Lee.org

I swapped out the photos in the upper right corner of the blog. I’ve had Burning Man 2005 photos up for a couple months. Now we’ve got photos mostly taken from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day site.

Note that you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

I changed the color scheme of the last few months from that brash green to flat gray.

Kevin Bacon –> Bobby Jacoby –> Laura –> Lee Sonko

I know Laura through Holly who went to summer camp with Bobby years ago, who was in the movie Tremors with Kevin.

Cool friggin beans. Songtapper.com lets you search for a song, by tapping the rhythm of its words (lyrics).

And the darn thing works.

I have 2 tickets to Burning Man 2006.

:-)

I’ve been thinking about what kinds of technologies have been extremely effective in the last several years. I had also heard some things about this on a couple podcasts… I can’t remember which.

The kinds of things that do well are things that “bring it to the people”.

eBay – sell it yourself

Amazon – trusting in the recommendations of other purchasers

blogging – lee.org/blog, boingboing – indivuals and little guys as news & entertainment sources and sources of discussion.

music file sharing – people exchanging popular music freely (of course, saving money by stealing is also a factor here)

podcasting – Adam Curry Daily Source Code – individuals as audio program sources

video podcasting – Rocketboom, Michael Verde – written by individuals and little businesses

social networks – Friendster, Match.com, Tribe – people meeting people

Craigslist – The newspaper classified ad killer… written and edited by its users

wikipedia – written and edited by its users

Open source software – written and modified by its users

XML – “extensible” is in its name. It’s designed to be added to.

Direct to consumer advertising of pharmacuticals

I suppose an obvious omission is Google as a search engine. That’s the tasty school glue that holds loose collaberation together… and when Googlezon gets going, it will be all about the people again.

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So, our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to find or create the next “take it to the people” application. It doesn’t take a billion dollar company to make this happen. Actually, taking a look at all those trends above, I noticed that none of them existed 10 years ago. So, what do you say? Wanna brainstorm?

I’ve been on Match.com for a couple months. In that time, I’ve gotten 3 spams. I don’t even know what they are trying to sell me, but they sure bother me.

Here’s today’s spam from “markinazaokk” on Match.com

Hello!
My name – Ekaterina, me 28 years.
I loved your structure on site Match, and I at once have decided to write to you the letter.
I very much loved yours the image, I while do not have the but if you will answer me
I shall try to send you the structure. I as well as many people simply want
To find to itself the person, for a life and for the father of children and love.
I hope, that my letter will be interesting to you, and you will answer me!!!
With impatience I shall wait for your letter!!!!
Please write letters on mine e-mail: katvolkova@rambler.ru
Katya.

And one from Jan 5th from “freefromall7v7 ”

I am a recent member of this site and like others looking for love. I decided to write you and see where it goes… If you are interested, I would feel more comfortable if you write me to sweet_cherry357@yahoo.com I hope to hear back from you soon.
Bye.

So is there actually a good news reader out there? I tried switching from Firefox Sage to something snazzier and I’ve been scorned twice now.

RSS Bandit is very pretty and has really nice management but you can’t tell how many comments are in a post using the UI. (this seems related to shoddy support/implementation of <slash :comments>).

RSSReader… I forget why I dumped RSSReader.

I’m swiching back to Sage. It’s silly though. I pull up a feed and then middle-click middle-click middle-click middle-click middle-click middle-click middle-click all the entries to open them up. That seems ineffient or something but it works.

I saw Gallagher last week. Yes he’s still alive, yes he’s still smashing watermelons and yes the show rocked. My only regret is that I didn’t sit closer! The folks sitting in the orchestra pit got SOAKED, people in the center of rows A-C got hit some. Unfortunately, row E didn’t get a drop. But that’s cool.

Birthday Cake Smash Video!! (you might have to right-click and download this to view the fun 5 second video, sorry!)

Gallagher asked everyone who’s birthday was today to come up front. (I seriously considered letting today be my special day. But going to the show alone, there wasn’t anyone to snap the photo of what I knew would ensue). Hit cake delivery mechanism was… I won’t say “efficient” but I will say “fast”!
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Last night I caught a Fire Opera at The Crucible. Just as I’ve experienced before, I couldn’t understand a word of it without the subtitles, even though it was in English. But it was pretty good. And there was fire and glass pulling and red-hot metal being pounded and power tools. Lots of power tools. And opera!

Tomorrow I’m catching 9.8th Fighting Kite Brigade in Bernal Hill Park. Real kite combat!

And then going to the Parkway with Laura

I got an Aerobed. It’s going to be my guest bed but until I can decide on a bed for myself… I think I’m afraid to get a bed or something. Something about settling down. Silverware, check. Kitchen table assembled, check. House still a mess, check.

Oh and I got the first half of a “deep cleaning” (scaling and root planing) of my teeth involving novocaine and lots of scraping. 2nd half is next week. Joy.

Last bit, I’ve starting an exercise regimen. First week down, it feels pretty good. :-)

Here is how to set your RSS news reader to read Protected (Friends-Only) posts.
I mention this because I had some trouble getting this to work with the available instructions out there.

This is tested on RSS Bandit.

Create a new feed entry with a URL like this: http://www.livejournal.com/users/YourFriend’sUsername/data/rss?auth=digest
(replace “YourFriend’sUsername” with… I’ll let you guess)
Go to the Authentication tab and type in your Livejournal username and password.
Done :-) You can now use that feed entry to read your friend’s posts.

I read in several places that you should do this:
http://Username:Password@www.livejournal.com/users/YourFriend’sUsername/data/rss?auth=digest
(replace Username, Password and YourFriend’sUsername)
I haven’t found this to work.

I’ve had this no-yearly fee Visa card forever. I even forget who I originally got it with. The company on the masthead has changed so many times… Today it’s Chase.

You know how you get those little “Important Notes for Credit Card Customers” pamphlets… the one written all in legaleze. I decided to read mine this time and yow! My APR on this thing is now 30.99% with a late fee charge of $39. So if I buy a $1,000 item and miss my payment date by a day, I instantly owe an extra $65! Oh, plus a $1 finance charge.

The moral of the story? Don’t be late!

(To try and cover my ass, I just set up an automatic billing thing with my bank. If I forget to pay, Chase Visa still gets an automatic “minimum payment” of $10)