Dujodu Blog

I bookmark a lot of websites every day related to obscure hardware/software things for work, and my bookmarks in firefox were getting out of control. I thought about organizing them all in firefox and just trying to make sure I categorize links correctly when I add them, but the categories would easily get out of control. Many categories also tend to overlap and pages end up having equal importance in two or more places which is not good for a folder based setup (I don’t really want to double bookmark things). I’ve flirted with using an online bookmark manager in the past but laziness and/or lack of necessity usually stopped me pretty quickly. When you deal in the business of weird hardware and software combinations though there are way too many little tools/patches/extensions needed to get things up and running to remember them all so I decided it would be best to keep things organized. Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is pretty damn good at doing that, with even less effort than it takes to bookmark things “the normal way.” One nice thing about del.icio.us is that it uses tags to organize links, not folders. So if I run across a specific tool that lets software package x talk to hardware setup y using technology z for project a, I can simply tag my bookmark “x y z a” and be done with it It’s now in four distinct categories, and will be displayed under searches for any of them (or a combination of a couple). Using an online bookmarking system has other advantages, like being able to access your bookmarks anywhere with an internet connection (without having to install some sort of bookmark sync manager), being able to link people to your bookmarks (http://del.icio.us/dujoducom/, or specific tags: http://del.icio.us/dujoducom/blog) and being able to see bookmarks from other people that bookmark similar things. Even though I initially started using del.icio.us as a simple organizational tool with little interest in much else, being able to view similar bookmarks has become a huge help. People generally tend to bookmark quality websites, so if you are trying to find information on something you can get a snapshot of “the best of the web” on any given topic by browsing through the most popular pages on any subset of tags. It is also great for finding additional bookmarks for obscure topics that might have taken you longer to find using a search engine. It’s also good to be able to bookmark things based on project, that way if I know I used a certain tool for a given project, I need only to call up the tag for that project to see a list of pages associated with it. The art of tagging takes a little while to get used to because it is a lot different than using a folder structure, but del.icio.us helps you out by recommending tags that other people used for certain pages, and once you have a tag collection of your own it will also recommend tags from your repository. That way you can be even lazier by clicking on the tags instead of having to type them in manually.

Well, that’s the end of my rant, I hope you check out del.icio.us if you haven’t already.

Firefox users, be sure to grab the del.icio.us extension for incredibly seamless and easy bookmarking!
http://del.icio.us/help/firefox/extension

I haven’t updated in awhile, I’ve been really busy. First with school ending and then the holiday marathon, which in my family is like a never ending party until new years. There is always at least one christmas party somewhere to be going to, it’s pretty insane.

Anyway, I was trying to think of something to blog about and then I realized that I never linked/mentioned Democracy Now! I’m sure you’ve probably heard about it before plenty of times, but what I’m specifically talking about is their daily show that I’ve been watching for the past month or so. I would highly recommend watching it if you have the time (approximately 1 hour/day). They cover a lot of international news (and national news for that matter) that never shows up on the major news networks here. There are tons of options for watching/listening to it, so I’ll go through a few of them. It’s mainly a radio show, so if you can find a station in your area then that is debatably the easiest way to (literally) tune in. They do apparently air it on some TV stations as well. If that isn’t an option or you missed an episode, then you can listen to the show streaming or a grab a copy in mp3 format from the democracy now website using real alternative (or real player, I guess), winamp, itunes, etc. The advantage of using the website over the radio is that you can watch the video, albeit a very low quality video. My favorite way to watch democracy now though is by using bittorrent, which is a kind of p2p app which allows for fast distribution of files, but I’m not going to get into that. If you have bittorrent and a broadband connection I suggest watching the show this way, new episodes are well seeded and you can grab the last 3 that “aired” from the democracy now website. If you want past episodes in high quality you can check out chomskytorrents.org since they are seeded there is well, but they loose seeds fast since it is a daily event. So if you DO want to view a really old episode in high quality, you don’t know how to use bittorrent, or you want to use a chunk of an episode you saw for whatever reason, they are all archived at archive.org in multiple formats ranging from streaming mpeg4 to DVD compatible MPEG2, which is pretty fricken insane. So there you have it, tons of different ways to watch/listen to the show. Now you have no excuse, so go check it out!

Although it doesn’t accurately represent the majority of the episodes, I recommend the one from Monday, December 6th (archive.org, torrent, streaming from website). It’s a great episode and it features various people reading from Howard Zinn’s book “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.”

I went to a web development meetup last week and it was pretty cool. If anyone actually reads this and is interested in web development, you can check out its page at meetup.com (which is a pretty evil website, but that’s where the group started). They used to be free, but now they charge like $20 / month, which is a total rip off unless you have a big enough group for everyone to chip in. My friend Martin (AKA Rich Greenfield) told me about it and was able to give me a ride home because I am a carless bum. Martin has a one man improv show, he performs as “Rich Greenfield” and he has some videos up on video.google.com if you want to check them out. This Martin fellow kept raving about this “rooibos” that is similar to tea, but without caffine. I decided I would give it a try, it’s a South African “tea” (it’s not really tea, but most people call it tea or red tea or red bush tea). I got some really cheap bags of it just to try it out while I wait for a shipment of genmai cha, and I must say that it is pretty awesome. It tastes like it would really kick ass iced, so I’ll be sure to try that out. Anyway, the web meetup was at a pretty cool multimedia place downtown called bytestudios. One of the guys there had an amazing screensaver (yes, I realize how insanely geeky that sounds) so I downloaded it immediately when I got home to replace some default lame-o Windows XP screensaver. The screensaver is called “Electric Sheep” and is named after the book “Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick, which I haven’t read. The cool thing about the screensaver is that it’s ever evoloving, and it’s pretty fun to watch how it changes. I’m not exactly sure how it works, I THINK that while it is running you and everyone else running the screensaver are helping to render the movies that the screensaver plays. The longer you use it, the more complex and flowing the screensaver gets. It uses random seeds based on your hardware configuration to morph the sheep (that’s what they seperate videos are called), and you can use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to rate the sheep. If you are using a boring screensaver, I suggest giving it a try. View more for some screengrabs of it in action, the variations are ridiculous though, so they don’t really represent the real thing. (edit: for a better explination of what the screen saver does, check out this tour from the website or this 5 page PDF)
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If you haven’t seen “The Corporation” you should. It’s an awesome documentary about… corporations! Right now it seems to be on http://www.video.google.com/ for some reason in it’s entirety, so if you want to check it out (albeit in low quality) you can at least get a preview of it there. It would probably be better to just rent it, buy it, or obtain it somewhere else though.

I was browsing around at chomskytorrents.org and I came across a movie called “Salt of the Earth” and it looked pretty interesting, so I downloaded it. It was made by a group of blacklisted hollywood talents who were accused of participating in “communist activities” and were disallowed by the studio executives & MPAA to work openly in hollywood. They apparently had a lot of trouble making it due to outside threats, you can read more about it at wikipedia. It is extremely interesting to see how far our government went in an attempt to suppress this movie. Here is a quote used at Wikipedia from the Washington Post

During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film’s leading lady was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead…. The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles.

I thought that was pretty interesting, and so was the film. The movie is based on a real strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico. It deals with labour rights, racism, femenism, and all sorts of other topics. It’s easy to see why the gorvenment wouldn’t want this film released.

Anyway, after checking it out at chomskytorrents I went to learn more about it at the imdb where I read a few comments. It turns out this movie is now in the public domain, if only there was someone willing to distribute it freely anyone could enjoy the movie! Enter Archive.org, a place willing to do just that. So it turns out the film (and many others) are being distributed freely by Archive.org in it’s Film section. You can watch it streaming, download a compressed version, or even get an MPEG2 DVD of it(!!!). After this revelation I decided to see what other movies they had to offer, and was totally blown away. Here are some of the things that I’ve found browsing Archive.org that I either recommend or look interesting/cool.

• Salt of the Earth
• The Power of Nightmares
• Night of the Living Dead
• Nosferatu
• 2004 Election Footage Archive
• Independent News Index
• American Power and the New Mandarins by Noam Chomsky (Book)

They have movies, books, audio, and even software. Pretty cool stuff.

Today the house passed the new trade agreement CAFTA (NAFTA, but extended for more of Central America). No brainer right? The Republicans have the majority, so obviously this would pass. WRONG! With 27 nay votes from the Republicans, who actually went against Bush’s urges to pass the bill, the Democrats could have turned it down.

Boston Globe

In an indication of the stakes, the president made a rare lobbying visit to Capitol Hill yesterday to make personal appeals to wavering GOP House members. He urged members to think beyond the interests of their districts and argued that the United States should reward nations that support US policies in combating terrorism and pursuing democratic forms of government, according to members who attended the closed-door meeting.

In fact, only one of the 15 Democrats that voted for the bill could have changed the outcome, since it was passed by only one vote. NAFTA cost the U.S. some 500,000 (some say as many as 900,000) jobs after it was passed in 1993. Will CAFTA do the same? Even if it won’t be as damaging to the U.S., free trade without fair trade spells exploitation for the Central American workers.

More reading:

• House passes free-trade agreement in tight vote - Article cited above.
• Targeting the 15 Democratic sellouts - Who are these Democrats? What else have they voted for?
• Democracy Sold Out - An in depth look at the decision and it’s consequences.
• In Their Own Words: The House Debate on CAFTA - How this bill got passed.

Read up on the whole Rove situation, if you can stomach it:

• What I didn’t Find In Africa - The original article by Joseph Wilson that started it all. Despite the information in this article and additional information from the CIA, Bush STILL decided to use the Niger case in his January 28th 2003 State of the Union address as an argument to go to war.
• Eight Days in July - A good article that sums up the situation, with an interesting look at the Supreme Court nomination in relation to the cover-up.
• Plame Leak Timeline- A very comprehensive outline on the leak.
• Complete timeline of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq - Look at all of this in context to the war in Iraq. The Niger case was the key argument for going in.
• CIA & Iraq: An Effort to Shift the Blame - The Bush administration tried to blame the CIA for the famous 16 words in the State of the Union. They also tried to discredit Wilson by claiming his wife authorized his trip to Niger - she doesn’t even have the authority to do that.

So, this must mean trouble for Rove right? Actually, it turns out the only consequence so far is a pay raise for him and other top level white house aides. Go figure.

The top pay for senior White House aides, including Chief of Staff Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Legislative Affairs Director Candida Wolff, was boosted to $161,000 at the beginning of July, according to a list sent to Congress and obtained by National Journal.