DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

More fun for nerds… use Google to search the Jargon file (aka the New Hacker’s Dictionary).

ESR calls this tool jargoogle. It supplies a standard search form as well as a promising JavaScript widget (that, I regret, does not appear to work in Mozilla 0.9.6).

Some favorite entries: astroturfing, VAXectomy, Zawinski’s Law, Gates’ Law, Hanlon’s Razor

Here’s something to do while you’re waiting… you can watch Tony Levin and the California Guitar Trio perform three sets of finger-busting acoustic music courtesy of primeticket.net.

Tony Levin’s home site: www.tonylevin.com

If you don’t recognize his name, you’ll probably still recognize his work — just take a peek at his discography.

Chank is having a font sale. Stock up today! $10 for a great Type 1 font is cheap.

This is one of the coolest uses of the web I’ve seen in a long time: a visual plot of weather data for San Francisco. Data comes from an informal network of weather stations around the city, plus published weather data.

When I lived in the City, people always talked about “microclimates.” That’s a fancy word that describes how the unusual geography of the area causes weather to differ dramatically from one neighborhood to the next. As I write this, there is a 25-degree disparity between the Zoo and the “Sunset Station,” located ~2 miles away.

Kudos to Aaron and sfweather.org for building such a useful web application!

I listened to Anthony Robbins’ audio webcast today. He wanted to address ways of coping with fear, in the aftermath of what he called the “nine one one” attacks. (It took me a few seconds to connect what I heard as “911,” a telephone number, with “9/11,” an infamous date. Does that make me a visual learner or auditory learner, if the same sound could be represented by two separate visual symbols, and I confuse them?)

Robbins was thoughtful, intelligent, and provocative, as usual. He’s also an entertaining storyteller, as evidenced by today’s presentation.

I think what I appreciate most is that he is always goal-oriented… You cannot follow his advice and fail to take action. You can, of course, read his advice and think to yourself, “I should do that.” Robbins calls that “shoulding all over yourself.” (That’s an auditory joke, for all you visual learners. Say it out loud; you’ll get it.)

He plugged a new movie, in which he has a cameo: Shallow Hal, starring Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow. Robbins invited listeners to see the movie in order to change their state (from fear to happiness, I guess). He said, “you’ll laugh your tail off.”

I’ve seen the previews, and I think that may be all I see of that movie. (If you want a laugh, go see Bandits instead.)