Something cool, I guess.

Another article from wellstyled.com I want to remember for later. Handy technique to use CSS to give text links background images.

A press release from the USC Center for the Digital Future has outlined some pretty interesting statistics. Check it out, or even better, download the full current report from their homepage.

This is the best use of Flash I've ever seen. Check out this state-by-state breakdown of the presidential election situation. Lots of information in a flashy and presentable package.

Check this out. This is a simple, standards-compliant CSS technique to do image roll-overs without loading multiple images. Just put all three variations in the same file, then specify offsets in CSS!

I've often thought that one of the problems with democracy is that people don't see what matters. Some people (who may even be voters!) simply aren't able to connect the simplest of dots.

For example, after the presidential debates today, I got online to ask people what they thought. A friend of mine who is a freshman student at the University of Montevallo messaged me:

(21:45:17) ckayeejss: when asked if kerry would get more attacks if president..bush talked about registered voters in afghanistan no one cares :)
(21:47:41) ckayeejss: if you honestly care about how many registered voters are in afghanistan you need to get out more:p

The fact that some people don't see the connection between democracy in Afghanistan and America's safety is scary. Even the most liberal of the liberals (I'm talking Moore, Rhodes, Franken, et al.) agree with the war in Afghanistan.

These are all facts:

1. Al Qaeda was able to openly conduct terrorist training camps in Afghanistan before action against the Taliban was taken.
2. Most (all?) of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks trained in those camps.
   
3. They were able to do so because Afghanistan was not a democracy, and was instead run by the Taliban.
   
4. Afghanistan is now a democracy. Terrorists therefore aren't able to run training camps there.
   
5. The fact that people are registering to vote in Afghanistan is relevant to the fact that Afghanistan is now a democracy.
6. Therefore, America is safer.
   

The connection here is so obvious that Bush didn't even need to explain it. And that says a lot, given the simple minds of many of Bush's followers.

When I tried to answer the poor girl's questions about why the answer fit the question, she would have none of it.

(21:57:39) ckayeejss: :) im no longer arguing with you :) conservatives are brick walls :)

I didn't even see where we started "arguing". I was simply pointing out something obvious that she was missing.

I guess that since I actually saw how what Bush said was relevant and she didn't, I'm part of a conservative conspiracy against the idea that Bush talks about voters in Afghanistan for no reason.... alrighty.

In line with the growing trend for everything about everyone's life being put online, I have joined AudioScrobbler! This means that you can see automatically-generated information about the music I listen to. Here is my user page on there.

Kazaa, the well-known hawkers of the Kazaa Media Desktop software, came up a while ago with their "Revolution" campaign. You can see it here.

While Sherman Networks pretends that their software is built for entirely legitimate purposes, we all know for what people use Kazaa Media Desktop. They use it to download songs for free, and burn them to CD (or transfer them to a portable digital music player).

What does Sherman Networks say Kazaa is used for?

You can publish your self-authored content. Just place your photos, book, articles, art work or independent films in your Shared Folder and users worldwide will be able to find and download them.

Supposedly. Who does Sherman Networks think they are fooling? I don't know what percentage of the media on Kazaa's network is original content. There might be some there. But out of the 60 million users of Kazaa, I doubt any of them downloaded Kazaa to download independent films.

Kazaa's software and propaganda encourages people to "share" large numbers of files. See here for example. The ability to "search more" is given starting at sharing 51 files. Further sharing of files is encouraged and rewarded up to 1000 files. I'd be surprised if there were 1000 legitimate files on Kazaa in the first place.

Enough about the users of Kazaa. Sharman Networks knows that the real threat to their business are the RIAA and MPAA. Back to their Kazaa Revolution page:

This Revolution can benefit everybody. So why are they trying to stop it?

Why are they trying to stop the revolution toward total anarchy? Well, it seems that Sharman Networks knows. Here are some of my favorite quotes from their propaganda:

[Movie producers] are concerned that peer-to-peer will reduce their control over every step of this process. This is because peer-to-peer is a market driven by the people.

Every market is driven by "the people". The traditional way of distributing movies into movie theaters has always been, and today continues to be, driven by the people. What Sharman Networks really means here is that it's driven by "the people"'s desire to get free stuff. It's been proven that this mob action has taken control out of the hands of the owners of the media, drastically violating their rights to distribute their content in the way they see fit.

Everyone knows that Kazaa's network and software are used to pirate movies, music, and software. But can Sharman Networks do something about this? They can, and do. They have "premium" content which can't be distributed for free, through partnerships with small-time media companies (most often, pornography producers).

It’s easy to set up a “digitally rights-managed” account that lets artists decide how they want their fans to experience their work. They choose the length of free trial, determine payment criteria and wrap their files in digital protection.

So, if media owners partner with Kazaa, then they can have control. Otherwise, Kazaa removes, by force, that control from them. This is just plain extortion and blackmail on the part of Kazaa. Either partner with them, or your content will be all over the Internet, in the hand of millions, distribution driven entirely by "the people".

It would be extremely technologicaly feasable to have an "opt-in" network, where legitimate content alone is on the network. But then, almost nobody would use the network and software. That wouldn't be good for Sharman Networks' greed.

It's not complicated. It's not like Sharman Networks spins it. It's pretty straightforward. Sharman Networks creates an entire mechanism through which millions are allowed and encouraged to steal intellectual property, on a scale far beyond any other stealing mechanism in history. Then, they say that their network is built for legitimate purposes, even though their entire user base is entirely built around the completely unrelated function of downloading ilegitimate files. Then, they blame the media owners for being behind the technological curve for not partnering with Sherman Networks, and all but say that unless media owners partner with Kazaa, their content will be freely stolen by a mob of "the people".

I have now, for the most part, finished moving back to Maplesville. I plan to stay here for the next several months. This moment represents a great "resetting" of many aspects of my life, as I cycle out many old social contacts (friends, etc) who are no longer useful to me.

Going to watch fireworks or something! Hurray for America! Hurray for Capitalism! Hurray for our position of global power!

Also, I'm now going to be moving on Friday instead of tomorrow.

Here you can find my EZ iTunes Bookmarks. It's a thing that has two buttons: Save, and Load. It runs on Windows, using the iTunes COM interface and the .NET Framework.

I placed an online order of:

1 - order of "mild wings"
1 - large meat-lovers' pizza
2 - two-litres of pepsi

online at about 9:30pm. About 10:40, I called and asked about the order. They said that the order was not in the system. This caused me great inconvenience, as I expected to be able to be in bed by 10:40, rather than still need to find dinner.

This is the second time in four days that Pizza Hut's "online ordering" has not worked for me. This doesn't leave me with much confidence in Pizza Hut's infrastructure for pizza delivery.

Hey, look. I made, just for fun, a Google Groups 2 group, for exchanging interesting or funny news with my friends. You can join it if you want.

Email:

I made a little plugin for Gaim that interoperates with iTunes! You can get it here.

This is a test where maybe you can post comments!

Here is an interesting article about Novell's "Open Enterprise Server" product, which will be a wacky mix of NetWare 7.0 and SUSE Linux.

See, I think that RFID is a good thing. A lot of people think that RFID is evil because it allows everything to be tracked. I think that's a GOOD THING! If everything could be tracked, I would know if the store had my favorite chips.

New military weapon! A gun that sprays pop-tart filling that's been microwaved too long.

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to get set up with Apache, PHP, and MySQL, try XAMPP! I installed it and I was up and running quickly. It installed itself somewhere that its configuration files didn't know where it was, though. That was kind of annoying. And if you already have apache installed, be careful, or you could get things confused.

I've updated my blogger plugin to match my current Gaim version. Now I might type more things here, if I ever remember to.

Cybernetic brain implants are on their way! Resistance is futile. While right now, this is mostly being pitched for use by disabled people, I want one too. My ideal situation would be to have a wearable computer with a wireless internet connection hooked directly into my brain using one of these things! I know it sounds wacky, but I would never forget anything, I would know anything I could think to search Google for, and communication would be much easier. I could even speak through it. Then begin to automate responses to things using the computer. And that would be the first step toward my goal.

I just got back from the doctor and now I have a new medicine to take! It's called "Abilify". Whee.

This is a test.

Oft-times when I meet people who are retarded, I put my foot in their mouth and say, "Welcome to Venus. This will be your last meal."

Alright kids, I've reinstalled the gaim-blogger plugin, so I can now update my blog through an IM interface! Maybe I'll update this thing more often now.

Maybe my search for a new music news site can be filled by the Google Web Directory. So, I go there..

MTV News seems to be more involved with whom rap artists shoot, who is dating who, and what Justin thinks about the SuperBowl ™ incident than new music releases.

In fact, every "music news" site seems to be just the same.

All-Reviews.com is a nice site. They don't have a lot of information, but the way it is presented is good.

PitchForkMedia.com is quite a bit closer to what I was looking for. They have good reviews, information about new music, upcoming releases, and even free downloads of no-name indie stuff. They have a lot of what I am looking for in a site, and it's put together quite well. There are a lot of ads, even animated ones, but they are well-placed and not too intrusive... they are even inviting, at times. Just think of it... an online ad that doesn't rely upon annoyance!

So, there I was mucking around Yahoo Launch, a nifty music and music video site, when I discover that Incubus, a band I particularly like, had released a new CD recently. Then, I find out that Carlos Santana has too! Then I find out that Norah Jones has too! These are all artists that I like to some degree, and I would have liked to have known about them releasing new CDs.

So, off I go to the net, to find a list of recently released albums of some sort, so that I can stay on top of which artists I like have released new music, so that I can sample, then eventually buy (yes, buy. I don't mean the kind of high-tech shoplifting that's so popular now-a-days with these P2P music-stealing services.). What surprised me is the difficulty in finding that sort of information.

First off, I go to billboard.com. That site wasn't much to my liking, because a lot of the information is linked to, but when one clicks on the links, one is taken to a "you have to join to get this" screen.

So, I head over to Google to seek out what will become my future source of news regarding new music releases. My ideal service would be an online service where one can enter artists one likes, and be notified via web or email when there are new releases by those artists, or possibly even by similar artists. Does such a thing exist online? I think it might. Off I go to search for it...

The first place I come across after searching Google for "new music", is nme.com. While I haven't got a clue what NME stands for, the title description of their site promises "all your music news, reviews, pictures, pics, competitions, video, radio, and discography." It seemed like a likely candidate. Click I go.

In the NME.com universe, there are only three colors: black, yellow, and red. Their entire site is decked out in these colors. These colors involve things popping up, dancing around, pictures of cellphones falling down the entire height of my screen, things flashing, and a finger flipping off the internet viewer. Also, on the front page is a picture of one of my favorite artists of all time: Thom Yorke, from Radiohead. Except the picture of him has a big X through it. So, I struggle to look at this site long enough to judge its usefulness. There seems to be some content there... but none of the features seem particularly useful. I see a link (with a red background) about ten pixels high with "new music" written on it. Let's give this a try...

On this page, I'm met with another pop-up window (no red, yellow, or black this time) for something... I can't figure out what before I'm so annoyed I impulsively close the window. The actual content page has more of the same flashing red and yellow annoyances, and under a heading "New Music - Features" has two links: "Listen to Regina Spektor and The Stroke here!" and "Exclusive - Check out the new Keane B-side and the new video!". That's not quite what I'm looking for. NME.com is completely useless, annoying, and not worthy of being the top search result for "new music" in Google. I close the page, only to be assaulted with another popup, this time for eBay.

My search continues...

Check out the Google Deskbar. Search Google from any application without lifting your fingers from your keyboard! This is one of the coolest things Google has come out with in a while. The other coolest thing being their calculator feature.

Hoobastank is playing a concert practically next door to me. It's not loud enough to be enjoyable, but it's loud enough to be annoying.

Hey everyone! Tomorrow evening, there's a lunar eclipse. Shortly after dark, go outside, and watch the moon get colorful. Total eclipse occurs at 7:06PM CST.

So, there I was, pleasantly sleeping, when I was woken up by some rock band that decided to be playing their music next door. Hoobastank, or something like that. *mumble mumble*

I just stumbled across a great internet-based radio station. It's alternative/modern rock, which just so happens to be my musical cup of tea. Radio.Wazee.

This is a test of gaim-blogger, a plugin for Gaim that lets you post to Blogger from an IM type of an interface.

If you want to find me, my geographical coordinates are:

-86.86020614 W
33.10724633 N

I suppose someone could punch that into one of their nifty GPS devices, and be led straight to my house!

Mozilla Firebird

Download Mozilla Firebird. It's fast fast fast! Yes, faster than Opera.

RHAPSODY Playlist

If you have Rhapsody, you can listen to my favorite Deltron 3030 tracks!

RHAPSODY Link

I'm testing out Rhapsody's built-in blogging feature.

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

I always like reading the Zeitgeist at Google. I particularly pay attention to the dominance of operating systems. Windows 98's 29% presence is depressing. Windows 2000 and XP combined are nearly 60% of everything. I am pleased with Windows 95's pathetic 1% presence. I look forward to the numbers on Windows 98 decreasing, and Windows XP and 2000 increasing.

I have started blogging again, over a year after I first started blogging.

Today was the first day I have made my blog. It's actually a little after midnight on September 11, 2002.

A lot of people around me are going crazy about remembering the terrorist attacks. A lot of other people around me are going crazy about not remembering them. I don't think either group has the right idea.