Well, a new era here. I’ve been trying to figure out how to store potential podcasts w/o hammering my server. (a recent potential solution is podshow.com…but a)
I’ve been thinking about it for longer than they’ve been around, and b) they’re not actually open yet.)

I want to keep the media off of my DSL line, to avoid the bandwidth crunch. Maybe using my io.com account, or speakeasy (my ISP) web storage. But I’m planning on dropping my io.com account (another end of an era), and what if I moved from speakeasy someday? How can I get something permanent?

I’ve been looking at webhosting plans for my media files…and crossing my fingers for ourmedia.org‘s shoe to drop. Consider it dropped. I had heard ourmedia.org was in the works, and the scuttlebutt promised unlimited, permanent media storage (through the
Internet Archive). Just what I need! They just went live (alpha) finally this week, so I got my account set up pronto.

And heck, we might as well EXPERIMENT, eh? So my compadres and I have been toying with a podcast format centered on our caffeine runs at work. We take a little break, walk up to…a really big coffee
company (who KNOWS what you can and cannot say, you know??), and chat along the way about all sorts of insanely non-interesting-to-anyone-but-us stuff. Absolutely perfect for a podcast, eh? We even did a test run with my iPaq on-board microphone back around Halloween of last year (2004). Never did anything with
it…but I kept the file. *grin*

So, without further ado…3 DBAs, Walking to Starbucks. (Direct MP3 URL [coming soon to an RSS enclosures feed near you!] ) Oh, I know…it’s horrible. But how else do you learn? Should be fun.

Wow. Run, don’t walk to your nearest browser, and start catching up on
David Brin’s
weblog. I’m a huge fan of his science fiction, his nonfiction works (I try to re-read The Transparent Society about once a year), and his talks (see IT Conversations).

Now I’ve found his blog (which I can’t believe I haven’t seen
before). Outstanding discussion of science, future trends, modernism,
and…well…tons of other cool stuff (aren’t I the descriptive
one today? *grin*). HIGHLY recommended.

OK…my mind is boggling over this: How To Save The
Internet: Computing on the Net is heading for a fall because
security is a joke. So we summoned the best minds to see if we
could put Humpty back together again.

Hmm. Does the best
mind list include Blake Ross (Firefox’s co-creator, who has saved thousands of
people from pop-up Hell and actually improved Internet security [with mucho thanks to all the other Mozilla folks,
of course]). Or Linus Torvalds? Or Jon Udell? Or, hell…Steve Jobs?

Nope. Doesn’t appear to. But they have some um, great ideas, like “Remove Intelligence
from the Edge, and Pull it Back to The Network Center” (an AT&T
exec…shocker), and “Let’s make all end user devices nonprogrammable”
(by a asst prof of CS at FIT…that’s Florida Institute of
Technology. And no, I’d never heard of it either.)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

And the REALLY funny thing is that these morons at CIO have given
me a “complimentary” subscription to the paper version (w00t!) that I,
with typical hacker disoganization, have forgotten to renew. (Hey,
it’s fun to mock sometimes). They’ve actually been trying to get me to
do so. I can’t WAIT to get another email from them (I went looking for
old ones, but apparently I’ve actually been deleting these, which is
rare. I delete few non-spam emails period). Insult me, and then ask me
to read your rag; fancy that.

I think I may put CIO on the same list I put
Michael Savage (who I’m purposefully not linking to); media that I
occasionally pay attention to, so that I can make a point of NOT using
their advertisers.

Oh, and shout out to BoingBoing for the link. Props to ya brotha!

Holy crap, this is great. Got the link from Doc Searls (thanks,
Doc!)…it’s a post by Jamie
Zawinski (background: old-school coder from Mosaic Netscape and
Lucid Emacs, helped create and ran mozilla.org, eventually got sick of
the software industry and opened the DNA Lounge nightclub in SF.)

If you don’t read Jamie’s stuff, you should. Lots of great stuff
there. This latest, though…nails it. It’s called Groupware Bad, and he
does a great job of telling it like it is. Made me laugh out loud.

Hell yes!
Not perfect, but really good news.

Whew. Over the weekend, I had the urge to blow things up in the
inimitable fashion of the first person shooter. This urge doesn’t
strike me frequently, but I try to placate it when it does. I couldn’t
find any of the Xbox games I had a vague interest in at Blockbuster, so I picked up Shadow Ops: Red Mercury. (Hey, the box looked ok, and like I said, they didn’t have any of the ones I was actually looking for. )

Soo…I’m not that far through, but I think I’m done. Burned it all out of me, in a couple days of blam,blam,BLAM! *grin* Didn’t help that the game isn’t all that good, but hey, it’s probably better that way! No risk of real obsession. Back to Quixote.

After a long absence, I welcome Rys (David McCusker) back to the land of websites. Rys has been out of
touch for awhile, but his website has always been interesting, and he
has some great technical work, both new and old. Good stuff to
root around in here…Rys is typically more low-level than I am (C/C++
vs. Python), but we both have an interest in structured storage;
organized persistence via file, db, compound document, etc. I’ll have
some fun checking out his work. He was involved in Apple OpenDoc, the
original mail/news storage for mozilla, etc. I have no doubt there’s
stuff to learn here. Welcome back, Rys!

(a private zinger, but I like it nonetheless *grin*). boingboing
posts link to AP article describing a shameful (and dangerous) lack of
comprehension of the importance of the rights enshrined in our
Constitution and Bill of Rights:

When told of the exact text of the
First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it
goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. What the fuck?

Three in four students said flag burning is illegal… Thank
goodness, not yet. Now, bear in mind, I get cross with people who wear
flags as fucking neckerchiefs, and I’ve hurt myself before (eh,
slightly) jumping to catch a flag before it hit the ground. But while
I may not agree with your speech…it’s speech. (and yes, flag burning
is speech. You want to argue that one, bring it on.) I may not like it, and I may not like you; but I’ll defend your right to say it unconditionally.

These people need to get their shit in one sock, before we end up with serious problems. Enough of these ignorant schoolchildren grow up, and they’ll vote something REALLY stupid into place…whew, I think I’m wound up. *grin* I feel a rant coming on…excellent!

These Nixie
Tube Clocks and Watches (watches, dude! A freakin’ wristwatch!) are
Da Bomb! When I (or I and my group of co-workers) win the lottery
tomorrow, this will be HIGH (wheres that blinktag when you need
it?) on the list of purchases.

Check it out: IPac‘s JailedForASong.com.