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The Idablow fiasco

Monday, August 27th, 2007

The American political system is good and truely fucked - no wonder with all these cum-drenched, closet-case, power-bottoms in office! Yet another anti-gay, pro-hate senator got out busted trying to suck dick in a public restroom. This time the perp is Senator Larry Craig of Idaho who was busted for soliciting sex from a male undercover officer in the mens bathroom in a Minnesota airport while on layover. They always say the biggest homophobes suck the best cock, but who knew it gets you into office as well!

Senator Larry Craig: big flaming buttclown

Slog points us to the fact that our beloved dick-slurping Larry Craig has a great record of voting with his constituency and not with his dick. Larry has voted as follows:

  1. Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
  2. Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
  3. Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
  4. Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
  5. Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

Larry’s excuse is a classic - he claims “At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct”. Catagorical denial in the face of the following police testemony:

“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again….

At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot…. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

I agree with Dan Savage on this one - how do you misconstrue playing footsie with a stranger in a public mens room? I guess it could be worse: his colleague Senator Bob Allen managed to conjure up “I got intimidated by a black guy” when he got busted for offering an undercover policeman $20 and a blowjob not a scant month ago.

Great job Larry. Hat’s off and pants on to you! P.s. Larry - you look a touch like one of those creepy 2nd uncle child molesters - you should really have an image consultant work with you on that.

Loving and hating list style

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

Things I love right now:

Things I’m not so hot on right now:

I can’t wait for another weekend. I need to get healthy again and catch up - my backpack is growing out of control! I’m thinking of doing a The Lord of the Rings marathon on Saturday so I can get rested up, then plan on making Sunday an ultra-productive wonder day!

Of Backpack and information collection

Monday, August 6th, 2007

Yesterday I was introduced to Backpackit and Ta-Da Lists, two fabulous web based information collection and management tools. Ta-Da Lists is the most simple of simple web based task/list management solution, but implemented with a clean and sensible design. Backpack picks up where Ta-Da lists leaves off and offers a full blown web based information capture, search, and management solution.

Backpacks genius lies in its simple interface to import email, notes, lists, and documents and allow the user to organize them into meaningful groups and pages. Entering information can be done through the AJAX powered web interface, or emailed to unique email addresses per page you create.

For the mildly OCD and scatterbrained professional like me it’s a perfect information dump solution. Previously I had accomplished this task with a mixture of desktop search technologies (Spotlight and Windows Desktop Search) and text files. Backpack allows for the capture of my stream of consciousness and later triage and sort information into tasks, savable bits, and ideas.

A web based solution is the perfect answer to my multi-computer, multi-platform lifestyle - all of the power of text files on OS X, OneNote on Windows, and accessible from any browser at the drop of a hat. Each page also has a unique email address making it possible to send notes and todo’s from any email capable device for quick entry on the go.

Backpack tops off it’s powerful information management technology with a well implemented developer API, SMS or email based reminders, and basic calendaring and calendar sharing functionality. I’m hooked on the Exchange/Outlook calendaring solution at work, but were I not chained to the evil empire the calendar looks well enough implemented to live out of.

Ta-Da Lists is likely enough for most people, and is entirely free. Ta-Da offers a maximum of 10 concurrent lists, and a very slick iPhone specific interface for those iPhone owners dying for a task/list solution. Backpack is very iPhone friendly, but lacks an iPhone specific interface which does make it slightly less useful on the iPhone, but Backpack’s power-user interface and abilities to go beyond simple lists into key-worded pages full of lists, notes, images, documents, and emails makes it an easy sell.

Backpack offers a free version which is likely sufficent enough for most users, but for a small monthly fee they will increase the number of pages you can create as well as increase the amount of storage available for you.

Check it out - it’s free for basic use and if you manage information anything like I do you will be instantly hooked.

YouTube on the AppleTV and the iPhone

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

YouTube logoI’m never was a terribly heavy YouTube user but now that it’s both always in my pocket and on the nice Audio/Video system at home I find myself filling a spare moment here and there with random videos. Most of these videos fall into one of four categories - cute, funny, cute and funny, or the largest category: paper-thin mid-to-post teens producing mostly random and meaningless content. I’m not entirely sure if the world is a better place having been subjected to the last category but I’d rather have crappy user created content be king than populate an internet based on censorship where such drivel isn’t permitted.

Content gamut aside one of the things that has struck me as odd over my past week of using my iPhone is how differently implemented the YouTube application is on my iPhone versus my AppleTV. They both allow for the browsing of a partial selection of the YouTube library streamed directly from the internet, but they both have some features the other lacks. Here is a breakdown of client-specific features that have puzzled me:

AppleTV:

iPhone:

All in all I think YouTube was a great addition to both product offerings, but I’m puzzled as to the disparity in the feature lists. I will be interested to see if future software updates for both platforms bring their feature sets closer together. Google’s “cloud of data” and Apple’s experience in creating engaging and intuitive user interfaces making for a market juggernaut that will be hard to beat.

A bump in the wire

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

I just had my million dollar idea and I’m all but giving it away in an effort to make the web safer - just give cut if you make your fortune on it. While plugging in a network cable I realized that the cable itself needs to be smarter and able to help filter and protect its user from network attacks.

For a long time software firewalls on computers have been problematic for many reasons. While they can be helpful in keeping malware and hackers out of a computer once something has breeched the firewall in even the tiniest of ways it’s possible to disable or subvert a software firewall to enable further attacks or malicious use of the machine. This is the reason most businesses put their trust in hardware firewalls - a hardware solution is much more difficult to remotely disable and can do a much better job of filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic.

While businesses with IT professionals can manage and maintain a hardware firewall with little muss or fuss it’s often beyond the average consumer. Many consumer grade routers offer firewalls and in addition offer a level of security by putting users behind NAT (Network Address Translation) which helps mask them from the Internet as a whole. These routers help, but not everyone has a router at home, and even a router can be tricky to set up.

What is needed is a smart network cable with a simple built in firewall. Imagine a cable with a “bump in the wire” which contained a small embedded OS which performed simple firewall and content filtering duties. It of course would be difficult to offer an enterprise grade solution from something this simple, but even the most basic filtering would make helping secure a computer as easy as plugging it into the wall. Because the cable would offer a hardware solution it would be far easier to not only prevent incoming attack vectors, but also if the attached computer does become compromised common outgoing ports used by malware could be blocked.

To take this kind of solution to the next level the cable could be offered as a managed service. The bump would be automatically updated by a server side component which could manage ports for their users and adapt the firewalls rules to new malware that has been identified in the wild.

Simple and transparent to the user, and yet another layer of security in this wild west we call the Internet. Am I a genius for coming up with such a simple but effective idea, or is the idea flawed in some way that’s escaping my exhausted mental state right now?

I are smart

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

To my sister Janet,

Sorry to say but the New York Times reports that I’m likely smarter than you (login required for link). From the article:

The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order.

Family Influence The average difference in I.Q. was slight — three points higher in the eldest child than in the closest sibling — but significant, the researchers said. And they said the results made it clear that it was due to family dynamics, not to biological factors like prenatal environment.

Researchers have long had evidence that firstborns tended to be more dutiful and cautious than their siblings, and some previous studies found significant I.Q. differences.

Family dynamics or no I’ll just take it as gospel that I’m smarter because I came first ;)

Love,

Sparky

Skype is feeling much better & Erica is still heartless

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

I’m pleased to announce that Skype is feeling quite well today. Last night was a little rocky with getting him comfortable and sleeping soundly, but today he’s pretty much back to normal. He’s fairly low key which is good - our veterinarian says he should take it easy for the next five days.

Skype is drinking tons of water (which is good), but it involves a larger than normal number of walks. Since I have to keep him low energy they have to be short so I’m feeling a little like I did the first week I brought him home when I had to take him outside once every couple of hours day or night.

On the topic of dogs one of The Strangers writers is obviously an insensitive and heartless soul: Erica Barnett posted a rude commentary on this story in the Seattle Times about an act of unbridled kindness.

From the Seattle Times story:

The fundraiser for Rhonda at a Fremont tavern netted about $2,300 for Dave DiStefano, who said he was overwhelmed by the generosity of those who were moved by his dog’s plight.

“It was an amazing night,” said DiStefano, whose dog is now in a Lynnwood animal hospital recovering from major esophagus surgery after she ate some brittle bones. “I figured I’d get $1,000 if I was lucky. I didn’t have any crazy fantasy, but this little piece is really nice and will take the edge off things.”

DiStefano racked up $15,000 in medical bills for his dog’s surgery.

Erica’s commentary basically boils down to: if you have the money to spend on charity do it on something other than ‘a freaking dog’. This strikes me as a frightfully horrible thing to say. I know for many people their pets are their children. I myself being a single guy regard Skype as a full member of my family and I do everything possible to ensure his good health. I would spend nearly any amount of money to ensure Skype’s health and well-being. I can understand why Dave would put as much love and effort into ensuring Rhonda’s health as any loving parent would for their human children.

While I will be the first to admit there are many great charities out there (the comments on the Slog post point out starving children and slowing the AIDS epidemic in Africa) I can think of none more noble as the pure act of kindness to help a stranger keep their family whole.

Like father like son

Monday, June 11th, 2007

Jim at 13

My father at age 13 - He really does look eerily like I do age for age. For comparison here are some shots of me when I was 10 and 15 years older. We both have the same mischievous smile, elephantine nose, and horrid comb-over of a haircut!

“Jim at 13” by sparktography

El Laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Yesterday brought me to Costco with Brien, and Costco brought me into ownership of El Laberinto del Fauno (Pans Labyrinth for those of us in the US), a simply stunning film. Prior to owning it I had heard a bit about it but had not had the pleasure of seeing it. In the last 24 hours I’ve not only rectified that problem, but watched it a second time for good measure.

Going in I knew it was by a Spanish Director (Guillermo Del Toro), but had no idea the audio was in Spanish as well. Normally I’m not a huge fan of subtitled films, but in this case it added a sense of charm and the fact that I couldn’t understand the vocals and thus was more able to let the poetic sounds of the script brought me deeper into Del Toro’s fantasy world.

Pans Labyrinth

It’s very much a dark fairy tale - it’s certainly not for kids with the amount of blood and violence, but it’s not gratuitous - used instead to show what horrors the ‘real world’ had to offer the heroine Ofelia. As dark and horrific as the real world is the fantasy world balances it out entirely with bright and visually mesmerizing visuals and a fanciful look and feel brought to life with the sublime art direction.

The hardship faced by Ofelia and the classic themes in fairy tales (three tasks, three bad guys, three good guys) work well with the style of directors style. In watching the movie for a second time I picked up on a number of subtle nods to both other fairy tables and common fables.

Between Del Toro’s Pans Labyrinth and Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men I see what all the fuss was about over Spanish directors at the Oscars. They might not be “proper American filmmakers”, but their vivid and well thought out style mixed with their excellent storytelling leaves audiences world wide immersed in new worlds, sprung up from film and into reality. Both movies leave the audience with a series of thoughts spinning about in their heads, and with a need for more answers.

The movie is currently only available on DVD so no high-definition viewing yet, but the DVD transfer is decent and the audio is available in DTS EX 6.1 as well as Dolby Digital. The sound is well done, and the simple but catching music works well with the subject matter. Javier Navarrete pulls from subtle melodies that echo through the worlds ears, regardless of if performance by a full symphony, or hummed quietly by the heroine at several key points in the film.

If you haven’t seen it yet pick up a copy - you will be glad you did!

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