Categories
Digital Culture

Politics

I’ve avoided political discussions on my blog, if only because they have a tendency to become vitriolic under certain circumstances.

But this is just unbelievable.

“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” – Dick Cheney

For the Vice-President to equate voting for the republican party with preventing terrorism is just vile. Lewis Black said it best when he said “Dick Cheney? I met Dick Cheney. I’ve never stood so close to evil.”

Categories
Digital Culture

Gmail? ha!

First we had the GmailFS, a hack which allows a Linux sytem to use Gmail space as its file system.

Now we’ve got Gallina, a Gmail based blogging system.

Google can’t possibly like this…it’s incredibly clever, but supplying free server space AND bandwidth just seems sub-optimal for them.

Categories
Digital Culture

A post in which we buy a vehicle

So we went car shopping last weekend, planning on hitting a few dealerships and seeing what kind of deal we could find.

The first stop was the Honda dealership in Chattanooga, where we were shown lines and lines of Honda CRV’s (the car that I had been sold on from the start…great reviews, good resale, last forever). After I asked for the “best price” they’d give me, I was shown a price a couple thousand below the MSRP on the car. Pretty good, I thought…except I’d done my homework. Thanks to Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book, I knew the invoice on the car, and that they desperately wanted rid of the 2004’s.

I countered with a price a couple hundred above invoice, and they agreed….so we are the proud owners of a new Honda CRV.
Honda CRV
This is our first ever new car, so it’s a pretty cool thing for us.

Categories
Digital Culture Media

I give you…

…the Ten Worst Black Metal Photos of All Time.

My personal fav:

Fenriz

Categories
Digital Culture

BoingBoing likes GenCon

Or at least Xeni does! I’m currently in Indy, enjoying the late night nearly asleep part of GenCon, posting from a random computer in the convention center.

Check the BoingBoing story for interesting links.

Categories
Digital Culture Personal

Suggestions from the blogosphere

I hereby summon the knowledge of the readers of my blog:

Has anyone had any experience with a webhost that they would recommend that would allow php/mysql setups for things like phpBB and a blog? I’m considering setting up something like a news/discussion site and am looking for cheap but reliable hosting.

Ibiblio (while wonderful for hosting this and other aspects of my site) isn’t appropriate since it would be for a psuedo-commercial project that would eventually need to include ads and such to pay for itself.

Suggestions? Anyone out there wanna host me? The traffic would be lite at first, but I’m betting it would pick up quickly…

Categories
Digital Culture Personal

Thunderbird

With Justin singing the praises of Firefox, the Mozilla stand-alone browser, I decided to take the plunge and see what the fuss is about.

Wow.

I’ve been a Mozilla convert for a long time, using the suite for both websurfing and email. But Firefox and Thunderbird have convinced me to switch, in no small part to the amazing extension support.

For example: Forumzilla, an extension for Thunderbird that allows you to treat RSS feeds just like email or newsgroups. It pulls the feed, allows you to filter them to different mail folders….just so easy to use, and just what I wanted with RSS. Not a stand alone aggregator, but something that is integrated into my existing information consumption.

Get Firefox

They’re brilliant, open source, constantly upgraded, fast, easy to use, and have incredible support. How is it that IE still has the upper hand in the browser wars?

Categories
Digital Culture Personal Sewanee

I, for one…

…welcome my BoingBoing overlords.

Categories
Digital Culture Legal Issues Media

Good news on the DMCA front

The Internet Archive (one of the coolest sites on the ‘net, if you haven’t checked it out) has recieved an exception to the DMCA for the purposes of archiving:

# Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete.
# Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access.

So some of the early copy-protection schemes can indeed be legally bypassed in order to preserve them. It’s a small victory, but any victory is good with the DMCA.

Categories
Digital Culture

Long time, no blog

Wow…didn’t realize that it had been days since I’ve been on here. Shows you how busy we’ve been. In the last few days we’ve been to Chatanooga twice, to Winchester and to Tullahoma. We’re trying to get ready to go to Mexico, get our license and registration for our car, and get all the other little things about a new place figured out. So far, we’ve found the WalMart (both of ’em), the Lowe’s, and the closest two movie theaters.

We’re getting there.