So…I get in the car yesterday morning, and turn on the radio to discover that the Air America affliate…is gone! Zoinks!! At least a couple of those shows I like!

Turns out that 1690AM changed hands last month, and the new owner has moved the programming over from his other station, 1160AM (which has a lower-power license). 1160AM is “a mix of opera, R&B, jazz and arts criticism”…and not very much to my tastes.

Silver lining, though. Because I really don’t like broadcast radio all that much, but I hadn’t been given enough of a push to buy a new FM transmitter for my media player (my old one is battery-only [vs. having a car plug], and eats batteries for breakfast). Now I have said incentive! Now broadcast radio goes bye-bye. Thanks, Mr. Davis!

OK, all you fans that haven’t been able to comment since the “magic-removal” migration; rejoice. Lee kindly pointed out the error (funnily enough, as I was viewing my web server logs. I might have caught it myself given another 10 minutes or so, but Lee definitely gets the credit here), and I’ve fixed the error. I ran part of the upgrade (for the comments section) for the wrong backend, and missed some objects that needed to be updated in the database.

Back to commenting, minions of Ken! *grin* Thanks, Lee!

I realize Mr. Romero of the ACLU probably isn’t able to respond to individual emails, so I figured I’d just toss this out here. Nothing major; I just felt like venting.

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 08:01:05AM -0500, Anthony D. Romero wrote:
>
> Dear Ken,
>
> Thank you for renewing as a card-carrying member of the ACLU!
>

Thank President Bush, Attorney General Gonzales, and Senator Specter. *grin* They reminded me how important work like yours and the EFF’s is. (EFF is next for renewal!)

> I am glad to know that you share our commitment to defending freedom.  I pledge to you the best 
> efforts of everyone at the ACLU as we work together to protect liberty.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Anthony D. Romero
> Executive Director
> American Civil Liberties Union

I look forward to doing anything I can to help! I expect we have our work cut out for us…

Whew! After a bit of trial and tribulation, I’ve managed to get my site back onto the Django main code trunk again. This involved “removing the magic” — the Django dudes checked in a bunch of backwards-incompatible (but mostly really good) code changes to the Django trunk about a month ago, and I’ve been putting off doing the necessary site work needed to “go live” with the new stuff. Because I’m lazy. *grin* Plus, massive migrations scare the bejeezus out of me (I’ve seen enough go awry in my day job), and I HATE the thought of losing my stuff!

But nothing to fear; all is done, and everything appears to be ok now. Couple of tricky issues with some of the less-frequently used functionality (feeds, mostly), but overall I’m very satisified. If you read this site, and you notice any weird issues, please let me know. I’ve tested everything I can think of (RSS feeds, commenting, etc.)…but I may have missed something.

The good news is that now I can get back to site updates. I held off on new functionality, b/c adding new stuff in the old branch would just mean more fixes when I flipped the switch. I’m over that hump now; joy! I’ve got several ideas I want to add.

Hmmm…after hearing Cam and Rich rant and rave about this thing for two or three podcasts, I decided to check it out. Very cool! I definitely see uses. I’m yet again dumping data into the Google silo, of course…it’ll be REALLY cool if a GData API for Google Notebook shows up.

Backpack has some similar functionality, and includes an API…but loses out on the “no Firefox extension” front. Hm…I should doublecheck that. I haven’t checked the Backpack blog recently; if they DO have a Firebox/Greasemonkey extension now, that would be cool! The API for Backpack kicks butt…I’ve used it before, and it works like a champ. Python wrapper and everything!

Snap! There’s a Backpack It! Greasemonkey user script…let the contest begin! Who will win the notes o’ Kenzoid…Google or Backpack?

Great link from BoingBoing on the upcoming videogame based on the Left Behind book series — Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City.

Schweet. Kinda reminds me of Postal; another classic. (Where IS my copy of that?) But the kicker for me is a couple of links in, in an LA Times article: To generate buzz for “Eternal Forces,” Lyndon and Frichner plan to distribute 1 million sample discs to churches nationwide.

W00t!! Who’s gonna get me one of those babies!!? If I can get one, I promise a review over at Nerdware Review (where I owe an Auto Assault review right now, actually…). Some churchgoer, hook me up!!

Oh crap! I’ve been putzing around with various other MMORPG type thingies recently, and behind my back, Linden Labs finally added http callouts to Second Life. AWESOME! This makes some very interesting stuff possible now, and really escalates SL to a full-on partner with the Web. Previously, calls in (via XMLRPC) were easy, and calls out could be hacked up via email. But with http requests available, it’s a 2-way world now!

See? All you have to do is wave something shiny and new under my nose…*grin*

Playing PC archaeology tonight and cleaning up my home directory. One of the many cool things I’ve found and archived (why delete when disk is free?) are the original mailing list archives of kenzoid-l; my friends mailing list from back in 1998, managed from my account at the awesome (and much missed) io.com! (PrismNet still runs the domain, but it just ain’t the same…I let my account lapse a year or two ago.)

Brings back memories…*sniffle*. I actually ought to try and track a couple of people down from this! Back to rummaging, though…who KNOWS what else I might find!

Data is awesome. Enough data, and you can figure out all SORTS of crazy stuff. My own most recent example is cleaning out my work Inbox. I constantly bump into the upper limit of my storage on our Exchange server, because I’m a packrat. Tonight, I was cleaning things out via the webmail frontend…which has limited search/sort functionality, so I had to get creative.

But it’s fascinating what you can do with good metadata; I seldom delete based on the text of an email’s body…it’s from:, or from and size, or from domain, or date, or subject thread, etc. Really interesting. Dumping the majority of the metadata into the sort of in-memory database that Jon Udell has been espousing lately could probably turn up some really interesting info about me and my interactions via email. Coupled with the types of analysis tools that Nathan Eagle is playing with, you’ve got potential!

Sheesh. I can’t BELIEVE I let 2+ years go by without an up-to-date Cygwin install on either my home or work Windows box. OK…I guess I can, as I run GNU/Linux desktops in both places. But still!! I just re-installed Cygwin at work yesterday, and at home today, and there is much rejoicing.