Just curious to see if this thing works.

So Joss Whedon continues to amuse and impress me when I see him talking. Here he is accepting the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism award.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

A couple of things. First, I understand how he can pooh-pooh Dawkins and Hitchens, since to him that's old news. To me, it wasn't. I used to believe, but it was through the efforts of those two, as well as Jonathan Miller and others, that I finally managed to wake up and realize what sort of LARP I was inhabiting.

Also, education is terribly important. Speaking as someone who survived public education in Alabama, I can tell you there isn't enough of it happening there. Cosette constantly refers to a Bible class she took in college that treated the book as literature–I think that would be immensely helpful for most people. Hell, for me just reading The Five Gospels was helpful. But I think if you educate people–not just about the world and science but also about their own belief system–it'll go a long way towards waking people up.

Anyway, great vid. Found via Brian Denham by way of Andy Diggle.

Okay, so iTunes is really starting to get on my nerves.

It was already on my nerves because it seems to be incredibly slow. Even on my new spiffy mega-mondo desktop it feels bloated–it's got that bad-comedian-in-a-fat-suit slowness going on. I was all excited at the prospect of a 64-bit iTunes…but after running it for a while I wondered why it had gotten slow again. Then I discovered that the installer was the only 64-bit part. The regular iTunes was still 32. Now I'm not a technical guy (not anymore–I don't count myself in that particular club) but why in the hell would you want the installer to be 64-bit? The only reason I can come up with is that the 32-bit version wasn't playing nice with a 64-bit OS.

Anyway, so that was annoying.

Now I found today I had somehow turned on a feechur I'd never witnessed before nor desired: that of "album ratings." I have MP3s that I've pulled in from God knows where–a lot of old-time radio files, audiobooks and other things. As a result, I am missing a lot of artist and album titles (which I use this previously mentioned method to go through on the run).

(more…)

Hi. And welcome back.

So here's the shot: you might have noticed that the website went into a bit of hibernation there. And the reason was simple: I had no idea what to put on here. In an effort to boost content on Needcoffee and boost the audience for that content, most of my stuff has gone there.

However, in recent weeks it's become clear that not everything fits over there, even as free form and chaotic as Needcoffee is. Sure, I can rant and rave over there as long as it's aligned with the core mission of Needcoffee, which is to entertain.

One thing that's not very entertaining, though–or at least hard to make entertaining–is looking for work. And talking about the things that I work on. So while it's fine to talk about, for example, Twitter and how it's amazing in the context of something like Bad Movie Club, it's another thing to talk about Twitter and why you need it for your business. I mean, a lot of people will tell you their reasoning for that, but a lot of it's rehashed and isn't thought about from the standpoint of normal people.

Let's face it: I run websites and can think in HTML and PHP code and, if you gave me the chance, could crank out content all day long. That's not normal.

Normal people don't want to have to think about this crap, nor should they. Normal people have lives. They are busy running businesses in the real world. They, you know, sleep.

This blog is now going to be about all the stuff that I should be getting paid for. All the stuff that I had to learn in order to publish and run a website and even a server. And the stuff I've learned working for somebody else.

So if you have a question–and I do get them from time to time–e-mail me at widgett at one tusk dot com. Or send me a message via Twitter @widgett. And let's see what happens.

I want to take him on tour with me.

Sitting at the gate awaiting my flight. On the airport wireless because…well, I'm me. And over the PA I hear (paraphrased) "Folks, I know there's a lot of people in the gate area waiting for standby seats. And I want to let you know that the chances are slim to none that that's gonna happen. The Pope was in town this weekend and everybody came in to see him and now they're trying to get home again. Your own hope is that there are people who checked in at home on their computers and we don't know if they're actually here at the airport or not. So as Jesse Jackson says, 'Keep hope alive!'"

As a P.S. to the coda, there was a booth at Comic-Con that was selling Exorcism Kits. "The Pope needs your help!" Priceless.

Cleaning out file folders from the old desk. Found these.

Yes, cassette labels created for my old band, The Frame.

Copyright 1992, 1994. Life was so much…something then.