Violence in the media

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I was browsing through /. tonight when someone mentioned an interview with Joss Whedon over at The Onion from last year (oh, except I’m not supposed to link directly to articles inside The Onion…I guess I better just link to the /. post that has the entire interview copied into it — so, which is the greater copyright breach? Anyway…). It’s a good interview on its own, but this quote is as a followup /. post said, “I think that’s just about the most intelligent and responsible thing I’ve ever read about the influence of culture on behaviour.”

People say, “After Columbine, do you feel a responsibility about the way you portray violence?” And I’m like, “No, I felt a responsibility about the way I portrayed violence the first time I picked up a pen.”

Breakin’ the law! Breakin’ the law!

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Okay. More stupidity. Or maybe ‘stoopidity’.

It’s just come to my attention that in my post “Kudos to the Onion“, and in Kirsten’s comments to “Stoopid. With two ‘O’s.“, my site is in violation of The Onion’s (don’t-)link policy.

Can I use a headline to link to The Onion on my site?

The Onion does not support the use of its headlines without the express written consent of the publisher. You can put a link to The Onion on your site but may not use the headlines or content. More information on how to link to The Onion is available at our Link Page.

Oh, come on. Looks like whatever ‘powers that be’ that exist at The Onion have decided to join the many other sites with stupid anti-linking policies. That’s a shame, too.

Oh, well. I’ll keep everything linked as it is, until such time as I get a cease-and-desist letter from the Onion (not likely to happen — this isn’t exactly a highly-trafficked site — but ya never know, do ya?). If that happens…well, I’ll probaby end up taking all links to The Onion off my site. Would be a bummer, but hey (shrugs). I won’t be the first.

Faster! Faster! Fas…aw, crap.

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I was playing with what I’d hoped would be a new feature for the site last night. Things were looking really promising for a while, too — but it looks like it’s not going to happen, or at the very least, not anytime soon. Bleah.

A while ago, Kirsten recommended I take a look at Andromeda, an application for streaming audio across the ‘net. At the time, I didn’t figure it was something to look into — primarily because all of my .mp3 files were on one computer, and my webserver was a seperate machine. Howerver, since the old webserver died and I’m now serving djwudi.com off of the same machine that has all my music, I thought I’d take a look at it.

Downloaded and installed it last night, and after a quick e-mail with the developers to figure out one small glitch, things were up and running. It works really nicely, too. From my PC, I could hit my website, browse through my music folders, set up playlists, and listen to any .mp3 file stored on my webserver. Nifty! I had all sorts of ideas for how I wanted to play with it, too — everything from linking to a band’s directory if I mentioned them in a post, to seeing if there was a way I could integrate it with my ‘Music of the Moment’ display to add a ‘play’ button for whatever track was being displayed at the moment.

Unfortunately, there’s one key roadblock — my connection to the ‘net. My incoming connection is nice and fast (1.5 Mbps, about the speed of a T-1 line), but my outgoing connection is pretty pokey (128 kbps, about twice the speed of a 56k modem). So, I figured it was worth taking a look at what other options I might have through my ISP, Speakeasy.

Turns out that according to their pricing grid, I’ve got two options for adjusting my speed, and staying close to my current price range. For $10/month more I could drop my incoming speed in half to 750 kbps, but triple my outgoing speed to 384 kbps. Or, for $20/month more, I could keep my incoming speed as-is, and triple my outgoing speed. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to go for the first option — while I really like having the T-1 speed incoming, it’s rare that I really use it all, so I figured I could go ahead and live with half of that, and take the smallest possible increase to my bill.

So, off to the phone to call Speakeasy. At which point, the bad news hits. It turns out that there are two different companies that Speakeasy parners with to provide their DSL service locally, Covad and WorldCom (though it might not be WorldCom, I’m hoping I remembered that correctly). The connection I currently have goes through Covad, and apparently it’s the top of the line Covad connection. Upgrading to a faster speed would require switching me over onto WorldCom’s network — which would require me cancelling my current line, and re-ordering a new line at the different rate. Sounds easy enough…except that it would create about a month where I’d be without DSL access.

Dial-up access only, and no website. Ugh.

The only other option would be if I had a second phone line. Then I could order the new DSL line, hook that into the second phone line, and kill the current DSL line when the new one kicks in. Unfortunately, that would require me paying for two phone lines for that month, two DSL lines for that month (plus all the setup costs for the new line), and then the hassle of changing my phone number at the end of the switch.

None of those options are particularly appealing.

End result, then, unfortunately, is that my site stays it’s current pokey (but, thankfully, usually okay since I keep most of my pages pure text) speed, and no Andromeda integration.

Ah, well. It was worth looking into, at least.

No more popups (almost)

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Since I’m one of the many people out there who believe, to the very depths of my soul, that popups are evil, I’ve removed the popup window for posting comments. Now, clicking on the ‘comment’ link will take you to the page for the post itself, and scroll down to the comment form. Simple, but much easier.

I still haven’t got the TrackBack popup banished. That’ll be a project for another evening (tomorrow)? I’m ready to quit for the night tonight.

Stoopid. With two ‘O’s.

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In working on the job submission tool I’m involved with at my job, it keeps amazing me just how many complaints and/or comments we’re getting from customers that they wouldn’t have if they would read the information on the page. But they don’t, and they whine, which forces us to attempt to dumb it down even further. I’m convinced that the lowest common denominator is sinking minute by minute.

Then I realize that I’m working in a place where there are signs posted on all the soda machines — which are free, and marked as such — explaining in four steps how to get your free soda from the machine.

  • Select and push button of desired soda.
  • Allow soda to drop.
  • Remove soda from cooler.
  • Please remove only one soda at a time.

As my dad once told me, “you will never lose betting on human stupidity.”

Testing EspressoBlog

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Just making sure that this is working. I’m trying out EspressoBlog, an OS X app for posting to MT or Blogger powered weblogs.

Seems to work so far — I’ll know for sure as soon as this posts.

Two things I’m noticing that I may want to toss Phil‘s way to see if he’s interested in including in the future:

  1. It can only post to the ‘main entry’ field.
  2. There’s no way for me to put TrackBack links in

Those are hardly dealbreakers, though. This isn’t bad at all…

Found via Phil Ringalda

fCon

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Okies — so a while back I babbled about the Tron DVD, and included a link to www.tronkillerapp.com — which appeared to be the beginnings of a promotional site for the rumored Tron 2.0 movie.

Well, tonight I stopped by the site again, and things have changed — a lot. Things are looking very interesting, too. Using a combination of a Flash presentation and a downloadable screensaver, there’s a little bit of backstory being presented.

Apparently a company called fCon has bought ENCOM (the company from the orignal Tron film), and nobody’s entirely sure why — but there are some hackers doing their best to find out. They’ve managed to intercept a few voice mail messages that you can listen to, and even found some very interesting images that can be viewed (18 in the on-site Flash presentation, 10 more in the screensaver). I’ve gotta say, things are looking pretty nice, and I’m definitely looking forward to this coming out.

The work on fCon is hilarious, too. At the site, you can get a little bit of background information on fCon…

fCon is dedicated to creating and controlling the future we know you want. Even if you don’t know it yet, don’t worry. Because we do. And we are committed to making our dream a reality.

…you can check out their privacy policy…

Should you decide to register with fCon, rest assured that any personal information we gather from you will be used for our purposes only, and at no time will any third party involvement occur*.

  • “Third party involvement” refers specifically to fCon competitors. Partners, vendors, and other companies that have established a reasonably good faith relationship with fCon (as determined by our senior executives) are clearance eligible for member information on a case by case basis.

…and, of course, you can register for more information…

Just follow these simple instructions to register with fCon (and prove to our Executive Board of Senior Information Executives that you are adept at following simple instructions).

…and it’s all presented like that. Wonderfully condescending — gee, I wonder who they could be poking fun at?

Needless to say, I signed up. ;) This should be entertaining. Sounds like the rumors of the MCP’s demise have been greatly exaggerated…

My most humble apologies!

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Erk…as horrid as a thing this is to admit, I goofed up.

Yesterday (the 15th) was my dad’s birthday, and in the midst of my usual weekend duties, I completely forgot to call. Or write an e-mail. Or post a note here.

Or anything. Sigh. I generally try to be better about this.

I’ll be calling tomorrow morning — if I’m lucky, before he gets up and checks this website…but if not…happy (late) birthday, dad! You’ll be hearing from me soon!