Recently in technology Category

Things coming along, slowly. Stunningly, no fires.

Yet.

Nothing’s ready to show off quite yet, but it’s looking like I’ll have something done by the end of the year. I’m just gonna be non–specific about which year.

Past hints: Teaser image

This would mark the first (and only) time I ever watched this video. Ground–breaking at the time, it was still an A-ha song. Oh, the hair of my youth…

Back in 2006, I had this nifty idea to jettison comments. First of all, they added little to the immediate subject. Also, I didn’t like the compromises I had to choose from with either anonymity or registration. The more popular my site became, the harder it was to police…unless there was nothing to police.

That led to be put together my site sans commentary. It seemed like it made sense at the time, so I went with it. First I was using TextPattern (and I still keep that thing around, somewhere — I love it). But I went with WordPress. And I turned the comment off. Permanently.

I guess my decision was based on a combination of hype and contempt. WordPress was just getting exciting, with the new version 2.0 starting to hit its stride. Messing with templates was just enough to keep me interested, and to make a site that worked just how I wanted. Not having to style comments, or figure out how to con people into registering was refreshing.

It wasn’t long, however, before I started to find the problems with the platform. While the system works well as a one–blog producer, it really isn’t that complete as a full–site solution. Plus, to get it to do anything, you needed a plugin.

While I found ways to work around the limitations, I kept on running into the same problem over and over again: why am I making the server do all that work on a page that almost never changes? That was the whole point of moving to Movable Type — to cut down on server load for a resource–light site.

It’s funny now seeing the other blogs that are buying into my 2006 philosophy. I got over that earlier this year, when I decided to be more of who I really am. That, and to interact with who I know you are (or don’t know, I guess). Now I’m all about the comments and the peoples. And I think I’m ready for my soapbox…

Movable Type soapbox

As a sidenote, this is just me telling anyone that’s gearing up for my comments–less WordPress experience: have you thought of just writing the HTML yourself? I mean, it’d make your server happy, plus you’d learn a new skill!

But for those of you who don’t want to cook it yourself, there’s always Movable Type. It will make the pages work exactly the same while allowing just as many comments. Plus, you can stick it to the man (if you’re really all that against–the–man–y).

As another added benefit, you’ll get the pleasure of answering, “well, have you even tried WordPress?” about 50 times a week. That’s always a reassuring way to let you know that people know what they’re talking about.

Just in case you’re curious about the blogosphere, Technorati has released its State of the Blogosphere 2008. It’s always fun to hear about the rich getting richer, isn’t it?

I don’t have much to say about it (other than my snide remark). If you haven’t been using Technorati as a tool for getting news, they do make a good point about reactions to political events, such as the Sarah Palin announcement. Plus, there’s the horrifying realization that even the richest bloggers don’t make much more than minimum wage (which really isn’t that minimum, anymore).

And for those of you who don’t know, Technorati is the place that tracks all the tags that blogs put on each post. It’s just a way to organize the internet. Then they put all that data together and use it to show trends and make these nifty charts!

Posts that contain Sarah Palin per day for the last 60 days (get your own chart).

You make the call: reenactor or hard core homeschooler?

It’s this or YouTube videos, people. And I don’t need to remind you what a scary thing that can be? Trust me, you don’t want that.

Or McCain. Whatever.

What I want to know is, aren’t these backwards?

Just a heads up. You know, in case the entire site catches on fire, or it looks like some of the page have holes where I just needed to punch something. Or, you don’t hear from me for 17 months.

Here’s a clue to what’s going on:

FireMillen.com Members and Staff Rejoice over the Firing of Detroit Lions’ President Matt Millen

September 24, 2008 (Detroit, MI) – After 83 losses, countless blown draft picks, and having the Detroit Lions become the laughing stock of the NFL during the last eight years, Detroit Lion’s owner William Clay Ford finally fired President and General Manager Matt Millen.

“Matt Millen should have been fired three years ago after mismanaging the team for his first five years,” says FireMillen.com founder Michael McCune. “At the same time, FireMillen.com members and staff are ecstatic about the decision to finally get rid of the worst general manager in professional sports history.”

Millen’s mismanagement of the team has gotten to the Lions off to another dismal 0-3 start in 2008. Under Millen’s tenure, he has hired three head coaches, even more assistants and coordinators, and signed and drafted new players each year. Even with all of those changes, the Lions are a league worst 31-82. Only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the mid 1980’s had a worse record in modern NFL History. In Millen’s tenure, the defense has been one of the worst in the league and the offense has only been ranked in the top half of the league once (2007).

“Poor drafting is just the start of Millen’s failure” said McCune. “He has overpaid free agents that have been backups on other teams and continued to keep players that have not delivered in the past. His mistakes continue to cost this team which has over $15 Million in salary cap space dedicated to players who are no longer on this team.”

While FireMillen.com is no longer needed to promote the firing of Matt Millen, the site will remain up, under a new yet –to-be-determined name, to follow the search process for a new general manager and future seasons.

“We hope that the Lions take this opportunity to execute an exhaustive search for a qualified general manager who can build a team of which Detroit Lions' fans can be proud” McCune continued.

FireMillen.com has always been proud to in keeping its arguments fact based. McCune said “I have no personal problems with Matt Millen. From what I have read, Matt Millen is a nice man and was a great football player. He just was an extremely bad general manager.”

FireMillen.com is not affiliated with the Detroit Lions or the National Football Association. The site was started in 2005 in an effort to get Matt Millen fired. The site has received over a million “hits” since it started and has a dedicated group of readers and forum contributors. For further information or comment, please contact Mike McCune at mmccune@hotmail.com.

Even more: Celebrating the End Of The Millen-ium

I know you’re wondering why I keep posting these things from MoreCowbell.dj. IT’S BECAUSE I LOVE ME SOME COWBELL! And because I’m hopelessly geeky.

Like a child on Christmas morning, I found this last night, and almost cried. I cannot describe the pleasure upon the blending of these two things.

For those of you who don’t know, there’s a game called ‘Guitar Hero III’ that forces you to spend hours in front of your television slapping five buttons and acting like you can play a musical instrument. And it’s making brazillions of dollars. The kids, they love the fake guitar playing.

This particular song is ridiculously hard, and it’s supposed to be the most difficult song in the game to beat. The top boss level, if you will. Just by completing this on ‘Expert’ will garner you the respect of your peers, and the devotion of your fans.

Behold!

For those non–fake–ax–wielding mortals (like me), perhaps another game would be more appropriate. Perhaps, one with another instrument…

Okay, don’t ask why, but I was using Google image search for Cheerios. This was the second time in the past couple of weeks, so I really have no idea what got into my head. I guess I just wanted to see what would happen.

Only, for reasons that are even less logical than using Google Image Search (GIS) for Cheerios, I turned the Moderate SafeSearch off. Yes, I was searching for Cheerios without expressly forbidding explicit images.

I have no idea why I did this. None.

You know when it’s late, and you’re convincing yourself it’s time for bed? And then you say, “well, one more site—then bed.” 7 hours later you’re wondering if the 1 hour of sleep you’re getting tonight’s gonna cut it? That is the best explanation I can come up with. Look people, I’m posting a story about an image search, you gotta believe me when I say this is outside my normal blogging behavior.

Still doesn’t explain me and my browser window full of Cheerios boxes. A browser window full of explicit Cheerios boxes. At least, that was what might have happened.

No sooner did I start going through the images, that I realized the potential for — well — Cheerios–related internet filth. Look, I’m not going to judge anybody for what gets their boats all floaty, but I wasn’t really thinking. I may have absolutely no idea what my boredom–induced journey into uncensored Cheerios pics, but I most certainly was not searching for anything approaching adult content.

“It’s Cheerios,” I said to myself. “What could happen?”

This happened. I hate the internet, sometimes.

For you completists, here’s the search (potentially NSFW).

Hate to sound repetitive, but somebody just posted a whole lot of awesome over at MoreCowbell.dj. Within the last hour we got all this:

• If I Had A Million Dollars by the Barenaked Ladies
• Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin (ahem)
• The Chanukah Song by Adam Sandler
• Rock Lobster by The B-52's
• Some “Unknown song” by The Village People
• 500 Miles by The Proclaimers
• I Am The Walrus (acoustic) by The Beatles
• A song that could only possibly make sense to longtime MacStansbury fans (read: Alli)

These great hits of the 80s and 90s only available for a limited time! Download now!

Just in time for sock puppet season, I’ve greatly improved the look and feel of the comment threads. It will also make it easier to tell whom is replying to whom with the nifty new ‘@commentername’. That will link to the thing the replier replied to.

It’s all done for you when you click the reply link next to the comment name. Here’s an example of what it would look like if I had commenters (sock puppets I got):

There you are, the finest, most powerful comment system in the free world.

Now, you too can get more cowbell. Upload a song, add some cowbell (or Bruce Dickenson, yes, the Bruce Dickenson), and really feel the studio space:

I didn’t upload this song, but, hey, come on, it has more cowbell!

Presented without comment, search engine keywords for this site in the past three days. Initial instances of keywords linked to their respective stories.

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I figured you’d want to share in the horror that was contemporary culture, circa 1990.

And feel free to add your own. Share the hate, people. Share the hate.

I don’t know what this means, but it’s funny. Laugh.

Click to embiggen

Twitter is useful for something I guess. Not much, but something. Pictures from New York, for instance. Crazy pictures. Crazy pictures from New York.

In other, completely non–crazy–pictures–from–New–York Twitter news, Alli wrote something hilarious on Twitter, but I can’t link to it because she protected her updates (I think). Just let me tell you, HILARIOUS. Truly.

Sorta summed up my feelings about my once torrid posting schedule.

Seriously, I want to know.

I’ve been Twittering for a while, it just seems like the effort I make there would go better elsewhere. Like…anywhere else. Seems kinda data–silo–y to me.

Seems like everybody’s using it, thus decoolifying the platform. What is it that you, my countless legion of followers think? Is Twitter still cool?

As you may or may not know, I heart blonde Italian ladies. No — really.

So any time I get the chance to post said…people…I do so, happily. And if said video with said person also includes a bunch of youthful street performers juggling and unicycling and dancing, how can I resist?

And did I mention the blonde Italian lady?

The song doesn’t make any sense to me (even with the translation), but who cares? It ain’t like that stopped me from posting something before.

hey guys(..),girls(..)come here(..),run here(..),
let’s go to dance pizzica
right on with guitars, right on with drums and let’s go all together to dance
When outside it is raining with the sun,
it is said that foxes get married
And when the rainbow arrives we dance pizzica pizzica poo
The sun is back, guys come here
The sun is back, guys run here
Let’s go to dance pizzica
With guitars
With drums
Let’s sing, let’s dance
Old men have to dance with old women
Young men with young woman
They have to give each other so many kisses dancing pizzica pizzica poo
The sun is back, guys come here
The sun is back, guys run here
Let’s go to dance pizzica
With guitars
With drums
Let’s sing, let’s dance

Translation of lyrics for us non–Italian speakers provided by Claudia Abbene.*

*No, I am not her, and no I do not know her.

Ever wondered what made the internet so popular? I mean, besides naked pictures of people. The answer is memes.

A meme is just an element of internet culture passed through imitation. Since people have so much free time (or, you know, are supposed to be working on those reports), creation and recreation of funny things takes precedence. The blogosphere is built on memes (most of which I hate).

Thankfully, somebody at Dipity decided to explain where all that nonsense about the cats and the pictures and the misspelled words came from. And an exploding whale. And that song about the Chronicles of Narnia from Saturday Night Live.

This is not going to make anybody more productive.

Click through to see what we wasted our time on instead of the reports (that were due in, like, 30 minutes ago).

Sad.

And by sad, I mean Packers management.

Say, didn’t the Red Sox make a famous trade once?