MarkW.us

Moved.

2006-01-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

It took a while, but I've finished my little move off of blogger/blogspot and onto a homebrew blog engine. I'm going to put in a site redirect into my template in a few days after I'm sure the new engine works well enough, this site should stay online (give or take the redirect). Anyways, the new blog is at Markw.us While it might be nice to have someone else to blame when things break, I think I'm going to like the freedom I'm picking up with getting off blogger. Its a great service for novices, but I outgrew blogger months ago. I can't imagine how anyone with more than a few hundred posts would keep using it when there are better engines for powerusers. To each his own I suppose.

Blogger Exile Progress

2005-12-22T18:55:00.000-05:00

I figured that I needed to make an update of sorts so here goes. I've moved all of my posts (give or take this one) into a database which was a royal pain in the ass (something like 4 or 5 long evenings). I then spent most of a night (all night) writing and running scripts to reformat what I pulled out of blogger to make everything ready for a custom blog engine, which after a few hours nap I managed start on. Right now I need to

1) Work out and write the code for all the archives (months and posts at least), once I figure out mod rewrite I think I might have it
2) Write RSS feed engine. I think this will be fairly simple since I've got the index working, its just a matter of fixing it.
3) Work in comments. I'd kind of like to try my hand at some AJAX like functionality here, but I'm not sure thats going to happen. Even if it doesn't I still need to add in the comment code
4) Beef up security and posting features. The scripts I wrote to move the database will help, but they are very, very crude, and certainlly not something I can post on a server
5) Work out the blogger redirect engine, this is low priority
6) Move the database and all the code over to the domain.
7) Build and expand. What's the point of custom coding a blogging engine if all you're going to do is write it and forget it?

I'd like to say I'll launch by the new year, but I had been telling myself that I'd be done by my birthday as well, and while that pushed me to finishing the DB and getting the main rendering code up and running, its since passed (aside: December birthdays generally suck, December birthdays within a week of xmas, really suck.)

We'll see. I'm out of school until the 5th, while I've got a pile of DVDs and video that almost rivals my podcast queue on top of whatever the 25th brings. If I decide to go to podcastercon (I'm up in the air about it), I'll really want to have something launched. This one feels a little ratty, and I feel a little cheap when I hand out the URL.

Iced

2005-12-16T01:00:00.000-05:00

Iced Buds
Originally uploaded by Mark_W.

While not as amazing as some of the ice storms I saw while I was still living in Iowa, the two ice storms that have hit Northwest North Carolina in the last week have been beautiful in their own right.

Because I haven't been blogging much between final exams, trying to get off blogger, and the fact I've horribly neglected my flickr account I've posted a set of photos I've taken after the two storms.

Enjoy

I love winter.

Huh?

2005-12-12T14:23:00.000-05:00

One of the RIAA vs Consumer appeals came out with a decision against the consumer. In itself its not surprising, since the argument was a pretty poor excuse of canned defences. What's shocking is that she's been fined $750 per song. Which makes me wonder where the hell the judge got that figure. I can buy a the CD it came on for $20, I can get the track off iTunes for $.99, or I could subscribe to some download service and get it and a zillion more for something like $5 a month. None of those cases gets over $3 a track. I can understand a reasonable fine for illegal activity, a 750% increase. That's outrageous.

Makes me glad I'm not supporting the RIAA.

(unrelated side note - most blog posts have been moved over to a database, and after exams finish up this week I'll get back to writing the blog engine)

Wow

2005-12-08T22:19:00.000-05:00

96 year old color photos from Russia

Via Damn Interesting

Hurrumph

2005-12-08T20:00:00.000-05:00

I may end up getting an Video iPod soon than I expected, my 20GB grayscale 4G iPod died sometime yesterday afternoon - massive hard drive failure. I've known since last night - between not booting, random error messages, and a very loud, clicking hard drive I knew early on it was the drive. Unfortunately its out of its 1 year warranty, and I know the drive is gone for sure since I was able to mount it long enough to run some disk utilities. Despite a full reset, an attempted repair, and a try at reformatting, its one very screwed hard drive.

At this point I could start shopping for a new drive off ebay, but a new known working drive is easily $150, and I was already outgrowing the 20GB drive. A new 60GB would run me around $370, give me photos, video, and more space.

I'm pissed, tired, and a couple other things, but in the end this just means I'm getting a 5g sooner than expected. I just wish I had moved some of the files I was storing on it over to one of my file servers before it died - most of them are replaceable, some not so much.

Semi-happy ending

2005-12-07T15:08:00.000-05:00

The Mount Airy City Schools have had a problem with bomb threats over the last month or so, receiving 4 bomb threats in 5 weeks (one at the high school, three at the middle school), all after I made a post about what I felt was a real blunder of disaster planning at the near by community college I'm attending and the FBI visit I received a few days later.

Well apparently the public postings paid off. After a couple rounds of echo the message (minus some of my colorful phrases) filtered up to the Superintendent of Mount Airy City Schools, who I've heard instantly caught onto the idea and that there's a good chance the the district will implement some form of distributed evacuation at the schools.

This isn't saying anything about the college, but then again, they haven't proven themselves to be especially receptive to criticism. Apparently they really pissed off the county commissioners last night. I don't know the full story there, but I know it deals with questions the commissioners had about the school's "very positive" reports despite all of the student complaints about the administration and some of its policies.

Packing

2005-12-03T00:03:00.000-05:00

Writing a decent script to move all of my 1350 posts (+ comments!) into a database is nearly a fruitless effort. I couldn't get blogger to output everything in something resembling a useful file (I'm not supprised, I've discussed the issue before), So I'm going though the painful process of copying and pasting all of the entries. I whipped up a couple web forms and tied them to the database to make entry a little easier, but bleh. I've barely finished one month worth of posts (leaving me with ~1300)

Part of it is that I'm homebrewing a blog engine, but even if I was moving to word-press I couldn't use the existing scripts.

At least its fairly mindless, and I can eat my way though my podcast playlists while repeatedly hitting command C Tab Tab V Tab Tab.

Plan for Victory

2005-12-01T20:16:00.000-05:00

It's too easy to make fun of this image.

Image is from reuters via Wonkette (via Kung Fu Monkey because I missed it at Wonkette)

Blessed are the ignorance, for they shall internet the earth

2005-12-01T18:38:00.000-05:00

Its amazing how ignorant people are when it comes to security. In a networking class today we had a teacher closed us off from the rest of the network and let us raise hell with hacking tools. Plain l33t hax0r script kiddie junk but a practical introduction to security, and more importantly, how its really hard to know when you're being attacked. So we're running our packet sniffing and password detection tools making one very hostile environment and nearly everyone is silly enough to log into some significant personal account. Several emails, a few personal web spaces, one fool even logged into paypal (which begs its own questions), I'm not sure what was more concerning - logging into priority accounts in a known hostile environment, or the week passwords. Makes me glad I use a lot of heavy passwords (the default brute force settings wouldn't have cracked my passwords).

At least this teacher seems to have the common sense to teach this well, even if it might give a few of the older students nightmares. He certainly seems to know the subject, and it looks like its going to be a smooth lead in to the network security course he's teaching next semester

AmigoFish

2005-11-30T01:06:00.000-05:00

Dave Slusher has released his user-centric podcast/vlog directory AmigoFish, something I was lucky enough to be an alpha tester on. Rate a handful of podcasts, it goes out and compares your tastes to all the other users, then comes back with recommendations based on the ratings of similar people. Basically the same thing podcast networks and community do, except automated and genre independent.

Its been working great for me, all the way back to when it was drop down menus and tables, and I've found a few new podcasts and video blogs because of it. A lot of that was when it was drawing from a limited user pool. I can't wait to see how my recommended list morphs now that its public.

While its good for people like me already consuming podcasts, I suspect it will be most useful for those getting started, and, possibly, for the critics who've been saying that there's no easy way to find podcasts you like.

Hmmm...

2005-11-26T00:58:00.000-05:00

Assuming this hasn't been too skewered though the wiki process, the Netherlands seem to have a sane Drug Policy, as opposed to the money leach the US drug and alcohol policy seems to be.

We can rebuild it...

2005-11-24T00:02:00.000-05:00

Slowly making progress on my little blogger exodus. I've pretty much completed my style sheet and basic page, I've set up a database structure, and I've even got a couple ideas on how to manage the blogspot redirects. That leaves moving all the content to the database then writing the blog engine and redirect script.

I wish I was better at programming.

And a happy thanksgiving or something like that...

A little too much to do

2005-11-22T12:42:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I need to trim down on the RSS feeds... even if I that is 4 or 5 days worth of content...

Irony

2005-11-21T15:44:00.000-05:00

Driving from NC to Chicago then coming back all in three days is almost suicidal. It can be done, but its by no stretch of the imagination fun or easy. However, it was important to make this trip this weekend since it was for my Great Grandmother's Memorial service (She lived to be 104 - so don't feel the need to express false sympathies).

While we didn't have a lot of free time in Chicago, one thing I was really itching for was a real deep dish pizza (I take pizza seriously) but for a variety of reasons we didn't get one while we were in Chicago. However I did get a Chicago Style Pizza out of the trip, just not from an expected place....

Irony (2.8MB 320x240 Quicktime Movie)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Not quite, but almost entirely unbearable

2005-11-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

The family is on a very fast trip for a memorial service in Chicago this weekend. Drove all day yesterday, and looking to drive all day tomorrow. Stupid rushed me forgot to grab a half decent cassette adapter for my iPod so if I want to listen to my ipod when I'm behind the wheel I need to listen to intermittent sound and static in addition to appeasing everyone else in the car. On my own I could probably bear it, with others I was outnumbered. So commercial radio it was.

Bleh. Half the time I had to listen to it I was thinking about banging my head against the nearest available object and the rest of the time I was thinking that Van Goah might not have been so crazy. I mean I can tolerate NPR (when they aren't begging for money) but commercial radio is just that - commercials, and usually uncreative over produced clips of crap. Even some of the worst podcasts would have been preferable to driving with commercial radio.

On the other hand the local TV stations here are not crap. For corse, the stations in Greater Chicago Land have a decent budget and a pool of highly competent people. Now if only the internet connection at the hotel didn't suck so bad (port blocking == evil)...

Had to happen

2005-11-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

As much as I love how advanced North Carolina is with respects to blogging, podcasting, and video casting (among other technologies). Unfortunately, those advances seem to be lost with my community college. I'll admit its not entirely surprising, we are in the mountains and Winston Salem (30 miles south east of here) seems to the western edge of NC enlightenment.

After three weeks, a movement started in part by an anonymous blog has helped catch the eyes and ears of the college administration and get them to address student concerns. Unfortunately both the local news and school are quick to dismiss the blog. While the local media is slightly more enlightened (they've excerpted this blog and keep tabs on several local bloggers, and have written about blogs, podcasts, and wikis among other things) the school administration isn't as kind. Rather than just dismissing the one student blog, they dismissed all blogs as a "national problem". Had I actually been approved to be there, I would have started ripping into him. His national problem of bloggers taking down corporations, media organizations, politicians is not a "problem" its a good thing.

Bloggers were the first ones to get the real stories out of Hurricane Katrina, and even as traditional media was in there reporting the news, citizen journalists were the ones writing the really moving stories. We're getting better, faster, and more informed looks at people like Harriet Miers. We can hear the real stories out of Iraq and the middle east, or find out the most recent Political squabbles from our own politicians, not just the wildly popular ones like Barack Obama, but even the small western NC representatives are taking time out to publish pieces in area blogs - at least if our politicians are so inclined.

Yes, you can get a disgruntled employee who wants to ruin your corporation, but I can't think of a really clear case where that has happened with blogs. (Someone feel free to prove me wrong) Yes, some companies have sued online publishers for soliciting trade secrets, and yes some have fired employee bloggers, but thats corporate America adapting to a new medium, but with IBM and others trying to get employees to blog I think that selecting a few cases in the minority is a low blow to a legimiant movement.

I'm willing to grant them that there are a lot of anonymous comments on the blog, and that there are probably a lot of people posting multiple times. However, if they bothered to count up the complaints signed with either a real name or contact (9 as of my last count) or handles (another 11 or so). I've heard that in Washington DC, representatives start a file when they receive 5 to 10 complaints. That may be out of 50,000 constituents. 20+ out of everyone who has passed though a rural community college should be lighting bon fires.

Its sad when you consider that they've launched an Internet Technology curriculum, but can't get themselves to pay even a minimal amount of attention to a website. More so when you think about how interconnected our societies are becoming, new and old, urban and rural, especially among the age groups that make up a large portion of their enrollment numbers...

(audio clips hopefully coming soon)

Bush's Next Move?

2005-11-16T00:46:00.000-05:00

Bush in 08?

You heard right. 4 MORE years. Sure the law says you can only serve 2 terms. Repeal it! The country needs W in '08. Show your continued support for George W. Bush by wearing the shirt or placing the sticker over (or next to) your W '04 sticker. God Bless America.

I know this is supposed to be a parody, ~~but isn't the 22nd Amendment just about the only part of the Constitution someone hasn't tried to mess with under the Bush administration?~~ Nevermind, someone tried to repeal term limits in 2003.

Bush '08 via Warren Ellis

The Low Cost of SoSo films

2005-11-15T22:44:00.000-05:00

Well, actually went to see Walmart: the high cost of low prices and while it wasn't a complete and horrible waste of an evening, it didn't exactly break even. The movie looks and feels amateurish. For example, I'd swear they were using a stock copy of iMoive and didn't bother making really clean cuts. They also borrowed clips from The Daily Show, which really didn't lend the movie any credibility. Sure it provided a well needed laugh, but nothing new or useful to the argument.

Even without borrowing from Jon Stewart, most of the information was nothing new and the little amount of content they really went out and collected seemed pretty heavily scripted.

Do I agree with the message? Absolutely. I've had friends who have had walmart jobs and were asked to do all sorts of stupid stuff (Hey, employee there's a tornado watch and there are a few landing in the area, can you come in and help us manage customers?) But I didn't get the feeling that this is going to be a serious problem for walmart. It doesn't attract the fencesitters, it doesn't suggest solutions beyond Unionize / keep walmart out, and it doesn't present any new facts. About the only thing it does is attract urban liberals like crazy - and they don't have walmarts to deal with.

Over all if you can get in free and want to kill an evening and a few brain cells, go see it. Otherwise find some more complete summaries or do some research. Once you get outside major population centers it isn't hard to figure out how Walmart is hurting America.

Hell is a Phone Network

2005-11-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

I'm traveling this weekend and I would really, really like to have tripping the rift on DVD while I'm on it. Sure I've got some nerdtv and DrunkenBlog's EAA video to watch, but those only go so far.

Unfortunately best buy is a wretched corporation whose idea of a good joke/business model is to get disgruntled customers to to do the work of disgruntled employees. Who needs to outsource to india when you've got plenty of customers pissed off enough to work just to get their products?!?!

I know my item is on "backorder" (a fancy term for "we'll ship it when you'll pay full price for it" or "We're screwing you over by not honoring the price we advertised and accepted billing information for") but oddly every store in the area has a copy. A nice new, shiny, glistening shrinkwrapped copy at its physical location. How do I know this? Well first it says so on the website - right there under local pickup, secondly the minimum wage college drop out I called at the store (who BTW isn't in on this scheme) told me they had a freaking copy in the store. So why then, do you idiots at the phone bank spew bullshit about "sir, there are no copies at the stores in your area." and offer the useless advice of "call the store's inventory department and have them update theier database"?

Bull-fucking-shit!

I am the customer. Notice me giving you money, not taking it. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should I have to call a fucking inventory department at one of YOUR stores! None. Hell I should have to place 4 separate phone calls to you half assed organization.

I might be a devil, but you made the bad deal, at least live up to it.

I think I need to get irate with a phone farm managerial goon at Worst Buy.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

(after thought, its slightly ironic that I want to pick this up before going to a screening of Walmart, the High Cost of Low Prices)

Fuck.

2005-11-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

Fuck.

Thats the same fucking idea I've been working on slowly (stupid, stupid stuipid stupid) over the last few months. Except they've got capital for who knows how many people and regions. I mean like all products there's a downfall, and I think NewsVine's might be in commercial/sponcered/paid content (how unbiased can you be if you're getting VC and brain trust from ABC's and Fox's?) Plus commercial ventures with community tend to be miserable failures. Has anyone successfully launched a community (as opposed to build)

Maybe there's some hope for an independent, but they've got full time developers, a pool of content producers and $5million that I don't.

Fuck.

Holy Fuck They Make This Hard!!!

2005-11-14T00:22:00.000-05:00

Well I've moved house, sort of.

This is yet another blow for blogger as a service, since moving from blogger/blogspot to your own servers is a ~~hard~~, neigh, impossible thing to do elegantly, and for any non-techies looking to try, I'm sorry. They are simply not geared up for letting people like me, or someone really serious about blogging get off of their (impossibly locked down) servers while keeping links and other goodies when moving to own on little corners of the interwebs.

First setting up the FTP account to move to another server while still using blogger (like I was initially planning) is tricky. It took me about a dozen times to set it up, with blogger spitting indecipherable error messages. Nothing wrong on my server's end, nope, all blogger.

Second, after you move off blogspot, they put your name back in the pool. This is fine, except in any sitituation where some people actually link to you and it is, in fact, recurring traffic. OK so a few residual clicks from Macslash, Edcone, or other blogs might not make the biggest difference, but if I can save that traffic, I want to save that traffic. The whole reason I started publishing online was to share information, I can't do that as well if you're scrapping my former domain.

Third, Blogger's proposed solution is this: reregister your blogspot domain. OK, but it still wipes the content that was there, which leads to 404s and other problems when your blog consists of 1350 posts and counting. If I can avoid it I don't want to make that lagging macslasher dig though 2.5 years of my postings to get to the one gem that was linked to in the past. I hate working to find content, and as a geek, I'm a lot more tolerant than most. If I don't need to make a user work, I don't plan to

These are things blogger can easily accommodate for. Just allow us to keep a copy of the structure of our blog on blogspot with a redirect that goes to the post on the new server. You don't need to store everything, just a structure pointing to the same location with a different domain.

Of corse that's just when using different servers.

Its a whole lot harrier when you want to move to another engine. Since I think my elegant solution is going to involve writing my own blog engine I think I'll leave this blog up with a HTTP redirect in the header. Then, I'm hoping, I'll be able to watch the referal addresses and set up another redirect to send it off to the posts new location. at least I hope. I already know its a problem thats going to take some research and experimentation, but I've already decided against the major blog engines. I think part of the spam problem is that all the spam spiders go looking for the same blog footprints. the "I Power Blogger here" or the telltale signs of wordpress. Up until a few weeks ago this blog was spam free, something I largely thank the jury-rigged design for (while it used to be based on an old, old, old blogger template, I've wired on a lot of shit onto it - 99.9% of blogger blogs seem to be based on default templates)

I had already decided to write my own engine, now it just becomes more important in my move, and at least now I have a copy of my blog to start working with. Which leads to my next grievance, why on earth does Blogger's owner Google not get them to move ass on making personal data more accessible. I mean the whole thing with gmail is "it's your data" hell the company's policy is "Don't be Evil", so maybe some one can explain to me why on earth we've got vendor lock-in, barely accessible raw data, and deletion of credibility all in one company that happily claims "Don't be evil"?

It makes my head spin. I used to say I'd be happy to recommend blogger to anyone interested in starting a blog, and maybe that's still true in some small way, but if you're even remotely serious about blogging, run away from blogger and blogspot as fast as you possibly can.

Moving.

2005-11-13T19:08:00.000-05:00

So long blogspot! Thanks for all the free hosting.

Thats right, after months of threatening, I am finally moving off of blogspot and onto my own paid servers at the domain I have been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to promote, Markw.us. Blogger does not make moving off of blogspot let alone Blogger simple, so for now I will continue using Blogger for updates after the move, but hopefully that will change by the end of the year as well. At the very least I'll make a change over next year when I should be able to write it off as a class assignment. (crosses fingers) Anyways I'm setting up some redirect scripts to get you form blogspot to markw.us, and if I can figure out how, try and get you to the right post (assuming all goes well in the move)

Its a shame that its nearly impossible to move, but its something I've known I'd need to do for a while. So, update your bookmarks/memory/feed (if you aren't using the feedburner feed, which I'll try and move over shortly) and I'll try to make this thing work.

If not expect a miserable and explosive failure peaking as a violent and expletive filled rant in an hour or two.

Obsure Economic Metrics

2005-11-12T18:15:00.000-05:00

FARK has noted that copper is an obscure economic metric. The article they link to notes that it is more accurate economic measure than gold. Which reminded me of a post I wrote in May where I did the math on how much the pennies in your pocket are really worth. Newer coins are pretty much worthless as anything other than currency (materials are worth .4 cents), but older pennies were getting close to being worth as much as their raw materials.

After reading the article and looking back on the post, I looked up the current copper prices. Right now, all those pre '82 pennies are worth about 1.1 cents on the metals market. Too bad that after processing the metal it wouldn't be worth enough to make it profitable, at least, not yet...

Fun wikipedia articles for this post:
Gold Standard
Debasement

Traffic

2005-11-12T01:06:00.000-05:00

I was just looking over my basic sitemeter traffic reports, and noticed I just passed 50,000 page views. I searched though my archives to pull some numbers, and it took me 26 months (10/6/2002 to 12/6/2004) to get to 25,000 page views and another month to get to 10,000 visitors.

The second 25,000 visits took about 23 weeks and I'll pass 20,000 visitors sometime early next week.

Not bad.

Stupid is...

2005-11-10T20:36:00.000-05:00

Stupid is standardized email address naming schemes.
Stupid is a public address book with 3176 listings of standardized email addresses.
Stupid is attaching 3176 real names to those email addresses.
Stupid is making those 3176 listings quickly and easily downloadable and converted into a bulk mailing friendly format.
Stupid is giving those 3176 email addresses a shared default password every four months.
Stupid is assuming that you're going to get 3176 people to change the password on an account many of those 3176 people don't realize they have.
Stupid is not realizing what makes the above facts stupid.

Stupid is... is a follow up to a post I made a few weeks ago called Stupid Security Practices

Surrynotes.blogspot.com

2005-11-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

A few day ago I linked in passing to a blogspot blog that's quickly become the core of a student protest in planning at the community college I'm attending. Its only been around for about 2 weeks but its already collected 100+ comments and based on the few links floating back to me and my experiences with the hyper-paranoid administration, a good deal of traffic. Now its really starting to get some attention. The local (and mostly inept) newspaper has taken notice of the situation (due in part because of the blogs existence) and is starting to probe around with a reporter (who didn't care to send traffic to the blog).

Wednesday the Student Government Association voted to launch a committee to look into some of the claims and will come back in a few weeks to see about moving this up the chain. The SGA also decided to investigate relaunching a school newspaper/newsletter, again due in part to the buzz generated by the anonymous blog.

I'm a much different demographic than those involved most with this. I'm tech savvy and have been blogging for a couple years, and maintained a web presence for longer than that.

However its pretty neat that students at a community college serving an area that for decades was (and still wishes it was) based in textiles and tobacco managed to start change though a fairly disorganized, distrustful, and mostly anonymous blog (some comments criticize that point).

Now that there's some more formal structure and coverage, I expect more to be done, but its neat that in an area you would least expect it, blogs are being used to turn things around.

I'm hoping, and will probably be emailing some of the people working on the committee and with the people starting the newspaper, to try and convince them to stay online with blogs and online tools. I doubt this area is enlightened enough, and tech savvy enough to follow the path Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham, Chapel Hill, and Charlotte are blazing, but maybe there's some hope.

Least Expected Weapons Research Group

2005-11-10T16:30:00.000-05:00

"Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission's Weapons Improvement Program" from an article on its advancements in humane whaling methods. Note to self - don't piss off the eskimos.

Keep the magic smoke in

2005-11-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

Userfriendly.org

EarJams

2005-11-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

About a week ago I ordered a pair of Griffin Technology EarJams for something like $10 shipped, I got them the other day so I've been giving them a work out. I'm not a $500 for 1 AV cable audio nut, but a pair of earjams on top of my iPod earbuds made a noticeable difference. They are slightly more comfortable than the naked earbuds, and the volume is louder, and I can hear things I normally don't, but anymore than $10 and I would probably feel ripped off. However, I think I might understand why people pay $100+ for real canal-phones. In a month or two, I might be getting real canal-phones (not the custom molded $200 things tho', maybe a decent pair around $70)

I'm afraid, I am very, very afraid

2005-11-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

I don't trust the dweebs at radio shack to know how to use the windows wares and cell phones they currently hoc, but they're now an Apple Authorized Retailer? Reminds me of back when Sears and Best Buys were trying (miserably) to sell Macs in the 90's.

I know there are more than a few differences between now and then, like the fact Apple has clean product lines that stand on their own, and iPods don't even need salesmen, but Radio Shack? Every Radio Shack employee I've known has had the customer relation abilities of a rattlesnake and technical knowledge on par with a chimp's.

Maybe they'll just stick to stocking iPods.

Blogs to Read

2005-11-08T17:52:00.000-05:00

Graduate from the Electoral College. I was talking about how borked the electoral college is in our modern society, before and after the '04 election. However, he does it much, much better than I can. Lot more research too with links to comments by politicians and PACs, analysis of various solutions, and a good look into how the votes are split up among states. Combine this with some of the stuff I discussed with CommonCensus and we may yet again have a working political system in the USA.

Forever Geek a blogger recycling a lot of content from other sites like engadget and MAKE, but I like multi-layer filtering. It helps keep me from missing things I really like.

Writer's Block Live This guy is treating his blog like a wiki, which plays some havoc with my news reader, but it also makes it pretty cool. The content, which is pretty focused on his experiences as an Apple employee a few years ago, is supposed to evolve into a book (hence the name) so while it is non-linear nearly to the point of confusing, its a good read on several levels.

Err, Whatever

2005-11-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

I'm getting pretty bad about checking my feeds on a timely basis (I've got another 2100 sitting in NNW now) but Grokster made some deal with someone about something involving those obscure copyright-wingish things.

I used to give a damn about how many people the RIAA/MPAA was suing that day but you know. I could care less at this point. The little music I really enjoy I've either already digitized, get from artists who release under Creative Commons licenses, or by from not a big name label groups usually found though podcasts. There are a a few exceptions, an occasional classic rock song I don't have already or a full CD like Verve Remixes (unlike most of the RIAA approved content, they aren't dreak) but over all I stopped caring about what type of anti-american activities they're up to.

Blessed internet.

Quack

2005-11-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

Its never a good thing then it seems like a class is (or might as well be) taught by a duck. Supposedly my teacher is qualified to teach Flash, but what should be a simple question took 15 minutes to solve and even then, the "qualified" individual didn't solve it, they gave up. So I ended up solving it. I hate flash, more so when obnoxious sounds are involved (currently, they are). (That would be signifiantly unqualified)

So something's wrong with that equation.

Pounding Ground

2005-11-05T20:16:00.000-05:00

It seems like every time I go camping, I come back wanting to write about it. To me there's nothing like getting out into the world, hopefully away from the connectivity hot zones and power outlets that I usually inundate myself with. When I started camping though Boy Scouts years ago, I was the guy that took out a tent or two, a sleeping bag, sleeping pads, a hammock, a lounge chair, a folding reclining chair, a couple folding stools, the coolers, the tarps, rope, two backpacks, flashlights out the wazoo, more pots and pans than the average small kitchen, etc. I'm sure my geeky nature shows in that, but more recently I've picked up a zen like camping style. On the camping trip I took up to Raven Knob a week ago I had a tent (I didn't end up using but always pack just in case), a sleeping pad (again not used, but always pack), a sleeping bag, a backpack with cloths for the weekend, a couple Nalgene water bottles, a mess kit, some trail mix, my cameras and a phone. Not a whole lot.

I didn't have to worry about food myself since it was a group trip, but aside from food I still wouldn't have taken much more.

To me there's a zen to camping, the idea is to get away from the information overload and stresses of everyday life. I know I have 48 some hours of podcasts, hours of video to chew though and a pile of books to read, and yes if I wanted I could take them with me, but I'm not going to take them. In daily life I would feel guilty if I idle around, but last week I did just slightly more than nothing and didn't feel the least bit bad about it.

What's odd is, that although I count my self among the digerati, I turned off all of technology I had with me, at least other than my cameras. I left my ipod in the car, the cell phone was turned off, the GPS was in my pack unused. I even had my laptop in the trunk of the car (because I forgot to leave it at home) and I wasn't the least bit tempted to turn it on. Yet I saw half a dozen pod people, not to mention people concerned with cellphones, a GPS device, radios or some other form of an electronic tether. I've even known people to bring personal video devices and TVs to camp with which combined with the gear some of those people bring, almost entirely defeats the purpose of camping. I can't think of something more ironic, or disheartening, than a camper yelling "Hey what's on Survivor over there" (Yes, I have heard this said while camping)

So I'm back to less is more. As long as I'm warm at night and can eat during the day, I'm fine. In the end that's all you really need, and when you strip away all the technology and communications to get back to mankind's pre-tech roots, it reminds you of how little you really need.

Camping really does wonders for the soul. (and hopefully next time, it won't take me a week to write up my experiances.)

Mmmm mmm code

2005-11-05T00:52:00.000-05:00

This has been a code week for me. Sometimes I just hit my stride and know what I want to produce then code it up. Today I've been messing around with a blogger template idea, and while its not really for me, its reminded me that coding for blogger isn't that complicated. So maybe if I don't have some other project pop up I'll get back to my own redesign, especially since my latest creation got me thinking about a few tricks that should work a lot better than where I was headed in my last attempt at recoding the blog a few weeks ago.

What I should do though is try and theme for wordpress or possibly ignore the existing systems and go back to my own blogging system, because as I've pointed out before, blogger isn't meeting my needs, and well programming, like the designing is fun.

Anyways, I've been at it since this afternoon and my body is telling me I'm done.

CommonCensus

2005-11-03T21:00:00.000-05:00

CommonCensus is a really neat project, and is yet another example of where I need to do more than just talk about my ideas.

The concept is that states and other political territories are very, very bad at truly representing what people in a region actually want. I personally identify with more northern and urban areas like Chicago but end up living in the middle of no where in particular where they want to kill all overseas production and will instigate riots if you even think of suggesting to place a ban on tobacco products in public spaces. I'm a little extreme since I'm a certified geek, but in a physical sense the same thing occurs. Someone in a South east Iowa might agree more with northern Missouri politics while someone an hour north might better associate with Chicago. Another hour north and off to the west they might be sympathetic to Minnesota policy and thats no minor difference.

If you look at state government there is very little they really regulate. Natural and public resources. fish and wildlife, agriculture, transportation, in some cases a limited influence on schools and other public service agencies (highway police, national guard), but more or less local issues slide down to counties and cities/towns while larger issues and matters of money go up.

Right now with the pretty lines someone started drawing back in the late 1700s aren't working as a political system. Take the few real functions of the state and break those up into geographically similar areas. The concerns of the DOT in the Mountainous portions of North Carolina have a lot more in common with the mountainous regions of Virginia than the costal regions of the state. Its literally the difference between preparing for an ice storm and a hurricane. The other state managed offices, like fish and wild life have similar differences. One might be worried with bears, the other with crabs, so why force an odd couple under the same roof? Its a waste of resources.

With natural resources taken care of that leaves a political mess, how to divide congress? Thats where commoncensus comes back into play. By plotting the community ties in an area you can come up with better districting, and while you'll never get over the Red Vs Blue Syndrome until people start remembering that this is not just a 2 party political system, you can help make sure that representatives in an area are more in tune with the beliefs of their constituents because you end up forcing the federal government to act more like a responsive, local government.

However, it won't take. There's far too much invested to simply drop the old system, and even if there wasn't, such a movement would need to put forth a heroic effort to educate most people about such a system, because unlike the states, its hard to talk about dynamic geopolitical influences

Right now the project is on its forth map, however the next one should be coming out soon (900 more people need to fill out the survey) so head on over to look at the current map and take the poll. While nothing will likely come out of it, in terms of food for thought, this is a nice big juicy steak.

For the politically uninterested there is a sports based sister project.

I need to go on a media diet

2005-11-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

I now have 2009 unread news items in Net News Wire

At least 50 of them are unedited posts that blogger spits out in its own spontaneous manner.

I really need to get around to reorganizing my RSS feeds, and removing some of the junky ones, as well as resetting the feed persistence on a few (500 some items are 2 days worth of deal sites, another 500 worth of tech blogs) maybe after I chew though this crop of feeds and whatever interesting stuff I can harvest.

Leaves, or Wandering Minds

2005-11-03T01:51:00.000-05:00

Its November, and since we're having unusually temperate weather it means the leaves are really starting to show their colors (ironically about two weeks after the areas "Autumn Leaves Festival") so since I've had a hacked up CVS one time use disposable camcorder, a marvelous little goodie that only cost me $30 I decided to start shooting some of the trees. Some of the 15 minutes I took was really good, most of it was rancid to a level far beyond just shaky cam. The 1 and a half minutes that were useable have been edited into a 2 and a three forth minute movie clip with some music.

The music is Thoughts, by Phil Cooper which is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5 license. Since I'm a good copyfighter the movie is also released under that license

Leaves (17.1MB 320x240 Quicktime Movie)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Forgive the cruddy editing in the second half, after the first 90 seconds got edited I wanted to finish the sucker and publish it. I think it still floats around like my mind when I'm thinking, so I doubt I'll go in to recut it if/when I get some more footage.

However, right now its 2 AM and I have every intention of falling asleep once this is up. If feedburner doesn't catch it and make it an enclosure, that can come later much later, like not 2 in the morning later..

Edit (at not 2 am in the morning): Feed burner made enclosures, of the CC logo. I've shuffled them around and when feedburner updates it should (i hope) make the movie, and not the logo the enclosure.

Remember Kids, Don't use your Cell Phone During Bomb Threats

2005-11-02T20:03:00.000-05:00

Note: Dear Police/FBI/Other Agency, I'm not your suspect. Ask the Fed who questioned me a few weeks ago.

Apparently some one claimed they were going to detonate a bomb they had placed within Mount Airy High School at 12:30 today. My brother goes there, and I heard about it by 2:30, partially because he also gets a kick out of the FBI file a few weeks ago but I also just heard about it though one of those annoying automated calling systems which handed me a few more details (and a lot more spin). Now I can't do as much of a threat assessment on the high school since I wasn't there, but I have an idea from when I was there.

Some one though it would be fun to get out of class for the day and left a bomb threat in one of the girls bathrooms. Someone, possibly the same person who wrote it, lets a good school official know about the note. The note quickly gets the attention of the school administration who call 911 and promptly evacuate all the students to a "secure location" by secure location they mean the football field bleachers. For the sake of avoiding another federal interviewer I'll skip the part where I mention how easy it would be to hide a few bombs in plain sight at a football field. Anyways they then sweep the building looking for a bomb and all that other good stuff and come up empty handed. So eventually they let the students come in. I'm not going to judge the management of the situation even tho' I'm a little vague on why they some teachers and staff were included in the sweep. I know some of the people in emergency services and I'm more than willing to trust them, some of the school employees on the other hand...

I doubt there was a real threat to students, as someone a little more concerned with practical security than most. Someone who leaves a note is usually an idiot (hopefully in a week or so, an arrested and publicly embarrassed idiot) who wants to cause a stir then exploit if for personal gain (get out of class for a day or two) or wants commit a mass killing (like 50% + of the student body). The other type isn't announced (Your New York, Madrid, and London Bombings) and can't be stopped.

After I wrote my last piece on Bomb evacuations some people felt I was suggesting that you not evacuate the building. Maybe I was (most buildings are strong and capable of ) but the real point I wanted to get out was if you evacuate do not cluster everyone into a single "secure" area where an attacker can cause the most amount of death with the least amount of effort. Using the cellular structure inherent in schools to distribute students over campus barely looses you anything in ability to communicate and gives you a significant increase in security/safety.

Maybe I need to diagram that concept. Anyways the last inane point of discussion in all this is. When they unleased their phone system the closing statement was to have parents remind students not to make cell phone calls during bomb threats. Huh? I've talked about how throw away cell phones are an easy way to make a remote detonation system so in the capacity not having students make phone calls makes some sense (assuming the bomber is stupid enough to be there when they detonate the bomb) I've heard, and can understand how, a family radio can be used to detonate an IED, which like the cell phones is becoming, if not is now, common practice in war zones. How ever I haven't heard of cell phone radiation (from connection) as being able to detonate anything. I'd love if someone dug up a story (factual only please) of a outgoing call causing some sort of detonation/ignition (like those gas fire stores everyone has heard - the ones that are completely myths) I think the school is actually more concerned with saving face and keeping people, ie media and parents, out of the area.

No I'm not threatening to or suggesting anyone actually blow stuff up, I'm just trying to be a little more security minded when it comes to idiots who get their kicks out of disrupting school for a few hours. I'm looking forwards to what, if anything, my brother writes about the bomb threat (he's already made a few jokes about wheat happens when our family discusses bombs and security)

Whoohoo

2005-11-02T10:18:00.000-05:00

Its being very clearly outlined to me I am being seriously screwed by High School University. I'm internet technology and I'm pretty much the only person in the degree track who is anywhere close to being able to take the capstone corse this spring. (I'm also just about the only person in the track who knows anything about internet technology other than "Ooooh Interweb"). There's one other person who says they're looking at taking it (good person, but I don't know how he is to take a capstone), and maybe one other who is ready for it. I can guartee however, that noone who might be taking the ITN project couse has all of the required classes. I'm looking at a killer load of at least 7 classes. I'm sorry but this degree isn't sleep deprivation / sucide. So 3 people, none of whom will be able to graduate after completing the class. Furthermore they cancel courses with twice as many students. I'm not holding high hopes for being able to move beyond Surry in June 2006.

There are a lot of problems with this school. A lot of problems that no one currently recieving a paycheck from the school is willing to admit or address.

I'm not the only one who recognizes this either.

Fox News Strikes Again

2005-11-01T23:02:00.000-05:00

I love my local TV stations, especially their seriously confused and out of date news coverage examples from tonight:

anchor 1) No flu shots at Lowes Foods until saturday
anchor 2) No flu shots at Lowes Foods after saturday

Not enough Flu shots - thanks for the obvious, but what year is this not the case?

WhooHoo! a potential pandemic of Bird Flu spead the misinformation!
But at least we're sinking more money into a vaccine that always makes good, despite the fact that the FDA needs years to approve new drugs. Woops.

Neat, its a job alert
144 jobs are being ~~offshored~~ removed to make the company more competitive with asian imports.
I thought job alerts were supposed to alert you to potential employment, not the destruction of positions.

Apparently they think there was a meteorite the other night, despite the fact that they don't know it hit the ground (at least I didn't hear them if they said that it did), so we'll just ignore that complimicated scientificalist gobble gook and not bother looking up the right term (meteoroids)

I'm trying to figure out why they're flashing the anchor's email addresses up on screen.

"its unclear what happened during that [closed] session", uhh, yeah, its what you call a "closed session" its a sessions that "closed" to the public, (and those pesky journalist types - can't trust them to keep secrets)

DeLay wants a new judge, something about the one he had not being a republican.

It didn't rain. Again. Somehow that qualifies as a news item.

I wonder why the commercials are quickly outnumbering the news segments.

Water restirction? Its November 1st, not June 1st. Why the hell do they need to water their lawns? Well other than they fact that its been hovering around 70 the last few days and they're expecting it to come near 80 this weekend

The not job alert: There's a career fair tomorrow!

Coming up: Wireless trucks. Err, thats a nice vague brief

Mmmmm, commercials. Again. Grrr.
Commercial - Good, quitting smoking and tobbacco use.
opinion - Bad raising taxes on cigerattes and other tabaccoo to help coerce people into quitting

on no, oyster prices are too high to have festivals. What a shame. We're blaming Katrina and Rita too

Not in my back yard: they heard about the nuclear power plant too. I don't think the anchor liked that news.

we're to 1 story, 1 2 3 4 5 6 commercials

Finally we're back

Wireless internet in your truck. Hurray, because we all know how safe those Big F*ing truck drivers are safe now.

Commercial or news, sprint is selling phones

Hey they just found out about "second life"
"at first glance it looks like a video game but its really an alternate universe"
damn science and facts
anchor "those people need to get out and experience the real world, they shouldn't be living so vicariously"
another anchor "yeah did you see that creator? he really looks like it needs to get out"
yeah, lets just escape into the real world where we have naive condescending idiots like you stereotype geeks who, oh by the way, are making a hell of a lot more than you.

speaking of stupid entertainment that consumes your time and lets freaks live vicariously
NASCAR!!! (and other televised sporting events)

I love hypocrites, especially the local news anchor variety.

I was actually waiting for the second life piece (not even local), and ended up watching 55 drivel filled minutes of local FOX "news" coverage that Rocketboom can cover just as well in under 5 minutes. At with Rocketboom, I don't need to poke fun at incorrect, biased, naive "coverage" they do it for me.

That's an hour of my life I want back. They've got some fat guy singing (badly), I think that's my clue to finish this up

I declare, If I can do that, I shouldn't have to loop

2005-11-01T16:07:00.000-05:00

Every programming language is based on three concepts. Declaring variables so they can be populated with information, Decision structures to figure out what you need to do with that information, and finally a looping mechanism so the computer, and not the user follows the same steps over and over and over again.

Its a pretty little concept they teach in basic programming courses, and its an easy concept to pull out when you listen to half a dozen recorded conferences at places like ITConversations. I'm one of those annoying students that picked up on that concept really fast, so now I'm paying the punishment by being really bored while my "Internet Programming" course finally (after 10 weeks, with 6 to go) gears up to actually program. I have a miserable feeling that in those remaining 6 weeks, we're going to relearn the basic three components to programming. I think the teacher (who to be fair has been pretty good about not dismissing the class and their experience) is quickly reverting to a retarded "the book is always right" mentality because we're treading away from web side and back to programming.

Good for the teachers, they can go back to dwelling on about variables, decision structures and loops for hours and hours and hours! Never mind that I can go home (not looking at the book) and code a quick, effective decision structure with a variable declaration by looking at a single result off of a three word google search and use 15 minutes rather than 150 minutes.

I don't know if I wholeheartedly agree with Wil Shipley's advice of Quit School and Set Things on Fire, (I've given it a lot of thought since it's been published tho') but I know some of the commenters have it right. If we really want those 6 figure educations to actually be worth 6 figures, we need to learn things, not be taught. Lecturing me about the bare bones of a programming language isn't the same thing as helping me build a custom content management system for a website, just like instructing me to follow a kindergarden level flash tutorial from a [sarcasm]really nice[/[sarcasm]] graphics book (printed with the highest quality black and white inks no less) while you twiddle your thumbs isn't going to come close to helping me compete with flash wizards like PixelGasoline, or even something that looks good (like the Mantalope cartoon in the first episode of ChannelFrederator)

Wow

2005-11-01T13:58:00.000-05:00

Its still 7 weeks away, but I already know I'm having a good birthday. I'll be done with classes and I'll be able to lounge around watching Serenity on DVD.

YIMBY

2005-11-01T13:23:00.000-05:00

The Triad is a potential future nuclear power site. I'm strongly in favor of nuclear power as long as its safe and secure (and I'm fairly convinced that it is). So if Duke Power wants to plant a nuclear site around here I'm for it (they won't, Surry isn't exactly well populated). via Ed Cone who thinks he might yell NIMBY.

Interesting Google Query of the Day

2005-10-31T10:38:00.000-05:00

bomb threat drill scenario

I'm the 23rd hit (as of me posting this), but higher up in the list there's some intereting planning materials. (ie, what to plan for, decisions to make on how/when to call an evacuation, etc)

Garg!

2005-10-31T10:04:00.000-05:00

I really need to stop committing money to BadBuy. Some of their prices on stuff I want have been amazing ($100 for an Apple iSight, $15 for Tripping the Rift Season 1) so I've been happy to send in an order, but grrr, they Backorder e v e r y t h i n g. I think it's their way of weasiling out of popular deals. I'll retract some of this statement if my currently backordered item ships in a timely manner (ie doesn't take them two whole months to tell m e they're not honoring their deal). Guess I can't complain too much because this order isn't costing me anything (gift card). Still why they hell can't they manage orders in a timely manner?

Amazon is a hell of a lot better. A few weeks ago I ordered a backorded item from them, expecting it to ship sometime this week, and they managed to get it out last week. I'll have that item by the time it was suppsoed to ship.

Amazon Good, Best Buy Bad, Mark Stupid (for committing funds, however free, to BestBuy).

Paper or Plastic

2005-10-30T17:56:00.000-05:00

I just had to run out and collect a dozen eggs from the store. One (1) single item, that probably shouldn't cause a fuss. Only, somehow, it was an ideal example of total waste. It took two (2) clerks to ring up that one (1) item, and then ask what I wanted "paper or plastic". Huh? I was only picking up one item, one single, easily grip-able item that I was carrying with one (1) hand and exactly zero (0) shopping carts. If I walked up with it in one hand, why on earth do I need a (1) bag? Of corse in this sloth ridden, gas guzzling, completely wasteful society known as America this logic managed to escape those two (2) clerks, who on hearing that "I don't need a bag" each produced nice confused looks (2). Eventually they figured out what they're supposed to do when the customer doesn't want a bag, but some on what type of insane logic dictates that you need a bag for a single (1) item? Its almost as annoying as when they throw a gallon of milk into a bag I mean, come on, there's a handle BUILT IN.

Stupid, Mindless, Wasteful Americans.

Watch, Laugh, Stay Subscribed

2005-10-30T17:07:00.000-05:00

Like nearly every alpha geek who has latched on to podcasting / vlogging, I love Rocketboom, I really love some of the crazier things they end up doing on Fridays. I've heard that they would love to not be the only regular show, well now they're not. Channel Frederator has piecked up on regular video content. I just watched the first show and it combined the best of Adult Swim with some excellent (and some not so good) cartoon shorts, ie Pixar-like animated shorts and Flash based cartoons that struck me as a remix of Rocky And Bullwincle's accidental heros and Wile E Coyote's rampant persistence and self-endangerment done by a host of animation veteran's (how can you not like it?) The not so good ones may have had a funny story to them, the first seemed like it could have been a Dogbert back story while the next to last lacked the full bodied story that makes great animation into a great cartoon. Fortunately they've implemented a voting system on the site to help them pick better animations, but the whole shebang, is crammed into 60MB movie file and placed nicely into a little RSS enclosure that downloads the clip for on-my-own-time viewing enjoyment.

I'm hooked, and if they keep up a better than 50% bating average, I may just add them to my short list of people deserving of money.

Old School Games at Hi Tech Prices

2005-10-28T16:45:00.000-04:00

I'll see your wimpy controller and raise you a game cabinet and a TV screen. Coming to a Target near you in Novermber '05. via MAKE

Somehow I doubt it will out preform the xBox 360. (Which as a side note, I actually kind of want)

Outsourcing Employeers

2005-10-28T13:35:00.000-04:00

North Carolina is being manipulated into giving Lenovo, (based in China) a company that now holds the assets of IBM's PC division, up to $8.4 million dollars in "incentives" to keep jobs that are already here. Considering how many of this states politicians denounce outsourcing, I find it ironic that they're more than happy to pay an over seas company to keep jobs. I don't know how hard it is to drop a 1800 employee facility from your corporate structure, but I have a feeling its not very easy or profitable. I'm not an economist or a politician, but the threat to pull out if they don't get "incentives" seems like a bluff and this kind of payoff reminds me of mob protection money.

I'll grant the state that these are closer to the sorts of jobs they should be focusing on, but at the same time they seem to be fooling themselves into believing that manufacturing is still a strong industry in the US, and the sad truth is that it isn't. No amount of "incentives" or passable legislation is going to change that.

What you're worth

2005-10-28T13:24:00.000-04:00

There are a few bloggers/new mediaists out there trying to make a paid attempt at what they've been doing as amateurs (in this context, a unpaid individual doing professional level work) Kottke.org is a famous one. Less famously is Jonathan Coulton. Yesterday, John Gruber wrote about this direct support to a content producer from the fanbase/readership because he isn't getting his expected membership renewal. I'm not a member of daring fireball, and I don't really plan to be. I enjoy the occasional post, and I've been subscribed for a while (I'm not sure but it could be up to a year) but I don't get enough value from it to kick a few dollars his way. Of the three people listed, I've only paid for some Coulton songs off iTunes (DRM'ed files under Creative Commons, there's a contradiction for another post) and of the 300+ feeds I have, I've only trickled money down to a few, fewer still though a direct method (which is somewhat stupid on my part). Keep in mind I suffer from poor college student syndrome, but even if I did have some more cash, I would still be selective in where I donate cash to.

I don't have a fixed scheme, but as a rough guess, I have to like an overwhelming majority of you content, and there has to be a fair amount of it, once a week in the case of audio, or at least a couple well written posts each week. At least for the amateur things, like Dave Slusher, Escape Pod and DrunkenBatman @ DrunkenBlog would meet those requirements (I'll admit that my college student syndrome has prevented donations to the later two, but soon, soon). In the case of Warren Ellis and John Rogers I'm not so likely to donate to the amateur blogging efforts, but am more than willing to go out and buy professional works (Global Frequency rocks) and if I can (and remember to) circumvent the mass media middle man, and can give them a little more than just a royalty, I will.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but it seems like there is a strong old media marketing view point of eye balls = ad dollars. I don't think thats true. In new media the equation isn't that simple. Maybe value/eye balls * quantity = money is the equation we're working with in new media.

Maybe its 1:30 and I'm not thinking entirely straight.

Tangental side note, after a year of Adwords, while I haven't earned enough to cover hosting costs for all my sites, I have managed to cover the cost of all my domain names. I suppose that's fairly good. Certainly better than some.

Beta

2005-10-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

This hurricane season has now reached Beta. I'm fairly sure there are a few geeky jokes/commentary in that statement.

Spin Doctors

2005-10-26T01:10:00.000-04:00

Whoever wrote the latest Bush Approval Ratings Story was really trying to minimize the damage to the Anti-Bush movement. Choice line:

"However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all."

This is almost as funny as Fox's "Fair and Balanced Reports".

One can hope

2005-10-25T22:16:00.000-04:00

Starcraft 2

Shame its only a mod. Part of what I loved about starcraft was the story line.

Not for sale (donations welcome)

2005-10-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

The latest internet meme is what you blog is worth guesstimated by comparing technorati ranking to the Weblogs Inc. deal a few weeks ago. Surprisingly I'm not worthless:

My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?

I wasn't going to post this when I first came across it, but then I noticed how many of the blogs I read, and enjoy a lot, are well, worthless.

I don't think I'll be selling out anytime soon, but clicking the ads or a little paypal donation are always welcomed.

Best Fark Headline

2005-10-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

I've been getting close to removing Fark from my feed reader, but then this came in:

Obvious McClellan: "Cheney is doing a great job as vice president". Given the past history of Bush Administration people who have been praised for their "great job", expect Cheney's resignation tomorrow

Blogger Bugs

2005-10-25T12:05:00.000-04:00

I'm really getting tempted to screw template conversion/redesigns and jump ship to a real blogging system, blogger as a whole is getting really crusty. Its great for beginners but as a more experienced user I'm noticing some major problems.

Updating is a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes it uploads in a snap, other times it idles for hours before it stalls out

Management on any sizable blog is crud. I'm near or past 1300 and finding older posts I want to reference is tough to say the least. For something owned by a search company, you would think the search features wouldn't suck so bad.

Reliable feed. Blogger spontaneously updates unchanged items to updated in the feed. On blogs like this, Sience and Politics or Circadiana where there might be a couple dozen posts on the home-page, one occurrence of this blogger glitch means I could have an extra 100 unread items to sort out from the 4 or 5 new posts. I'll admit this could be a quirk of my newsreader and personal settings, but even sent though feedburner the feed can get borked.

splogs. Blogger is the easiest system to create a blog with, which means that some social lowlifes have written scripts that hammer out junk blogs filled with junk posts in a clear attempt to flood google with BS.

Interface. Simple is good, but how about an advanced panel. Google has tied on tons of functionality to blogger, how about making it easy to access.

Backup. I've seen blogger blogs disappear, and when I have 1300 posts I want a backup and recovery system. One click publishing is good, how about a one click backup in a standard format. (OPML?)

I love the smell of molden solder in the evening.

2005-10-25T09:56:00.000-04:00

After abouta week of waiting, I recieved a palm III cable yesterday. Last night I spend about an hour and a half soldering and dremeling the connector to a USB plug. Now I'm among the legion of solder kiddies who have hacked a single use CVS digital camcorder into a multiple use digital camcorder. Pictures and or video coming sometime. Maybe.

Now that I have it, I'm not quite sure what I'll be using it for.

Links
Instuctions I used for the cable
Original Hacker and software I'm using
Assorted fun things to do

Double Plus Ungood

2005-10-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

Another Military Blog Silenced. Makes my recent government/school and blog confluence pretty trivial. I appreciate my freedom of speech, but military bloggers are putting their lives on the line to protect that right, only to have it taken away by those who, similarly, swore to uphold those rights. Welcome to America?

You know its fall when...

2005-10-24T13:52:00.000-04:00

a city employee is driving a 3 ton vacuum cleaner down the street. Backwards.

Leaf removal. For some reason they don't like it when you burn stuff here.

That's more like it.

2005-10-23T20:39:00.000-04:00

If you have a Mac and use broadband, Broadband Optimizer makes a significant improvement in download speeds. I'm not benchmarking, but I'd guess at least a 30% improvement, and probably more than that. My iBook seems like its downloading at least as well as my linux box. URLwell by the same group is also a real software gem. Before I got it I must had a few dozen temporary URLs floating around on my desktop, now they're all in a small menu. Both are freeware, but well worth a donation.

Must have missed the memo

2005-10-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

I've had an idea for a collaborative news site that takes the elements of print media, blogs, and wikis that help filter echos on the web. I really started working on it in August but the whole moth of September threw me off. I'm back to working on my new system, due in no small part to things I was hearing up to during and after Converge South, stuff about tools, networks, and blogs. Something else I heard at Converge was Memorandum. I don't think I wrote it down, or if I did I know I didn't check it out promptly because it took a Wired Article to bring it back to my attention. It looks like it's a system that tracks the swarms around the latest story. I'm not sure if I want to embrace it as another Google News or Technorati, or if I want to curse passionately at it for beating me to part of the system I'm working on.

I'm leaning more towards embrace but I'll probably curse about it some regardless. Their system is all about algorithms. Which for the technically inclined is good. Everyone else tho...

I think there will still be room for my system, albeit, a slightly diminished one. Automated systems are great for collecting the news every 5 minutes, but there's a lot more to news coverage than simply spitting out what's changed in the last 3 minutes, and thats something is a processes computer scientists have yet to figure out.

Apple Counting Problem

2005-10-20T17:23:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty steamed with Apple right now. I have a non-functional iPod shuffle on my hands, have for a week or so but I'm only now getting around to pestering Apple. I was motivated to get around to it because last night while trying to fix it, my iTunes Library did a vanishing act. Rather it became corrupted, and while the XML version of my library made it easy rebuild, it was a frustration I didn't need. So first I tried the online service request, entered all the info it wanted and after writing up the problem it comes up - "OUT OF WARRANTY". Maybe the 90 day warranty as I didn't get it from an Apple dealer, but it is certainly within the 1 Year Limited Warranty, and I can prove it. iPod Shuffles were released in January, about 9 months ago.

How can a product that has only existed for 9 months be outside of a 1 year warranty?!?!

Broadband in America

2005-10-19T14:12:00.000-04:00

I've hashed this one many times but in America, when we say broadband, we seem to mean glorified dialup while we watch every other civilized country go screaming by with connections 10+ times faster than ours.

Salon's Take on the situation

Things to do

2005-10-19T11:36:00.000-04:00

1) Go cycling.
The leaves are finally turning colors (a week too late for Autumn Leaves Festival) and the area is absolutly stunning. I really need to take my bike out and explore.

2) Go camping.
Its been over 6 months. I'm really joneing. I think there's a big event at the end of the month. Not ideal, but at least its out of doors.

3) Get off of blogspot
The content part of the interweb is going crazy because of slogs, most of them at blogspot. Now that the comment spam is starting to find me I don't have a good reason not to move. Domain, hosting, motivation. Well some motivation. I'm not thrilled about moving a 1300 post blog to a new bloging system, but for what I like doing, I need to get off blogger.

4) Catch up on the DVD collection.
I've got 4 or 5 DVDs that I own and have yet to watch. I blame new media. Too many podcasts/vlogs.

5) Sniff Solder Fumes
Its been all too long since I've build an electronics project. I have a couple neet ideas and some therotical circuits I've started designing. I should finish those and place an order at digikey.

Fun with CSS

2005-10-18T16:14:00.000-04:00

Technically this was an assignment Realistically it was fun. If I get bored a little latter I may make the forms usable, tho' I should just sit down and do some more work on the personal site redesign or do some programming on one of my other personal interweb projects.

Reckless Endangerment of Perfectly Good Cameras

2005-10-17T18:57:00.000-04:00

Camera Toss 1
Originally uploaded by Mark_W.

I've been ooohing and aaaahing the camera toss photo pool on flickr for a few days. Last night the air was perfectly clear with a full moon glowing pure white, so I whip out my barely a month old Canon, set it for a long exposure click the shutter and start recklessly throwing it up in the air - then more importantly catching it. I shot about 100 exposures and some of them are absolutely beautiful. I posted 4 to my flickr account, and two to the cameratoss pool. The one to the right got a little more attention, rightfully so. It even got

Hello Wilma

2005-10-17T07:23:00.000-04:00

Tropical Storm Wilma has become this hurricane season's 21st named storm. We've got another 6 weeks in the official season, and not only has it used up all the existing names, tying the record for most active storms in a single season. Its battered the Gulf Coast, a good part of Mexico, one storm, Vince, even made landfall in Europe.

The next named storm gets the very uncreative name of Hurricane Alpha.

Welcome

2005-10-17T00:41:00.000-04:00

To anyone coming here because of the Mount Airy News column, here's some links to more information on Converge South: (links open in a new window)

Converge South Homepage
Technorati: Blogs tagged Converge South
Google Blog search for Converge South
Photos from Converge South

Greensboro 101 covers news events in Greensboro, has a good list of bloggers in Greensboro, ending about a week ago, links to a lot of outside coverage of Converge South.
NCBlogs.com tracks many of the active blogs within the state, as a whole as well as regions. It's a great example of how much blogging goes on in the state.

Blogger.com is a free blogging service owned by google, and is fine for anyone interested in starting a blog.

Anyone who has questions about blogs, podcasts or videoblogs, or wants some help starting a blog or a website (I've created several local websites) is welcome and encouraged to leave a comment on the blog, or to send me an email at mark@mountairync.net.

Original Content

2005-10-15T23:43:00.000-04:00

This has been a weird week, between Converge and the FBI thing. I've posted several thousand words of original content, which I love doing, but it always makes it that much harder to slip back into the casual blog form. Partially because original content is so many levels above what I usual post, and partially because of the increase in traffic. I don't have perfect numbers, but in the last 8 days I've received more traffic than in the (approximately) 8 weeks before that.

I expect surges of traffic when I post and publicize a static write that up I may spend the better part of a day (or) getting up, but the few times that surge has happened to this scratchpad of a blog, where any given post has less than a 2 hour investment, well its tough to go back to the random mental exercises that make up most of the blog.

Presidental Approval Ratings

2005-10-13T16:50:00.000-04:00

A lot of people keep bringing up the point that Bush's Approval Ratings are under 40%, and have been falling over the last few weeks. I am by no means a fan of the Bush Administration, but what does that really say. Several presidents have had their approval ratting dip below 40%, Nixon was around 25% when he resigned, and had been under 40% for over a year before he resigned. (source) Of corse he was in danger of impeachment, an issue that hasn't come up for Bush - yet. Harry Truman dropped to as low as 25%, and also stayed in for a year before his replacement was elected and sworn in. Carter stayed in for about a year and a half after he slipped under 40%.

While the fact that Presidents keep their heads low between that 40% mark and the end of their presidency is encouraging, look at the current alternatives. The only good thing Cheney has done as Vice President has been staying out of the office and staying in "Undisclosed Locations". The rest of the succession list doesn't look much better. With inept Democrats and all but non-existent 3rd parties, I'm inclined to let the Republicans screw themselves. Of course we'll see what the next year or so brings...

Assorted Sources
Bush Approval slips
Preelection approval ratings
Chart of Presidential approval ratings since Carter

Deep Dish Pizza

2005-10-13T15:06:00.000-04:00

Deep Dish Pizza
Originally uploaded by Mark_W.

There are many great things about North Carolina. The famous southern hospitality thing, the comfort foods, the diverse environment - Iowa never had mountains. But there is one thing I deeply miss about the midwest though, and that's Pizza. I would love to be wrong but I don't think there is such a thing as a great pizza south of the Mason-Dixon line. Sure there are some decent chains, but none of them started in the South, and the few local places I've tried are only marginally better. I've had pizza since moving here, usually Papa John's since its the only edible chain in town, and visited California Pizza Kitchen a while back, neither of those however, is able to come close to the nirvana induced by a Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza. Not that thing chains try to sell as deep dish - I'm talking about thick crusts holding in a mount of chunky toppings at least an inch deep and swimming in sauce. That is pizza.

Pizza Country gets some blame for the craving, watching the pizza photos they've posted has been regularly causing salivation, but at least one of the tips they've posted helped me make the pizza to the right (plus two more). One of those, a couple bottles of cold Bawls, and some classic rock made for a great start to fall break.

Blog, Now Federally Questioned

2005-10-10T20:27:00.000-04:00

About 4 o'clock an FBI agent knocked on my front door. Of course, and fortunately for me, I wasn't home. My Mom was and must have promptly freaked out when she saw the badge wallet. Shortly afterwards I got a call from the same FBI agent wanting to know if I would be willing to answer some questions, after figuring out why he wanted to meet me I agreed to show up in about half an hour, the first instinct was public spaces, but he asked if we could just do it at the police station. I guess I knew that if this was serious trouble they wouldn't be calling me so agreed to go to the station and about 30 minutes later, did.

The agent, whose name I forget, was easy to spot - not many people stand outside the police station in a good suit here. So after showing me his ID we stepped inside and he told me more about why he was here, it's the blog - which I already knew from the phone call, and more specifically this post.

Someone at Surry, came across this blog, I'm guessing it was a first time visit by someone completely unfamiliar with me - I have some vague guesses as to who, but am keeping them to myself. I'm not political in class, but I think most of my teachers understand the way I think, and that I'm pretty vocal about things I think are stupid and pointless - like HTML meta tags and apparently school policy. But back to whoever my mystery reader is, they were jolted by the post, an intended reaction, and I think that they may have reached for the phone a little fast. I think it bubbled up at Surry, and like any good round of telephone, the message got garbled. As I understand it, the concern at Surry was "someone is going to bomb the school," where it should have been "there's a potential problem with our security". So Person X calls administration, administration, probably having not read the post, calls the FBI. Who then come to me (which isn't the hardest thing to do -, my name, phone, email, address are all online, and easily accessible).

I might rant about how this is a waste of national resources, like I did just the other day, and trust me I still think it is, but I'm sympathetic to the agents. They're just doing the job. I think that if it was his call, he would have stayed at his brach office, but because it was brought in, it had to be investigated, so a 10 minute talk with me provides whomever with some reassurance that if some thing happens at Surry they can at least say they investigated this part of it, and can be however certain they're allowed to be that I'm not a terrorist. If anything, I now have a higher regard for three letter agencies, at least the FBI. I'm sure there's plenty of fault in the bureaucracy of all of it, but I'm not calling them on it, at least not today.

If I have a problem with anyone, it's Surry and whoever thought that my post was a a call for an attack. From what I've seen so far - and like I said, I haven't talked to anyone at the college yet - they just blew it. I'm expressing my free speech, and the FBI is doing their job that doesn't leave much on the chain. I'm nearly positive the school called in the FBI, and I know that they were fully cooperating with the FBI (the agent had my course schedule), and I know that the agent is getting back in touch with the school tomorrow. But why didn't they look at the "problem" a little closer.

I understand why the school would have trouble dealing with the situation, at least if I was a real threat, approach me and I might do something, ignore me and I might do something, call the FBI and let someone else bother with it. However everyone I've talked to who has read the post, agreed that I recognized a problem, thought about the variations of the problem, looked at the existing solution, and seeing flaws, proposed a new solution that solves the problem as best it can. Nice simple critical thinking skills

Which as it happens to be, is the same process the school is trying to instill in students and staff. I wish the school would have done a little more thinking about the problem they saw with me, and I'm going to approach them about it, just like I would have liked them to approach me. Problems are solved though open communications, not by jumping though half a dozen hoops and at a more than insignificant cost.

I'll admit, not that I've ever denied, that I have posted a lot of harsh things since starting this blog. Most of them tongue in cheek, and maybe, occasionally, some not. Some of which, I might regret, but being familiar with the web, have no intention of digging up and trying - pointlessly - to bury. The web just doesn't work like that. I don't want anyone who has commented to bother taking off their content either. What will happen, and was probably going to anyways, is that I will be a lot more careful in my phrasing. I'm not going to make posts that start with the idea of shooting politicians anything but messages, and I'm going to be more mindful of saying things that could do really bad things to my reputation. I'm not going to stop making biting posts, or comment on how I would go about doing something, thats my way of thinking, my style, and thats not something I can change.

In the post in question I wrote "Now that I've outlined so much of this I'd really hate for it to come back and bite me in the ass", and now it seems it has. On the other hand, how many times have I said I'm waiting for the FBI to come knocking?

Pleasing the Voodoo Gods

2005-10-10T14:35:00.000-04:00

Calvin and Hobbes First Published 10/08/1994

Reminds me of the story about my friend and the consumer electronic gods.

More stupid comments

2005-10-10T11:07:00.000-04:00

"No one puts any validity in comments" (online)

Considering my experiances at conversouth and watching the blogosphere since it ended, I can't put any validity in her lecture. Oh wait. I'm not. I'm looking at blogging stuff and buying a cable to do a CVS camera hack with.

Stupid Security Practices

2005-10-10T10:57:00.000-04:00

The community college I'm taking classes at provides a free email account for all of its 5000 some current students. I think most of them are unaware of it, or simply don't bother (I've got 5 emails, who needs a 6th thats going to expire in 4 months) but the reason I mention this is that each semester they reset it, somewhat pointlessly, and give everyone the same password. last semester it was Jeopardy, this semester its resolute. Now a month after the semester started we're being told to "change our passwords so no one can access our emails and steal our account" That's from the people managing the distance education systems (email and user accounts) I wonder if the shear stupidity of the practices occur to her and the rest of the IT staff...

Offshoring, off of our shores

2005-10-10T07:20:00.000-04:00

"The best thing a government can do is to avoid giving the impression that we can avoid these changes."

Why isn't our government thinking and talking like that? Change is inevitable - why act like we can stop it, furthermroe any company focusing on cutting costs - not increasing profits, is not a company you want sustaining your economy, and not a company you want to deal with (the difference in atmosphere at Walmarts and Whole Foods or Target).

Converge South

2005-10-09T19:22:00.000-04:00

Temporary Edit: To anyone coming here because of the Mount Airy News column, and is interested in learning more about Converge South or about blogs in general, please see this post.

Converge was a great experience, so I'm extremely glad I decided to go. I had put off registration (which is why you probably find any mention of me on the converge site) until it was full, but when I saw that I could still go to sessions I literally ran out the door and made the trip to Greensboro a bit faster than I probably should have. One I was there everything was well marked and easy to find, which is a big improvement over Chappel Hill last spring. I arrived later than the official start time, but fortunately (for me) someone got lost and I ended up being right on time.

Political Activism and Blogging
Wikis and Mass Collaboration
Mmmmm... Lunch
Tools and the Future of Blogging
Podcasting
Post Conference
Wrap Up

Political Activism and Blogging

Most of the sessions were great. I tend to sit back and listen so I was quite during all of the sessions. The first two, Blogging and Political Activism (discussion led by Ruby Sinreich) and Wikipedia/Mass Collaboration (Talk by Jimmy Wales) went well together. Political Activism seemed to push towards just go out and do it. I find I can be political here, but maybe not so active. What I, and probably a lot of other bloggers, need to do is rather than rant go out and find more constructive things to say. Venting just adds to the echo chamber. If we want the current and next few crops of congress critters to pay attention to blogs in the same way they do to the small town papers - which can have similar readerships - the echo is exactly what we need to cut down on. On a similar note, one thing Ruby brought up that I wasn't really familiar with was the memo that led to the rathergate thing. When bloggers first figured it out, the first thought wasn't "lets nail them" it was "how do we correct them". I guess the final tone I got from the session was activism dose not mean radicalism.

Wikis and Mass Collaboration

Wikipedia Session
Originally uploaded by mark_w.

The wikipedia session was OK. As a lot of people have pointed out it was more of a lecture than it was a discussion. I prefer the discussions, but I found that I was fine with the talk. Wales brought up a lot of things I wasn't fully aware of in the wikipedia community. I'm sure I could have found it if I wanted, but there was one thing at the very end of his talk that really interested me. I think most people missed it but he said that he wanted to see a news/politics blog fused with elements of a wiki. Possibly like the LA wikitorial disaster, but rather than trying to create better editorials (which I think was the goal of wikitorials) the idea is to take editorials and boil them down to news articles. Journalism has this idea that a single person can be unbiased - which can be a nice line of BS, but I think that we're seeing those "unbiased" stories hit the web, and all of a sudden millions of people find bias. If we take several people with vastly different social, political and economic views and have they focus on news items we can get them to produce a compilation that becomes unbiased though a massive collection of biases. Like the idea of an open encyclopedia, its going to need new tools supplementing the right people in the right atmosphere.

Mmmmm... Lunch

Lunch
Originally uploaded by mark_w.

Lunch was good. Thats actually the first time during the day I met up with Dave Slusher. He was talking to someone about the video blogging session and some podcasting when he noticed the Evil Genius shirt I was wearing. I had been eavesdropping on the conversation and eventually joined in. The great thing about these conferences is how informal everyone is. Just listen to a conversation for a while and then just jump in. But back to the conversation each of these new media arenas (text, audio, or video blogging) the technical know how is second to figuring out which content best fits the media. I can read a rant on a text blog much easier and with a greater tolerance than the same content on a podcast or blog. There are going to be exceptions to those rules, but they're all interesting fields. After the third person broke off Dave interviewed me with his hacked CVS one time use camcorder.

Group Session
Originally uploaded by NCBrian.

Lunch kept up for a while but I also joined a group of some well known blogger sitting outside talking about the conference, some others that are in the works, and things like O'Riley Media.

Tools and the Future of Blogging

The sessions started up again and I think just about everyone was in Dave Winer's session on Tools and the future of blogging. I'm not sure where that needs to go but everyone seemed to be focusing on what text blogging needs in terms of tools. I'm not sure if thats what it really needs. It seems to me that there is a much greater need to increase peoples awareness of blogs, both the writing and the reading. Some people in the room were begging for video tutorials on how to blog, or suggesting that it takes so much time they can't do it. I think both are false. If you just look at tools like blogger, which I'll come back to in a minute, they pretty much explain themselves. One text box, one text area, connect a bunch of words and press submit. If you can deal with hotmail, you're more than qualified for blogger.

There was also some discussion on how to find blogs and podcasts, and how to make yourself known. Honestly I don't know much of anything about making myself known, otherwise I wouldn't be referred to as the "guy wearing an Evil Genius T-shirt, don't know him" (edcone.com) I haven't cared much in the past, but maybe I will. The buzz I got (personally) when I was macslashed was great, I wouldn't mind if that was the case a little more frequently than once. I think podcasting does need some tools to make it more searchable. The directories out there just aren't enough, but with text, and to some extent audio/video, the more people aware of it and feeding back to the environment the easier it will be to find things you agree with. Humans make a great filters, but in large enough numbers they can do great things not only well, but effectively.

Thats not to say there aren't some things that need to be changed. This is being hosted at blogspot, powered by blogger, but as a blogger I'm currently in the minority of users that has more than 500 post. For the new user I don't think you could have a better system than Blogger and the tools Google has lashed onto it, add feedburner and you have a mindless system than can do 90% of what the vast majority of users want. I think a number of power bloggers also have blogspot blogs, because there just isn't a better product for a short term, low content, high traffic blog. However when you get to 500 some posts, blogger just isn't build to support you. I know there have been several blogger outages that have only effected those of us with hundreds of posts. I think it was Anton Zuiker who actually hit on the idea of making it easy to take the posts from one system (blogger or livejournal) and making it easy to feed that into a more advanced system. I know there are ways that I can migrate to another system, but I'm a geek and well - I don't want to deal with migration issues. If I don't want to do that, what is Joe Public going to do.

Podcasting

Pulling back to my point on the Winer session, make people aware of the medium. In the following session on podcasting, someone said that "blog" isn't a term kids are using. They think of blogging as blogspot, xanga or livejournal, because most of them aren't aware of the terms, aren't aware of the uses, and aren't aware of the consequences of the tools. To go onto the next session, Podcasting, you just read most of it. Of all the sessions I was in podcasting had the worst execution. It wasn't on community like the leader said, and we didn't actually do one, which we very well could have, all he did was talk about what it takes to get involved with podcasting, in his book at least. $300 in hardware and software tools, expensive servers, and god knows what else. I don't blame the audience for 1) leaving or 2) being confused/bored as hell. It takes exactly $0 to get started with podcasting. Step one start a blogger account, sign in with audio blogger, make a phone call, talk, hang up, and then set up a feedburner feed for the blog. I could have done it in 10 minutes and circumvented 2 hours of dull bullet points. If you have some webspace, and you have a computer with a mic, you're set, as Cory Doctorow has done with his first few After the Siege Podcasts (he gave in and bought a real mic after 4 or 5 episodes)

Post Conference

After the mind-numbing podcasting session I floated around in the lounge. Several people were there, Paul Jones, Anton Zuiker, Will Raymond, Ryan Irelan and a few others. We talked in the lounge for a while before relocating to Natty Greene’s downtown. It continued on blogging tools and the future. at different pointed people were rehashing what had been said in the sessions, but one thing that caught my attention was I'm not the only person thinking about a weighted RSS reader. Will Raymond is also playing with the idea, but in reverse of my ideas. In his concept, repeated stories, the memes and polls that get boring, sink to the bottom of the pile. In my idea, repeated items rise, with my preferred blogs coming up first, as well as the origin (most linked source) Its reassuring that a lot of smart people are think on very similar lines about what tools need to be developed. The question isn't is there a need, its whose going to get rich or famous for being the first one to do it right.

Rocketboom Dinner
Originally uploaded by mark_w.

The group broke up closer to 7 when the dinners were starting. I think most of them went to Winer's dinner, I opted to go to the Amanda Congdon/Rocketboom Vlogging dinner at Minj Grill. Met Chris Daniel there and ended up talking about a lot about what it was going to take for video blogging to take off, which I think is going to be broadband and system resources. We already had all the tools for audio, and people can handle those bandwidth requirements so its no wonder why its exploded in the last year. Video needs a lot more of those resources and tools, so we need to let Moore's Law run its course, but I think most of us there agreed that content isn't a problem. Some of the best stuff out there doesn't need to be highly produced by a major studio. Look at Monty Python or the fan films working their way into the media.

Wrap Up

Closer to 9 we moved to Solaris for the free concert. It didn't start until closer to 11, but there were some more great discussions. I think if it was mentioned during the sessions, it was rehashed and expanded on by the 10 or so bloggers who were still there. More on vlogging, podcasting, text blogging, tools, ideas, technology in general, sports, music, mass media, content distribution, and on and on and on until a while after 2am. Over all a great experience, by while I may have been dead tired when I got home, it was 22 very well spent hours. I've got some more blogs to look into, and some others to catch up on. I'm pretty sure I said it after the Chappel Hill Conference, but its worth saying again, I love these conferences, and I can't wait for the next one.

Technorati Tags: convergesouth

The End of a Very Long day

2005-10-09T03:56:00.000-04:00

I have been going all day, either getting to, enjoying, or returning from Converge South. It was completly worth it and then some, but right now I have every intention of falling asleep once I publish this post. Publishing notes, photos and commentary can wait from some much needed REM cycles. If I gave you this URL or you're coming here from some other Converge South Blog, come back in a day or two when I actually have that stuff up.

Two things you shouldn't forget, but I forgot

2005-10-08T01:27:00.000-04:00

First: Never forget the first three rules of troubleshooting electronics.

Is it plugged in?
Is it plugged in?
Hey Stupid stop saying yes and make sure the damned thing is plugged in!

My linux box has been having video problems this week. Turns out the video card became unseated (it wasn't plugged in)

Second: Never forget your headphones.

I've been watching Nerd TV on my laptop during my unwanted 2 hour break from classes on Fridays. I forgot to grab my headphones on the way out so I didn't get to watch it in a comfortable position and listening to music wasn't an option so killing two hours was more painful than normal.

Three: Never forget to stop at two items when you say you're going to post two items

Make of that what you will.

What Can I possibly say about this one

2005-10-07T17:50:00.000-04:00

other than that I for one, welcome our new segway powered robot overloards.

My little brother and I are both extremely fascinated with robosapiens (when we see store demo models we almost fight for the controller), and we are both too cheap to actually go out and buy one. I may be on the starving college student plan when the next generation comes out, but I don't see that really stopping me from getting one of them. Its got to be a lot cheaper than a segway...

Libertarianism.

2005-10-07T17:04:00.000-04:00

This is one of those days where I'm reading a whole lot of well written, insightful articles, so bear with me. Now that we've dealt with bad science, walmart, idiots in law enforcement, religion and the Bush administration, here's more politics. Don't know who the author is but its a good little recap of Libertarianism. Its also worth it to see the context of this quote:

Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers?

Don't Worry George, I Believe you.

2005-10-07T16:47:00.000-04:00

Yep I Sure do:

President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq

From the BBC

You know, there was another George who though he was talking to God. He wasn't too popular in America either.

Reason 3,785 to avoid Walmart

2005-10-07T16:16:00.000-04:00

Especially the photo lab.

Kid drops film off to be developed
Walmart Lab Tech doesn't like content of kids film
Lab Tech calls cops
Cops call Secret Service
Secret Service Calls Kid, School, and Attorney General
Walmart has No Comment

via Stay Free!

Ig Nobels

2005-10-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

Because everyone loves to laugh at science.

I could throw jabs at Bush, but they do much more than I could in the streaming video. I'm half watching the stream of this years presentation and its pretty funny. If you can't invest an hour or hour and a half to watch the video at least browse the site. I especially love the winner of the 2005 ig noble literature prize...

Foreseeing the Future

2005-10-07T14:23:00.000-04:00

Wired has a real brief article on professional Futurists, or rather the growing potential for them, and I got to admit, thats one job I would love to have. I'd probably be half decent at it to.

What it really means

2005-10-06T19:52:00.000-04:00

Scientists have convinced Dolphins to sing the theme to Batman, however said scientists have yet to decipher the actually meaning for this action.

Gorram!

2005-10-06T15:38:00.000-04:00

Stupid laptop battery. 12 months ago I was getting 3 solid hours of battery life, more if I wasn't doing anything more than text based stuff in memory, and for months I was getting somewhere around 2 to 3 hours. Sometime in the last month or so my battery life has dropped to virtually nil. I'm surfing, which means I was amassing a pile of browser tabs to be read after the news skimming and I get the battery life warning. OK I have 6 minutes left and even if I push that it will drop to sleep. Or so I though. 2 minutes later it shuts down. I loose all my open tabs (because some boneheaded engineer at apple decided that safari doesn't need to save sessions) and even Net News Wire, which is usually pretty good about these things, forgets the last 20 minutes of surfing.

I'm not so pissed off about the battery life. Its lit-ion which means the chemical breakdown is going to be pretty substantial after 12-18 months (which is where I'm at). I'm fine with that. My problem is with how its handling the low power. The normal behavior of sleeping is fine with me. Shutting down is not. Don't know what my final point is, partially because I've written this post in three parts, and partially because I don't have a suggestion on how to fix it, but its still irritating as hell.

Comic Strip Philosophy

2005-10-04T12:51:00.000-04:00

Wonderful Washington Post Article on Calvin and Hobbes. If don't know why I'm linking to it you clearly haven't been reading this blog very long.

Business Oppurutnity? Ethics need not apply.

2005-10-03T23:04:00.000-04:00

I want to become the American Distributer for this stuff. Not that I like beer (give me grape juice), or tobacco, (I detest nicotine), but despite my tastes, I'm not going to stop the abuse of either, so why not capitalize on it? I don't know if they're drink or chew it up but its bound to be as addicting as Tomacco

Bush Wacked

2005-10-03T08:21:00.000-04:00

I'm not thrilled about Bush's Supreme Court Nominations. I don't think any president with a less than 50% approval rating has any business making life term nominations that will impact this nation for the next 30 or 40 years. Yes they need to be approved by congress, but they're proven many many times that they are not above being bought out. I'm not sure John Roberts was put under enough scrutiny, and certainly should not have been allowed to pass associate and go directly to Chief. Harriet Miers is similarly concerning. At first look Bush is nominating a crony who has been around him for 15-20 years, and who has a lot more experience in the legislative and executive branches than in the justice department. Furthermore I'm not a fan of religiosity in government, Bush's description of her was full of it (disclaimer I did not hear all of it) and while her part didn't mention religion, it had a lot of that feel good stuff like love and family that gets to the religious types. I'll listen, but I'm not putting a lot of faith into either Bush nomination.

It will be interesting to see the blogs when I get home in a few hours.

Illiteracy

2005-10-03T00:36:00.000-04:00

Ran across this link from some other post I was reading at the same blog. I'd do a deeper link, but the originating site is down for me. Something more to chew on.

Corrupted Officials

2005-10-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

If we were going to line up the politicians in Washington, and start shooting them, George Bush and Orrin Hatch would be tied to get the first bullet. Bush might have started a war, lied to the public, and done all manner of stupid things, but somehow I think Orrin Hatch, is just as if not more corrupt. Senators and Congressmen should probably be held to a higher standard that which ever dweeb the political system lets sneak into the oval office, because they're supposed to be representatives of the people. Now I know that I'm not in Utah, but this corrupted slime ball acts as the representative of every major lobbying group. RIAA, MPAA, BSA (Business Software Alliance), Wine (not that I have anything against wine) tobbacco, gambling, and who knows what else. While money isn't exactly a perfect indicator of ones corruption, its a good start. Its a good finish too when the money you're accepting goes against all your religious beliefs and doesn't come close to benifiting your state, as is the case with Orrin Hatch, a serious public enemy.

Your Attention Please.

2005-09-30T23:41:00.000-04:00

Edit: Oct 10, 2005 - At least one person who has read this post felt it was a how to on bombing schools. They acted on that misinterpretation and on October 10th, 2005 I was questioned by an FBI agent. Let me make it clear that this post is not a how to bomb schools, its a post on how I would minimize the impact of a bombing if it was to happen. I may explain how to carry out a bombing, but emergency services are constantly developing practice scenarios to learn how to best deal with diasters, and thats what I do here. Skim over that if you want, but make sure to read the last three paragraphs, thats the important part of this post. For more on the questioning, See here

This was written shortly after a bomb evacuation drill at the lovely High School University about 12 hours before the actual blogger time. so enjoy

There is a bomb in the building. Please leave your Intelligence Behind.

I'm writing this minutes after a "Bomb Evacuation Drill" and like nearly everything else in this post 9/11 era it is a prefect example of group think cluster-fucking. Thats not to say that the drill didn't go smoothly, it did for as much was planned, but they aren't thinking about what the effect would be. Let's say I'm a bomber, and thats not too far of a stretch because as I have pointed out in the past its extremely easy for anyone to cook up a bomb (google anarchist's cookbook) make a decent remote detonator (cell phone and some cheap electronics) and combine them to make things go boom. So what exactly happened during this evacuation drill?

Congregations. Each building has a designated location to goto where they call for an evacuation. Thats not one location for each building, its more like three or 4 evacuation locations for all the buildings

If I was joe bomber and wanted to do the maximum human damage possible at High School University, I would build one or two bombs for each location into the trunk of a car (something cheap, like a used Geo Metro, a Kia, or a truck - which oh by the way - would blend perfectly with the types of cars students here are driving) Now park them near the evacuation areas the school has designated (all of them at the edge of a parking lot) On a busy day all the parking spaces are filled so you can't have bodies floating around freely, they're all confined to a certain space. Call in the threat (being specific that the device is in one of the buildings) and when everyone is evacuated, remotely detonate and tada, maximum kill zone. Proceed to watching the TV news coverage while running out of country - say Iraq. So the school's evacuation plan for bomb threats is bull.

Notice I said threats. As I see it the only reason someone would threaten to blow up a building is 1) if they're bluffing and want something out of it or 2) want to inflict maximum damage (as pointed out above). The one type of "bomb threat" that the plan actually works for is of the unexpected i.e. your 9/11s and train bombings, and you'll forgive me if I can't find the 9/11 commission document that talked about the threat issued to us by the attackers around 8am the morning of the attack.

So it fails when the attack is unannounced (most likely), it fails miserably when the attacker wants to do the most damage possible, and it doesn't do anything either way when the threat is a bluff. So what's the point, at least beyond the "feel good" effect? Anyone? Anyone?

Now that I've outlined so much of this I'd really hate for it to come back and bite me in the ass so here's how you get away from this centralization. Train all the teachers and staff to form distributed groups. The campus here (like at most schools) has a shit load of space available so you can very easily spread groups out in parking lots, grassy areas, baseball fields, etc. You can still have a handful sweep the buildings, and really need to (if for nothing else - to look for the bomb) Since the number of groups is significant, you'll see and communicate with the "evacuation cells" when they move back into the buildings (people are nice and stupid, mostly the will follow - especially in groups).

Of course this isn't going to be able to stop a really determined attacker. They will always be able to do significant damage, but as we're learning from middle eastern groups, a single Cell Unit is extremely hard to take down, and the challenge grows exponentially when you try and take down more at once. I don't know why this isn't a normal practice in emergency planning.

Keep in mind this concept is for schools, where the cells are virtually pre-made. The corporate challenges are different, but as the survivors of 9/11 proved, people on the ground organize themselves faster a lot more effectively than the hierarchies you find built into school environments.

Who is this God Person Anyways?

2005-09-30T23:19:00.000-04:00

I'm still chomping though this, but a lot of news organizations have been running this wire story, but in typical mass media fashion they don't properly credit the paper or author, which makes it more than a little challenging to find. Fortunately I'm skilled with that which is google so I've tracked it down, and I'm reading it now. I think anyone who has read this blog knows where I stand on religion (the wonders of triangulation) so I won't make this a soap box for my own arguments because I want you to read it and think about it.

Serenity

2005-09-30T15:46:00.000-04:00

10 months ago I made my first mention of Serenity, the movie based on Firefly, a short lived Fox TV show cancelled before it could end its first season. While thats common practice at Fox anymore, Firefly was amazing, developing a rabid following that had a decent 3rd party option to the Star Trek/Star Wars debate. I'm sort of sad that it took me 3 years after its cancellation to finally get around to learning about it, especially since I love the science fiction genre. The veer back on point I've been waiting for Serenity to come out for about 10 months (likely more - but I can't quite prove it), well not quite sitting as I've sunk close to $100 (very well spent) into the franchise. And today, finally, I got to see the movie, and it is shiny! I won't go into details other than to say that while the movie can stand on its own, it is made for the fans. If you can, get a hold of the DVDs (beg, borrow, rent, or steal) and watch them before seeing Serenity, because they really do add a whole new layer to the movie. You don't need to go into the comics or anything, but at least a few of the episodes (like the intended pilot - also named Serenity, Out Of Gas, Objects in Space, possibly Ariel and Heart of Gold) If you can't, are too lazy, or poor to get the DVDs, go see the moive. It'll change your mind.

But yes Firefly / Serenity good. Go see Serenity. Go watch Firefly. Then go see Serenity again. maybe a third time too....

Back to my not so normal self

2005-09-30T05:03:00.000-04:00

Pre-dawn Lounging
Originally uploaded by Mark_W.

I've picked up a dozen some hours of quality sleep, so I'm no longer suffering from Gully Foyle mixed up sense syndrome. I woke up around 4, picked up a breakfast of last nights Beef and Mushroom Stroganoff, a mug of hot chocolate, while passing on leftover german potato salad. I check some of my RSS feeds, making not that apparently everyone of my favorite bloggers had posted reviews of Serenity after having seen it at midnight showings. I clear out of lot of the others, but I'll hold off on serious reading for a few hours. Having finished my electic breakfast, and not wanting to stare at my laptop for a few hours, I turn on the TV only to realize that the only thing on are those misserably stupid infomercials designed to place victims into a sleep like state, yet leave they cogent enough to call in orders for the cheap plastic products they're hawking. Not wanting to fall prey to the sirens call, I turn to my iPod where waiting for me is the latest issue of Escape Pod, my favorite Science Fiction Audio Magazine, looks like this one is biopunk, so I tune in, and drop into a predawn hammock, that, as always, is supprisingly comfortable.

Like I said, I'm back- to my not so normal self...

The not so fun side effects of sleep deprivation

2005-09-29T12:47:00.000-04:00

I'm not getting the REM cycles I need and I know it. Trust me I've been trying to this week but it just hasn't been happening for assorted reasons (at least the crickets are quieting down as it gets cooler) I have every intention of being asleep before 8PM tonight and will kill anyone who dares wake me short of a massive disaster.

However I'm noticing some really weird, very not fun side effects of sleep deprivation.

The first is the headache. When I'm short a few hours sleep I know it because of a general headache, but with as little sleep as I have this week, I'm noticing a special headache. A double headache. It feels like my head is split into 6 quadrants, and two non touching quadrants are hurting, one distinctly more than the other. I don't think I've ever had that happen before

Furthermore my tongue isn't working right, I kind of feel like Gully Foyle from Bestler's "The Stars my Destination" (one of my favorite books) Specifically the scene where his senses are mixed up. When I had some sugar based candies the moment it touched my tongue there was a shocking pain, sort of burning, and as that subsided it tasted rancid and extremely bitter.

I'm also dazed but functional. I was drafted into some stupid task during class this morning, some server configuration, and did it perfectly while 1/3rd (or less) awake.

Strange Strange Things.

Yeay!

2005-09-27T21:58:00.000-04:00

I love my hosting provider. I love them love them love them. They turned 8 years old and rather than giving them gifts, they gave me some, unlimited domains and sub-domains, in addition to everything else they've given me over the last 9 months of hosting, like triple the bandwidth, new software tools, and weekly increasing bandwidth/storage limits. The only problem I've had with them is the LA blackout a couple weeks ago, but hey they got it back up and running in a hurry. So did I mention I love these guys? I really really recommend these guys and if you want some dirt cheap hosting to play with, you can't go wrong with them, especially since the current promotion is 80% off the first year, which on the basic package is $25 (with free domain) Thats a sweet deal. I've casually been working on a redesign, but after some stuff clears up this week I might sink some more effort into that and see about doing more than a cheap redirect (part of which was going to include moving stuff to my linux box and host it over DSL, but no more - at least not for my regular sites). Frankly I'd love to get off Google's locked up blogspot servers (and away from the all the spam-o-blogs). This is making my moves a lot easier, and I love it.

Since I'll be renewing my .mac account (which was recently upgraded as well), I suspect will that account will play host to the majority of my photo collection as well as some of the multi-system syncing I'd like to do. Flickr is cool, but I can only upload a dozen or so photos a month before I hit the free account upload caps, and frankly I've got other places I'd like to spend $25 a year at. I'll post my favorite ones on flickr, as well as the .mac page (assuming this is how I actually restructure my spaces) but I don't think there will be more than uhh 20? flickr photos a month (as opposed to upto several hundred on the .mac account)

Anyways enough on the hosting. I actually have some school work to do.

Dreamhost, the promo code is 888 and entered late in the registration process (one of the last steps.).

Of course now that I've got unlimited domains, give me a yell if you want a real site without the hassle of dealing with server configurations and registrations. $15 - $20 sounds good for a year (with a full domain, less if you're willing to put up with a subdomain on one of my existing domains.)

Seriously I'm done now