Tales from Uncle Mike

I do not accept non-nature based belief systems. In other words, I accept as truth only that which is quantifiable and observable. Speculation and postulation about spirits, ghosts or some spectral intelligence which, no matter what the argument, sits at a meta-level unknowable to humans is, to me, simply a waste of time. If it will not change the temperature of the room or cause a chemical or physical reaction in matter, it does not concern me. The stock in trade of those who deal in matters spiritual seems to be faith in things unseen and a world of possibilities. Maybe there is a God. Maybe God is inside us. Maybe we are all God. Maybe God is just another intelligent being like us, who created us as an experiment. If we humans ever create a digital machine or network with even the most rudimentary ability to question, to think laterally in a cloud of fuzzy logic like we humans do, surely it will encounter the same fundamental metaphysical quandaries. Who created me? Why am I...

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else. And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: ''Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?'' And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of. And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months. And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I...

I recently had an exchange with a coder/developer concerning his hack for displaying a " label cloud " on Blogger sites. You can read our mutual comments here . Before seeing the replies from phydeaux3 , I had already spoken to my business partner about the concerns in the commercial sector about open source in general, and the use of such weighty packages as Joomla in particular. Sure, the code is free, constantly updated, infinitely configurable, and often comparable to commercial applications. Sometimes there really is no commercial equivalent in any affordable sense, as in the case of Content Management Systems such as Mambo and Drupal . But the issue of support and ongoing development makes business owners crazy. They are used to the model of buying Microsoft software and paying a premium for both the code and all the collateral stuff necessary to support it: books, tutorials, classes and the MS certified geeks to keep it running. All that is standardized and avai...

What is Web 2.0? Well, apparently, whatever it is, it comes with spacey new-age music. Watch and learn.

I met a girl not long ago and tried to make her fall in love with me. It didn't work. This morning I ate a raspberry tart I had planned to serve for dessert when she came for dinner. It was delicious, and I thought "This would have worked magic on her. She would have fallen for me, if she had eaten this." Then I was doubly glad that I had eaten it instead of her.