I've had my HTC Hero for about 2 weeks now. Has it changed my life? No. I mean it's saved me some time with Google Maps/GPS; time which I would have had to spend on the computer before I left. And yes, I'm writing this post on my phone, but it's hardly easy--even if it is convenient.

And that about sums up my 3g, touch phone experience. I have the feeling that I can do anything I want, if only I could bear to thumb it out.

Mostly, having a phone like this has made me feel lonely. These phones are at their best when you're making plans, on the go, staying in touch. I simply don't have enough friends, and the new phone calls that into relief

So I decided that there was no point in learning Django just to do the same "entry.comments.first" and "comment.created_on" kind of stuff that I'm doing in Rails anyway. The framework doesn't seem sufficiently unique to warrant learning for the sake of learning. If I saw a major upside where I could use it at work or there was a big freelance market, that would be a different story.

I decided instead that my site just needs a visual refresh, but I am completely at a loss for what that refresh looks like. I tried something with a header and a footer that mixed around my color scheme, but my mom said it looked awful and bland (which are not generally descriptors you go for in design....).

So I'm back were I started, I guess. I vaguely feel like I want something new, something interesting...but I just can't figure out how to make it work. I wish I could meet up with a designer and do some bartering, coding for design.

Eric Mill over at Mill Industries has some interesting things to say about Google Buzz. Mostly it seems that he's not counting it out yet, despite the rampant privacy concerns and general sense that Google has intruded on people's sacred inbox space. The reason is because of comments by DeWitt Clinton, a Google developer.

I'll let you read now....

...

Back? Okay so basically DeWitt talks about this Internet Utopia where the whole web is one big social network and you can follow a friend/twitter like feed from any application that supports it. Turning friend feeds into email. Google Buzz has already decided that if your friend feed is as federated and easy as email, why not show it next to your email? For many people that should have been the final step, but if Google's coercion got more people on the playground then I don't really care.

But I do have a few questions. Like if someone leaves a comment on something in my Google Buzz, how do I see it in my Yahoo! Hum? I supposed the sites would have to be 'connected', which basically means that my Hum would have to subscribe to the pubsubhubbub feed of my Google Buzz.

But as far as the comment goes, we can't just import the names of the people, "Joey Shoad" and the like. Then we'd be facing the same supposed 'privacy concerns' as were created by the launch of Buzz. Actually, I totally think we should just show the guy's full name because he should have known that he was posting a public comment in a public form on a public post. But Joey could get mad about this. So as a compromise, I guess you'd have to md5 his email and get 'HanZ972oF0F...@GoogleBuzz' which could be shown to the user as "Travis' Friend", with each friend in a different color to help with threaded comments. Then, if you're subscribed to my Yahoo! Hum and you also know Joey by email, you'll see his full name.

Are there going to be pubsubhubbub nodes out there that represent groups and interests? If so, I think we should drop the word 'subscribe' and allow users to 'follow' these nodes. It's simply a less scary word...though I could see using 'connect' to, and treating the node as a site. But that would muddy the metaphor that sites you connect with share YOUR data. Anyways, would public nodes have options for joining? Twitter simply becomes the biggest friend feed pubhubsubbub aggregator. Of course, it's going to be up to the application to filter out redundant messages. Do Buzz posts have UUIDs?

Yeah, I'm not going to wrap this post up. Cheers!

Okay, okay, I'm doing it. I'm going to build a new website using Django which, from the getting started guide, looks a lot like Ruby on Rails.

I haven't done any significant development on this site in ages. Mostly it was because I felt the design was broken and it would take too much work to get it to be anything close to something better. But that's the whole freedom you get with a redesign from scratch. I'm not limited to staying within the bounds of what I currently have.

The new site is going to focus on my musical creations. I already have descriptions for each song, which I wrote when uploading them. But until now I've never had anywhere to display those descriptions. I should probably draft a formal TODO list, but for now I'm planning on adding a more intuitive music playing interface, separate blog and music sections, and Facebook connect and OpenID integration. If you're friends with me on facebook and you log in with Facebook connect, there will be a log that you visited the site (and a log of what songs you listened to). I'll also integrate my twitter feed. Those last two ideas, the log and the twitter feed are inspired by Eric Mill's website.

I want my new website to be interactive. I'm going to make it so that you can change the color scheme and background picture not just for you but for everyone who visits the site. Does that sound gimmick-y? Because to me it just sounds like fun. I'm also hoping that I'll be able to eventually integrate Twoopsaphone into the site. I wonder if I can integrate my Facebook wall somehow.

So right now I'm full of big dreams. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that no matter what I change, still no one will read my shitty blog. :(

I just finished reading about the top 10 highest grossing movies of the year on Yahoo. The strange part is that I feel like I couldn't name 10 movies that came out this past year if I tried. Although all of the names of the movies were familiar, my memory simply doesn't have the stuff to generate even half of that list.

Now it's easy to mark me down for lack of interest in the subject on movies. I haven't been to the movies since Bruno....when was that, May? But even in areas where I have a high degree of professed
interesting, I can't keep things straight anymore. I can barely remember who pitched in the bullpen for the Sox this year, and when asked point blank if we had traded Buchholz during the season, I couldn't remember for the life of me.

I just get anxious that my life is so transient. I live day after day but none of it seems to make any lasting impression. I can't tell you, truthfully, if I'm doing subjectively better or worse than I was this time last year, or this time 6 months ago, or even this time last month. What did I do for thanksgiving again?

There is a common idiom in American culture that if you consider a glass to be half empty you are a pessimist, and if you consider it to be half full you are an optimist. Because of this cultural idea, a half full glass is different than one that is half empty. The difference exists only in our minds however, and therefore I say it is not real.

Perhaps the person who considers the glass half empty is also an optimist, because he or she considers, optimistically, that the half that was emptied was enjoyed. Perhaps the person to whom the glass is half full is a pessimist, because it's full of the same bullshit that he or she deals with every day in his or her life; just more shit to shovel.

So at this point I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need to either go to a tax counselor or directly to jail. I owe the IRS thousands of dollars, and I'm pretty sure that I've yet to pay a dime of it. Mostly because I was unemployed and didn't have a dime to pay.

How did I get in this mess? Independent contracting. It's the devil's work, I tell you. You get these big fat checks with no taxes taken out and it's like 'Party time woot!'. But really, you owe a third of it to the government. Like I've ever been able to save anything.

And it gets worse. I did more contracting this year, so there are thousands more dollars out there that should have gone to the government that I spent instead.

I guess I should just wait until I owe tens of thousands of dollars, and then settle for 653 bucks...like those people on TV.

"And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make"

I was listening to Abbey Road today during my morning commute and this part of the album brought me to tears. The reason was because I suddenly interpreted it to mean that there is no love in the world, not one bit. Love is a zero sum game and whenever someone takes some it's because they made it. There's none left over for anyone else.

Honestly that's how I've been feeling. I used to believe that love was abundant, that every smile, every laugh creates more love than we know what to do with (which is why a smile from a stranger can be arresting or even embarrassing). Now it feels like love is a scarce resource. If you happen to create some, you need to preserve it and be very selective with whom you share it.

I don't like the new feeling. I feel the urge to share love with every person I see shuffling groceries or spinning their iPod dial on the T. I want to grab their hands and start dancing, smiling. I want to teach everyone in the world to laugh, and compete to tell the silliest jokes that make you slap your forehead but you can't stop laughing.

In short, I want the love I make to be MUCH greater than the love I take. Maybe this one time McCartney was wrong!

Twoopsaphone is at: http://twitter.com/twoopsaphone
And it's radio station is at: http://tinyurl.com/twoops

Yes, that's great, but what IS it you ask. Well it's a collaborative loop-based synthesizer that you control using your tweets. Anybody can send Twoopsaphone a message using '@twoopsaphone play <music string>'

The music string resembles MML (music macro language) or really Ringtone Transfer Language or whatever, where it's just a string of notes:

8c 8c 4d5 4e#5

The first number is the duration (4-quarter note, 8-eighth note, 1-whole note, 2-half note, etc) and the second number is the octave. Single numbers on their own (ie '4 c 4 c') represent rests of the indicated length. If you don't use an octave number, 4 is assumed.

The synthesis engine is Bloopsaphone. So any command line that Bloopsaphone would accept is accepted by Twoopsaphone. Bloopsaphone + Twitter = Twoopsaphone.

As for the technical side, the whole thing is streamed to Nicecast via cycling 74's Soundflower. I hacked the Bloopsaphone source twice, once to calculate the duration in beats of a track (Track.duration, so I know how long to loop) and again to have it stream the output to soundflower instead of the default output.

The whole thing is running on my home iMac. You'll notice that the server shuts down every hour and restarts...that's me trying to weasel around Nicecasts trial limitation that they put static in the stream after an hour--I just don't have the 40 bucks to register it at the moment!

I pledged $25 dollars to support the campaign of anyone running against any Democratic senator who helps the Republicans filibuster healthcare reform.

Below is the copypasta of the email that MoveOn.org wanted me to send out. If any Democratic senators are reading this, though, you should know that I'm fully committed to this and I WILL scrape together and pay the money to your future opponents, should you help filibuster health care reform.

Subject: The nightmare scenario

Hi,

Here's the nightmare scenario: One Democratic senator joins Republicans
to filibuster and 2009 becomes just another year when health care reform failed.

But if thousands of us make it clear that we'd support a primary challenge
to that senator, and Democratic senators know it, we might just be able to keep
this nightmare scenario from ever coming to pass.

I just pledged to support a primary challenge if it comes to that, and it's
critical that all of us who would, say it now. Will you join me?

http://pol.moveon.org/hc_fund/?r_by=17769-9507010-b2c__qx&rc=paste

Thanks!

I uploaded an a cappella of myself singing my song "Dandy" to ccmixter.org. Well wouldn't you know it, someone remixed it! Check it out at http://ccmixter.org/files/unreal_dm/22905

I was extremely excited to find such a high quality remix of a song I wrote. I really felt like I had collaborated with this unknown stranger ('unreal_dm') from the scary internets. I only feel inspired to release more things into the creative commons and see what happens!

If you plot a graph of song submissions to this site by month, you'd notice that I didn't submit anything for like two years....yet in the past two months I've submitted 4 songs. I definitely like the value of my d(songs)/d(t) at the moment!

I only wish I could stop writing techno songs in the dorian mode! A C major scale, with a D as the tonic, gives you the Dorian mode, which sounds minor (and shares a number of tones with the blues scale). For some reason, it's my go to scale for melodies in electronic songs. I'm challenging myself, right now, to go outside my comfort zone when writing electronic music melodies.

Also, I took a look at my site in lynx, while browsing in text mode on my iBook G3 (circa 2001) which I have recently installed Fedora 11 on. it was actually pretty well organized, with all the information being there and being in a logical order to boot! Score team CSS for layout, not tables!

I've had an idea recently for a Ruby project, so I figured I'd offer it up in advance in case anyone is interested.

Basically, I used to be a pretty hardcore MUD'er, doing text based RP. When I got to college I sort of gave it up, because the 'real' dungeon was more fun ;)

Anyways, I started playing WoW this summer while I had time on my hands (I know, I know....). Meanwhile I also got interested in browser-based games like Travian. I was thinking about creating my own browser based game, when I realized that LambdaMOO already has the framework for a multi-user persistent environment, and all it's really lacking is a modern programming language/user interface.

All this said, I thought it would be interesting to create a Ruby shell to a LambdaMOO server! It seems like this old Ruby quiz is a good jumping off point.

Note that I'm not talking about a MUD/MOO/M* client, but rather a Ruby shell for the game environment itself. Basically using Ruby as a bridge to the MOO programming language, to help a new generation of
hackers discover the joy in manipulating an object oriented shared environment.

I think Ruby is especially good for this task because of EverythingIsAnObject, which is the philosophy of LambdaMOO to begin with. If you think of the LambdaMOO server as Moonix, this project would be about porting Ruby to it. :)

I've already got a prototype on OS X that uses the Telnet standard library and connects via a Unix Domain Socket (I compiled LambdaMOO to use file sockets instead of net sockets).

But some of us are more free than others. I'm committed to making this blog more accessible for the blind and those with sight related disabilities. My first main goal is to make sure that you guys can enjoy the music that I've recorded and released here. I'm also concerned with those who have color differentiation issues....though my main scheme is blue-white-grey-red, so I think I should be okay.

Anyways, I met a few people today at different times (Manny and Matt) and we played 2 player New Super Mario together. It was a blast! Tyler Ames, if you're listening....2 player DS New Super Mario is just as fun as Super Mario All-Stars 'battle mode' in SMB3....and I think I might actually be able to beat you!

Speaking of Mario strategy, have you guys heard of the Mario AI Competition 2009? It's over now, but all the software is open source and the winner published his code, which you can see in action on youtube.com. Looks like some fun code to hack on! I'd like to extend the original Infinite Mario Bros to include more complex enemies, or to add a Luigi! Actually, the version of the game engine used in the competition would probably be a better starting point.

"The beanstalk of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of mushrooms and koopas." — Toadstool Jefferson

Ever since I heard of Creative Commons, I've been a huge fan. I know it was before that famous issue of Wired magazine came out, because I was excited about the issue and specifically sought out and bought it.

Anyways, if you want to know what "some rights reserved" is all about, check out
this creative commons intro video.

For some reason, I've never been active on ccmixter.org. Well, that has now changed. Check out my page at http://ccmixter.org/people/audiodude

I uploaded a new recording of Dandy, a cappella and in a different key. I think it sounds warmer and less whiny in the new key, and I'm going to re-record the music too. I also found a really cool classical recording a cappella and decided to do a house remix. That file is available here as well as in the song module at the top of this site.

We are culture.

Just wanted to help circulate this image:

http://imgur.com/j9wrB.jpg

The world is really, really gigantically large. I think about it every time I'm driving on the highway, whipping past endless empty patches of woods at 70 miles per hour.

I just wrote my second grease monkey user script, called TweetQ. When someone links to a netflix movie page, the script adds a button so that you can add it to your queue without leaving the page.

The script is here: TweetQ

And you'll need Firefox and Greasemonkey, which can be found here: Greasemonkey, customize web pages.

Also you might want to check out the tens of thousands of available scripts at userscripts.org

Enjoy!

Firstly note, the title of this post is more for SEO than because I'm irate in any way. I imagine more people will search for "cafepress.com scam" then "clever title that Travis came up with".

Let me explain their business model. They let you use web tools to upload graphics that they then print on t-shirts. Sounds simple, but the key differentiating factor is that they'll print as few as 1 t-shirt, which is perfect for novelty t-shirt ideas for you and just a friend or two. Most other t-shirt design companies, online or off, require orders of 20-50 to do a run.

They also offer you the opportunity to 'mark up' the price that they charge for t-shirts. So, if a t-shirt costs $14.99, you can sell it for $17.99 and you get a 3 dollar commission. It sounds like a cool idea, until you realize that no one is going to pay $14.99 for a t-shirt, never mind $17.99. More to the point, no one thinks your design is clever and so no one is going to buy it anyways.

So basically, that's the plan: Everyone buys their own shit at insane markups, and generally everyone is happy.

The problem is that, at some point in the summer of 2006 (when I set up the shop), someone from the Boston ruby user group bought a 10 pack of my clever and exquisitely designed "I'd Rather Be Using Ruby" button. I happened to make a princely $5.51 off this sale. Which I thought was neat, but never really thought about again.

You see, I had forgotten to enter address and tax payer information on the site, so they could never mail me a check. But more to the point, my amount was always under the $25 'minimum' payout amount, so they never intended to mail me anything anyways.

Okay, so that's the obvious scam: minimum payment amounts. I worked on a PayPal integration, you can pay people automatically via computer with them and it costs about 15 cents per transaction. I'm not an accountant, but it seems that they must have a HUGE amount of liability on the books for the millions of people, like me, to whom they owe less than 25 dollars. The only reason they have this shitty system in place is because they want to dodge that liability.

But liability is a real thing in accounting, and you can't just let it sit around forever (for tax and other purposes). So, after 2 years of 'inactivity' (which means no sales, not no logins), they will eventually send you a check. Okay okay, so I had to wait 2 years but hey, at least I got someone money. Penny saved, something something.

But here's the bullshit part. Cafepress.com, after making you wait 2 years for a check, proceeds to AUTOMATICALLY charge a $5.00 'processing fee' for all the steep toil and hardship it takes them to print a fucking check. No matter what their service agreement says, legally they owe you that money. So I imagine that this is a blanket policy to protect them against people demanding their money and them having to realize their epic liability. But automatically? That's where they really cross the line, in my opinion.

Anyways I called, and the customer service representative tried to explain that the check would only be for $0.51 and I should probably just wait until I had made more earnings. More to the point, there was the issue of whether I would get the check 2 years from NOW (when I finally entered mailing/taxpayer information) or 2 years from 3 years ago when I became 'inactive'.

She eventually decided to escalate my issue, because she honestly didn't know the answer. She also told me should couldn't tell me at the moment when I'd get my check. I told her that I hoped it would be soon, because there's this really nice gumball that I've had my eye on for a while.

She didn't laugh.

For some reason, I'm more interested in the passing of Millvina Dean than Arturo Gatti, neither of whom I had heard of before today. Of course, it seems like The Washington Post had never heard of Gatti either, because their reporting of the story is a tasteless 'double feature' with a picture of Steve McNair's mother attending the football star's funeral.

The reason I bring this up is to point out the ridiculousness of public grief over celebrity deaths. Now of course I understand that Ms. Dean's passing, though notable, was pedestrian (she was 97) while that of Gatti, McNair and Michael Jackson were tragic. No, I don't share the view that 'all death is a tragedy', nor even the stronger 'all human death is a tragedy'. Personally, I believe that death is intrinsic to the very existence of life, exactly as winter is to summer. I don't fear death, for I believe that an infinite time of human consciousness would be worse than any Hell human religions provide. This belief forms part of my rejection of Christianity, since in this view Heaven is only the lesser of two eternal hardships. The fact that humans couldn't possibly enjoy eternal existence of their consciousness in any reasonable manner that would also preserve it, for me, exposes the foolish belief in anthropomorphic gods and goddesses. Although, technically speaking, death is a privilege reserved for those who have lived, it seems clear to me that we will be no more dead after we are buried than we were before we were born. And it didn't seem to bother anybody then!

The real tragedy is the importance that people seem to place on death. Although funerals and memorials are important parts of the grieving process, and quite useful in preserving (and in most cases, shaping) recorded history, I can't help but feel some form of pity for those who would place a paid death notice. Meanwhile, I can't help but feel the same disdain for those who show excessive remorse for the death of celebrities as I feel for those who consume gossip news (though I imagine it's the same contingent). The lives of those who perform for us on the field and on the stage, while notable, are really no more important than those of the rest of us.

As the title of this article says, I want you, oh humble reader to stop. Stop right now.

Because if you are an average American, then the odds are nearly 1 in 4 that you're currently watching television.

That's right. Somehow, some way, Americans manage to spend a quarter of their day watching TV. ON AVERAGE. So please just stop.

Listen, I'm not the most educated, insightful, creative guy out there. I'm not toiling away at inventions and ideas that benefit the whole of mankind. For someone who has a crumb of musical talent (a minor in music, to boot!), I don't spend much time practicing it, or even listening to it. When I read, it's largely articles on web blogs, wikipedia, and online equivalents of print publications.

But I certainly don't spend anywhere near-- checks website-- 353.1 minutes ON AVERAGE watching television. Here are a list of things you could do, Mr. or Ms. Joe Average, if you turned off the television for even a single day:

• Write 4 blog posts


• Learn jQuery


• Burn 300 Calories and subsequently significantly reduce cancer risk


• Save the planet a couple of times


• Advance the visibility of atheism in America


• Learn to play the guitar


• Hug 765 people


• And still have 10.1 minutes remaining to listen to Bit Bop Three 2.62 times

Not to mention all of the time you could spend keeping up with local and national news from your local newspaper or its equivalent website, keeping track of the actions of local politicians, checking in with friends and relatives, telling a story to your child, learning more about a cause that you care about, etc etc.

I'm sorry, but television is simply one of the greatest wastes of time there is. Which, I imagine, is probably the reason why so many Americans spend so much time with it. I have the impression that people largely don't like their jobs and when they get home they'd rather 'veg out' in front of the television because they can't motivate themselves to do anything that would be productive or enriching to their own lives or those of others. Please, please...I want to challenge myself and everyone out there to fight the urge to passively consume useless media like television, and instead take up an activity or two that actively engages your mind, talent, and personality.

We'll all be better people for it!

Funny thing, I'm a programmer but this is my first fully nerdy technical this-is-how-I-did-xyz-task post. Go figure.

Anyways, here is some detail about accessing Java classes from within an XSLT stylesheet, so long as you are processing it with Xalan. (For yummy syntax highlighting, here's the post as a Pastie)

The main gist is that any built-in Java class can be accessed by using the 'xalan://java.package.name.ClassName' syntax. It is easiest if you 'import' the classes you need into your stylesheet using a namespace declaration at the top of the file. For example:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:cal="xalan://java.util.GregorianCalendar"
  xmlns:tz="xalan://java.util.TimeZone"
  xmlns:fmt="xalan://java.text.SimpleDateFormat">

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <!-- Stylesheet goodness goes here -->
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Then later on in your stylesheet, you can call functions on the class using the defined namespace. In this context, static members (aka 'class functions', such as Calendar.getInstance()) are called simply using the namespace and a colon. Other member functions (such as Calendar.set(int field, int value), which operate on a specific instance), take the instance variable as the first parameter, and all other parameters are shifted (so the first parameter becomes the second, the second the third, etc).

Here's an example of this which parses a string that contains a GMT time and outputs it as a PST:

  <xsl:template name="FormatDate">
    <xsl:param name="date" />
    
    <!-- incoming format: YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSZ -->
    <!-- outbound format: MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM AM -->

    <xsl:variable name="tz_pt" select="tz:getTimeZone('America/Los_Angeles')" />
    <xsl:variable name="tz_utc" select="tz:getTimeZone('UTC')" />
    <xsl:variable name="fmt_in" select="fmt:new(&quot;yyyyMMdd'T'HHmmss&quot;)" />
    <xsl:variable name="fmt_out" select="fmt:new('MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss a')" />

    <!--  Set the output time format to PST, and the input time format to GMT.
          These statements don't actually output anything. -->
    <xsl:value-of select="fmt:setTimeZone($fmt_out, $tz_pt)" />
    <xsl:value-of select="fmt:setTimeZone($fmt_in, $tz_utc)" />

    <xsl:if test="$date != ''">
      <xsl:variable name="src_date" select="fmt:parse($fmt_in, $date)" />
      <xsl:value-of select="fmt:format($fmt_out, $src_date)" />
    </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>

Note the use of 'xsl:value-of' statements in order to call an instance method on our variables. In XSLT, you have to wrap your method call in a 'select=' type statement, either in a 'xsl:value-of' or as the evaluation of an 'xsl:variable' in order for them to be executed.

You could call this somewhere in your style sheet by selecting the date value you wish to convert.

  <xsl:template match="first_president">
    George Washington was born on <xsl:call-template name="FormatDate">
        <xsl:with-param name="date" select="birth_date"/>
      </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:template match="first_president">

Looking back, I probably thought that if I didn't blog about it, it would go away.

2009 has not, so far, been kind to Travis Briggs (Travis Briggs' blog, this is the blog of Travis Briggs).

My main problem is that on January 12th, I was laid off from my job. With a conciliatory tone, my boss explained that my work was exemplary, that he was thoroughly impressed with my contributions, but that there simply was no longer room for me at the company. Another developer got cut at the same time as me. It turns out that they let me go exactly on my 2 month 'anniversary'. The most crushing immediate impact of being laid off was that they cut off my health benefits immediately (not at the end of the month). I ended up having to pay over 200 dollars for prescription drugs later that week-- and that was only for a half month's supply! I read through my options, and COBRA would cost me like 415 dollars a month, so I should probably get that, seeing that my prescriptions would then only cost 45 dollars and I would be covered for other ailments (at about the same cost as a month of drugs now).

Notice that I introduced the above as being my 'main' problem. Additionally, I have recently turned twenty-four (on the 13th, the day after losing my job). I'll admit there was the passing joy of celebrating the occasion with my family (my mom baked an awesome double-layered peanut butter chocolate cake) and some friends. However it seems the main function of this date was to call into relief the fact that the past 2-3 years have been wasted. I've given up a great job (Brightcove) had multiple failed romantic relationships, failed at saving any money I've earned and barely made a dent in my student loan payments, and failed to accomplish anything significant or worthwhile outside of my professional life, which in itself has not lived up to its full potential. My social circle (friends and acquaintances) has shrunk rather than grown, besides the fact that I am a fat, unemployed computer programmer living in his parents' basement.

Mother. Fucker.

I'm a generally optimistic person, though, and I'm convinced things can get better. Not that they necessarily will-- I know it will take work and dedication and of all things luck on my part-- but that they can. Here's hoping.

He's like the surprise Christmas present that you forgot to open Christmas morning. Tonight, while pondering the awful things going on in Gaza and how completely incompetent and ineffectual our asshole President is, I remembered that the dark knight (ahem) is on his way. It made me really happy, and I'm literally filled with hope that he can do something about this mess and our economic troubles.

Two other things. I'm going to the gym tomorrow (tomorrow!) and I'm signing the fuck up. My fat pants were snug to put on today, and that's just intolerable. I've been fat before, and it makes the second time easier. But getting even fatter than I've ever been, when I've already been pretty fat? No fucking way. NO FUCKING WAY!

I don't even care. I have no life, I can go to the gym every fucking day. All it means is taking a later train home. And I can afford a personal trainer too, to 1) teach me a bunch of fancy-pants exercises and best practices so that I maximize my workout and 2) inspire me to keep a schedule/appointments (harder to blow off the gym when you have an appointment with a trainer).

As for the second thing, I FINALLY bought a book that I've wanted for more than 3 years. It is The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads. It's basically a textbook for all things computer music. Not just MIDI, Digital Audio Workstation, home-music-production stuff. We're talking synthesis, digital signal processing, etc. Hardcore stuff like you'd learn in Bianchi's classes if he was teaching grad students. I already own The Csound Book, a similarly intimidating tome. However I found The Csound Book to be too application specific, though it was fun to work through some of the tutorials.

Anyways, with the new book, I finally plan on pursuing my dream of programming/creating a virtual analog synthesizer in Audio Unit format. This goal is a bit 'rained on' by my discovery the other day (while doing 6+ hours of research) of Rham which is EXACTLY what I wanted to do. My heart is so broken, I was tempted to use a <blink> tag.

But at least I'm not going to be fat anymore.

Oh and Christmas was nice.

Damn right: http://cowbird.110mb.com/46.html.

Also, I, Travis Briggs am going to spammishly (Travis Briggs) pad this post with my name (which happens to be Travis Briggs) in order to attempt to reclaim my #1 Google spot which seems to be oscillating between Travis Briggs (the real Travis Briggs) and some dork with a livejournal. I'm considering making the front page of my site automatically re-direct to http://www.boxofmonocles.com/travis/briggs/travis-briggs

It's nearly 11 and Thanksgiving is pretty much officially over. I'll admit guiltily that I didn't see any part of the televised Macy's parade, for I woke up at around 12:30 PM.

No matter what happens in my life, I'll always remember the fact that my mother is a cooking MACHINE. She had 3 types of pie ready before I had even woken up, not to mention the extra turkey that she cooked yesterday. There were two separate rounds of appetizers, the latter including stuffed mushrooms and baked stuffed shrimp.

It was my niece Hailey's first Thanksgiving, which was a largely uneventful occasion. She was paraded around to some of her father's (my future brother-in-law's) family. During the meal, she sat in her bouncer seat and watched football, making high-pitched cooing noises (at 5 months, she's still far too young to share).

I also did a little bit of impromptu music recording with my uncle Buddy (who's not really my uncle and not really named Buddy). He plays some mean folk/blues guitar, and I let him play Rosie for a bit. Eventually I plugged him into Pro Tools, and he laid down a track (which he unfortunately messed up a bit, but I'm going to maybe try and fix it up).

The day was without pageantry, without poignancy, but still had a lot of old-fashioned, feel-good charm. My family is good people and we do love each other. And I'm thankful for that.

I switched my hosting today from BlueHost over to WestHost. So my hosting has apparently changed color and moved out west. To Arizona it would appear. I opted for the "big 10" package which, for 10 dollars a month for 12 months, gives me 150 GB of storage and 1000 GB of transfer. I will use paltry fractions of this capacity.

The process was pretty painless, thanks in a large part to the excellent import/export database tools in phpMyAdmin. WestHost offers VPS, Virtual Private Server, which allows you to have a virtual machine on a shared host. Because of this, they give you GCC (a popular source code compiler, for the non-programmers) and you can do whatever you want from there. I installed Ruby and Rails from scratch (because I wanted Rails 2.1 for no other reason than it's the most current version), then proceeded to configure my rails app to be the document root via a virtual host, before configuring FastCGI.

Honestly, I didn't really expect any of this information to be of particular interest to anyone. I more wanted to post as a marker for me when I look back, so I can say "Oh, this is where I changed hosts".

My old hosting was supposed to go offline at Midnight, so we're past the point of no return, baby!

I watched Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States last night.

And I must admit, I cried.

It was to be expected, seeing as I cried during the Democratic National Convention (multiple times) and cried after casting my vote on the walk home. I feel so inspired by this man! I am an optimist; I believe that people are inherently good and want to do the right thing. The fact that we might finally be getting away from all of the fear and division of the past 8 years is exciting. The fact that we might be able to help the millions of people around America who are having a difficult time economically or with their health care is uplifting. And the fact that we have a new leader who truly believes in himself and more importantly in us is enough to, quite frankly, make me cry.

Besides, who wouldn't be taken in by that puppy comment. I mean come'on!

The next two things I want to blog about both come directly from things I saw on Facebook.

First, everyone knows that Sarah Palin has mediocre intellect and extremely poor public speaking skills. These facts are made more apparent by her statement that media criticism of her amounts to a violation of her First Amendment rights. We are left to wonder, has she read the First Amendment. It starts with "Congress shall make no law..." (I didn't look it up, but will be mighty embarrassed if I was wrong) and goes on to list a whole bunch of things Congress can't make laws about, like freedom of speech, the press, religion and assembly. I would reallly hope that intellectually mature and especially educated individuals are past the point of thinking that freedom of speech means the right to say whatever one wants whenever and wherever one wants. The governor clearly doesn't know any better. In fact, I would offer that the kind of media criticism she has come under for her 'Obama?=?Terrorist' comments is EXACTLY the discussion of public political figures that the First Amendment was put in place to engender.

Also, there seems to be a problem at Halloween parties this year.

Wired is telling me to ditch my blog. Their argument is that Facebook and Flickr make it easier to do what I'm doing with my blog anyways. Now, I was never on the cutting edge of blogging. I didn't even have my livejournal until my junior year of college, which was 2002...about the middle of the bell curve for blogging 'taking off' and ancient history if I was really trying to be emo about things.

Now I'm not even the top result for "travis briggs" in Google, a statistic I prided myself on forever.

And why should I bother watching the World Series? I love watching the Red Sox, but I loathe watching other teams play. Especially when one of the teams is from the National League, a league that I spend the entire regular season ignoring. I'm simply not familiar with the players....not to mention that Fox coverage of baseball is only slightly above TBS's. Nothing beats the local broadcasters for local coverage of a baseball game.

But I'm probably just bitter because I don't have any friends to go to a bar and watch the game with...

There was a day in August, around the time of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, when I was approached by a man while we were both riding Boston's blue line. At the moment he approached me, I had been casually yet enthusiastically discussing some of the things about the convention- and, of course, Barack Obama's candidacy- that had me particularly excited.

The man had a worn face, and was wearing work clothes - a dirty hoody and scuffed jeans. It was clear he was a hard working man, presumably a member of the 'working class' that I keep hearing about. He approached me courteously yet assertively and asked simply "Do you think Obama can win it?"

I was secretly delighted to have a soapbox thus thrust underneath me. I first answered a resounding "YES!" to the man's leading question. The follow-up was the expected: "Why?" For that answer, I recall briefly and enthusiastically talking about minimum wage and health care, and how Barack Obama not only supports raising the levels of both, but has specific, well thought-out plans for doing so.

I hurriedly left the train at my stop, shaking the man's hand, surrounded by the grunts of approval and some disapproval of the patrons around me. It was an altogether electrifying moment, and it made me think "Yes, I could be a part of politics" and "Yes, I could do canvassing".

Since then I've lost a lot of enthusiasm for the campaign. It seems the television ads and the debates have boiled the Obama campaign, for me, down to a bunch of 'talking points'. And although I can recite many of them, I don't feel passionate about any of them. Obama is still my candidate, and I'm still going to vote for him if at all possible. But I'm not considering joining the Democratic party as much as I was a couple months ago. <sad_face/>

Dear boxoffail,

Thank you for performing an anonymous, unrequested security audit of my personal blog website. I appreciate the obvious thought and effort that went into your test cases/attack scenarios.

In the future, we would appreciate it if you contacted us in advance before performing any such audits. Although we here at boxofmonocles.com consider the security of our website and our customers' private data our highest priority, random, unannounced testing such as this is neither welcome nor helpful. As an esteemed member of the online security community yourself, I'm sure you understand that these sorts of activities, even when conducted in a "white hat" manner, can undermine our own security practices. Furthermore, your queries look strange and confusing to our legitimate users, and may give the false impression that we have been 'spammed' or 'compromised', even when no such breach has occurred.

We will further address this issue in the coming days.

Sincerely,
The boxofmonocles.com Security Team

Internet Trolls....now available in hardcover!

A few days ago the 24-hour mainstream news networks seem to have decided that it was the correct day to discuss the new Jerome Corsi book, The Obama Nation. Presumably, this was prompted by the near laughably warm reception Corsi received from Sean Hannity on his television and radio programs that day. I wonder if Sean Hannity ever realizes that his public persona is a caricature as ridiculous as that of Stephen Colbert.

Anyways, I found out quickly that the book was simply a political attack book, and found out that it had reached New York Times #1 bestseller status within two weeks of its release. At first, I assumed this was simply a sad reflection of the American appetite for sensationalism. But later, I learned that the New York Times was reporting "bulk sales" as a contributor to this apparent success. Without getting out my tinfoil hat, I think it's reasonable to believe that so-called right wing 'think tanks' are buying the book in large numbers simply to inflate the best-seller numbers. People are then susceptible to statements such as "...according to the #1 bestseller", and may confuse notability with creditability.

Obama has released his lengthy criticism, Unfit For Publication, in PDF format. Good for him. After Abigail let me read her copy of Al Franken's now-slightly-dated Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them), I realized what wimps the Democrats had been for letting people like Corsi and Hannity get away with their hateful attack politics. I'm glad to see that Obama won't necessarily stand for this kind of crap.

Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article for this book isn't fairing particularly well. When I first visited it last week, it seemed like an evenhanded discussion of the book's content, as well as some well cited criticism of its allegations. I was particularly impressed by the talk page where, although disputes had arisen, they had been discussed and resolved in a civilized manner. But now, not even a week later, the article is under protection because of edit warring. And the talk page is an unapproachable mess of the same tired allegations, over and over again, along with an alphabet soup of Wikipedia policy appeals (WP:RS, WP:BLP, WP:SOAP, etc...). I'm starting to believe that some people simply have an agenda, and aren't particularly interested in creating a neutral, accurate, freely-accessible reference work.

Anyone interested in an unbiased treatment of the subject is likely to be disappointed. And maybe that's the point. Maybe that's Corsi's real objective in publishing a book like this. An Orwellian attempt not to create debate, but to destroy it in a trivial shouting match of allegations. Corsi has stated that "voters can make up their own minds." I can't help but wonder if Corsi hopes that the electorate will do so in lieu of seeking out researched and established facts.

Someone needs to invent a simple word/phrase that means "wow, this is my first blog post in a while..."

Anyways: I left Pawtucket, RI at about 9 AM EDT Friday morning, and journeyed to beautiful Chicago, Illinois. The trip was hellish; the combination of layovers, delays and 'missed flights' (apparently you can't arrive at 11:20 for a 12:05 flight) caused me to arrive at Chicago Midway at 9 PM CDT.

Despite that, my trip has been absolutely awesome. I've been staying with my friend Sarah, and I've managed to attend a Red Sox game, which they won 6-2, and go to the top of the Hancock Building/Tower/Center (I'm not sure which is the official name...). It actually kind of creeped me out that there is a giant Hancock building in both Boston and Chicago.

Tonight I went to a couple of blues clubs that were in walking distance from Sarah's apartment. I had an amazing time. One cover charge grants you admission to both clubs on Sunday, which was completely serendipitous from my point of view. I met a few bona-fide blues musicians who were hanging out at the clubs on their off days (aka non-performing-days), as well as a couple from Kentucky and a couple from the UK. None of which would have been at all worthwhile if the music had not been absolutely wonderful! Seriously better than anything I've heard in Boston, and I've gone to some authentic blues clubs/nights in Boston.

One thing that sort of caught me by surprise this trip was finding out that I had happened to arrive exactly in time for Terminus, a Harry Potter convention that I had first learned about on 07/20/07 while wandering around what had become "Hogwart's Square". I was discussing my fandom with some folks when I was given a promotional pin and an invitation to invite. "Yikes," I thought, "A Harry Potter convention, and more than a year away. I can't imagine I'll be attending." And I was right, I only actually heard about the conference again through a local news station I happened to be watching, and then only after it had, ahem, terminated.

All in all, my trip was fun and exciting, and probably exactly what I needed to help me climb out of the 'funk' that I've been in the past couple weeks. Thanks again to Sarah, who was a gracious and welcoming host.

Looks like moveon.org is giving out free Obama stickers, no strings attached:
https://pol.moveon.org/obamastickers/

Well, with my imminent unemployment, my resume has found its way back into the luminiferous aether of the Interwebs. Since it contains a link to this here website, I imagine that any number of recruiters, hiring managers, regular managers, engineers, ex-engineers and various other assortments of motley folk will soon be casually browsing my blog. Hello to all of you!

In an attempt to seem more amicable, or at the very least hirable, this time I will be forgoing the posting of an inflammatory rant. I'll also hold off on posting the tantalizing new shots of Paris Hilton exposing herself that I've recently obtained.

Instead, I post a GRAND CHALLENGE:
To all those who are reading this blog simply to get a gist of my hire-ability, I challenge you to reveal yourself! Click the 'Add a comment' button below and participate in the discussion.

Who knows? Maybe we'll become friends. Maybe you'll become totally addicted to my blog and find yourself at 3 AM visiting boxofmonocles to get your "Travis Is A Poopyhead" fix. There's only one way to find out...

I remember reading this Washington Post article last year around the time I became interested in busking. It was, in fact, an inspiration for me. Of course, the larger inspiration was hanging out with Hunter and his busking friends, which lead me to believe that busking is something that relatively normal people do.

It's getting to be that time of the year again. The temperature is in the 70s and it's sunny. Of course, I'll have plenty of time to busk after May 23rd, which is when my contract with Brightcove is up (I found out earlier in the week that they won't be renewing it due to budget constraints).

I don't know how, in my internet meanderings, I came across this quiz site, but MAN is it lame. Just thought I'd share. My favorite up there so far is wat bitch, followed closely by do boyzz think ur hot or a dork. If only 13 year olds reigned over the entire web...

Of course this site still has nothing on the worst website of all time (which my co-workers insist is walthampizza.com), but which we all know is, of course, www.fanfiction.net. If you have some time to kill, why not casually peruse their selection of 8,745 Power Rangers stories, or waste your life away reading the entire collection of over 352,000 Harry Potter fics.

Oh God, did I just say "fics"?

So as I was waking up this parody popped into my brain, fully formed

You better watch out

You better not cry

You better not cross

I'm telling you why


Santa Claus is driving around

He's makin' a turn

Signal's not on

Give him 4 seconds and

Find that he's gone

Santa Claus is driving around

He sees you from his Bentley

He doesn't even wave

He bought it with money from selling the gifts

Of the kids who misbehaved

You better watch out

Better stop quick

Santa has never learned to drive stick

Santa Claus is driving around

I've started a new blog. Here's a quick FAQ.


Q. Why did you start a new blog?
A. I wanted to do a blog with my friend Sheila. She used to write articles in college, but she hasn't written too much lately. The fact that we're 'buddy-blogging' will help motivate both of us to keep posting

Q. Won't the output of THIS blog suffer?
A. Probably. But I'll be posting music files here, once I get my home studio set up again

Q. Okay, so what's the new blog?
A. It's called Hip Devil and it's located at http://hipdevil.blogspot.com

Posts about exponential growth....no wonder no one reads this nonsense!


Anyways, I made a quick 4 question Harry Potter quiz to stump my sister. It's limited to Goblet of Fire (book 4). Good luck!


http://www.quizyourfriends.com/quizpage.php?quizname=071208231748-397814&

I was just trying to 'waste some time' on Facebook and found that the signal to noise ratio has gotten REALLY bad. Facebook has, in my opinion, finally outgrown the "wow! what the heck is this neat new thing?" phase and is now firmly in a phase more like "what? what the heck is this thing in the way of me doing what I've always done". It has jumped the shark. Gmail, I'm looking at you, because you're getting dangerously close to this.

Anyone who has ever been taken in by a "and then THEY tell two friends" type pyramid scheme knows how exciting exponential change can be. But quite honestly, it doesn't really fit into your head. Or at least it doesn't fit into mine. In my mind, all change is linear. You come back 21 days later, there should not be millions of comments. When I look at all the crap on people's facebook profiles, and think about how long it would take me to understand, never mind APPRECIATE that nonsense, my brain simply shuts down and I freeze up faster than my new phone.

Speaking of which, Sprint charged me 57 dollars to replace my phone with a (presumably) refurbished model that was identical. They left me with the same battery and the same phone number. The new phone works fine while it works, but it does tend to freeze up sometimes.

My phone broke in half this morning. The top flip part detached from the bottom flip part and the wire is ripped in half.

I don't know what I'm going to do, and I'm a bit panicked. I'm still not getting paid till like the 17th, so I can't afford a new anything right now, nevermind a new phone.

If you can't get ahold of me, know that I'm not ignoring you. And I'm also going to need your phone number again if I want to call you

Sigh,
-Travis

I'm writing you this letter to inform you that <PORN SITE NAME CENSORED> was found on my child's iFruit computer this afternoon.

As you are well aware Sec. 117 of <US CODE> specifies that it is illegal to market, attempt to market, think about <PORN SITE NAME CENSORED> in the state of Maryland. And you can't do it in DC either.

I read in <NEWSPAPER NAME CENSORED> Ask Alice column yesterday that <PORN SITE NAME CENSORED> was censored by <a href="http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Bill_gates">Bill Gates</a> (brought to you by MICROSOFT) automatically by CyberNanny ME. Or was it XP.

Anyways, I would sincerely appreciate you reversing the charges for <PORN SITE NAME CENSORED> on my husband's credit card.

Sincerely,
<EX-WIFE NAME CENSORED>

PS. Ask Alice also told me that the XBOX 360• sites "gunk up the memorey (RAM)" more than the adult websites. But that might just be a myth propogated by Microsoft

PPS. Don't be Evil. Or at least have fun.

At some point you stop feeling bad for all the kids who don't get to celebrate Halloween, and you start enjoying Halloween.

If you've ever seen the Home Movies Halloween special, you know what I'm talking about.

Melody, my little sister, today said "Hahaha, keep laughing at your own jokes". And I thought "That's what I have a blog for".

Discuss.

When I thought of the scariest thing that I could dress up as for Halloween, I instantly got discouraged. How do you dress as Cancer?

Maybe I could go as Breast Cancer. For 49 dollars at Super Stop and Shop, I could get 49 of those pink ribbons and tape them to myself. October is breast cancer awareness month after all.

Or maybe I could go as CantAffordTheRent...Again. I could be the sheriff in Roger and Me who comes and actually takes your shit out of your house and puts it on the sidewalk. Or I could be the woman in that film who is raising cats for food. Spooooky!

How do you dress up as MinimumWage? Or his scarier uncle MinimumWageForTheRestOfYourLife.

Or maybe I could dress up as Police have documented cases of madmen randomly distributing poisoned goodies to the little tykes who come calling on Halloween. But people would get mad when they realize I just as easily could have dressed up as Bigfoot or the Gyroball (Hint: none of them exist).

This Halloween I'm going to dress up as TheGhostOfHalloweenPast. I'm going to dress up half as that cherished memory from your childhood, and half the realization that you'll never be that happy again.

At least no one's ever accused me of not having an imagination.

Roses are red
Violets are, too
Wait no they're not
Who invited you?

---

if you stand close to an airplane
you might not fly
but at least your eardrums will be shattered
by the powerful jet engine

---

dreams are like puppies
they're cute when they're young
but eventually they grow up
they're less cute
they're bigger
they eat more
...
I never had a puppy as a child

---

Camels are brown
Violets are, of course, violet
Zoos are fun
But what's the point?

---

If being depressed is like being In Jail
Then I'd like to believe I'm 'Just Visiting'

This is an open letter of apology to anyone who read my previous blog post and was offended.

Although I'm no newcomer to blogging, I'm still struggling to find a middle ground between "say whatever the bleep you want" and "be sensitive, people are listening".

So fuck fuck fuck, I can say whatever I want. Whoopdee-poo hoo-ray la la la. The dumb part is that I'm writing naughty things about myself on my own bathroom wall.

Smoking is the opposite of talking to yourself. The former can safely be done in large open places where there's not anything or anyone (living) around. The safest way to talk to yourself, meanwhile, is in a dark room, preferably owned by yourself or your family. You should be under covers. The curtains should be drawn. Sometimes it's fun to cry and pretend people care.

The sad thing about talking to yourself is that it's a great way to think about things. Especially if you're "talking" to say a book (they communicate via flashlight). Or an iPod/Gameboy (Duh, the light's built in). Or maybe you're "talking to yourself" into a phone that got disconnected (ad campaign) or whatever.

Maybe you're just sitting on the fucking Blue Line having good ideas (talking to yourself) about what clever technologies you can apply to your shitty blog that no one reads.

The awkward stares are hard. What's worse is the questions.

What's much worse is coming to the realization that the CleverAd you're staring at that claims Hey-Wanna-Work-In-Software-We've-Got-Cool-Stuff-You-Can-Think-About-All-Day is for a company that builds shitty blogs that no one wants to read. Or more likely bank software. (How the fuck does anyone convince creative people to work on bank software nowadays? )

Actually maybe it's worse when you realize that the candidate that you're "secretly" Googling just wrote you what he (hoped) was a CleverWay to tell you Fuck-Off-Stop-Reading-My-Blog. Sorry for the profanity, but it's the goddamn cloak-and-dagger 'secret' part that pisses me off. I've got a blog. You're reading it. Let's both be adults and realize that it's okay. I also have sex and it's awesome.

Duh.

I was on an impromptu vacation starting August 30th. Sorry if I didn't answer your calls or emails. But I'm back now (I've actually been back for a number of days) and I'm ready to live in the real world again.

Except for the fact that I left my job at Brightcove. Did I mention that? Apparently I got it in my head that I was a 'professional musician' and I didn't need my day job. Can you spot the error in that logic? I can, with three words: source of income.

So now I'm looking for another job. Wish me luck.

I bought my guitar. It's a Creation acoustic/electric with a rose-patterned body. It's flashy and great sounding and spectacular and I couldn't be more happy with it.

I spent yesterday busking, first in the Embarcadero center subway stop, and later on the Embarcadero itself. I eventually made my way to Fisherman's Wharf (the Fanueil Hall of SF), where I met another busker named Adam. He was playing with amplification and singing in Chinese. Very cool. The two of us and his friend Stu hung out for the rest of the evening.

I just bought a fedora. I'm going to drive back to SF now and try to find somewhere in GG park to go busking. Wish me luck!

Okay, every city (person) has a dark side. Have I already seen San Francisco's?

I'll freely admit that I'm completely naive about crime. In all my time living in Worcester, a place where many of my friends experienced crime first hand (home invasion and mugging), nothing bad or sinister or even simply illegal happened to me. Nothing traumatizing enough to make me fear crime.

But I'm naive-not-stupid (compare with Google: rich-not-stupid). I'm in a new city. I don't know really know where I am, I don't really know how to get back to my hotel. It's 2:15 in the morning. What's a boy to do?

Nothing. I mean, I couldn't find any good clean fun. Plenty of people offered me drugs and prostitution, and one guy was even creepier (offered to 'help me if I could help him'; I gave him a buck to go away)

Okay, SF, I've seen your dark side. I'm waiting for 6:21 AM (PST) and then I'll be back to see your sunny side. (pun intended).

I arrived in San Francisco yesterday and made the trip to Silicon Valley (turns out it is an actual, semi-well-defined place; ie I bought a Map of It) during rush hour. That clearly was an iffy choice, as the traffic was the equivalent of I-93 in Boston (on a good day) the entire time.

I'm in Mountain View now, it's almost tomorrow (midnight). Of course, to my body, it's already tomorrow; it's 2 AM EST. I can't deny that I'm jet lagged, yet the concierge at my hotel (the fabulous Hotel Avante; the room has a Rubik's cube!) just informed me that bars/clubs in San Francisco stay open until 6 AM....and some until 3PM the next day!! Now, quite frankly, I don't really like clubbing. Which is why I'm sitting here blogging about this information instead of driving up Route 101N right this moment. But as a hacker, I love freedom. And the freedom to stay up till 6 AM, if I so choose, is momentously refreshing.

Also, the weather today was fantastic. Sunny, 70.

When you go to Craigslist, the default view is SF. When you hit Google Earth, they suggest SF as a place to search. To anyone but a hacker-nerd-geek, these would seem contrivances. But to me, it's philosophically refreshing to be in the default namespace for once...

...It's also not a pipe.....(sorry)

There are very few areas of human endeavor in which achievement is based more on talent than hard work. Child acting, I would say, is one of them. So is Gymnastics. In those fields, you really have to be 'born with it'. For child acting, you're a kid: you don't have time to study, work hard, gain experience, etc. You just have to have a knack for acting, and be lucky enough to have that knack manifest itself before you start growing hair in awkward places. With gymnastics, you need to realize that it's what you want to do early, while your body is still nimble and flexible and you can then train it to grow in a certain way. One also needs to have enough talent to sustain one's focus, so that the craft is fun and rewarding and never full of drudgeries.

By contrast, with almost everything else in the world that human beings aspire to be good at success is more dependent on hard work than 'raw talent' or 'intrinsic ability' or whatever. The main areas that I want to highlight that fall into this category are: Computer Programming; Music; (which are my two main passions) and.....Professional Baseball.

Of course there are tools out there that can....ahem....'enhance' your 'performance' in certain areas. Like a good text editor, or a debugger. Or a guitar pick or amplifier.

Is using these devices 'cheating'? Or to put it more broadly, is it unfair competition? It depends on how the competition is set up; what it's rules (both explicit and implicit) are. If one believes debuggers to be immoral then using them would definitely be cheating: at the least, cheating yourself. If there is a code of ethics in your field and you use a tool that violates that code, then you are undoubtedly a cheater.

There's an upside and a downside to believing the premise of this post (which, by the way, is this: hard work is more important than talent in achieving your goals). The upside? You can achieve anything you want if you're willing to put in enough hard work. The downside? To achieve something you want, you have to put in enough hard work.

Here's a video of me playing a song I wrote with the title of the same name as this post.

Enjoy!

Brightcove:

YouTube:

I honestly can't believe it was that easy to make a podcast! Not that I couldn't have (ahem) done it myself using Ruby on Rails...(To get to it, click the 'Get Podcast' button in the widget directly below the song module on the main page)

I fricken' love storymaker. How much does it cost? Would a regular shmoe like me be able to afford his own account (and not have to use the demo account that Brightcove gave me since I work there)? Even if I have no way of monetizing my content but just want to share with friends and family?

Looking at the storymaker website, my instinctive answer to my questions is no (since you have to talk to customer engagement to get a free trial, that screams $$$$ to me). I spend ~100 dollars a year on my shared hosting, so I would only be willing to pay maybe another 25-50/year for the mp3 player project in storymaker. But don't quote me on that.

Speaking of my costs to run this website, I might be adding AdWords soon...not because I need the money (or even expect them to make money) but more to get a feel for how the integration works.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I work for Brightcove, who bought Storymaker (which up until then was its own company) maybe a year and a half ago

I'm in this week's Weekly Dig, a local free magazine. If I were to quote the article, it would look something like this:

Thompson, Barry. "exit polls". Weekly Dig. p50.

    Volume 9, Issue 30; July 25-August 1 2007.

It's interesting, because Barry didn't tell me that he was a reporter for the dig. He just said "Can I interview you and take your picture".

Same in the end
Same in the end
If you're told different
It's a liar...
...or a friend

Harry Potter. My blog is a spoiler free zone. By even SAYING that, I'm afraid that someone will post something in the comments. I actually left a showing of The Princess Bride at the Somerville Theatre (during ArtBeast 2007, an arts festival in Davis Square) because I was worried about spoilers.

So I spoiled it for myself. It was the only true way to take power away from those who would spoil it for me

That's right, I read the end of the book. The last chapter. Well, I more skimmed it than anything, so I'll still reserve the pleasure of reading it at a later date.

But honestly, I'm not going to let something as trivial as Harry Potter control my life, even a small portion of it.

Life or Death: Same in the end!

I have my secret thing with the secret company tomorrow. It's barely a secret, actually, since my boss already knows. I'm pretty nervous, but I definitely intend to post a full review here afterwards, if only because I know it will increase my page views.... :)

In other news, only about a half dozen people have downloaded my songs off of here. This is unsurprising, but still a bit disappointing. The original point of putting them up here was so that I would be inspired to compose/record more, because I would have an outlet for my creative output. Well for the first couple weeks that I had the songs up, that was definitely true. But nowadays, I've seemed to have a built-in creative drive, where I'm composing and recording almost every day with no thought to posting any of it. And that's a fantastic feeling!

I've always considered myself 'Liberal' in political views.

However, I just read the following footnote on page 18 of The Monk and the Philosopher (which is a very interesting book and deserves its own post):

'Liberalism' means in Europe almost the opposite of what it means in America. Thinkers considered liberal in Europe are John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.

Damn! That's always what I've thought I meant when I've said I'm liberal. That I believe in, you know, Liberty. Freedom. That we have free will. That our government has been established to protect our Freedom and never to take it away.

But I guess that means I can't be 'socially' liberal at the same time? Because that would entail big government and lots of social programs, which would be against the ideals of Smith and Locke?

ARGGH, I wish I had taken a BASIC polisci course in college. It's times like these when I feel just woefully undereducated.

I hate the federal government, but I love America. That's the way I truly feel. I love the American people, I love the ideals of freedom and liberty on which we were founded. I hate unchecked Capitalism and privatization of public lands and resources. I love the fact that we have a highway system, a post system, the internet, and clean running water almost everywhere. I hate the fact that we don't have health care, that social security is bankrupt, that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

I hate George W. Bush. He's a fucking asshole; and absolute idiot and a clueless anti-leader. Him and his cronies are quite literally ruining America. But as this article from LiveScience points out, presidential power has been growing for decades, and George W. Bush is only the latest manifestation of an Executive Branch that is out of control.

As Jefferson pointed out "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes" (Declaration of Independence). So whatever is wrong with America, it would not be prudent to throw the whole Grand Experiment out the window. However, we must not let our leaders (Bush in particular, also the Supreme Court) trample on the traditions and precedents that have made our country great.

So like I said, I hate the federal government.

But I fucking LOVE America.

Happy Independence Day! Fuck the Brits! :)

The first line of the Tao Te Ching, roughly translated, is "The Tao that can be known is not the true Tao". I struggled a lot with that last night, but the following paragraphs, ripped wholesale from Stan Rosenthal's introduction to his Tao Teh Ching 'translation', helped a great deal.

Consider a thing such as a strawberry. If we wish to find the word 'strawberry', we look in a dictionary; if we wish to find a description of a strawberry, we look in an encyclopaedia. But if we are hungry, we do not go to the library, but to the field where fine strawberries may be found. If we do not know where there is such a field, we might seek guidance as to where fine strawberries may be found. A book on the Tao is like such a guide.

It can point us in the direction of the strawberry patch, but cannot provide the fruit itself. It can give an idea of the taste of Tao, but of itself, has no taste to compare with direct experience of the Tao.

Consider now three things: There is the universal principle which enables all things to be, and to flourish naturally; there is the name 'Tao', by which that universal principle is known; and there are words which describe the manifestations of the Tao.

Pretty hefty title for a blog post.

I was talking to my roommate Frank today about all sorts of different things, and I came to two conclusions, which I will now share:

1. I really want to go to Wikimania 2007. Unfortunately, "Wikimania 2007, the third annual international Wikimedia conference, will be held August 3-5 in Taipei, Taiwan at Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center (CTOYAC)."
2. If you want to make the world a better place, first focus on 'your corner' of the world. This doesn't mean you should be selfish and only do things to benefit yourself. But maybe that wouldn't hurt, either. If you think of karma as the doctrine "Whatever good or bad you do in the world is reflected in yourself" then the corollary is "Whatever good or bad you do to yourself is reflected in the world". Also, focussing on 'your corner' means not forcing yourself to act or forcing yourself upon a situation. This doesn't mean being lazy! It's simply taoism, 'going with the flow'. Leave your mind open to helping situations that you are familiar with, and when the appropriate time comes to act you will recognize it and benefit all involved.

I agree with Socrates, who stated:

"My opinion is more or less this: no wise man believes that anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any base or evil act; they know very well that every base or evil action is committed involuntarily."

So really, I'm once and for all rejecting the Puritan work ethic. My belief is that an effective strategy for doing good works and therefore 'making the world a better place' is to "do what you can, with what you have, where you are." (Theodore Roosevelt).

I created an app on Facebook using their API. It's called 'Wishes'. It was inspired largely by the 'cheer' idea that I'm using for songs on this site.

Anyways, the way it works is that each user makes a 'wish' that gets added to their profile (as well as the global wish board). Then, other users 'cheer' the wish to help it come true.

If you think that sounds cool, or if you think it sounds really lame....well give it a try: http://apps.facebook.com/makewishes/

The only real purpose of this entry is to pop up in your RSS reader and get you to come to my site and see my new Song Display Module (tm).

Holy SHIT it is so sweet. It put my CSS and javascript/AJAX skills to the absolute limit, and took a good 9 hours straight of coding. But it's here, and it works.

Also, if you hadn't noticed, you can "Cheer" songs if you like them. Yes, it's a ripoff of Digg...whatever at least you don't have to register.

To download the songs, simply click the title or the image. Wooooooooot!

Okay, so it's not really finished. What I'm working on now is a way to link blog entries to songs, so that I can talk about songs I upload, and so that songs can have their own display page that displays the full title and info about the song. But I think what I have now is a great start!

So last night I excitedly uploaded a bunch of new code to this here website.

But it didn't work.

In a frenzy, I quickly tried to delete the post where I had been flaunting my new features. But too late, it had already been picked up by my facebook notes, and cached by Google Reader.

Anyways, I HAD tested my changes in my local environment, and everything had worked fine. But whatever, I'm not bitter. Apologies to anyone who read the 'Mr. Mustard' post and got their hopes up. I'm looking at re-implementing the file upload capacity with "acts_as_attachment" (a rails plugin) instead of using "file_column" (another rails plugin). And this time, I have set up a mechanism to test that everything works before the feature goes on the front page.

I've decided to link my blog to facebook. Previously, I had resisted this, because I thought it would be the equivalent of spamming facebook. But it seems that nowadays facebook is doing a pretty good job of spamming itself, so whatever.

I'm also going to start posting songs on my blog here, in their own special section. Once I roll out that feature, I anticipate that I'll be aggressively promoting my blog, much more than I do now. So get ready!

I still think it's a good idea, but I'm not sure my choice of topic was a good one. I just don't think I'm interested enough in Harry Potter to write a five paragraph essay on him. Especially one with such a narrow topic. I tried writing an outline, but all I could come up with was "Harry's not an asshole just like most people aren't assholes. He had some rough spots growing up, but who doesn't? As Dumbledore puts it in OOTP, 'You were not a papmpered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances.'"

Actually, I think it's more of a convenient plot device than anything that Harry grew up with the Dursleys. The story is told largely from his point-of-view, and thus the reader gets the pleasure of 'discovering' the magical world along with Harry. It's the same wonderful feeling you get when you watch The Matrix for the first time.

On a completely unrelated note, I REALLY think that <i> and <b> and their kind should be re-introduced into HTML, simply for the fact that in online sites which allow 'some HTML' in profiles and comments, they will rarely allow for <span>s. And for good reason.

I've moved into my new apartment, with an amazing amount of help from Paul. For something that I got at the very last minute, it turns out to be a really nice place. Two roommates, and they both seem pretty chill. Only real downside so far is that I have to mooch wireless, since we don't actually have an Internet connection ourselves. But whatever.

Yes, this post is useless. It's just to let people who may/may not care know that I'm okay, since the last time they may/may not have talked to me I may or may not have been very upset about not having an apartment. It's kind of a 'closure' post, so that I can 'get on with it' and post something interesting/creative without feeling bad.

PS: I was thinking about linking Paul's name to his blog, but I realized that he doesn't really publicize it much, so it wouldn't be polite. But I encourage you, if you know Paul, to ask him for the link!

My love of blogging and my hatred of copyright laws, I believe, stem from my innate irrational fear that I am fundamentally incapable of original thought.

Holy shit.....I don't think I can even write anything more after that...I'll just gleefully link to my old favorite website and my new favorite website.

This will be my last post from Amsterdam. Perhaps the less astute readers (readers? Hah!) will notice that it is also the first. Hopefully we can gloss over this unfortunate fact. There's something about the....let's call it the áir....in Amsterdam that makes you just want to wander around and really do nothing at all. Also, the computer I'm at has this sick coin slot that wirelessly broadcasts the fact that you have added coins to a computer locked under the desk. I wonder if the guy who owns the bar, or maybe a friend of his, built it from scratch. Anyways, we'll chalk it up to the fact that this was more of an exploratory journey, and that I will be returning to Amsterdam sometime in the future, with big ideas for a Google my map.

I had a very sad dream the other night that my sister wanted to tell me something but then chickened out at the last minute. It made me think about my relationship with my parents and my family and feel a little sad about the fact that I'm not closer. In fact, if they are reading this, it will be their first clue that I'm in Amsterdam at all. The trip was booked partially as a "Fuck it, I don't need to ask my parents' permission to go to another country. I'm 22 years old and I can book the flight and hotel myself" kind of experience.

And then last night, I dreamt about a teacher I had in high school that I wasn't particularly fond of. It was the second day of class, and our assignment had something to do with baking in various shapes. I had gotten very angry with her, because she had assigned the first chapter of our vocabulary book which was filled with nothing but shameless self promotion for the previous book in the series. Questions were something like "What would you say you have learned so far from our vocabulary book series?" and then a multiple choice response with presumably only one correct answer.

Of course, everyone says this, but it makes me really consider and appreciate the importance of good teachers at both the secondary and post-secondary level. And I definitely think that WPI has some damn decent ones. I mean the teacher has to sort through maybe a hundred years of kruft that has accumulated around their given subject, and somehow condense it into a 50 minute lecture that is relevant to students of today. I definitely see myself teaching someday, though probably not until after I've retired.

You know, I think that even if no one is reading (And obviously there's some really skeetchy geeky MIT girl who is...), it is important to write down one's thoughts each day. Keep the old brain working, and make sure that you manage to actually have some thoughts. I'm really going to try to post to the blog everyday, and hopefully post musical ideas every couple days or so. AND, I've decided to try and write a five paragraph essay each week on a subject of my choosing. This week's topic is: "Given his miserable and abused upbringing, explain why Harry Potter isn't more of an asshole."

Also, the teacher that I was thinking of in High School reminds me a lot of Professor Snape. And my piano teacher's surname is Snape, so as I've told him previously, he has a lot riding on whether or not Snape turns out to be a good guy or a bad guy in the 7th book. Though I hear that Rowling has said she is going to kill off Harry Potter so that people can't write him after she's gone. Cool idea.

If a blog gets posted in a forest and no one is around to read it...does it really exist? I suppose there is some statistic I could read to see how many visitors I actually have. But it would be tainted, because a long time ago I realized that I had become a target for spammers. So all of my visits are actually spam bots trying to post their viagra and porn ads.

Quite honestly, that is REALLY depressing...

I thought about it tonight, and I realize that I have an RPG driven view of life. Like, I'm supposed to be somehow 'levelling up' my stats in various skill areas. And generally, in my life, the thought that I wasn't doing so would drive me nuts. I think the major stats are things like "musical ability", "worldliness", "general knowledge", and "contributions to Wikipedia". Subconsciously, I'm pretty sure I've included in these such stats as "Decadence" and "Risk Taking", though I feel like in the last couple summers I may have maxed these out.

I have finally come to the sad realization that these 'stats' are illusory at best. Life plods on, day by day. You can't stop it, you can't change it...so what are you going to do? Minute changes from day to day hardly have a chance of adding up over time...

Actually, today I was contacted by a recruiter at Google and I was very excited at the chance to send her my resume. Seems like they are aggressively hiring at Youtube, and seeking to poach some young Brightcove talent. Seeing as I am the first result for "Travis Briggs", I guess I should start being more careful about what I post on my blog? But honestly, in light of the ideals of 'free speech', 'net neutrality' and general open-ness, I can't really bring myself to censor my posts or color my ideas based on the fact that I want a job at Google.

It's fundamentally wrong to me. And I think that's okay.

Daddy's swimmin in the ocean
Mommy's hangin on the beach
Sister's standin with a boyfriend
Everybody's out of reach

The prime minister is boring
And the president is lame
Now I'm looking out my window
Everybody looks the same

Take a monkey to the office
Put a bunny in a box
Eat an apple in the morning
Make some money selling stocks

When there's purple in the sunset
And there's laughter in the rain
Go and climb the highest mountain
You and I are both insane

--Me

This post is awesomely vulgar, but very, very funny. Please don't think less of me for sharing:

A Playlist For Life's "Special" Moments

If you know why this is funny, then I am proud to have you as a friend of mine, sir (or madam):
http://digg.com/tech_news/unfortunate_placement_of_yahoo_ad

So I've been reading digg alot. Please tell me you've heard of it. It's the cool 'social' nerd news site. Basically, thousands of people submit stories/links from around the Internet. Then, supposedly, everyone 'diggs' the stories that they find most interesting, and those make it to the front page. In reality, it's like 20 people that have no lives constantly digging everything. Anyways. I've found that I can't read Slashdot anymore. I don't know why. I think it's because digg is just so lovably populist/trashy. Slashdot is Time magazine to digg's People. It's junk news for nerds. Slashdot will run stories like "DRM chip embedded inside of Xbox 360 revealed", while digg is like "XBox pukes at Wii's birthday party (PICTURES!!)".

Anyways, I've been trying for a long time to come up with the best stereotypical, all-encompassing, prototype, guaranteed-to-be-hall-of-fame digg article title. Here are some that I've come up with, feel free (please!?) leave your ideas in the comments.

• iPod controlled by Wii interface
• Scientists: Ubuntu is a product of evolution
• Steve Jobs pissing on a PS3 (PIC)
• 37 ways to get an article on digg
• KDE 4 with CygJiis2, FraNET, XXGL 1.5.7a download
• 88 new AWESOME bittorrent sites
• How digg is totally rigged

I don't know. None of them are the #1 uber headline that I thought I could come up with. How about YOU (3D animation of finger coming out of computer screen)??

You know, I really don't appreciate the assault on the Catholic Church in modern times. When you think about it, it's really not in humankind's best interests to disparage or weaken the institution. The Catholic Church has been the front line of defense against all manners of the supernatural and occult for thousands of years. If the Pope goes down, and I get bitten by a freakin' werewolf, I'm coming for YOU, Amanda Marcotte

Speaking of which, I had a dream last night that there existed a charismatic young left-wing senator who wasn't afraid to speak pragmatically about the issues. Politics are a lot like comic books. Everybody has got this huge back story, which becomes largely unimportant for the purposes of a single episodic installment. For the people who follow it, they've got their favorites and...dis-favorites for one reason or another. "Oh HIM? Don't you know he voted against NAN-OPA in '88?" It's tough for the casual fan not to feel intimidated in this environment, which is probably why we like the so-called 'fresh faces' of Edwards and Obama (can YOU spot who's got the cooler video page?). Politics even has its super villains.

It's currently 8 AM and I've been up for the past 3 hours. I couldn't sleep because of the burning pain in my leg. My injury was sustained Monday night in a full-speed, flying attempt to prevent a flying disc from being caught by some guy in Milford. Said guy did, in fact, catch the disc...much to my dismay. I tried to bandage it yesterday, but the wound sticks to the bandage and causes all kinds of pain (not to mention preventing it from healing).

Pictures coming soon!

Also....did I really just write a blog entry about the disgusting festering wound on my leg? Whatever. Maybe it's the first part in the series on "How my leg got amputated".

So I've been really spiffing things up around here. The latest addition is the RSS feed. It's interesting to add an RSS feed, because on the one hand it lets people know when I've updated the site, and even see the post, as soon as I post it. So it makes it easier for people to read the site. But on the other hand, it kind of makes it so that people only view when there's an update. Oh who am I kdding, see #NobodyReadsThisSite.

Anyways, I've also added the 'see all' view of the blog, to compliment the front page which only shows the latest 5 entries. There have been a great number of behind the scenes tidying and fixing, most of which nobody should really notice but which make me feel good about myself and the site.

But of course the coolest thing is the DHTML to add a comment. Go ahead, click the 'add a comment' link....I dare ya!

I've cleaned up this website a bit. The major change is that the main page now uses <div>s instead of <table>s to layout the content. Although this seems like a meaningless change, and you can probably not tell any difference (assuming there's anyone out there; 'ECHO! echo...echo...echo...') (on second thought, I know Emily is there because she left a cute comment about being my online stalker).

I've also gotten rid of all the mumbo-jumbo on the comments page which didn't work anyways.

I also replaced the weird quote that has been up for a while. In the interest of editorial impartiality, I had left it up....and hoped that someone would come through and replace it. Well since all of you slackers couldn't pull it off, I was left to replace it myself.

Anyways, the biggest changes are yet to come! Look out!

I think the reason I could never work at Google or Apple is that I don't have the self esteem for it. I simply don't believe I'm good enough. It's the same reason that the really pretty girls never get talked to by anyone. Out of my league. But that doesn't stop google from getting 1,300 résumés per day.

Everyone says, of course, that if you want to change, the first thing you have to change about yourself is your attitude. I think it's bull. How can I change my attitude? Simply 'thinking happy thoughts' isn't going to cut it here.

I feel like I'm 'squeaking by' at my job. I think I spend half of my time fixing mistakes that I made. I really wish I had a sweet website with all kinds of cool features and information. Instead I have this monstrosity. Actually, I bet my website doesn't appreciate me talking about it like that...

So why not? I think the real answer is 'why'? Here's a rehash of past crap, but the fact is that I don't really feel inspired to create a better website. I'm the only one who cares. I mean, I fixed it when it was going to spam bot hell, but that's about it. I'll mow the grass, but who would I be planting the flowers for?

And THAT'S why I could never work at Google. Because I don't capital L-O-V-E love programming the way that I 'should'. I can do it, and I don't mind doing it. I even enjoy it at times. But I don't love it enough to slog through the quirks of CSS to make an ultimatic website.

Of course, no one likes posts like this. They don't make anyone feel good, they don't accomplish anything. They're like the personal ads on craigslist "I'm lonely, please be my friend". Who wants any of THAT.

My life has really settled down in the past few weeks. In general, I've got a good job, a good roommate, a good place to live, a good girlfriend. Everything is....well....good. And yet I feel like I'm missing something. Some spark. Some driving force to motivate me.

I can't remember if I used to be more interested in the world around me, or if it was always just schoolwork that solely held my interest. I think it was the latter.

I really like programming computers, and I'm so lucky that it's my job. I'd like to do it more in my spare time, but I haven't found an interesting project to work on. Like Reel Big Fish said, "Everything I want to do it's already been done/why would I wanna go and do it again?"

I just wish I had some project that would keep me up late into the night. Something where time would fly by rather than me counting minutes until it's time to go to bed.

This isn't groundbreaking, or particularly insightful, but I've realized that the CD reviews on amazon.com are absolute junk. The book reviews are generally balanced, with people offering criticisms and giving insight into why they liked or disliked the book. But the CD reviews are just a handful of fanboys (and girls) gushing about how this CD by their favorite band is their favorite and it makes them do their favorite dance every time they put it into their favorite CD player.

I suppose people consume music/CDs fundamentally differently than books and movies. With the latter, you go through it once, give your opinion, and if you really liked it you might revisit it again some day in the future. CDs that we like, on the other hand, have the potential to get integrated into our entire routine. My favorite CDs, I listen to some of them multiple times a week at work.

This isn't a call to action, like "Everyone quick, go review CDs you don't really care about on Amazon!". If anyone knows of a site that reviews CDs more evenly (professionally?) than amazon.com, that would be cool.

You know that your startup is getting big when you no longer know everybody's name. You know your startup is getting HUGE when it's written about in the AP (and thus thousands of local and national papers around the world) and USA Today.

Brightcove has just launched the next generation of our video publishing tools, and they're awesome. You can now go to www.brightcove.com and search for videos. But the really cool thing is that you can sign-up, and publish videos for free! Here's an example:

All you need is the Video Downloader plugin for Firefox, to start grabbing content from Youtube or Google Video. Once you have the stuff (.FLV format preferred) you can easily upload it to Brightcove and get a video player like the one above, which you can post on a blog or a MySpace.

So yeah, Brightcove rules!!

With all the marvelous things in heaven and on the Earth, you'd think I'd have something to blog about. Politics? Current affairs? Religion? Science? The Arts?

Just look at all the stuff they find to put into the newspaper each day, and yet I've got nothing to say on my blog. As we speak, I'm writing a post about nothing, about a total and utter lack of content. This post is completely useless, void of all meaning and worth.

I'm going to the Big D And The Kids Table concert tonight at the Axis. Although I had heard of Big D since high school, for some reason I only bought an album by them this week. They're really good, and I would say truthfully that I've been really missing out all these years. Also, they're playing with The Toasters, of whom I do own a single album.

Here's a quote from Mark Twain:

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.

I'll say again why I think blogs (and even livejournals) are so awesome. Yes, anyone can sign up and have a blog. Which is, of course, both the good side and the bad side. Even though people might have nothing to say, at least they're saying it. At least they're overcoming their shyness and literally putting themselves out there. So I think that blogs are a counterpoint to Twain's quote.

On the other hand, there's the news of the new Republican TV spot. Here's the transcript:

"Hey! HEY! Terrorists are bad, m'kay? And they want to KILL YOU. That's right. YOU. And your pets! Osama Bin Laden wants to blow up Scruffy!

Vote Republican. Fuck yea!"

I'm not a Democrat....but man shit like this pisses me off. Let's get those brains working, people, prove Mr. Twain wrong and not fall for this kind of fear-mongering bullshit!

I've gotten creative lately, recording the following three songs:

Mad World by Tears for Fears, made famous recently by the Gary Jules cover on the Donnie Darko soundtrack
Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band made famous recently by the Will Ferrell and company cover on the Anchorman soundtrack.

and...
and...

An original song. That I wrote. My original words and music. Okay, so the music sucks, and so does the arrangement. I know this. The song is really all about the lyrics, honestly:
Support Our Troops by Travis Briggs

I'm amazing.

Okay, I'm not trying to brag. But I did code this website from scratch. I used my knowledge of Ruby on Rails, and managed to hook up a blog that works. It's got a comment system that works. It's even got a nifty Quote of the Moment feature.

So yeah, everyone's got a blog nowadays. And most of them have more interesting things to say than me. That's fine. I'm not expecting to get slashdotted. The real point I'm trying to make here is that not everyone can code a website, even one as modest as this. So I should be proud of myself! Bam!

Okay, so I never mustered the motivation to actually code a new blog website. Laziness? Sure. Lack of Motivation? Absolutely.

But deep down, I think the main reason is a large, blinking question etched on the back of my eyelids: What's the point? Everyone has a blog, and if I really wanted mine to look swanky I should just use Typo (which is a ready made blog software like the one I was trying to write). Now it's definitely true that by writing my own software, I get a chance to make my site unique. But again, what's the point? Nobody reads my blog. The only real point is to have somewhere where I can post my rantings and then give my friends a URL instead of long email CCd to 5 people.

And for that purpose, what I currently have works just fine.

I've updated my blog software (read: added one character [a '0']) and now every post I've written should be here. I'll add a better indexing mechanism soon, promise!

PS: Ruby on Rails makes it easy to TAKE IT SLOW

Okay, so this rain is probably going to extend into tomorrow. Sucks.

Still, BUDA is planning their 16th annual good cause tournament. The cause is Bikes Not Bombs. They're a local (Roxbury) non-profit that recycles old bicycles to help provide alternate transportation (and thus reduce our energy dependencies). They also do youth outreach, with after-school programs where kids learn to be bike mechanics. In addition to all that, they also are globally minded, sending bikes overseas to less fortunate folk who need them.

I've already raised around 150 bucks in the past two days! Most of it has been from my generous co-workers, but I made $13.30 by singing on the street with my guitar. I had a sign that read "Sing 4 Change! Today's cause: BIKES NOT BOMBS".

Also, check out the new t-shirt in my shop!

Ok, the next time a representative from the CULTURE OF FEAR™ gives you shit about the Bird Flu, tell them about this:
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=47451]

Also, there are FAR more important pandemics (correct word?) in the world, people!

Peace!

New cut

I've noticed that this blog hasn't been terribly collaborative. I seem to be the only person posting comments and articles. To rememdy that, here's a link to post your own entries:

Post a blog entry on MY blog

This is SUPER TRIPPY:

I apologize for use of a <blink> tag

Lawrence Lessig to speak at [wp WikiMania 2006]! Thank fuck I'm going!!

That as soon as I get my new [wp Nintendo DS], I also get a giant [wp projector] screen. There seems to be a contrast here. As well, I believe the purchases reveal much about my socioeconomic standing as well as lifestyle choices and aestethic preferences.

I hope to develop a mark-up language, [wp SHITAML], which will turn the previous text into links into Wikipedia. Hash table of working links, baby!

Is there a tag on wikipedia to provide metadata about which pages are redirect/disambig?

Also, why is the first post on my blog in a long while about technology, and more specifically, hi tech toys? Do these mean more to me than people? What are my fucking priorities? And why doesn't my blog have an RSS feed.

All will soon be revealed...

My Google notebook is public!!

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/04564427275814027200/BDR03SwoQ76iX0r8h

Note, that is the way I swear on party poker. I also use fnck, NI66AZ!

The following is my post on Video Game Voters, a great site intended to rally support against video game regulation.

For the past decade, we have been endlessly reminded by politicians and pundits alike that we live in a 'digital age' of groundbreaking technological innovation. Today, interactive media has reached a point where it can convey characters, storylines, and messagaes as convincing and engrossingly as a great film. Morris Sheppard Arnold, writing for the Eighth Circuit, sees "no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in video games are not entitled [to first ammendment protection]" In this time of creative and commercial progress, Congress has the duty to ensure that the video game industry remains free and open, not encumbered with 'nanny state' legislation.

Not particularly interesting, but this headline just seemed to stick out at me and make me grin:

Bears eat monkey, visitors shocked

Japanese Gmail User Frustrated By SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writer TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese internet user Auta Udiodude reported being frustrated on Thursday when he was unable to register for Gmail using his prefered username.

"I was all ready to use the exciting new webmail service," said Udiodude, through a translator, "But it seems that someone had already registered my name!"

After receiving an email invitation from a friend, Udiodude was excited about trying out many of Gmail's popular features, including conversation view and email tagging. He was upset when it turned out that he could not register with his given name. Udiodude has contacted Google, who refused to reveal the owner of the name and stated that they have no policy for claiming rights to a username.

For now, Aya Udiodude has registered for Gmail with the name DrSexMachine@gmail.com, which he reports is a common nickname used by his friends and coworkers.

Researchers at the State University of New York in Binghamton have announced a method for fingerprinting digital cameras. I think this is interesting and important. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know that forensic scientists currently do this with analog cameras, or furthermore that it was until now impossible with digital cameras.

Also...does this entry (and the previous) mean that I'm updating this blog again? Pftt, who knows?

Seriously, how likely is it that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon? Or more specifically, how likely would they be able to do it without us knowing about it?

I mean, I'm getting a LOT of FUD from the media, with the kind of non-facts worthy of a wikipedia article (things like 'Many believe that Iran wishes to develop nuclear weaponary" and "Some nations, including the US, are worried that Iran may be attempting to develop nuclear weapons").

Doesn't it take MUCH more than enriched uranium to build a nuke? I mean, first of all there's the equipment. That enrichment facility probably doesn't double as a high-precision munitions factory, does it? Second of all there's the know-how. I mean, the machines I just mentioned aren't going to calibrate themselves. How many scientists are there in the world capable of supporting a nuclear weapons program? Doesn't the CIA know all of their names and favorite ice cream flavors?

Let me know if you have the straight dope, because I'm interested

So, there was apparently a bug in my blog software that I wrote, which erroneously recognized everyone who visited my blog as an administrator (more specifically, as me).

Some cruel-hearted individual took advantage of this and deleted almost all of my blog entries.

I am extremely disheartened by this action. Luckily, I was able to recover many of my posts from the cache on Google. I will probably re-add them when I get the chance. Unfortunately, my more recent posts have been lost forever.

Well, live and learn I guess. As Eric Mill pointed out, I should never actually DELETE posts from the database, I should simply mark them as 'inactive' or something. Either way, this has hurt my morale, and really discouraged further work on this blog, at least for now.

Chevy is running a 'make your own' commercial contest for their gas-guzzling Tahoe. Man, as if they didn't see this one coming. On the other hand, that is some pretty nifty flash technology to allow people to make their own short movies like that. Wouldn't mind seeing other applications of such a concept.

Here's some more.

I'm going to buy a bike, so that I can commute to work that way. It'll be good for my health, besides just being a chance to get outdoors and see the city. Having a bike will be fun, because I'll be able to make trips to Davis and Porter and Medford squares without alot of fuss. And visiting Eric Mill will be simpler, too. Also, I'm sure that I'll be taken to random explorations of the city. It seems like a worthy goal to try to be able to navigate the city you live in above ground.

Also, I signed up for Zipcar today, kind of on a whim, but also because one of my co-workers said that he has a bike that I can have if I can come pick it up. Of course, he also said that it's pretty busted up and needs a lot of work. So what I'll probably end up doing is just getting a bike from Bikes Not Bombs, which seems like an excessively awesome community organization. And I'll probably also go pick up the bike that my co-worker offered and donate it to them, too. It's an exciting idea to have a zipcar membership, to know that I will soon have the power to travel "off the [T] lines" at a whim.

Because I don't see any comments to my most recent entries. No one has even tried to edit the quote at the top of the page!

<pout>

Anyways I had lunch today at Al's State Street Cafe with Eric Mill, and it was an experience. I was a bit intimidated by the yelling and the fast pace, but I supposed they get the job done. They sold me a 'large' sub, which turned out to be 16 honkin inches. I felt like a pig.

Tonight is the Spinning Hardcore finale at The Tribe. I was personally invited to come out by some of my colleagues in D-Lab, and I figure it will be a good time. I went to Sea Mission last week, and it was great. Hung out with people afterwards at the Tam and had an overall wonderful time. My favorite part about being at the Tam was going to the bar and asking the bartender, "Can I have a cheap beer, please". It was 2 bucks, and I have no idea what it was called, but it didn't taste like piss so it was fine with me.

Comment, folks, comment!

So this is my first entry using my new custom blog software that I wrote. Hope it's awesome!