life is short

Coda, Panic's new website app.

When I used to make webpages, eons ago, I was a handcoding kind of person. The fanciest I ever got was Arachnophilia 4.0 (not the pretty Java-ized version you see there, the one before that was quite ugly), written by a hippie former NASA scientist dude. And that was only because handcoding tables is something no human should ever have to do if they can avoid it. I am much lazier now, and I prefer to automate as many tasks as possible while still having the ability to tweak things as necessary. Coda makes me want to make webpages again. Just look at that CSS support!

I'm all excited now.

Oh, David Wu. You were a truly unremarkable congresscritter before you made this speech.

While Barad said she is glad Wu brought Star Trek into the Iraq debate, she noted that "Klingons look out for each other, and it certainly doesn't seem like the president is looking out for our troops." Instead, she corrected, Wu should have compared the Bush administration to the Cardassians, who occupied the planet Bajor and "were not as concerned with honor as the Klingons were."

While the correction is more apt, yes, that is still really fucking pedantic.

[edit because I think waaay too much about this shit:] Wait. If the Bush administration are the Cardassians, doesn't that make the insurgents the Maquis? I mean, it makes sense, but still.

Warren Ellis on how the chambara form is used by George Lucas.

And the more I think about it, the concept of the Jedi as itinerant wandering do-gooders makes much more sense than a bunch of stodgy old bureaucrats in a building on Coruscant.

Adrienne and I had a discussion about Joseph Campbell and Star Wars the other day, and about how much George Lucas really is like Quentin Tarantino: such great influences, but unbelievably shitty output given said influences.