Installed Adhesive Plugin. This lets me make posts “sticky”… staying as the first post in my blog, regardless as to when it was posted.
I know I’m addicted to Wordpress plugins. And that’s the first step in beating it.
Literature
I’ve always been a slow reader. Sometimes, when I see people that read those big, heavy tombs like all those James Mitchner books, I get jealous. But then, I savor each word. In a good book, I have to stop every now and then because, although my eyes are strong and fast enough to read on, my mind has to digest what I’ve read. Reading quickly loses it’s advantage if you miss substance and depth.
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver - 6-20-02 - I spent time with the people of Zebulon County on every long car trip for the last three months. I borrowed this wonderful 15 hour audiobook from Shara. I just finished it and I miss the characters so. Not that the story is unfinished but like a good friend and neighbor that has moved to another town, I feel their absense. I cherished the time I had with these characters. Thank you Ms. Kingsolver for writing this story and then telling it to me.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin - 6-1-02 - Last summer, Shara lent me an audiobook of another Earthsea book. I was enthralled by the frank and precise language the Ms. Le Guin used and I wasn’t disappointed by this story. She applies such a down-to-earth style to high-fantasy that sits very well with me. I’ll be reading more of her!
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Edward Hutchings et all - summer 01. He’s my kind of guy. And it’s written so personally. It shows through that most of the book is actually dictation of a happy man telling great personal adventure stories to a friend.
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson - 1994 or so. Cyberpunk at it’s best. I first saw it sitting on the kitchen table on Shepard St. What I usually do is dare people to read the first 20 pages and then put it down. Go ahead, I dare you.
Zodiac by Neil Stephenson - 2000. Yea, Neil’s pretty cool with the tech. Maybe Tom Clancy will have some competition in the movie theaters some day. The Big U by Neil is also a fun romp.
Comics
- Swamp Thing - I got the graphic novel (the first S.T. graphic novel) many years ago… in ‘90? It convinced me that this format could be powerfully compelling.
- Transmetropolitan - in late 2001, TJIC lent me a the graphic novel issues 1 thru 24. I ate it up! I think the most important message the author tried to get across is that, in order to appreciate something, and to be able to articulate your thoughts, you’ve got to hate it. That’s an interesting idea..
- Sandman - I picked this up at the comic store around issue 40. The best ones were the first 30 or so (excepting #50, a super-snazzy double-issue) so I bought them all in novel format. Wow.
Installed Search Meter Plugin
So I can see what my adoring fans are searching for on my blog.
Upgraded to Spam Karma 2.0
Spam Karma 1 beta 2 has been very good to me, only letting through a couple false negatives and almost no false positives. But it’s good to be pro-active about comment spam. Spam Karma works.
I just installed Spam Karma 2. First impression: The new Spam Karma has a lot of knobs and buttons! This is industrial grade stuff.
I even went all wacky and turned Pingbacks and Trackbacks on.
If your comment gets inappropriately eaten by SK or you’re having any trouble, ping me.
Burning Man 2005 Pictures
Here they are! Behind these links are are selected photos and videos from my 2005 Burning Man trip.
The videos don’t display correctly in Firefox but you can get them (with a yucky interface) from here. Just look for the .avi files at the bottom of the list.
And here is my special small contribution to the spirit of the burn… *These beautiful panorama images* were stiched together with Hugin, a terrific photo panorama tool. Each image is composed of 5 to 14 or so photos. I might recommend that you right-click download these images and then view them in their fantastic high-res detail at your lesuire.
Catch my Burning Man 2004 pix too.
Burning Man 2004 Pictures
I sat on these pictures for WAAAAY too long. I just never got around to putting them together in a coherent pile.
Well, here are my Burning Man 2004 images!
Just like for my 2005 Burning Man pictures, I stiched together a precious few into fabulous panorama images. Here are the panoramas!
Google Talk, Skype and internet telephony
Long story short:
If you use Skype, call me, username: gadlen (I have Skype voicemail)
If you use Google Talk, call me, leeatleedotorg
If I don’t seem to be online, ping me on AIM, u:gadlen or by phone. I sometimes turn off my instant message & talk clients to save on RAM for intensive tasks.
.
.
I’ve been using Google Talk for 2 weeks now, talking on the phone/computer with my sister fer free. The sound quality kicks and it’s hard to beat the price. (free)
TJIC says that my Skype-Out call to him sounded “like a good cell phone”.
My Google Talk –> Google Talk conversations with my sister sound much better than a telephone.
I got the free crippleware version of Total Recorder to make recordings of some Skype calls. The sound quality was “pretty good” (and definitely adequate) but there was some weird static on the recording.
I’ve been mooching off my housemate’s phone so I’ve been using Nobelcom calling cards. For most calls to New Jersey there is a terribly frustrating echo on the line… I hear my own words a 1/4 second after I say them. All other calls sound peachy
I might have to go buy cordless computer headsets for all my friends and family for Christmas.
ASCII art text
____ _ _ / ___|_ __(_)_ __ __| | ___ _ __ | | _| '__| | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__| | |_| | | | | | | | (_| | __/ | \____|_| |_|_| |_|\__,_|\___|_|
Time Zone ninniness in Outlook
Dear Lazyweb,
I recently moved from the Eastern time zone to the Pacific time zone. All of my reoccurring events (i.e. birthdays and anniversaries) in Outlook shifted from being “all day events” to occuring three hours sooner… 9pm the day before until 9pm the day of the event. I rummaged around on Microsoft.com but the best I could find was that Bill told me to either move to another time zone, just get used to it, or manually fix all of the events. I went ahead and manually fixed all of the events… it took about an hour and a half and now my eyes hurt. :-(
For future reference, is there a better way to do this?
SierraTradingPost.com comment spam
Update 12-9-05. See comment #5, below
I had an exchange with SierraTradingPost.com recently about comment spam they appeared to be writing.
Here is the last letter I wrote to Andy Newlin, Online Marketing Manager at SierraTradingPost.com
To paraphrase our conversation:
I said: Your company is posting comment spam, which I don’t think is very endearing.
You said: No, we’re not.
I said: Yes you are, and here are 20 examples of it
You said: No, we’re not. That’s not us. Well, actually, you’re right. An adverstizing affiliate of ours is writing potentially deceptive ads in our name. So please apologize for saying that we’re writing comment spam.You do what you think is best for your company. Have a nice day,
Lee Sonko
Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional
I guess I’m in the right place….
By Associated Press
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - Updated: 02:06 PM ESTSAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge in San Francisco has declared it unconstitutional to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
The judge, ruling in a lawsuit brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, today ruled that he is bound by precedent of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Newdow objected to the words ”under God” in the pledge.
When a court fires pot-shots like this, the rulingslikely won’t stick nationally, but the sentiment is still there.
Survivor Richard Hatch might not survive in the long run
I generally only watch a particular television series once in order to grok it. When I’m done with it, I’m done.
I watched and enjoyed the original “Bachelor”. I found the experiment in “forced romantic community” quite interesting. I also followed the original “Survivor”. I thought that the Survivor story was finished… well, except for the multiple of re-iterations. I was wrong.
Richard Hatch won the original Survivor through a mix of social engineering, careful plannning, and luck. But apparently, his skills are so infused into his personality, he doesn’t know when to turn them off.
“Survivor” winner indicted for tax evasion, fraud, charity swindle
SEPTEMBER 8–After rejecting a plea deal earlier this year, original “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch was named today in a 10-count indictment charging him with tax evasion and fraudulently using charitable donations to cover personal expenses. According to the indictment, a copy of which you’ll find below, Hatch never bothered to report his 2000-01 haul for winning the initial installment of the CBS reality series–a $1 million check and a $27,000 Pontiac. The 44-year-old Newport, Rhode Island resident also never told the Internal Revenue Service about nearly $400,000 in other income. Included in that six-figure sum was $36,500 in donations to Horizon Bound, a purported charity established by Hatch. Prosecutors allege that Hatch actually used that money for personal expenses. Along with two tax evasion counts, Hatch was charged with filing a false return; mail fraud (four counts); wire fraud (two counts); and bank fraud. He faces a maximum of five years in prison (and a $250,000 fine) on nine of the felony charges, though the bank fraud rap carries a 30-year max and a $1 million fine. Hatch reneged on a January plea agreement calling for him to cop to a pair of felony tax evasion counts. Prosecutors responded by opening a grand jury probe that resulted in Hatch being hit with eight additional felonies. (18 pages)
My dad’s heart
My dad went to a doctor today. His heart has some tricky blockages. I’m very concerned.
I’ll probably be flying home for the surgery.
Installed Subscribe2 Plugin
I installed the Subscribe2 plugin by Scott Merrill. It lets viewers subscribe to an email version of my blog. You can probably see a link to it in the sidebar. Or here.
Shall We Dance
I wrote this list in response to watching the movie Shall We Dance with Richard Gere on my way to San Francisco in February 2005. I have only now gotten around to transcribing it. I think that it is a good list.
What I learned from Shall We Dance
- Follow your dreams, even when they take you in unexpected and even threatening directions. Keep hold of your foundations and things are bound to go well.
- Don’t be afraid or ashamed. There will be times when you -are- afraid or ashamed. Let the natural course of events overcome.
- When you see a chance for happiness, take it.
- Be proud of what you love.
- Allow new passions in your life.
- Don’t let your fears control you. Don’t sweat it when it does. It happens to us all.
- I cry often during movies in which people dance.
- The substance of what epassions you is much less important than the spirit and energy that is put into it. The spirit -is- the substance, and that will show.
Skype’s success
LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 12, 2005–eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY)(www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration
Skype had been privately held.
From working stiff to billionaire, overnight*.
.
*If, by “overnight”, you mean: innovating, struggling and slaving for without any solid goal in mind for several years.
Mailinator
It’s like super-instant, always-ready, any-email-you-want email. right now.
Mailinator is a new kind of mail service. The biggest difference is that you don’t need to sign up. Any email name you can think of already exists at mailinator.com. Want goofy@mailinator.com? You got it. Want to be SuperGuy? BoohaBunny? FredInPants? No problem. They all already exist just waiting for you to check your mail.
How is Mailinator different than some other webemail? Say, Yahoo or Hotmail?
The differences are easy to list. Generally speaking however, anything you can do with Mailinator, you can do with some other email service. In fact, you can do more with other services since they allow you to actually send email (Mailinator only receives).
The differences are:* Mailinator requires no sign-up. To create an account, you send email to it.
* You cannot send email from Mailinator.
* Your Mailinator email inbox can be read by anyone. There is no security here. If they know (or guess) your email address, they can read your mail.
* You cannot delete your email here (you can’t reply either), after a few hours, all email is auto-deleted.
* Mailinator has strict rules about what kind of email it receives. Plain text is best, html is filtered. Images, attachments, and fancy stuff is simply stripped away.In a nutshell, other services provide more functionality but require a sign-up (where you can falsify all the information really anyway). Mailinator provides less, but requires no sign-up.
Installed Enhanced Post List Plugin
Enhanced Post List by Brian “ColdForged” Dupuis is similar to “Paged Comment Editing”.
It’s a good thing
What happened to Coldforged?
www.coldforged.org is down. I hope he’s ok! I only know him from trolling his posts but he’s a good guy!
I’m hoping the best for him!
I’m guessing that he lives in a currently waterlogged portion of the US…..
Update 9-12-05
Not waterlogged…. CPU logged.
From Coldforged on Wordpress.org
Just FYI.
After some trouble with my hosting provider — meaning having my account suspended for CPU usage 3 times — I’ve gone ahead and shut down coldforged.org. I currently have no intention of finding another hosting provider and starting anew, so this is the end of that era. Thanks to those who read and those who found my plugins helpful.
My plugins, Enhanced Views, Paged Comment Editing, Image Headlines, and the Spelling Checker are still freely available under GPL from the plugin repository but I will no longer be supporting them. If by some chance I decide to revive the site in the future, I may pick up where I left off but I certainly wouldn’t count on it. And I’m sorry to say I won’t be checking back here for support questions on any of the plugins. There are lots of people using them who may be able to help you, though, so it doesn’t hurt to ask here.
This also isn’t a call for help, free hosting, or debugging my installation. I’ve tried many things — static caching, disabling features, cached gravars — and I realized following this time that I think I am using the seemingly notorious “Brian’s Latest Comments” plugin which has caused such issues in the past. However, I’ve apparently had one too many strikes with my hosting provider and frankly don’t feel like paying more or going through the headache of migrating. Not worth it. Thanks in advance to anyone who wanted to help :).
Adios, friends.
9-16-05 update: He couldn’t stand to be offline. Blogging is catharsis for him too.
Religious Conversion
I have had a religious conversion.
I am now borne up by the saucy tentacles of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
