LookIt

If Yahoo! Mail says it's spam, it is spam

I have two items in my Bulk folder in Yahoo! Mail that Yahoo put there in error. I have selected both of them and clicked the "Not Spam" button, but they stayed in the Bulk folder. So, I selected them again and told it to move them to the Inbox. Nope, they stay in the Bulk folder. Feh. This is why I use Gmail for this kind of work: they do what their users tell them to do.

Patent applications: the devil in the details

Methods and apparatus to search and analyze prior art. At first, this doesn't seem so bad because most of the independent claims are long and tortured (it would be fun to have a tape recording of the examiner's first words after reading claim 1), but some of the independent claims are short and pretty frigging obvious, particularly claim 57. Maybe this is a new application strategy: make some early claims that are likely to get granted because the examiner assumes they make sense, but slip in the useful and obvious stuff way down the list.

Anyone can try to patent anything

Email World Lottery. Maybe those "patent it yourself" books need a bit more detail about what not to try to patent.

My Better Self

The always-intruguing Dar Williams has a new album out, My Better Self. Dar fans may see the title and think "it's going to be another serious one" until they see the front cover:

Many of the songs have the catchy lyric twists that Dar has had on her previous albums, and her voice is as clear as always. Fortunately, it is less than a month until she plays in Santa Cruz; the east coast always gets her first.

...and then there is Dar and Ani DiFranco doing "Comfortably Numb", and you just want to cry from the loneliness. Ani's trippy, ethereal backing helps buffet the song from hopeful to despairing in ways that Pink Floyd never did. This is probably one of the best re-psychedelicized cover versions since Siouxsie and the Banshees blew "Dear Prudence" into a different plane. Lord knows what this will be like live and without Ani, or if Dar even tries it.

LA people and turn signals

There is a general belief that people in Los Angeles don't use their turn signals. This weekend was the first time I had driven in LA in many years, and I found that belief to be mostly true. One place where it wasn't true was on the freeway when a hot-head was tailgating someone, then passed them on the right. In one hour, I saw three cases where the hot-head used his right turn signal at the beginning of the maneuver, as if to say to the people behind him "watch out, I'm going to pass this idiot". Humorously, none of those three used their left turn signal when they cut off the too-slow driver five seconds later. Go figure.

Driving to Los Angeles

Bay Area folks who drive to Los Angeles (and vice versa) and normally go down I-5 might want to consider driving 101 instead. People who do both advised me that 101 takes about an hour or 90 minutes more, but Chuq noted that people don't tailgate as much. I certainly discovered that in both directions yesterday. I was driving 75-80 MPH on the wide-open spaces, and the folks who wanted to pass me were pretty polite about it. It's also a much prettier drive than I-5, particularly if you like the rolling golden hills of California.

High school reunions

I went to my 30th high school reunion over the weekend. One thing that was pretty fun about it was being in a room where almost everyone was nearly exactly my age and had spent their adolescence in the place where I did. That combination helped strip away some of the normal juggling one needs to do at parties when meeting people.

One phrase that worked well for me (because it was true): "I certainly remember your name, but I don't remember how well we knew each other."

Out-of-context blog quote of the day

From a thoughtful article on the inefficacy of some proposed countermeasures: "I'm not sure people should have to suffer anal burning in order to get relief from chronic pain."