October 2005

Farewell, Bravenet

Up until 5 minutes ago I used Bravenet to see who was coming to my page from where. Their pages have a lot of ads on them, but they're free so that's ok.

Unfortunately, it's not ok anymore. For the 2nd time in 24 hours while checking to see who my referrers were my web browser started downloading .exe files without me requesting them. Before I managed to force-quit Camino (A browser based off of Firefox) 94 different install files had been tossed onto my desktop. I don't know how they were able to do that and frankly I don't want to know.

If I wasn't using a Mac, I would probably have had my machine infected with spyware.

Free is good, but it's not worth that. I filed a complaint with Bravenet but since they allowed this to happen I've decided to remove all the Bravenet.com code from my webpages.

UPDATE: One thing in Bravenet's favor is the fact that their tech support responded to my complaint faster than any online company I've seen in a long, long time. I don't mean a computer generated something, I mean a living human being asked me to clarify some things and then responded again once I did so.

Bravenet might yet redeem themselves. We'll see.

Stanford sets the music free

Ok, so it's not putting the songs under a Creative Commons License, but Stanford has been collecting tracks from students, faculty, alumni, and resident artists and distributing them for free among the students.

Don't go to Stanford? Fear not, they're also free downloads on iTunes.

I feel the need to warn you, however: Like most organizations that give things away, there is a tendency for the quality to be worth every penny paid. I'm not saying all the content is bad, only that you might only want to download some of the songs provided.

Rained Out

On Columbus Day Weekend my family and I tried to spend the day at Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm. Tried, because it was the first time in about 30 years that their Harvest Festival was rained out. It was cold, the rain did not stop, and I would say that a majority of the farm was under water.

A good time was had by all. Would you like to see the photos?

What the ... ? #6: Before or After?

Take a good look at that picture, and give me your first guess at what those things are.

Now, if you look closely, you can see that they're supposed to be sculpted mushrooms and carrots. You have to hand it to the person who did the glaze work here, though - They took the food as it looks BEFORE you eat it and made it look like it should once you're all done with it.

Yeah, makes me want to buy the whole set and hang it on my wall.

Ok, so maybe not.

Lawrence Lessig Rocks

Believe it or not, there's actually a lawyer who doesn't put me to sleep, and this guy has even argued in front of the Supreme Court! (He lost, but oh well...) If you're involved in any kind of creative media (audio, video, visual art, etc.), you should really check out some of his stuff.

One of his books, Free Culture, is even under a Creative Commons license so you can get it for free. (Click on the "Remixes" link for different downloadable file formats.) The book itself gives a decent history of Copyright Law, including the good, the bad, and the ugly details.

It continues...

Badger badger badger Santa Santa Santa ...

One Step Forward.

We recently got back from the hospital, where Kelli had some outpatient surgery to close up the hole in her neck left over from last year's traecheostomy (no, that's not a typo) which wouldn't heal shut on it's own.

Our day started at 4 AM, and we were at the hospital by 6. We had plenty of waiting to do, but we still managed to get home by noon so they were relatively quick.

We'll have to go back in to have the little (coin sized) drainage bag removed, and the stitches come out in a week, but now Kelli's almost as good as new.

Now, Kelli's neck doesn't wheeze whenever she talks. YAY!

Do not press.

Can you resist the shiny red button?

Fun with Browsers

For a while now my favorite browser's been Camino, which is a side project from Mozilla.org. Essentially, it's like a combination of some of the best things in Firefox with some of the best things in Safari. There are some things that Safari does better (built in spell checker), and some things that Firefox does better (extensions), but I think Caminoo really is a good compromise. It's faster than Safari and it looks nicer than Firefox.

There's that, and the fact that it also has a built in ad blocker in addition to the standard pop-up blocker. It doesn't work for ALL ads, but from what I've seen it handles Google ads and almost every banner ad I've seen so far, regardless of what company has embedded it and where the ad has been placed on the page.

Role Playing

You know you're a geek when...