Heh. Courtesy of Labnotes, Google Maps directions from Stanford, California to Stockholm, Sweden. (Hint: Step 34 is a doozy).

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has been receiving death threats (warning: it’s disturbing material). These threats have caused her to cancel speaking engagements and to consider giving up blogging altogether. As discussed in the article, these threats aren’t merely the anonymous trolling comments that most bloggers see from time to time, but comments made about her on other prominent blogs. With cleverly photoshopped pictures to help illustrate the threats.

Some of the accused parties are busy doing damage control this morning, and I think it’s probably true that none of the people she names were directly responsible for the threats. The problem is that those people helped to create an atmosphere where their readers felt free to post these kinds of misogynistic comments. It’s not news that the Internet provides a degree of anonymity that emboldens people to say things in e-mail messages, or in posts in online forums, that they would never say in real life — indeed, that practically unregulated level of free speech is one of the great things about the ‘net. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough, for the most part, to participate in online communities that are self-policing and don’t put up with or otherwise encourage this kind of crap.

As Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” No, not the wild rice guy — Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. I don’t know how to finish this post off other than to say, think about what you write and the power that your words have, even when — or especially when — they’re anonymous. And on the off chance that you’re a reader of one of the blogs that “hosted” these attacks on Kathy, maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from those feeds.

Paul at Rogue Amoeba has posted about his discovery that AppleTV will work just fine with some standard definition (i.e. non-HDTV) televisions, as long as they provide component video inputs and a simulated widescreen display mode.

My television definitely has component inputs, but I don’t know whether it has a “simulated widescreen” display mode. The owner’s manual doesn’t mention it, but the article’s author writes that his owner’s manual didn’t mention it either (despite the fact that his television apparently does have said mode). So now I’m thinking about picking up one to try out. I’m not uninterested in buying an HDTV, but we have a furniture problem that makes that an undesirable choice right now. Our “entertainment center,” which weighs approximately 4000 pounds and will never again move from the spot where it’s now sitting, has a 34 inch-wide space in which to put a television. That means the largest HDTV that would realistically fit would be one of the smallest available models (a 27″ screen), and I’m guessing that that just wouldn’t be worth bothering with.

I’m in the camp that wishes that Apple had added DVR capabilities to this device, but I think I understand where they’re coming from business-wise — Apple wants to be your content provider, and they want you purchasing (or at least downloading) your content from the iTunes Music Store. If I decide not to try out Apple TV — say, because Denise won’t let me get one — I am still interested in converting our old PC to a MythTV server; and that might turn out to be the best option in the long run anyways.

The web site for Ruby Hoedown 2007, the first ever Southeastern Regional Ruby Conference, has officially launched, thanks to the work of Jeremy McAnally and Nathaniel Talbott. Please sign up on the mailing list at the web site to keep up to date on all the news and announcements leading up to the conference. The CFP should open within the next few weeks.

Artic Refrigeration
Originally uploaded by quailwood.

At some point before you pay someone to decorate your delivery truck, don’t you check a dictionary to see how “Arctic” is spelled?

Buds appeared on our trees late last week and they’re getting ready to bloom. A lot of the trees in the neighborhood are already blooming, but ours have always been late bloomers.

Meanwhile, Oscar was watching me walk around the yard taking pictures and he was not happy about having to stay inside.

It’s old news — from about a year ago, actually — but Palm has once again shafted Mac users by providing their Palm TX Enterprise Security Update (which adds support for stronger Wi-Fi encryption methods and authentication protocols) via a Windows-only installation process. Someone has probably figured out a hack to get this to work with Macs, but it’s just one more example of how little Palm values its Mac-based customers.

I hope that Apple destroys the market for Treos with the iPhone. It would serve Palm right.

Via Lifehacker, news of Universe 3, a new open source web browser for Palm OS. If you’ve used Blazer (Palm’s built-in web browser software) or Opera Mini, you know that browsing the web on a Palm handheld can sometimes be an exercise in frustration. Despite its “Release Candidate 1″ status, it sounds as though a lot of users are running into problems using Universe 3, and so I’m not going to actually download it at the moment. I just wish I could get to their developers blog (which seems to be down at the moment) to see else they’ve got planned.

Just upgraded my WordPress installation from version 2.0 to 2.1.2. You shouldn’t see any problems, but please let me know if you do!

Dave Thomas of the Pragmatic Programmers has written the first of what he promises will be a series of articles on writing books. Given that Dave has yet to write a book that wasn’t widely appreciated and wildly successful, this seems like a good series to keep an eye on.