WriteLarge.com

Dotster may have cheap DNS registrations, but FYI: You can't change the A-Record on a Dotster registered domain without buying an extra service. Meaning that Dotster and Tumblr do not get along.
According to Friendly Doster Service Rep Jared H:

Unfortunately the only means we have for assigning an IP for a domain is to make A records in DNS Management, make records in a hosting package, or register new name servers.

I suppose a refund is out of the question.

The AP really doesn't get it. I point you to Making Light:

The Associated Press ... has now published a web form through which intimidated parties can give the AP money in return for “permission” to publish as few as five words.

In this spirit, I will shortly be putting up my own Web form through which people can PayPal me money in exchange for my promise to not blow up the moon.

At least the RIAA dirtbags pretend that they're protecting copyright on behalf of the artists. (They're not, but that's a discussion for another day.) How much of those "permission" payments will end up in the hands of the AP member who wrote the article in the first place?

This is just another greedy money grab by the established fat-cats who see that their industry is dying and think that they can sue there way back to the 1950's when we had lots of trees to cut down so paper was cheap and people actually cared what the traditional press had to say.

But let's talk about the hypocrisy at work here. The press is happy to cry "fair use" when they're stealing beer can logos and clippings from private speeches in order to cover the news-- (in the sense that you _honestly_ consider everything that's not in the two main news sections of any given paper news).

This gets at the thing fundamentally wrong with the traditional press, and one of the main reasons I left it. The press seems to have forgotten that they aren't special. The tools of a good reporter are the same tools available to any member of the public. Reporters don't have any special rights or magic (beyond certain shield laws, which, believe me, have never been exercised on my behalf).

It's coming.

Just posted a story about an Okauchee Kid who makes horror movies at Ocono.com.

We watched “The Old Country Inn” and “Blood on the Glass Slipper” today. We don’t recommend you watch them with kids within earshot. But, hey, it’s horror. And if dropping the F-bomb makes a linguistic case for horror, we’re all for it. While the films we typically watch are a little more cerebral, we’re extremely pleased that the home-brew horror makers of today still make films the caliber of those we were making 15 years ago.

Apart from breaking Publisher Pete's semantic markup and web standards compliance, with my posts, this is the thing I love about writing for Ocono.com. I still see all these amazingpeople doing these amazing creative things. The kid's movies are really good, considering the improvisational nature of them, and I actually enjoyed watching them today-- in spite of my natural desire to be cynical of them.

I just posted what may be my Magnum Opus of Ocono.com posts. Please enjoy Oconomowoc's Most Famous Former Drag Queen.

Is Josh Kilmer-Purcell Oconomowoc’s most famous former Drag Queen? Maybe. According to his “possibly not generally notable” Wikipedia entry, Kilmer-Purcell allegedly spent some of his formative years a resident of our fair city.
Kilmer-Purcell’s drag persona, known as “Aquadisiac,” was allegedly renowned for sporting a pair of goldfish as part of her attire; a single fish swimming in each of her ample breasts.
The thing is, Aquadisiac does not appear in the Ocono.com go-to drag queen reference book: “Drag Dolls” by Roundtable Press. Henceforth we’re not sure we believe in the genuine existence of Aquadisiac.

Hop over there, click a few ads, and enjoy!

What I love about this photo taken by our friend John December is that it shows me using one of the most egregious security flaws in a modern software product to get Bucketworks' Ustream password out of Firefox.
If you let Firefox manage your passwords on a public computer you are exposing your passwords to anyone who comes along and knows to look.
Worse, there have been bugs that expose those passwords to the entire internet.

Use Firefox's master password feature to slap a small bandaid on this problem.

Warning: Here's a first-world gripe.
Come Monday Morning, the CenturyTel DSL we enjoy at our Lakehouse slowed down to become extra craptastic.

Here are the pings to Google:
PING google.com (72.14.207.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=2268.945 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=2238.784 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=2208.223 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=2177.891 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=4 ttl=242 time=2150.244 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=5 ttl=242 time=2120.107 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=6 ttl=242 time=2089.441 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=7 ttl=242 time=2059.193 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=8 ttl=242 time=2028.967 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=9 ttl=242 time=1998.596 ms
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1998.596/2134.039/2268.945/86.041 ms

And, just to be sure it wasn't trouble between the lappy and the gateway, here's a ping to the gateway:

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.338 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.426 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.486 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=22.380 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.488 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=38.085 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.358 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=2.404 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=5.696 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=2.264 ms
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.358/8.092/38.085/11.668 ms


I don't honestly expect any of you to find this interesting or even informational. I'm mostly posting this to keep track of for testing next time I'm up here. Sure, I could just put a text file on a thumbdrive, but I've got the internet to do my thinking for me, Darn it!

Got an email from my Uncle Jim on Last.FM, of all places.
Last.FM is great because it just hangs out in your system tray and watches what you listen to in iTunes, then makes a feed of what you've listed to, and makes a radiostation based on what you've been listening to. It's a very passive way of greating a radio station, but makes a fairly accurate list of your iTunes collection. However, mine isn't exactly 100% on with my musical tastes. Mostly becuase my Sansa 280e doesn't scrobble.

A more active way to make a "Radio station," but without having to go full-bore into hosting and running your own files are the Mixtape services.
I have also been playing with a service called "muxtape" (http://heygabe.muxtape.com/) and MixWit (www.mixwit.com).
Both of these services let you make "mix tapes" of songs, the former of songs you upload from your own collection, and the other from stuff already available on the Internet.

Anyway, keep on Rockin' Uncle Jim.

If you don't have an Ego alert set up at Google Alerts, you're not serious about the Web.

However, I got an alert today that was somewhat alarming.

The text:

STREET POLICING OF PROBLEM DRUG USERS
By admin
By Stuart Lister, Emma Wincup, Toby Seddon, Sam Barrett and Peter Traynor. Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain, a ten-year strategy published in 1998, focused strongly on tackling drug-related crime. The police play important role ...

Can't figure out why it's setting of the alert, other than to concern me.