Archive for April, 2009

On Gay Marriage

Just read an article on how Miss California has launched a campaign to protect “traditional marriage“.  It makes me laugh a little.  Are people so naive that they actually believe that gay marriage is not destined to be accepted in just a few years time? The parallels to other moments in American history couldn’t be clearer if it were outlined in Sharpie.  Within a decade (two if we foolishly put a fundamentalist in the White House… God Forbid), gay marriage will be seen as no different than interracial marriage.  I think back to how our country, not so long ago, felt that alcohol was so bad that we banned in our constitution.  We Americans are so short sighted.  In time, we’ll look back and laugh at ourselves for this even being an issue.

Furthermore, let’s be serious, why does gay marriage bother anyone anyway? It doesn’t infringe upon any of your rights. It’s truly a case of “this doesn’t affect me, but I insist you don’t do it.”  It’s holier-than-thou nonsense.   The fact that these so-called protectors of traditional marriage feel strongly perplexes me: Burt Bacarach is still right: “what the world needs now is love, sweet love.”  Those lyrics don’t work when you replace “love” with “exclusionary dogma”.

You don’t have to advocate homosexuality to “be okay” with not limiting marriage via law or constitutional amendment.  Legislating hate and discrimination is the most un-American thing we can do.   We’ll all look back at Miss California the way we look back at people like James Earl Ray, who felt they would be seen as martyrs and voices of reason, but instead just look like fools.

I’m not anti-Chritianity (or any religion at all, for that matter) but – boy, oh boy – those fundies do a good job at making themselves look foolish.

…And We’re Back!

Small Axe Hosting firsttube.com is now live on our new server, proudly hosted by smallaxesolutions.com. Yes, I’m now running my own hosting (shameless plug: I can host you for cheap, including installation of WordPress) and I have migrated all of my domains over. That means my old host will be offline in a few days, once I’m sure DNS has fully replicated.

So far, I’m hosting about 5 domains with another one potentially in the pipe. I’m giving everyone cPanel access, which means MySQL, phpMyAdmin, mailboxes, forwarders, Fantastico, and much more. You shouldn’t have to do anything: your feeds should remain intact and you should see no interruption of service.

iPhone OS 3.0 to include “Jibbler” voice control

Slashgear, and many other sites, are today posting a story about “Jibbler,” the alleged code-name of the voice control subsystem present in iPhone OS 3.0.  If this is the case, let me gently and professionally say “HALLE-FRICKIN-LUJAH!”

It’s about time the most amazing and groundbreaking mobile device ever had a proper hands-free solution.

Susan Boyle

As spectacular as she is, I think I’ve heard enough about Susan Boyle for a little while.

Has Lost Lost You?

Many people are complaining about Lost’s wacky twists this season, many with good reason.  In order to prepare for their big reveals, it’s time for them to start telling the real story, and much of it deals with time travel, which is always a sticky subject, given that its entirely science fiction.  But it’s tough, because we have all envisioned a perfect mystery, and it’s likely that some things won’t make sense.   I’m still on board, I’m still hooked.

Here are some things I feel I can predict in the storyline of Lost, and some things that are standing out.

  1. I think the “Incident,” we all can guess, has to do with the bomb called Jughead.  I suspect it has some sort of detonation or radiation leak.
  2. I think that Pierre Chang will instruct his wife and child to leave the island because he knows that the Incident is coming, possibly because Daniel tells him so.  I think it would even cooler if Miles told Chang to clear them out, for obvious reasons.  Then Miles would have spent his whole life hating his father for doing what he would eventually tell him to do.
  3. I think it’s possible that Miles’ mother’s cancer is directory related to Jughead and the Incident.
  4. I  use to think that the Swan’s layers of concrete were to encase Jughead.  Sayid said the only time he’d seen that much concrete was at Chernobyl.  But the construction of the Swan in 1977 reveals that the bomb has found another home for at least 20-something years.  Now I think that again, because I think there’s a trick here: the “Hostiles” were the ones who had the bomb in the 50’s.  Perhaps Horace and Chang know the bomb is out there and intend to steal it and encase it at the Swan, evacuating the radiation every 108 minutes.  I’m still foggy on this, but obviously, whatever the Swan’s original purpose is must be explained shortly.
  5. I am a little disappointed at how underwhelming the Dharma Initiative is turning out to be.  They were initially described as a team of elite scientists.  Instead, we’re treated to a slew of janitors, cooks, blue collar workers.  Is it possible that only Dr. Chang and Horace know what the heck is going on? Even the Dharma people themselves are unaware? That makes the DI no better than any old cult, which is a letdown.  They were doing high level experiments.  Who is conducting all the research? If the hatches aren’t all constructed yet, when will those experiments begin, because we all know that the Purge is coming, and it has to be before that.
  6. It seems unreasonable and irresponsible for the Dharma Initiative to brand everything.  That seems like a colossal waste of both time and money.  And why jumpsuits? Who is going to see them? Why not just t-shirts?
  7. We had better see a connection with the DeGroots and Alvar Hanso or I will be one pissed off dude.
  8. I think we will see the following things and events explained, and in the following order: the Hatch, the Incident, the Purge, the Statue, the Dharma Initiative, Jacob, the Island.  The numbers have been revealed to be the Valenzetti Equasion variables.  We will never  get an answer to some minor things, but I suspect all major plot points will be explained.  Included in eventual reveals, I predict: Annie, Ellie == Eloise?, Adam and Eve, the smoke monster, the blast door map, Alvar and Magnus Hanso, and where the eff Bernard and Rose have been.  I think it’s possible they may never explain why Walt is “special,” but I bet we learn why Desmond is.
  9. I believe in artistic license.  So unlike some friends of mine (wink wink, E) I don’t mind minor mess ups that don’t really affect the greater plot.  There are some weird Rousseau things: in one season, she said the others were nothing but whispers, but certainly, she saw and spoke to Ben.  Okay, so they hadn’t fleshed it all out in season 1.  But I suspect they know where they are going with the big reveals.

Just a few thoughts.  If you’ve got some, feel free to chime in.

The Wobbly World of Corporate Tweeting

Update: Please see the bottom of this post for the latest.

I am feeling spurned.  I used to follow my local news station, Central Florida News 13, on Twitter.  A few days ago, I realized that I wasn’t seeing their tweets anymore.  Anyone who knows Twitter knows that its performance has been a huge pile of suck lately, so I figured it was one of those Twitter bugs.  I went to their page and it was full of garbage: pages and pages of the same nonsense message.  Had they been hacked? Caught that Twitter worm?I tried to follow them about 5 times, but it wouldn’t let me.  Broken Twitter.  Nothing new.

Today I saw that they had posted a new update because someone re-tweeted it.  So I navigated over to their page and found that they had protected their updates.  I hit the button to  request to follow them, only to be greeted with the following:

Blocked!

What the eff? They blocked me? Why? Why would they block me?

So let me ask: in what case does it make sense for a corporation or business to block a normal user.  I must say, I am pretty upset, upset enough that I am seriously thinking that I won’t be watching channel 13, which I normally watch almost every single day, anymore. If they will single me out as someone who can no longer enjoy their service, why would I be a patron in front of my TV?

This is probably trivial and I should ignore it, but instead, I’m going to blog my new-found hatred for Central Florida News 13 and their Twitter team. Boooooooo!

Bitch, Please!

So, knowing that doing so has lost them a viewer, does that make the world of Twitter a little scarier? Would people stop listening to a band, watching an actor, reading an author, if they expressed a feeling or idea with which the reader didn’t agree? Would companies feel that Twitter is safe ground knowing that tweeting the wrong thing or blocking a user could result in loss of business or audience?

Update, 4/20/09: Turns out it was – unsurprisingly – a Twitter error. I got a DM and a tweet from them, and they followed me. I can’t understand why Twitter can’t seem to get their crap together. You KNOW they aren’t getting as much traffic as Facebook. With $55 million+ in the bank, you’d think they could build the right infrastructure.

It’s Not a Spoiler, Bub

I think once something airs on TV, it’s no longer a spoiler.  It’s just what happened.

It’s courtesy to wait a bit for the West Coast, but if they’re bright enough, they’ll know to tread cautiously online until they’ve watched something big.  I’m thinking Lost, House, ER finale, etc.

I think it’s fair to wait until a movie is available on DVD for a bit before assuming everyone who wants to watch it has. I think it’s proper to say “Spoiler Alert” when talking about a movie twist.

I think twist endings in books should always be properly notated.  Books don’t generally have must-see-it-now appeal, so it’s always a potential spoiler.

It’s unfair to force people to not discuss something fun and current, like “last night’s Lost,” simply because you were too tired to watch it.  Yes, it will ruin the surprise.  If it’s important to you, either watch it or remove yourself from the conversation.

It’s not a spoiler once it aired. It’s just what happened.

Damn It, Twitter!

FAIL WHALE

All goddamned day I’ve been getting this goddamned whale on Twitter. I’ve also been trying to change the background of my stream, but although it always reports successful (when it doesn’t fail due to capacity problems), it never changes. It either replaces my background with nothing, or it uses the background I had three or four changes ago. God damn it, Twitter, get your goddamned act together!