Google has replaced the links it removed yesterday after a fight with the Scientology organization. This still shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
More site reorganization
If you’re a regular visitor, you’ve probably noticed by now that I’ve moved things around a bit. Basically, I’m working on simplifying the site, especially the first page that people see when they show up, trying to make things a bit less overwhelming (since I do tend to babble).
In essence, the first page of the site now serves as a table of contents/overview of what’s on the site. The table of contents that used to be on the left hand side of the page now fills the main content area, while the Long Letter blog itself has been moved to its own page. The links listed in the right sidebar have been split between the pages — more general links on the main page, and more blog-related links on the Long Letter page.
Lastly, I was able to set the entry for The Long Letter up so that it will always show a short summary of the most recent five entries in the blog. Clicking on the title of the blog will load the main page, while clicking on the title for the individual posts will jump to that entry on the main page.
Overall I think these will help simplify things. Feel free to e-mail or comment if you’ve got any thoughts on all this, of course.
Putrid weisenheimers
There are people I unquestionably despise. They lack morals, character, and honesty. They change this country’s moral infrastructure. In case you can’t tell, I’m talking about Mr. Michael Hanscom here. Let us note first of all that whenever anyone states the obvious — that Michael’s wisecracks are one of those things that will turn over our country to putrid wisenheimers — discussion naturally progresses towards the question, ‘Why can’t Michael live among us in peace?’
— thanks to Scott Pakin’s automatic complaint-letter generator
But where’s the Green Fairy?
Care to import some Absinthe for your next party? Order now, and save 10 if you order the Moulin Rouge DVD at the same time! Really. I’m not making this up.
How many inches?!?
As if it weren’t bad enough that I’ve been lusting over a 22″ Apple Cinema Display since they came out, yesterday at MacWorld Tokyo they had to go and introduce a 23″ version. Too bad I don’t have a spare $3500 lying around. Also introduced was a new, higher-capacity (10Gb) version of the iPod.
Scientology origins?
If you were to breed the Ferengi with the Borg you would end up with Scientology.
— lermanet, in this /. post discussing the Scientology mess in this /. thread.
Scientology vs. Google
This is nasty. The Church of Scientology is using the DMCA to have any and all anti-Scientology links removed from the Google search engine. I first saw this on Boing Boing, more information can be found at Operating Thetan’s Xenu/Scientology/Google page.
Andersen in Seattle
This morning, the Business section of the Seattle Times has an article about how the current scandals are affecting the Seattle branch and its employees.
New e-mail addy
I’ve always kept three active e-mail accounts. One I only give out to my close friends and family, one I give to friends and contacts, and the third is the one I use publicly, on this page and whenever I sign up for anything via the web (this shuffles most of my spam to the public addy).
Due to changes in Yahoo! Mail‘s terms of service, I need to discontinue using my @yahoo.com address. My new public e-mail address is djwudi@myrealbox.com.
(Incidentally, parents, friends, or anyone who has either of my other two addys — you don’t need to worry, those are staying the same).
Yesterday, Yahoo! Mail sent out a notice to all of its POP3 service users (this allowed you to use an external client — such as the Mac OS X Mail program — to check your Yahoo! Mail account, rather than having to use the web-based client) stating that as of April 24th, they would no longer be providing this service for free — rather, you’d have to purchase a $30/year ‘premium’ account. Since I would much rather use my Mail client than have to use the web client, I decided to find a new public addy.
I found a thread on MetaFilter discussing this, and one of the comments suggested that we take a look at Lycos UK‘s free e-mail, as it has the best free e-mail deal available on the web today (“…15 meg of storage, POP3 access, and importantly — SMTP access with unlimited attachment size for outgoing mail.”).
So, I stopped by this morning and signed up. Now I just have to ferret out all those places on the web that I gave my yahoo.com addy and change them over…(sigh).
Update: For one reason or another, the lycos.co.uk server was incredibly slow, to the point where it proved unuseable. I did end up finding MyRealBox, which is run by the folks at Novell, and looks to be a truly good service. So…that’s the addy I’m at now.
Update: In the end, MyRealBox didn’t cut it either. As with many people, I’ve since moved to Gmail. If you really need to find me and don’t have my e-mail addy already, check the ‘about’ page on this site to track me down.
Pro-US, anti-Bush
It’s kind of funny that one of the most accurate and incisive editorials I’ve read on the ability to be pro-USA and yet anti-Bush comes from a British newspaper.