I'm drafting the playlist for my neighborhood summer cookout (5th party so far, 4th with music, 3rd with a preplanned playlist). I've laid out a theme but need to about double the duration. So, I have two questions:

1. Have any song suggestions that fit the music style? (current list follows)
2. Is there a better site to ask this, like slashdot journal but for music?

2008 Block Party:

• Jesus Of Suburbia - Green Day
• Club America - The Cure
• People Are People - Depeche Mode
• They - Jem
• Television, the Drug of the Nation - The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
• 16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
• Welcome To The Occupation - R.E.M.
• I Should Be Allowed To Think - They Might Be Giants
• The Bottom Line - Big Audio Dynamite
• Imagine This (Bush) - Wax Audio
• Better Way (War Mix) - Ben Harper
• Revolution - The Beatles
• Talkin' Bout a Revolution - Tracy Chapman
• Yell Fire - Michael Franti & Spearhead
• Children Of The Revolution - Baby Ford
• Freewill - Rush
• Free - Phish
• I'm Free - The Soup Dragons
• The News - Carbon/Silicon

If somehow Hillary manages to pull a victory, I can't think of a more appropriate symbol of American ingenuity and resolve than: both Hillary and McCain picking Joe Lieberman as their respective running mates. It would be fabulous!

Alternately, we could all just skip past the next 8 months of ugliness straight to President-Elect Obama. Please. Either way would be fine.

p.s. Any thoughts on Obama's running mate? John Edwards? Ron Paul? Arianna Huffington?

In the last few weeks, we've switched most users over to the new 'D2' discussion system- a fully ajaxified discussion system. There are a number of minor bugs, but I figured I'd toss up a few quick notes to address the biggest user complaints.

1. you can turn it off if you log in. Some people get stuck in there ways, and no matter what we build it will never make you happy. So you can have the old lame system and we'll all enjoy the new cool system without you.
2. you can get 'nested' mode back by dragging the 2 thresholds together in the floating slider. they connect and become a single thing. it's quite nifty, and if you are logged in the setting is remembered so you don't have to click to navigate deep threads.
3. you can get more comments at once from the 'prefs' link. the default is currently 50, but choosing 'many' changes that (currently) to 250, which means you will get roughly the average number of comments in a typical slashdot story. Yes you will need to click 'more' on a huge discussion, but at that point we're talking about very large pages and slower computers like to choke on huge pages anyway so we have to balance size and performance.

there are 2 huge wins here for everyone... the first is retention of context. You can wade into a thread, retrieve more comments, change your threshold, all without losing your place like you did in the old system. And using the WASD keys to navigate makes it very easy to peruse discussions in a number of interesting ways. mouseover the help text in the floater for more information about how they work. We're open to suggestions on how this should work- i'm not totally happy with it yet... but it *is* possible to mash a single key and go from start to end of a discussion, which pleases me.

the second is that the default users see the highest score comments first. You can change this by logging in and toggling the retrievable order to oldest first, but for most people this means that the first comments they see will be the best. There are so many great comments on Slashdot, but most users don't see them because they are buried within the discussion. I think this goes a long ways towards helping.

A final word about the ads in there- unfortunately there are ads in the new system. Changing from a static page-page-page system to a dynamic ajax system with a single 'page load' causes us to serve hundreds of thousands of fewer ads. We worked out roughly how long people read discussions and are trying to strike a balance so that you see roughly the same number of ads under this system as you would have under the old one. We'll tweak it of course, but we gotta pay the bills here people!

And obviously all of this is a work in progress. Pudge is leading development work on this. The next project is to make it possible to post without losing your place in the discussion, and then to refine navigation keybindings and thread expansion/contraction controls to make the whole UI clean. We appreciate constructive criticisim. There are bugs (especially in IE, but almost no slashdot user runs IE) but we're mashing them out- thanks for your feedback on them. As we sand off the rough edges I think you'll all find the new system a vast improvement if you just play with it for a bit and give it a fair chance. Not all change is bad ;)

...is the New York trifecta:

1. Hillary Clinton maintains her faux-mentum and sweeps the delegates!
2. Rudy Guiliani makes a shocking comeback and 9/11s his way to nomination!
3. Mike Bloomberg throws his moneybag into the ring!

Now all I need to do is figure out their running mates, and some scenario where Bloomberg gets a nonzero number of electors.

Purely for the aesthetic symmetry of it, I'd want HRC to win a one-term Presidency: Bush 88, Clinton 92, Clinton 96, Bush 00, Bush 04, Clinton 08. Then either she declines to run again (maybe Bill keeps sleeping with her interns) or, preferably, she loses the 2012 primary to a Neo-Dem upstart.

Since this is not yet documented, I figured I would mention this here now... we are experimenting with some very rudimentary keystroke navigation in the discussion2 system. We support both FPS style WASD keybindings, as well as the standard vi layout of HJKL. Down/Up will cycle you through next/previous comment chronologically... left/right will cycle you through next/previous in thread order. Holding SHIFT down while you press the navigation key will collapse the previous comment. And when you get to the end, pressing down or right will attempt to retrieve more comments if you want them.

What this means is that you can now use D2 to simulate most of the most popular viewing modes of the original discussion system. By dragging both the abbreviate & display sliders right next to each other you effectively remove abbreviated comments which simulates nested mode. By toggling comment retrieval order to 'Oldest First' and using up down, you can effectivel read the discussion from oldest to newest. And of course the default settings gives you the best comments first, providing a nice default view of discussions for most anonymous users (who rarely participate and we want to really show only the best comments).

You can also disable D2 in the comment prefs (the word 'prefs' in the floating dialog box) if you are logged in. Right now we're testing D2 for a large percentage of anonymous readers. As soon as we finish IE7 support we'll roll out D2 for the rest of the ACs.

The Ann Arbor party seemed to go great- lots of people packed Leopold Bros place, doing battle with barflies and football fans. It was somewhat bizarre watching obvious normal bar people try to figure out what this large crowd of 'different' people were all about. We handed out a ton of t-shirts, drank much alcohol, ate nachos etc. Our party had a great number of Slashdot and SourceForge staffers... all folks who have been with Slashdot for so many years it's hard to remember Slashdot without them. I'm not exactly sure how many people eventually showed up... a lot of our RSVPs didn't show, and a lot more didn't bother sign up at all, so I think the two balanced out.

For me personally these sorts of things are always difficult. I'm not very good at crowds. I can smile for a picture, but I'm perpetually nervous when surrounded by strangers who have certain expectations of me. There's a reason I live life behind a keyboard!

Further compounding matters lately is baby induced chronic sleep deprivation. Me want REM cycles. It's always nice to get out and have a beer. Kathleen & I get only so many hours "out" together now, gotta make each one count. The party attendees were all cool... and understanding that I was pretty tired.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed up... I've still got the california party later this week. Hopefully my throat heals up by then. The only real problem with this location was the acoustics... I had to shout to be heard, and stick my ear in front of people to hear them (baby crying has done some amount of hopefully temporary ear damage). My throat is raaaaw from yelling. Sucking on cough drops helps.

As for other parties, boxes have been shipped. Hopefully they have arrived to most places on time, although I think they were shipped on a slowish shipping option so I'm not sure. I know some folks got shirts on friday, but I'm sure the others will arrive monday or so. Also, keep in mind that we only had 700 shirts and 2300 attendees from 136 parties with more than 5 attendees. So obviously not every party is getting a box... when we sent out the bulk mail, we had over 100 replies, and I'm sure there was nowhere near enough to fill even that.

But shirts or not, I hope your parties go well. Remember to submit videos or pictures or whatever to anniversary at slashdot dot org for your chance at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate grand prize.

This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . . .

I just published my third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I mention it here because it's all about growing up in the 70s, and coming of age in the 80s as part of the D&D/BBS/video game/Star Wars figures generation, and I think a lot of Slashdot readers will relate to the stories in it.

I published a few of the stories on my blog, including Blue Light Special. It's about the greatest challenge a ten year-old could face in 1982: save his allowance, or buy Star Wars figures?

After our corduroy pants and collared shirts and Trapper Keepers and economy packs of pencils and wide-ruled paper were piled up in our cart, our mom took our three year-old sister with her to the make-up department to get shampoo and whatever moms buy in the make-up department, and my brother and I were allowed to go to the toy department.

"Can I spend my allowance?" I said.

"If that's what you want to do," my mom said, another entry in a long string of unsuccessful passive/aggressive attempts to encourage me to save my money for . . . things you save money for, I guess. It was a concept that was entirely alien to me at nine years old.

"Keep an eye on Jeremy," she said.

"Okay," I said. As long as Jeremy stood right at my side and didn't bother me while I shopped, and as long as he didn't want to look at anything of his own, it wouldn't be a problem.

I held my brother's hand as we tried to walk, but ended up running, across the store, past a flashing blue light special, to the toy department. Once there, we wove our way past the bicycles and board games until we got to the best aisle in the world: the one with the Star Wars figures.

I'm really proud of this book, and the initial feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been reluctant to mention it here, because of the spam issue, but I honestly do think my stories will appeal to Slashdotters.

After the disaster with O'Reilly on Just A Geek, I've decided to try this one entirely on my own, so I'm responsible for the publicity, the marketing, the shipping, and . . . well, everything. If this one fails, it will be because of me, not because a marketing department insisted on marketing it as something it's not.

Of course, I hope I can claim the same responsibility if (when?) it finds its audience . . . which would be awesome.

So if you only count anniversary parties with 5 or more attendees, we have 128 venues with a grand total of 2366 attendees. The largest parties include Pudge's in seattle with 129, mine in Ann Arbor with 194 and Hemos's in CA with 197.

I'm sure that there will be many RSVPs that no show, but still, that's still an awful lot of interest. We'll be shipping shirts to a good number of those parties, but we have triple the attendees to shirts available, so we'll see just how far we're able to spread the love. Emails will be going out to party planners in the next couple days to get postal addresses.

As we're nearing 100 signed up people for the A2 Slashdot anniversary party, we've changed the venue to Leopold Bros... it's just a block south from the other place and they can handle us. I've also got word that we'll be printing a few hundred extra shirts since there was already like 50 parties with 5+ people in attendance. We certainly won't have enough for everyone, but we'll make a good dent in it.

I will of course put this information into a story next reasonable chance I get for a story, but I figured at least I could get the word out there. The anniversary party entry on the official page has been updated with the new location & address.

The A2 party already has like 70 signed up. We're going to have to rethink venue or time I think if we really have that many people. Wait a few more days and see what we can work out. Keep reading in the party forum for info. We have 500 shirts to print and hand out... it'll be fun to see where they go.

more info as I get it. There will be notes on future stories as days get closer.

Larry Craig trying to play pass the potato has finally crystallized the answer to a question that has been floating around the back of my head for many years now. Why do so many social conservatives believe that being gay is a choice?

ANSWER: because for them, it really is a choice.

Way back in college I completed most of a minor in Psychology (then transferred schools and did most of a minor in CS, then decided to just graduate rather than finish either, but I digress). The key point my favorite Psych professor stressed about sex was that orientation is not a boolean toggle. It's a continuous set, bimodally distributed with a large hump near the hetero end, a smaller one on the far side, and a non-zero curve joining the two. (FWIW, I express this mathematically because that was my major; she taught it with friendly illustrations).

For most of us, preference is just a hard-coded trait. We might feel an outlier twinge once in a while, but it's not enough to act upon or even worry about. But imagine what it's like for folks toward the middle of the spectrum, who find themselves attracted to both genders on a recurring basis. Among the Reality-Based Community, such a person might accept being bi and have a good time. However, for someone whose gut tells them that devout belief supersedes pesky facts, wow, this is a serious problem!

And so we end up with hundreds of these conflicted souls entering politics, publicly proclaiming their choice of heterosexuality, while covertly looking for cock in bathroom stalls. Almost makes me feel sorry for them. Almost.

While browsing for disinformative comments to downmod, I came across this likely candidate.

Take a casual glance at http://www.google.com/search?q=canada+nickel+dead-zone+nasa and you'll see the obvious fingerprints of a dittohead smear campaign. However, the question is ... is it false or not?

My searches didn't find any factual reports about nickel mines in Canada; either the story doesn't exist or it's completely overshadowed by the turd blossoms. Anyone else have better sources?

If any of you are using an iPhone and are willing to help test out some Slashdot handheld crap, shoot me off a note... my email is the same address as always, and if you can't guess it, you probably can't help anyway ;) I've built a stylesheet and Tim put together a few little options that we think will make a few bits of Slashdot look nice on an iPhone (or really most lower resolution displays) but unfortunately none of us actually HAVE one yet... so anyway, let us know. Or if you work at Apple, send us freebies dammit!

So here we are, four months into the first year of Apple Inc, and they are living up to the name change. I didn't realize the utter non-extent of it until I opened the latest version of MacTracker, clicked 2007 in the Timeline, and found exactly THREE entries:

1. AirPort Extreme (802.11n)
2. Apple TV
3. Mac Pro (8-core)

That's the complete list of product revisions since last year. Not even an iPod Gig-bump or an inch of display. Exactly one Mac update that's only of use to a handful of high-end pro artists. Meanwhile, Centrino Duo is here, and everyone else's models are zooming ahead. Several of them offer internal cameras now, BTW.

There hasn't been a year with this few announcements since ... hmm ... 1998. Lord Steve really believes iPhone is going to be as big a hit as iMac and iPod were. Dammit, I don't care about that, gimme my MacBook Santa Rosa!

Apropos of nothing: My kids love those repetetive decrementing-verse songs, so I hear them way too much. This variation has been going through my head for a while, and I felt like sharing:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
are your monkeys jumping on the bed?

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor says,
I'm reporting you to Social Services!

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
doctor called the copper and the copper said,
no more mother jumping on her kids!

One mother monkey in a jail house bed,
slapped around by her cell mate 'Ed',
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!