pinkasphalt

Although blogging might seem like a fairly innocuous activity, apparently it can have some pretty serious repercussions. Michael Hanscom, former Microsoft employee, wrote a blog entry entitled “Even Microsoft wants G5s”, which included what appears to be a pretty innocent picture of a bunch of Apple G5s being delivered to Microsoft’s Redmond offices. Three days later he was fired for having made that blog entry. The moral of the story? Watch what you write, Big Brother Bill is watching

NASA’s Earth Observatory website has some amazing satellite photographs (1, 2) of the California fires. These images are really large so be sure to scroll down to see the huge amount of smoke the fires are putting out.

Wired has a FAQ on the Wachowski Brothers (who knew Larry was a cross-dresser?), and while you’re over there check out this interesting article on a typeface developed to help dyslexics read onscreen text.

Remember Wesley from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Well, I am sure many of you have spend sleepless nights wondering what ever happened to Will Wheaton. Wonder no more. He is alive and blogging away.

And finally, for Americans far from home who want to catch a glimpse of what’s on US TV news shows, Lisa Rein often posts good video clips from different news sources, like the Jim Leherer News Hour and Meet the Press. (A full index of her video archive is here.)

I started reading the new Michael Moore book on the plane yesterday and so far I am enjoying it. The edition I am reading has an introduction aimed at UK readers and I wonder what the US version has as an introduction. In general, I find that it is less funny than Stupid White Men, but still very enjoyable. I do have one complaint/crituque though. In an effort to make the book easily readable and accessible to a wide audience, Moore presents things in overly simple terms. A few times I have found myself wishing he would go a little more in depth with some of the ideas he presents, rather than reducing them to a one sentence sound bite. Nonetheless, he is saying things that few other American writers are saying and that alone makes this book worth reading. And for those of us who want to go a bit further, the book is well referenced and could serve as a launching pad for more in depth research.

I was beginning to think it would never happen, but after a long hiatus, I have redesigned pinkasphalt.com and, more importantly, switched to a new blog publishing service, Typepad. It’s by the same people who made Movable Type, but it has some cool new features and I find it much easier to customize. Anyway, things are still a little messy around here, so please excuse any errors you might come across. I will try to get everything in order in the next few days. Welcome back!