2006 March - Justinsomnia

Wikipodia? Encyclopodia? (Wikipedia on your iPod) #

Wow:

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Loving Helio Sequence’s song Let it fall apart #

Yikes! Matt Mullenweg: We’ll be passing a million tables in a day or two, so I’ll let you know how it goes. (emphasis added) #

Something is happening in Kenya: Media shutdown in Kenya — TV station, newspaper torched more on wikinews: Kenyan TV and newspaper raided by masked police #

Another kickass PD front page headline: BUSH WAS WARNED
#

Neat: C&D post on Digg #

Scary UNC news: Jeep crashes through the Pit #

Will Farrell in a serious movie? Winter Passing #

Hell yeah! Natalie Portman Gangsta Rap #

Quote of the day on Guantanamo: Any message given, that any state can just override some of the basic habeas corpus-type provisions, is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the world, now and in the future Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams #

Ooo, but this is a good quote too: Mr Buffett also said his board was prepared to oust him should the need arise “from my decay, particularly if this decay is accompanied by my delusionally thinking that I am reaching new peaks of managerial brilliance”. #

Word of the day: Fundie #

Photo of the day: I Know H.T.M.L. #

Neat: WordPress on a USB memory stick #

Cool thing: Railbikes #

Etech vicariously: Scaling Fast and Cheap – How We Built Flickr

One big lesson learned about database scalability is that 3rd normal form tends to cause performance problems in large database. Denormalizing data can give huge performance wins.

To read: Caring for Your Introvert and Introverts of the World, Unite! (via Kottke) #

How easy it was for Osama bin Laden to turn the America into a totalitarian, fundamentalist regime:

Exhibit A) GOP senators propose NSA spying bill: Measure would codify, oversee no-warrant surveillance program

Exhibit B) State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion

How many lives will be ruined before this tyranny is reversed? #

New thing I learned: Placenta Recipes (thanks Stephanie!) #

New culinary technique: sous vide (French for “under vacuum”) #

Must try! this is what happens when you put Mentos in Diet Coke #

Rock! classic modern chairs as tattoos #

Flickr photo of the day: The right to bear arms (for reals!) #

On Google’s acquisition of Writely: Google wants to build the “Just Enough Office” because that’s really want the people want. #

Photo of the day: Yoda fountain at ILM #

Robin on white crunk #

Heh! Love this title: Itty Bitty Titty Committee #

Hella cool advertising, for a strip club, in Paris #

This is pretty cool: Super Grip with Plasti Dip #

Hmm. Sex, wives and religion: HBO tries polygamy

This is why I don’t need television. I can read the news (via the web) and stay totally up to date. #

Fuck this pointless, pointless war.

The picture of [Ali Shalal Qaissi] standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became an indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib. “I never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way,” he said, as he sat in an office in Amman. That said, he is now a prisoner advocate who clearly understands the power of the image: It appears on his business card.

Chapel Hillian Ben MacNeil (of the Trixie Update) launches his baby-rific Trixie Tracker #

To look at later: Simon Willison’s ETech JavaScript tutorial #

hehe, from the Onion: Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness #

Damn: Dave Winer Kicks Rogers Cadenhead in the nuts (What a wanker! Dave that is.) #

To look into later: reblog #

Interesting, but will it scale? Distributed BoingBoing, for those blocked by censorware #

I need to play more with Photoshop: Fake tilt-shift photography #

Shelley Powers on RSS 2.0:

What we’ve done to the natural ecology of our area is what’s been happening with RSS 2.0 in the last few years: we’ve all been compensating for a specification that is, frankly, ill. If there had been no such compensation, it would have died out, almost from the moment of its birth.

I found this useful, especially the text flow diagram: WordPress Text Flow vs. Markdown (I wonder how WP 2.x compares) #

Invention I think my dad would find cool: Spray Well Bottle #

Interesting portraits: Americans Who Tell the Truth (via Sally Greene) #

I went to a casserole party tonight.

Yes, I know, I thought they didn’t exist either, but Leona was deadset upon bringing them back. This first round involved a lot of cheese. Next round I suggested be a whitetrash casserole party, where one of the primary ingredients of every dish has to be some sort of processed junk food. We may want to pick up this cookbook for reference. #

I still love Achewood: Man, fuck those guys! The hell they’re gonna say how this Fight is won! BRING ON THE JEEPS GOD DAMN YOU! (but you’re gonna have to jump all the way back to January 25 to get what the heck is going on…it’s worth it though) #

Wikipedia article of the day Church of the SubGenius (how is it even possible that I’d never heard about this?!) #

This is so cool: Cruise Ship Line Art in Adobe Illustrator #

Ex-Gay Watch, which also received a cease-and-desist letter from Liberty Counsel for republishing my parody, had the Los Angeles-based law firm of Irell & Manella send Liberty a response letter on their behalf today as well. Here’s a choice bit:

“Just as the ex-gay movement often uses weak science in support of its agenda, so Exodus is using weak law to curtail Mr. Airhart’s freedom of speech.

Interesting, an online poll (containing a few factual errors that I left a comment about) asking the question: Do you agree with Exodus Ministry’s intellectual property claim or with Justin Watt’s free speech defense?

So far I’m winning. Ha! #

Oh, I’m happy the Trixie Update is back: It’s all the process — just being able to zone out and grind a crayon into oblivion for an afternoon. #

I just did a quick on-camera interview this morning with the folks at Santa Rosa TV50 (KFTY). Does anyone have a way to digitally record that channel tonight at 7 and 10pm?

ACLU Defending Sebastopol Blogger’s Parody Of Anti-Gay Website #

Don’t hate me because I don’t believe in your Judeo-Christian god: Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority #

Yeehaw, the story made USA Today: Christian group backs off case against blog parody #

My first fan site! Justinsomnia Sucks Let the cult of personality begin! #

File this under: Token Braille for seeing people.
#

How to capture a screenshot with Windows Media Player: press CTRL+i during playback (and I thought Print Screen not working was Microsoft’s weak attempt to plug the a-hole) #

How Matthew feels: Construction workers used jackhammers on my head while they tried to fill the space with cement. #

Justin Watt, aka the hetero hero for our homosexual brothers and sisters everywhere #

It’s official. I have blown up the internets: Justin Watt and ACLU win parody case on Boing Boing. And on Suicide Girls: It’s Legal to Parody Uptight Assholes #

He’s your vice president: Dick “All Televisions tuned to FOX News” Cheney #

The universe is telling me: pay attention to the church of the subgenius #

Oh shit: Pre-Pixelated clothing I love the cap. #

Tricky research: insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial. #

For the record, my name is Justin Watt (not Watts), but this morning I made the New York Times! Both Sides in Parody Dispute Agree on a Term: Unhappy (page C7 in the print version, which includes a screenshot of my blog displaying the parody) #

Check out Leona’s crazy awesome pictures of the Sutro Baths in SF:

WordPress plugin to consider… Autorelated plug-in

If you use WordPress and insert an absolute link from one of your posts to another post on the same weblog you’ll find that a “pingback” is generated and will appear in the comments of the post to which you linked. In my opinion these links are ugly and are not the right way to automatically group together interrelated content on the same site (intrasite links are most definitely not “comments”).

Gettting the death penalty is the new black: Rather than rotting in a jail, [Zacarias Moussaoui] might consider the ultimate martyrdom to be being put to death by the American infidels #

As several people know, this is exactly my favorite laptopping position: dadmade horizontable #

Time to write a blog post about mesothelioma, an uncommon cancer related to asbestos exposure. #

My Exodus billboard parody winds its way around The Netherlands: Straight? Unhappy? Gay.nl! #

Mesmerizing indeed: Watching half of Nicole Richie, and her panties, blink in and out of existence (priceless) #

Whoa: In ESPN.com’s 2006 Men’s College Basketball Tournament Challenge, Pleasant had one of the four entries among three million with U.C.L.A., Louisiana State, Florida and George Mason in the Final Four. #

This is cute: Sam [Ruby] Destroys the Internets #

Aww shit, this is just my kind of protest tshirt: Drop Shadows Not Bombs
#

DIY-licious: fractal chandelier #

From the looks of it, Robin and family visited San Francisco…
#

I’m not sure I want to continue reading this article: Up With Grups #

Ohmigod, check out their menu: SHOPSIN’S #

Wikipedia article of the day: Fixing Broken Windows #

WTF I say, WTF: Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston #

Clearly this book needs to be on my reading list: Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement

(thanks Dawn and her mom!) #

URL of the day: www.72hours.org #

Hmm, synchronicity: Google, technology, and Ghana what’s not to like? #

Oh my god, this is so the cutest thing evar! Love ‘n’ Hate Mittens

Neat-o! Someone had the smart idea to put my Santa Rosa KFTY TV50 news segment on YouTube #

I wish there was a way I could get a print copy of the Orlando Weekly. This column contains one of the best (and snarkiest) journalistic writeups of the whole affair to date.

Watt’s reaction was “visceral.” No, he’s not gay (though he did go hiking with his sister … hmmm). He’s just the kind of guy who thinks intolerance should be answered.

hehe: “Golden Showers” Make a Fitting Tribute to a Long & Happy Marriage #

In the Bay Area Reporter:

Blogger wins round against Exodus
by Robert Akers

Last September, I was reading some blogs and stumbled upon the post that included the image,” said Watt, who is not gay. “I wanted to respond, but I wanted to do so in a way that communicated why I was offended, not just that I was. The inspiration to parody the billboard occurred to me almost immediately

This link is nipple free: Bust Doctor #

A more, ahem, blatant parody: