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
Personal Sewanee

I have no words

Weeks ago Betsy and I were wandering around an odd store in Winchester, TN, called Hammer’s. It’s a department store from the 1940’s or so, and has never been renovated or updated at all. The current contents of the store change from time to time, and all of it is cheap, and weird.

Case in point, this candle:

Smell My Nuts candle

Now….this is NOT a photoshop job. This candle was sitting happily alongside other candles, with scents like “Apricot Jam” and “Apple Cobbler.” If you can’t read it, here’s an enlargement of the photo, and here’s one of just the label.

The mind boggles and the fact that someone, somewhere, thought this was a good name for a scent. I nearly had to be picked up off the floor when I saw this, and I’m keeping it here on my desk to remind me that somewhere out in the world, the person who named this has a job, and I, as yet, do not.

Edit: to assuage all you naysayers out there, behold! Here’s a link to the manufacturer.

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
Personal

On the Road Again…

One more jaunt off into the wilderness before school starts for Bets and hopefully I find a job. We’re off to see B’s family, and her new niece and nephew (Hannah and Tyler). Back later this weekend, and buckling down.

Categories
Personal

Books consumed over the vacation

Not all great literature, but Oryx and Crake was interesting (it wasn’t great sci-fi, but passable). Davinci was a page turner, but was ruined by the Deus Ex Machina ending and some of the ridiculous “eureka” moments. A Fire Upon was brilliant sci-fi, but took me some time to get into…the pack aliens were bizarre before you knew what was going on. The Silent Blade is just typical D&D ficition…not great, but I read it anyway. Sue me. 😛 Me Talk Pretty was great…hilarious as always for Sedaris.

Categories
Personal

Jason’s views of Acapulco – the weekend in review
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

These were my views all week while laying by one of the 5 pools at the Fairmont Acapulco Princess. More pics (and soon captions and explanations) at our Gallery.

Categories
Personal

Bloggin´from Acapulco

Well, we´re having a blast in Mexico, and weather.com is full of crap…it´s been wonderful here. We´ve just spent most of the time lounging by pools and staring at the ocean…many, many pictures to come. Hope that everyone is doing well!

Categories
Personal

Our week in Acapulco.

Forcast for Acapulco

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.