Move along if you’re looking for anything serious…I’ve been slammed catching up with work after Dragon*Con, and I still have my periodic crying jags over Thomas passing away…but this little video just made me happy. Found on FriendFeed (thanks, felix!), but I’m reposting just to try and get myself back in a bit of a groove. Plus, this little bugger is cute as hell.

It’s been quiet this month on the blog, though I have done some work on the layout. I’m fairly active (in the comments and quick snippets sense) over on FriendFeed, but never fear, I’m not abandoning things here by any means. It’s just almost time for Dragon*Con, and a lot of prep work for that happens around our place in August. Plus, hell…my cat died, and I’m STILL not over that. I completely lost it getting ready for bed just this past Monday. *sigh*

So I’m here, and I’ve got posts queued up. I might have some time tonight and tomorrow as last-minute D*C tasks finish; we’ll have to see. Otherwise, expect many photos and some stories next week!! *grin* I’ll hopefully be seeing some online buddies like Dave Slusher and Derek and Swoopy from the Skepticality podcast at the con, and a good time WILL be had by all.

I know…it’s early; we’re so far less than a day into Olympic coverage. But this is just broken.

I’ve often heard that even as the Internet becomes more of a venue for video of various types, that the last stronghold of broadcast will be live events, and especially sporting events. Because no one wants to see 12-hour old sports results…right? Well, someone should have told NBC.

NBC has the exclusive rights to Olympic coverage in the US, and has decided to ignore the fact that it’s 2008, and just pretend prime-time coverage will still carry the day. Now, it’s worthwhile to note that they drew a tough one here; Beijing is halfway around the world from the United States, and literally 12 timezones from the East Coast. That…well, sucks for NBC. But the solution isn’t to pretend that the Olympics aren’t happening until US prime time! From Day 1, where NBC postponed coverage of the Opening Ceremonies for 12 hours (until prime time), there seems to be a lack of understanding of just how frustrating their coverage choices are making regular people.

But what about Internet coverage? You can watch on the Internet, right? Well…kinda. Maybe. Initially, my tests looked pretty promising, but tonight the feeds have been sparse, and even what’s there is a comedy of “buffer…run for several seconds…buffer”. Net streaming is tough, certainly, but this either should improve quickly, or NBC’s got a fiasco on their hands. (I like the format of the player…but the potential doesn’t make up for the reality of The Fail.). And regardless…NBC has already stated that they won’t preempt any of their primetime coverage with live streams, so many of the premier events aren’t going to be viewable as they occur, at least in the US.

And other countries are no help. The streaming rights are geo-bound in every way imaginable, and I’ve spent hours tonight looking for the correct proxies to get something usable. Little joy. I expect that by the end of the weekend, I’ll have something semi-workable, but this is ridiculous.

It’s so disappointing to see such a lack of vision in 2008. The flat-out refusal to try anything new, simply ignoring the reality of the world today, is befuddling. I’ll be unable to WATCH these events in real-time, but whether NBC likes it or not, we’ll actually know the results. And if I can’t watch live, I may not watch at all. Their refusal to allow large-scale streaming, to not show events as they occur, and to try to pretend that broadcast is still the only option available will only hurt their ratings, IMO.

I heard about Steal This Film II when it was originally released, and I meant to watch it early on…but never got around to it. Shame on me…I recently finished it, and it was outstanding. And I’m even more excited now, b/c I’m in the middle of exploring the raw footage that the film was based on.

Wow…this is truly awesome!! The film was great, but as in the case of every documentary, there’s far more raw footage than made it into the finished work. All this footage is now available for viewing, and it’s an deep, engaging dive into the concepts and questions brought up by the film (copyright, intellectual property, creativity, and the future of distribution, for starters). It gets better…the footage is all under Creative Commons, and most of it is under the Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license, which allows for derivative reuse. It’s mind-boggling, really.

Some of my favorite thinkers in this space are represented, including Eben Moglen, Yochai Benkler, and Fred von Lohmann (though not limited to them by any means). Regardless of your knowledge level on these topics, there’s probably more than one interview you’ll enjoy and learn from here.

My cat Thomas passed away this morning at about 10:15am, EDT.

I can’t believe he’s gone; I keep looking down at my feet for him, and my ears strain to hear cat noises in the house – noises that are no longer there. He’s been sick for some time, so it wasn’t a surprise; but you never want the day to come, you know?

Every time I think I’m cried out, I discover I’m not…so we’re staying home to cry today. *sigh* He was the sweetest animal I ever knew, and a true friend and companion. I love you, Thomas! Goodbye.

My buddies and I that do a monthly-ish geekfest have off and on played pen-and-paper RPGs, but never gotten a campaign to really stick. I’ve given it a lot of thought (I’m generally the game master in these things), and I think it’s at least partially due to the meta-work needed. I’m an old, experienced game master…but at this point in my life, the emphasis has to be on the “old”; it’s been 10+ years since I’ve GM’d a game regularly. I still have all the skills, but they’re optimized for old systems. In the meantime, I keep trying different stuff with my buddies, because we all of course like novelty. Some of these guys are old-school pen-and-paper types, but some aren’t…inflicting a new system on them every 6 months isn’t doing anything for their ability to get into the campaign. So I needed to re-strategize.

(Plus…I gave away my 1st edition rulebooks back in the early 90s. That didn’t help!)

So I finally decided that ideally, if I could replace my old rules and just DM an old-school 1st edition campaign, it’d be the minimum extra work for me, and for most of the players (half of them used to play back in the day). And lo and behold…my co-geekfester Steve and I were out putzing about yesterday, and look what they had at the local game shop:

They didn’t have a Player’s Handbook, but I tracked one down on eBay; no worries. It’s on it’s way. And the Monster Manual isn’t necessary straight off; basic monster stats are in the DMG, and I mostly know them all anyway. Let the gaming begin! This should be fun.

(Aside: I’m one of those old cantankerous RPG-types that thinks even 2nd edition AD&D was blasphemy, so 3, er, 3.5…4th edition was Out Of The Question. Just to clarify. *grin*)

Light post today…I’m doing some Saturday stuff for work, so my SCOTUS post can wait until tomorrow. *grin* I did want to note, however, that a) my Disqus comments are live, fire away folks! *grin*, and b) leaf/lawnblowers make podcast listening impossible!

Let me explain. Podcast listening is something that happen in many environments…you can listen at a PC, pump it to the stereo, with an MP3 player, etc. People listen while working, at the gym, in the car, or wherever. Much like radio, it doesn’t require full attention, unlike video podcasts or TV. I personally tend not to listen to podcasts while working…I’m too easily distracted. I usually listen to music while coding or working (watch me code on last.fm!). I listen to podcasts in the car, on mass transit, out doing errands, and running. I like the fact it’s such a flexible medium, though!

Anyway…so I listen to a LOT of podcasts while running. I’m no marathoner, but I do 15-20 miles a week when there’s nothing stopping me, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years. So since the beginning of podcasting, I’ve LOVED listening to podcasts while I run. In fact, I had started about a year before; in 2003, I started recording BBC news streams to listen to on a 64 meg CF card player. Ah, those were the days. *grin*. But now, it’s podcasts…lots of podcasts.

And podcasts vs. lawnblowers don’t fare NEARLY as well as music vs. lawnblowers. Not like this is a new phenomenon, but I’ve for some reason noticed it a lot more lately. I get a lot of lawn care types out near the park that I run at and the neighborhood nearby where I live. Music? Music survives 10-15 seconds of absolute overwhelming blower noise. After all, they’re probably songs that I love and know completely by heart anyway. But a podcast, especially a technical one, or a presentation? Blam. Conversational thread lost. So lawnblowers suck. *grin*

So that is my rant for today. More fun tomorrow!

Dodd: Does America Stand for the Rule of Law, or the Rule of Men?: This link includes both the video and text of Senator Dodd’s remarks on the floor today before the votes on amendments to the FISA bill (which were all ultimately shot down), and the subsequent vote on the bill itself (which passed). Senator Dodd has been steadfast in his opposition to the retroactive immunity grant to the telecoms included in the bill, and had already once helped block it’s passage (late last year). His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful today, but he is much appreciated. His words are also a powerful reminder of the risks we are taking with our liberty in service to imagined security. From his closing:

Mr. President, allow me to close with one of my favorite quotations – one I have recited on this floor many times. It is from Justice Robert Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremberg trials. And it reads:

That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

Mr. President, the tribute that Power owes to Reason is as clear today as it was when those words were spoken more than a half-century ago: that America stands for a transcendent idea.

The idea that laws should rule, not men.

The idea that the Constitution does not get suspended for vengeance.

The idea that when this nation begins to tailor its eternal principles to the conflict of the moment, it risks walking in the footsteps of the enemies we despise.

For, as Margaret Thatcher said, “When law ends, tyranny begins.”

Today, let us pay the tribute that Power owes to Reason today – in this moment, with these votes.
I implore my colleagues to vote against retroactive immunity…against cloture…and above all, for the rule of law.

Thanks again for trying, Senator.

So…one of the neat things about FriendFeed is that it highlights services for me that I don’t presently use, but that keep showing up in the feeds I follow. For example, I checked out GoodReads based on seeing a couple of people using it, and it’s nifty. I’ve got an account there now, in fact (wiring it up to LibraryThing comes later). FF supports a lot of services that I haven’t used ,but I think the most interesting thing I’ve seen is Disqus. So interesting that I think I’m moving my comments there.

Weird, eh? I mean, I live for running my own stuff. I host my blog myself, host my mailserver myself, host my wiki myself, host my…we’re seeing a pattern here, aren’t we? *grin* So what’s different?

Well, a couple things I think. One is simply pragmatic, but it enables the other. Firstly, in a pragmatic sense, pushing my comments out into the cloud is a fundamentally different thing than hosting my email there. My blog is public, and the associated comments are by design, public as well, so there’s not the privacy and 4th amendment issues associated with my personal email. For email, this is still a show-stopper for me…it would require serious crypto-wizardry for me to store my full email corpus in the cloud. For comments, not so much…which means I’m willing to at least entertain the idea. And once I do, it’s pretty attractive.

Disqus provides a lot of cool features for both a blog owner and a commenter (and hey, I’m both!). For a blog owner, it provides nice conversational management tools, good spam filtering, dashboard management, etc. Nice to haves. But it really, IMO, shines for the commenter. You suddenly have a persistent identity across thousands of blogs, allowing your reputation and ID to become a much more useful online tool. You can also use widgets and services like FriendFeed to easily highlight your witty remarks from any tenth-rate blog (like, say, this one *grin*) on your own site or in your own feed. Nice!

There are also comment ratings, and the ability to email into a thread, the ability to backup posts (in case the service, you know, goes away), and an API. They also make it clear that they claim no ownership of your comments, which I find kinda important. *grin*

PLUS…it supposedly runs on Django, and they use Firefly characters in their features tour. I mean…geek bonus juice aplenty right there.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure it’s not perfect. But I’ve been giving this your sites as loosely coupled components scattered across the cloud model a lot of thought lately, and Disqus fits in well as training wheels for a trial run (how’s THAT for tentative? LOL). So I think if I can get this wired up pretty easily, I’m going to give it a whirl. Let’s see where we end up! Comments welcome (and appreciated). What do you think? Have you used Disqus? Do you like the idea?

PS: It certainly isn’t live yet…as of now, these are still my old-school comments. I’ll make it clear when I’ve switched over (though it should be pretty obvious). I’m just making the decision now…

UPDATE: An important note. I want to make clear that the persistent identity benefits I’m so enthusiastic about above are optional. I will NOT be requiring any commenter to register with me, or with Disqus. I think it’s of value, obviously…for both me and you. But I understand anyone who doesn’t wish to do so. I will still have the ability to post anonymous (well, unnamed; I have your IP address) comments, and I always will, barring some unforeseen Internet calamity that makes it impossible. So don’t worry about that.

It’s really been quite the excellent long weekend so far *knock on wood*. On the 4th, we went to the Georgia Independence Day Festival in Hampton, GA…a really fun local 4th of July festival with music, historic reenactors, fair food, friends, and of course fireworks! A good time was had by all!

Photos here: GIDFest 2008

Then yesterday we decided to finally visit the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, GA. It’s been on our list for awhile, but we finally made it there, and it was a lot of fun. The center is dedicated to kangaroo preservation through captive breeding and public education, and they currently exhibit over 300 kangaroos of 9 species (in fact, apparently the largest collection of kangaroos outside of Australia). It’s an AZA-accredited zoo, and has been for over 20 years, so this is no roadside animal attraction. The habitat is beautiful and spacious, and the animals look very relaxed and happy. I’m sure we’ll be back!

Then on the way home, we stopped off in Dahlonega for some shopping and dessert. Two thumbs up for dessert! *grin*

Photo set: Kangaroo Trip

Two very full days of fun, and still a day left…joy. Now Sunday will be some wind-down…online (uploading photos and such), get some running in, do some chores and some other hobby stuff. Nice. Good friends, fun events (and nice weather) make for good memories. This will definitely be one to remember!