written 3 Jul 2008 while the sun tried, at least, rising
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According to Wired, a judge ordered that Google must hand over private user data from YouTube to Viacom. All of that data.
So as long as you’ve used YouTube, your private data will be handed over to Viacom. Viacom, which owns CBS, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, CMT, Spike, VH1, Comedy Central, Logo and Showtime, as well as Paramount and Dreamworks, claims that YouTube has more copyright-infringing materials than user created videos. They’re basically pissed because people are uploading segments of shows (and that’s all you can upload, YouTube uploads cap out at 10 minutes) and they’re not getting paid for them. So they’ve somehow convinced a court to turn over your private data.
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written 29 Jun 2008 well into the night
This world around us is perhaps the greatest place we can live. Whether you choose to spend your afternoon choosing fruit and fresh vegetables from the wooden and baskety of your local marketplace, or swimming your hands in dish soap and daily chores, the very acts of our every day are what make up the entire purpose of living. Televisions and books and writers and rock stars and high school football stars all make it seem like perhaps there’s something more to strive towards, that there is a glamour in fame and a desire to have all of the fortunes and lifestyles that we can possibly muster up and hold onto in our six or seven decades. Of course, most of us can only hope to watch a movie that will give us that escape. Escape from the daily living that we should be doing anyway, and perhaps then we’d enjoy it more.
Even still, in our wonderfully future-filled science fiction modernity, we’ve discovered, patented and mass distributed as many ways to avoid both the depression we’ve convinced ourselves that everyday life is made up of as well as the actual striving to become one of those great figures of lifestyle that we wish we were. We’ve installed screens in everything possible, connected them across all of the world and replaced every aspect of our lives inside of them. Our friends, jobs, and free time, even our thoughts, are all stored up inside of our various screens, even as small as they continue to get over the years. And so we have an entirely new chance at creating ourselves; who we are, who we can make ourselves into, even as we’ve opened up a whole new door as to what we want to make ourselves into, who our new heroes and idols will be.
Not that I’m against our wonderful Internet New Reality, in any way &em; or at least not all together. The actual fact which is as indisputable as global warming or the modern day automobile is that the Internet’s information rivals the knowledge of God. Humor me the idea that God is a creation of man &em; even if God, even in the most fundamentalist, evangelical, literal Biblical translation of the sense, is real, all that we as mortal sinners know of him is what our feeble human minds can imagine; a great deal less than the actual, omnipotent being Himself would be capable of, I’m certain &em; and I think you’ll find it easier to believe that the entire human race (or at least that percentage which are connected to the Internet) share a collective at least equal to what we can imagine God to know if not more, considering all of the other deities that other cultures seem to know so certainly of as well. So with all of the knowledge that can exist doing so in one place (which now with our iPhones and WiFi, is nearly every place) and being so easily accessible at any time, we can literally have the entire world at our fingertips. So yes, of course the Internet is a valuable tool. This is the point where everyone can wonder why they’ve continued reading this far if all I was going to say was such an obvious statement as The Internet is a valuable tool.
But it’s not a single shred more valuable than a paint brush or a hammer or a simple pulley. All three of those can be used to do great things, even if their individual purposes seems simplistic and singular. A paint brush can be used for something as mundane as covering rust on a car’s bumper, or it can be used to create letters and language or the Mona Lisa. A hammer can pound a nail into a chair or chisel away David. A pulley can pull water from a well or a young child’s life from the same hole.
All the same, the Internet can be used to replace the living, the doing, the walking around neighborhoods, meeting friends for drinks or meeting new friends, or picking out fruit and washing the dishes. It can be used to understand what effects Democracy might have on a new, emerging China or what ingredient might go best in tonight’s stew. Hours can be disappeared watching dogs ride skateboards or reading what a Presidential candidate actually plans to do, or if they have even taken the time yet to plan to do anything. We live in an immediately brilliant and amazing time. It’s as if both the wheel and the car were invented in the same day, only hours apart, and now we don’t know what to do with all of this new found freedom and powerful knowledge. The question, I think, is whether or not we’ll be able to understand what we have and turn that into something good, use it for something beneficial to our own lives and the future history of our civilization, or instead watch it follow in the heels of books and the radio and television and capitalism, conglomerated, made expensive and kept mostly in the hands of a few out of touch people in a world of multiplying billions.
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written 14 Jun 2008 in the early afternoon
Local resident Sam Brahm mentioned that he and his wife were awoken at 5:47 this morning when, rudely, his brother had emailed him.
“It was even worse,” said Brahm, “because I have to get up at 6 am, and this was just like ruining my last 10 minutes.”
Mr. Brahm goes on to tell the sorrowfully impolite tale of how his brother had forwarded him an email containing pictures of hands which had been painted to look like birds, leopards and other animals. Apparently his brother, Mitch Brahm, who lives in Connecticut but was on holiday in France forgot about the time zone differences and just sent the email while enjoying a croissant.
“I was just having such a hard time even pronouncing the word ‘croissant’,” says Mitch Brahm, “that when I saw the picture of the owl painted onto the back of an old woman’s hand at CuteOverload.com, all I could do was forward the email along.”
Apparently the email was so loud that it woke up several neighbors in the Brahms apartment complex, causing a baby to cry and two common house dogs to bark.
“I tried to find my computer,” says Brahm, “but it was so loud and I was panicking and it was early, I just couldn’t hit the volume down button at all.” Mr. Brahm reports that while he thought F5 was the volume down button, it was actually F4 or alt+command+*+4 that would have done the trick.
Filed Under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments Looking for Company
written 12 Jun 2008 just before midnight
- Multiple Greetings. I’d like to be able to create groups within my contacts, ie. Friends, Clients, Family,, etc. and then have different voicemail greetings for each group, or even on a per-contact basis. I just like to have goofy messages and don’t want to be limited because of the chance that the President of Creamed Corn might call me.
- Web 2.0 Sync. Think syncing Google Calendar with iPhone Calendar, your Camera Roll with Flickr, etc. This shouldn’t even be an app, it should be built in similarly to how Gmail or Yahoo! Mail can be easily synced with the Mail application on iPhone.
- Grocery List Sync. The Older Woman and I often venture to the grocery store together and we both have the same grocery list on our phones, but we have to check in and continually see what the other person has already picked up. Something that would sync in real time would be the knees on a bee.
- Podcast Aggregater/Downloader. I don’t understand why iTunes can’t fulfill this service on the iPhone just as it does on the desktop, but I’d like to get my podcasts straight to my phone as I don’t want to have to sync every morning before heading out into the world.
Filed Under: quoting me | 4 Comments Looking for Company
written 12 Jun 2008 just before midnight
I wasn’t necessarily trying to lose weight, but just trying to eat in a healthier fashion. I guess these things just seemed like things I always knew I should do, but it wasn’t until recently that I actually did them.
1. Drink more water. I know, it doesn’t seem like it tastes as good as Pepsi or Gatorade, but — especially in the squelching summer — after awhile, nothing tastes better than seriously ice cold water. While the benefits of getting your 8 glasses a day has recently come up for debate, a definite benefit is the lack of consuming corn syrup-laden calories.
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written 10 Jun 2008 in the early afternoon
We visited a local amusement park with Tristan’s friend, Jay, yesterday. We’re standing in line for a rollercoaster after having ridden this, very tame, haunted Garfield boat ride. I asked Jay if he was scared:
No I wasn’t scared… Just a little nervous.
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written 10 Jun 2008 over a light lunch
The cold, sweated on and leather of my seat and its all I can do to not have my eyes drown in the blazing evening humidity of a month before summer. I feel the urge to run, hike, walk and bike, explore, disbound and explode into whatever amount of amazement my ego tells me I was meant to be. The urge to live more. The urge to be always more.
But that’s all that it is, the urge. The drive seems sunken so far into this old leather lazy boy that the day, as soon as it seems, when I finally make myself into that motion is desperately far away.
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written 10 Jun 2008 over a light lunch
I could’ve sworn I’ve posted about this fine and well podcast in the past, where John Hicks (perhaps most notable for creating the Firefox logo, among others) and John Oxton (perhaps most notable for eating a sandwich with John Hicks on a regular basis) discuss their favorite crackers, cheese or meatstuffs and occasionally discuss all things Web designering, occasionally injecting hilarity into their roughly 45 minute long show.
It’s great, good stuff and if you’re of the type who enjoys acronyms such as CSS, XHTML and even RAF, you might do well to download the episodes from 1 and move on from there. They often answer listener’s questions, typically by making fun of their names or heritage first, and occasionally run out for cake during the show.
I was fortunate enough to be made jest of on their show this past week when they answered a few of my ponderings about child-rearing and content management systems. You can listen to or download the podcast from their website on the Internet via this link.
Filed Under: links | 4 Comments Looking for Company
written 6 Jun 2008 while the sun tried, at least, rising
This American Life is a really great radio show, at the same time the quintessential public radio program — slow talking exploration of the human condition through an introspective viewpoint — mixed with everything that most public radio shows get wrong: This American life actually has interesting content.
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written 4 Jun 2008 in the earliest morning
A Wired News feed in my Gmail tells me that Obama has finally become the Democratic Presidential Candidate, and as I click on the link to read the details I mention it to my son, Tristan, who I’ve been explaining the election process and my affinity towards Obama vs. Hillary or that old guy, etc.
“I know,” he replies.
“No, I just found out right now. It only happened today.” I assume he’s just mistaken or misunderstood something Olivia and I were discussing the other day.
“I know, I saw it this morning on TV.”
My son is officially now more well-informed than I.
Filed Under: tristan | 2 Comments Looking for Company
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