CYN.ICAL.US

While what you're seeing here isn't necessarily the death of traditional media and methods... not yet... but it does mark a very big change from the procedures of the past. This is an excellent example of the new future of content: creative, niche-based content, streamed free over the internet in easy and quick Flash format*, with high quality fullscreen video, but without commercials, and without crufty borken DRM headaches, which has traditional TV bringing up the rear and getting the leftovers**. I think it's also vitally important to this method and medium that each episode is short, engaging, and that they come frequently - in small bites, so to speak. This isn't what you want to veg in front of the TV with, this has to grab you and get the point across quickly before you click off and get distracted by something else on the net.

And hey, indie music too. And, *gasp*, it's even downloadable! NO! (Ok, actually it looks like you have to buy it through iTunes, so it's not really that earth-shatteringly different.) But encouraging what are apparently fairly independent artists is something we want.

*Though with a bit of skippy jumping, but hopefully that gets worked out with the continued maturing of Flash-based streaming video.

** Yeah and that writer's strike isn't helping. Talk about being kicked when you're down... heheheh. I love it.

Ok, I've now got this blog enabled for OpenID commenting. The plugin I'm using to provide the service is a little basic, but I expect that the plugin will expand in features over time. Initial tests show that it works (though not as I expected {mostly regarding the SREG bits}, but again, I think it's the plugin being a bit limited at this point), but if you don't have an account here, then try it out with your own OpenID!

I've also setup my own OpenID provider to host my OpenID identity, since I didn't care to use one of the third party services. You can do that too... I used an article from Sam Ruby as a base to get me started with OpenID.

Also, in case you haven't heard yet, Blogger is now OpenID enabled for commenting. It works very nicely.

So I want to do something to help out Ron Paul as much as I can. I realized that I have a lot of allocated bandwidth on my dedicated server that I am not fully using. I have available about 1,400 GB per month of premium high-speed bandwidth (up to 10 Mbps). If you can get bandwidth for cheap, that amount of bandwidth is worth about $700 per month. If you get charged more for bandwidth, then it's probably worth between $1,400 and $2,800 a month, (though some smaller hosters that I've seen charge as much as $15 per GB for over quota bandwidth!).

I'm sure that the official campaign is fine and wouldn't have much need for additional bandwidth. Unless, say, they did release an official RP DVD, with an ISO download, and needed additional mirrors for those large files (similar to what is done to handle the load for new game demo and patch releases.)

So I'm probably looking to assist the Ron Paul grassroots sites with their projects. After all, a cheap hosting account can only handle so much traffic, and most 'unlimited' plans aren't actually unlimited enough when the sites get very popular.

So I can do a lot of things... I can mirror your large files, or your images, and I can seed your torrents, I can run your heavily trafficked scripts to spread out the load more, and maybe I can even provide you with web site hosting.

So if I can help you with your Ron Paul project by providing bandwidth/hosting, please contact me by sending me a message through my contact form. Click the envelope icon at the bottom of this entry to get the contact form.

I've done some quick searches but haven't really turned up anything. If I don't hear from anyone, I supposed I'll simply pick a few torrents to seed. Though, I just haven't seen any popular ones (all the ones I've seen have very few downloads) and there are quite a few torrents all scattered around. So I'm just not sure that's the way to go.

I switched email programs†!

Yes.

I did.

I dumped Outlook 2002 and moved everything over to Thunderbird.

It was just time. Very very much time. Outlook had just crashed again for the last time (I lost count at around a million times), and I had the available disk space, the plan, and the will to do it.

So I did it.

It basically just happened. I didn't realize that I was essentially committed to a new email program until after it was all done.

The temptation to turn back to the Dark Side was quite strong for a few days. This temptation was tempered with the much more involved task of converting new emails back to Outlook. However, then a new temptation arose. Perhaps an upgrade to Outlook 2007 would solve my issues with Outlook 2000/2002 and not involve losing data and learning to use a new program?

NO! Get thee behind me, Satan!

So ideological purity won out and I have freed my email from Microsoft chains. Forever. (Freeing my desktop is going to be the battle of the century though - applications are being accepted now to apply for cannon fodder. Hurry before all the best spots are taken!).

As you can see, for me, switching email programs is not something to be done lightly, certainly not like switching browsers, or mice, or desktop wallpapers. A large chunk of my life is in there. It must be protected. It must be available. It must be converted.

Of course Outlook has to store the html for emails in a way completely different from anyone else. A way that is completely inaccessible to anyone else. May their camels forever spit upon them in contempt! CONTEMPT! Oh and, uhh, may their hard drives fail with the Buzz of Death, with no BACKUPS! HAH HAH HAH!

So aside from losing html from every email since '98 or so*, everything went quite well. Most email also has a plain text copy that works just fine, but some email - eBay/Paypal in particular - has just useless plain text. So I've backed up my outlook mail archive til the time that Microsoft technology advances enough to speak standards with everyone else**. Yeah, it could take til 2030 or beyond, but oh well. Speaking of 2030, after the conversion, there appeared a few emails from 2030, but fortunately they weren't important... probably just stock tips or something. Oddly enough, receiving email from the future seems to happen every time I convert to another mail program. Email converting must create a rift in time and space every time it is done. Surely such a thing would necessitate licensing and training programs!

Anyways, Thunderbird is fairly nice, and eminently customizable. It lacks a bit of the spit and polish*** that Outlook has, those little helpful things that are just too tiny to have settings for, but that really make a significant difference in the User Interface department. I also question several of the default settings for Thunderbird, however it wasn't too difficult to tweak to my preferences.

Meanwhile, Thunderbird has many of it's own kewl features... I'm getting used to keyboard shortcuts, which are handy. There are many that must be learned though. The in-window search function is absolutely great, far better and faster than Outlook's disk thrashing searches. Tagging looks quite nice, though I've only used it a few times so far. Plus TLS encryption for connections!

My favorite feature by far is no crashing, no hanging on exit! Yes! No stupid binary mail file that must be rebuilt frequently, due to hangs, and that I always worry that I must be losing mail to. No stupid 2 GB mail file limit! It's much nicer to have mail storage split up among many mail files. Old mail stays mostly the same, and new mail is added to much smaller files. Huge help with defragging.

Yes! I finally have a decent address book. Somehow, a long time ago, I lost my wonderful (well, it was all I knew at the time) Windows Address Book (WAB) and was forced to use Outlook's abomination-that-masquerades-as-an-address-book (ATMAAAB), which is mostly a place to store random names and emails that sometimes comes out as someone I recognize. Plus you can easily tell that the programmers who created ATMAAAB had no social lives and didn't have more than 5 people in their address books, because there was no column sorting anywhere! No SORTING! So poor me has to go through trying to remember last names or first names, or what name did that email address go to, and also trying to remember why I was looking through the address book in the first place.

RSS Feeds. Yes. I have finally joined the 21st century and gotten on the bandwagon with RSS feeds. I used the Sage extension in firefox for a few feeds that I really really wanted, but sometimes I just didn't remember to open it. Live Bookmarks were just totally useless for me. Treating RSS feeds like email/newsgroups just works best for me. So now I've got it. It's organized. It's great.

I don't use that many extensions so far. I use ReminderFox to handle my reminders and todos that used to be handled by Outlook. The customization available for timers and snoozing is great... though sometimes it seems that the timers are off (How can a 1 hour timer and a 3 hour timer consistently pop up together?). That just makes it feel less polished than Outlook's reminders.

Attachment Sizes (This is the new version) was apparently a necessary one. I couldn't figure out any other way to make it obviously show me whether an attachment was 5 MB or 5 KB. Why, oh why, is this necessary feature not built-in???

MinimizeToTray is the last one I needed. Since I got used to Outlook minimizing all the way down to the system tray and getting out of the way and making my task bar less crowded.

Sometime soon, I will also install the Enigmail extension again and use encryption. That's something I've wanted to do for quite a while, but it's always been quite difficult to do in Outlook.

Now, there are indeed a few annoying things that I haven't figured out how to change, or workaround, or just haven't gotten used to in Thunderbird.

...

Dang... Now I can't think of any.

Well, there is the compact folders reminder. I would rather be reminded once at the end of the day to compact folders (I don't want it handled automatically). My volume of mail is such that by default I got a reminder every two minutes or so. This is not a huge issue and I can figure something out. I just now set it up to around 5 MB before it reminds me to compact. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll turn off the auto compact reminders and set a reminderfox popup to remind me once a day to do it manually.

The other thing is that my Trash folder totally disappears when I empty the trash, and then nothing can be deleted after that. A restart cures this issue with no apparent ill effects. Fortunately, this hasn't been a huge deal so far, since I empty trash infrequently, perhaps once a week, and usually at the end of the day. I think this is sort of a bug, but mostly the recommendation seems to be to just make a new profile. Well, this happened on a brand new profile and I don't feel like changing everything over to a new profile only to have it happen again.

There was the issue with Back/Forward buttons not working (because I don't open more than one mail per window). This was mostly solved by customizing the menu to use Previous/Next buttons instead... however these buttons only move from unread message to unread message, and not to the next mail in the line. Delete will, however, move to the next mail in the line, whether read or unread. I just want my navigation buttons (when I'm not using the keyboard shortcuts) to move from mail to mail as is shown in the main window, whether read or unread. Haven't figured out how to fix this one yet.

The minor UI issues mentioned earlier, most of which I can't articulate, or even remember at this point. (Must make a list as they come up). One that just popped up, and might qualify here, is that Outlook had an email address autocomplete, when creating an email, so that I could keep the email address handy for people that I rarely emailed without actually adding them to my address book. Otherwise it's just clutter!

Oh there's also the one that doesn't show href links in html email as 'visited' once they are clicked and the browser loads the page. Outlook used to do that... even with Firefox.

There are others that I can't remember... but overall I'm quite happy with Thunderbird, and I don't regret the switch at all.

And so the story ends happily.






† If at any point in this narrative, someone even thinks GMAIL, or gMail or Gmail or however you freaking spell it, well! The punishment for such heresy will be severe! Imagine, if you will, an iron maiden, a medieval torture cabinet with spikes inside. Except that this one is a unique iron maiden, as instead of spikes inside, there are many, (hundreds even!), of 386 and 486 processors, along with a few 486DX processors††, all positioned along the inside, pins facing inward. Just think of the pain. The agony. It would be rather like acupuncture... except without the acu- part. So be warned! I hate webmail. (Except when it is actually useful - for those rare occasions when I want to check my email and don't actually have my own computer with me.)

†† This the one with the integrated Floating Point Unit (math coprocessor).... if you cared.

* Actually I'm pretty sure that html didn't come into existence til sometime in late 2000... you know, cuz they had to fix those Y2K bugs and all.

** Actually I saw something about uploading the mail from Outlook to an IMAP server, and then redownloading it to Thunderbird. It's supposed to keep it all intact. But again... sorting email, uploading a couple gigabytes of email and then redownloading it and resorting it? That could also take til 2030 til that happens.

*** Ok, so there's actually no spit involved. Spit is bad for electronics.

Also known, as "Bitter Irony Day", but it just doesn't have the same ring to it.

I see no reason to celebrate July 4th. If you're celebrating this day because of the independence of our ancestors from the tyrannical rule of the kings of England, well, this isn't the same country. Neither you, nor your fathers, nor even your grandfathers have ever lived in the same country that our ancestors once did. Important things have changed. Their independence is not our independence. You might as well be celebrating Bastille Day, or Grito de Dolores, or Tag der Deutschen Einheit.

Maybe it makes sense to recognize this day as a reminder of what we lost and what we need to work back towards. But that really wouldn't be a day of celebration.

However, I would encourage you to go and light some fireworks off today, as they seem to be illegal to touch, look at, have near your person, or otherwise use for their intended purpose, practically everywhere in the nation. Just think of it as your own personal Independence Day.

Let's look at some things that are happening around the country on this supposed independence day. We have police checkpoints looking for fireworks in Kalifornia. In New York City, the NYPD conducts fireworks raids. In Wisconsin, you can buy fireworks without trouble, but you can't use them for their intended purpose and presumably the purpose that you bought them for (unless you just like to look at fireworks). Note that in all these cases, they're doing all this For Your Own Good™.

I will happily and enthusiastically celebrate the 4th of July when these united States of America are again free, independent and sovereign.

Sic semper tyrannis!

I've never served on a jury before. I've always tried to avoid such a hassle whenever I could, as most people try to do.

I've wondered many times what it would be like. I've read a few Grisham novels, and I get the gist of it, but it's still nothing like actually sitting in a courtroom as a juror. From what my father has told me of his jury duty experiences, before he learned that he was eligible to be excused practically every time for undue hardship, I rather suspect that the jury experience may destroy any shred of idealism I have left and make me fully and totally cynical. But I still want to try it. If just to say that I've participated in the cornerstone of the American justice process.

I would be more reluctant to be so eager to volunteer if I were still in Southern California, in the city. But out here in the sticks, where men are men and government is not so readily visible, I'm just much more willing to go for it and am looking forward to it.

Juries are extremely powerful. Even separated as individual jurors, they are arguably the most powerful people in the courtroom, even though they are not generally recognized as such. And I feel it at odds with my beliefs to avoid jury duty wherever I can and yet be horrified at the direction the country is going. Juries are a powerful institution to delay and disrupt tyranny - as long as courageous and knowledgeable citizens are aware of their responsibility and exercise it.

I'm reading everything I can from the Fully Informed Jury Association, as well as Washington's laws, in the RCW, relating to juries and trials. I'm especially interested in the concept of jury nullification. Therein lies the real power of juries.

There are some relevant sayings regarding juries, “When you go into court, you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty”, and “Having your fate rest in the hands of a jury is the same as entrusting yourself to surgery with a mentally retarded doctor”, as well as “A jury is a group of twelve people of average ignorance”. And unfortunately, these days I think these sayings are all too true. The people, those whom the jurors are drawn from, are just too stupid and ignorant, and those that might be a little smarter than the average, really have better things to do. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable entrusting my life and freedom to 12 average ignorant Americans these days. At least not for Justice's sake. The saying, “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” is true. But I'd rather express it as, "A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to be manipulated by the lawyers. May the better manipulator win."

So, sometime this month I'll find out when, or rather if, I get to serve. And if I survive voire dire, then I'll likely be a juror. It's not really much though. It's just for the county District Court. I'm fairly sure that the caseload will consist of fairly petty civil cases, no hot murder trials or cases where the gov is bringing the charges for victim-less crime against the defendant.

So this guy thinks that the only solution to gun violence is a violent, oppressive, and authoritarian confiscation of "all" guns. Maybe it all sounds good and workable on paper, but would it actually be so in real life?

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Well, Americans do tend to obey arbitrary edicts from bureaucrats more so than most other citizens of the world, so issuing such edicts would likely compel large numbers of the population to 'voluntarily' comply.

However, though I generally think of your average American today as weak and foolish, a worrywart, and a pusillanimous coward (in short "wusses"), I think there is still a tiny spark left of the old pioneer spirit, of the old Yankee grit, in a few citizens. Enough to make a difference.

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Here's where I see this idea seriously breaking down. I think this is a very definite line in the sand. And that it would be an intolerable line to cross for a number of Americans. I think those squads would simply be decimated as they charged into American homes and through American neighborhoods. It might take a little while for the outrage to spread, but I think that a resistance would be organized. And it would very likely lead to Americans exercising their right to reform or replace their government, by force. Article 10 of the Bill of Rights of the New Hampshire State Constitution says it well.

However, this would fairly certainly work, (regarding the government-sanctioned theft of arms from citizens, not so much for the confiscation of "all" guns in a particular area leading to a cessation of gun violence), in places such as San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. I just don't see it working in most of the rest of the country.

But I could very well be wrong about 'modern' Americans too... they've accepted and tolerated quite a few acts in recent times that would have previously been seen as intolerable. Perhaps a plan like this could indeed succeed.

In WWII, there were no more than 10,000 armed Gestapo police, and yet they were able to terrorize a nation with a population of 70-80 million people, and an ethnic group comprised of an estimated 600,000. There was a prevalent state of fear... and few people thought about actually resisting.

After the events of September 11th, 2001, around 280 million people in the United States felt sufficiently threatened by the 19 (dead) hijackers and their ideological companions to accept more extreme limits on their own freedom than has ever been done in America since its inception.

So sure, I'd say that such a plan might be forced upon us and there would be much complaining and grumbling and outbreaks of violence here and there, but overall the status quo would continue. It's possible. But I prefer to retain a few shreds of idealism, and believe that enough Americans wouldn't stand for it.

In any case, we do have a good case study for the effectiveness of this plan. If such a plan is so workable, then why are we still bogged down in Iraq? Iraq is a nation of around 26-27 million people, which is over 10 times less than the United States, and a land area that is 21 times smaller than the United States. Soldiers regularly cordon off neighborhoods and squads enter each house and search for weapons and contraband. Cities are under martial law and soldiers patrol the streets in armored vehicles. And yet, bombs still go off regularly, gun violence continues, and the death toll gets ever higher. So is there any intelligent person that actually believes that it will work in the United States?

So I thought my keyboard space bar had gone out, just on the side that I always hit. I can tell, there's a highly polished spot in the key texturing where I always hit it. It was really getting annoying having to backspace all the time to correct my emails to clients, search query terms, and such. I had put up with it for a week or two, but today I was just getting ready to call Dell XPS Support and get them to send me a new one. I reviewed the instructions for replacing a keyboard, and checked my warranty status, and then checked what the keyboards were going for on eBay (~$35 - mine is more expensive because of the IBM style mouse pointer stick in the center). Then just before I called tech support, I checked the keyboard once more to make sure it was really what I thought it was. I tapped it a bit, and then harder, and moved around on the space bar to find the point where it no longer worked. Around this point, I heard a distinctive "crunch", and the space bar seemed to start working correctly. So I blew out the keyboard to clean it out a bit more. And it does seem like my space bar is properly working now.

Whew. That would have been quite embarrassing to have that happen as the tech support guy walks me through his standard troubleshooting script. So much for eating at my keyboard.

As far as polished keys go... I have the expected wear showing on most of the vowels, and the spacebar. But oddly enough, my H, N, T, R, S, and D keys show fairly significant wear as well, some more than many of the vowels. I don't really understand it. At this point, I should also note that I'm quite happy with the Dell keyboard lettering. None of the printed letters show any sign of actually wearing off and disappearing. Kudos to them. I've seen some keyboards where the letters were worn off in a matter of weeks by heavy typing.

On a related note... my 3 year extended warranty (that came with my computer) expires in 83 days. I'm trying to decide if I should purchase another 1 yr extension, for $169, or a two year extension, for $269, or not buy anything at all - simply replacing dead parts using eBay, and then eventually buy/build a new computer when that gets too expensive.

So far, the only thing that has been replaced under the warranty is the CD/DVD drive. Apparently the spindle motor just died, since it wouldn't spin anymore. I got a nice, new, upgraded version for a replacement, since apparently they didn't have the old model. Dell sent me an invoice for $332.49 that they wanted paid if I didn't return the old one. But after much headache with the shipping carriers, I finally got it returned. Airborne Express doesn't deliver or pickup anywhere within two hours of me, and neither does Fedex - they both just drop off packages at the USPS and ship them to me Parcel Post, (even for Overnight or Express packages) then I have to drive the 30 miles to town and back to pick it up. And for some reason, they weren't capable of giving me a UPS label. Annoying, yes. Anyways, it seemed like that was a pretty ridiculous price for a notebook CD/DVD drive module, so I expect they just really wanted the old one back.

I've really taken care of my computer, but I'm hoping that anything else that is going to go out, goes out sometime in the next three months, err, 83 days.

Ok... so if you want to see the private posts in your rss feeds, and your feed reader is separate from your browser so it can't use your login cookie, never fear. There is a workaround solution that should work for all feed readers, even those that don't support HTTP Basic Auth logins.

Simply use this string on the end of whatever feed url you're using:

&login=youruser&pwd=yourpassword

Replace youruser and yourpassword with the appropriate values for your login.

This should work for all b2Evolution based sites that don't have the feeds hacked up.

While I'm giving RSS feed tips... You'll notice that the main feed on this blog doesn't include the linkblog posts. That's because the linkblog is actually a totally separate blog. However, I do have an 'aggregator' blog, which aggregates together all posts from all blogs on this system.

Use these feeds, if you want to have all posts on Cyn.ical.us included in your feed.

XML Feeds

• RSS 0.92: Posts, Comments
• RSS 1.0: Posts, Comments
• RSS 2.0: Posts, Comments
• ATOM 1.0: Posts, Comments

(Also, I apologize... but I may have broken some of your feeds and bookmarks with the url rewriting I just did for clean urls. Most of them should survive, but because I actually changed some filenames some will be broken. Sorry. I'm done with my url tweaking now, and it won't happen again.)

#!usr/bin/mom wonders when things changed...

When exactly did public education become something the state has a right to rather than something they were doing for the parents? When did parents begin submitting to the state rather than holding the state accountable? The whole reason behind teachers needing to be certified and the schools being tested, etc., was that they are using our tax money to teach our kids. They were supposed to be accountable to us!

A bureaucracy is an ever growing entity... always consuming more resources, gaining more power and control, and ensuring not only its continued existence but its continued growth.

Our government is a bureaucracy.

It will never willingly give up what it has taken, and will always be taking more, and more, and more. Always pushing new boundaries, gaining new ground, and new breakthroughs on what is acceptable or tolerated.

Our bureaucracy machine, now quite monstrous, must be stopped and dismantled before the Constitution, with its strict restraints on such ever growing government growth, will actually be relevant again.