This rocks…full text of An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Thanks to boingboing for link!

*sigh* I ALREADY have little enough free time, and then Mark Pilgrim
goes and writes what looks to be another kick ass developer
book (he already wrote Dive
Into Python, which is an excellent Python introduction for
experienced programmers new to the language.)

Thanks, Mark. Thanks a freakin’ lot. *grin* I’ve held off on Greasemonkey for awhile now, b/c I didn’t see documentation that would let me just…er…dive in. So you suck.

w00t! Here we go! I have a shiny new toy (bearing in mind, of course, the serious
security issue being worked on as I type this).

Well-spoken . Thanks for being a Voice of Reason.

Don’t forget about NASA’s Deep
Impact mission, which is scheduled to have impact with comet
Tempel 1 at approximately 1:52am EST tonight (morning of July 4th). If
you’re a science nerd, the post impact briefing is at 4am. I don’t get
the NASA channel, unfortunately, but I’m poking around now to see if
CSPAN or someone else is covering it…hmmm…maybe CNN. What ELSE is going on at 4am, after all?

The website looks to have some good stuff…they’re already throwing
up images
from both the impactor’s targeting sensor camera, and the flyby
craft’s scopes.

UPDATE: Ah…if nothing else, we’ve got good ol’ web connection to NASA TV.

…so little (free) time. *sigh*

It’s a good thing, but a little frustrating at times. I have tons of cool stuff to play with, and not enough free time to do all of it (or even part) justice:

• Quixote project with my buddy Mark
• Learning Mono, and hacking on Monopod (a Mono podcast client that is an excellent intro to Mono. Thanks, Edd!)
• Hacking on Second Life stuff
• Playing some Guild Wars when I need a fun, but less intellectually rigorous break from the other items.

And that’s just the computer stuff. *grin* Isn’t modern life a blast!?

Joy. I’m having much fun this evening dinking about with my Second Life avatar. I finally got around to wiring up a SL primitive (simple object) to the in-game XML-RPC interface. Nothing advanced here…it’s almost trivial, and a well-established communication method for calling into the game from the “Outer Internet”. (currently, only inbound xmlrpc is allowed, to limit malicious code in-game for DoSing websites.) But already, I can see the possibilities…this is uber cool.

My initial test is simple. It involves the “MediaURL” that can be attached to land…what this means is that a particular audio stream can be kicked off when you walk or fly into an area. I want to be able to stream podcasts, but have the URL updated automatically as new podcasts are posted to the sites that I register with. Thus the XML-RPC call. I have an external script that handles the podcast subscriptions…it checks for new MP3s, and calls into Second Life when new podcasts are released. This updates my in-game media player, even if I’m not there. Jazzy!

Right now, initiating _outbound_ communications from Second Life is clunky…email is the only option. But within the next couple of releases, the in-game scripting language will gain the ability to manipulate the web. A Mozilla client is being baked into the SL client, and LSL (Linden Scripting Language, the scripting language of Second Life) is scheduled to eventually grow some calls to set URLs. These calls are designed to allow you to dynamically apply HTML to a primitive (to paint an object with a web page, basically)…but you could potentially (depending on implementation) also use it to “call out” to a website and communicate, based on the URL you use (a stereotypical REST interface).

The Metaverse is coming. Second Life seems goofy at times, but it’s flat-out cool. And it contains a lot of the pieces we’ll need for a “Metaverse”…environmental persistence, player-created and owned intellectual property (along with an associated economy and real-world currency exchange), tools for creation and manipulation of the environment. A scripting language powerful enough to build upon (and getting better…the VM is moving to Mono in v.2!). Tons of content, created by the users. (check out SnapZilla for ongoing snapshots from within the game. Some are kinda cheesy…others are pretty interesting..)

Plus, it’s cheap…7 day free trial, and a one time payment of $9.95 gets you a permanent basic subscription (your ability to create and persist objects is limited with this account, but it IS possible.) Check it out; it’s worth taking a look. I certainly DO enjoy my Guild Wars account, but if I had to pick only one, I’d pick Second Life.

Dave Slusher’s Evil
Genius Chronicles is my favorite podcast, hands down. I love
Dave…we’re around the same age (so his college stories strike a
chord), have lots of similar likes and dislikes, and his podcasts
frequently make me laugh out loud. Dave’s da man. Go check him out.

On his June
9th episode, he hit a new high, though. He played two songs by Jonathan Coulton, and these
things ROCK! Good tune, nice to listen to, and both are
snort-coke-out-your-nose funny. Check Jonathan out at CDBaby, and buy both
albums…”Skullcrusher Mountain” is on one, and “First of May” is on
the other. I’m buying them this weekend. Thanks, Dave!

Bruce Sterling: Great Leapin’ Space Cannon, have a gander at that…

Make:Blog:
Juicebox Hacking – A few months ago we posted up about the $11
Mattel JuiceBox project, some photos in the MAKE Flickr Photo Pool and
some resources for hacking up these little guys for other
projects. Slashdot has a story on it today with a lot more comments
and resources that might come in handy too.

CNN: Senators compromise on filibusters

I applaud the spirit of compromise here. That is after all, like
it or not, what it’s all about. Neither side tends to get 100% of what
they want all of the time. Not the Republicans, not the
Democrats…and certainly not my Libertarians! (we have a couple of
dogcatcher posts, though, and are doing a great job! Watch out!)

Let’s remember this compromse if we can, and try not to demonize
people we don’t agree with as long as they’re not actively trying to
harm you. We disagree. Like it or not, not everyone thinks the way you
do…and part of the marvel of our society is that you can get along
day-to-day with these people without poking them with a stick.

David Brin puts it well: And yet, it also seems to me that we’d all be a lot happier, and better off, and more capable of dealing with criticism if each of us were to remember, now and then, to say the following phrase:
I am a member of a civilization.

(IAAMOAC)

I have friends that I agree with on lots of things, and friends I
agree with on some things…and friends that I like, but seldom agree
with on much to do with politics, religion, and such. Them’s the
breaks. As long as they’re still nice people overall, it’s OK.

While driving home today, I was flipping back and forth between Sean
Hannity on WSB (Atlanta AM 750) and Randi Rhodes on Air America
(Atlanta AM 1690). I’ll be honest…I like some of the talent on each
of those stations, but I don’t like either of these people. They’re
TOO far out there…and they’re indicative of the problem. It was
amazing, and somewhat distasteful, to listen to.

So thanks again, centrist Senators. Thanks for reminding us of how the
process can work. (I admit, I forget too…libertarian fantasies
sometimes get in the way of reality.) Now…can all you guys get back
to doing something meaningful? *grin*