Went out to the KelTec shoot. Was good lots of fun — wicked hot. Followed my GPS instead of the directions and ended up dragging the BMW through 2 miles of dirt ATV road. Doh! Shot some cool guns, including a .308, largest round I’ve shot to date:

Fun times :)

Websites and the browsers used to display them are cruel and fickle masters -- they will choose to work fine one day, and ruin your whole web presence the next. And, of course, it never looks wrong for the person that designed the dang thing.

Most people have a hard time describing exactly what is wrong with a webpage, which element is in the wrong place, or what functionality is going wrong. Heck, sometimes it's simply too much to get the error message. As such, I'm going to walk through the steps for taking a screenshot and uploading it where a developer can see the problem.

Step 1) Find the problem

If you can't find the problem, why are you even reading this?

Step 2) Take the screenshot -- Press your "Print Screen" button, aka "PrtScn"

While there are different ways to do this between mac and Windows, I'm covering Windows.

Step 3) Nothing happened!? Yet...

Step 4) Open MSPaint

You can start MS Paint by clicking you "Start" button, selecting "Run..." typing "mspaint.exe" and clicking "Ok"

Step 5) "Edit" Menu -> "Paste"

This will put your screenshot into the new document.

Step 6) "File" menu -> "Save As..."

In the dialog that follows, make sure the "Save as type" has "JPEG" selected, and save the file to your desktop (remember the name you give the file!)

Step 7) Email the file you saved, or upload it.

I prefer it when people upload their screenshots somewhere. I usually recommend xs.to. Simply pop over to that website, click the "Browse" button, navigate your way to the JPEG file on your desktop, click "Select", check off the "I agree" box and upload. A few moments later it will greet you with a few urls you can give to the developer.

I suppose I should have screenshots of this process -- but the lack is deliciously ironic.

For those who don't want to read my long rant and look at all the pretty pictures, I'll boil this down for you real quick:

MySpace is and ad-ridden hell-hole of a site swamped with crappy layouts, horrendously intrusive marketing, and infested by maliciously insidious users hacking into people's accounts or simply mass spamming you with auto-generated "pretty-girl" accounts.

Yup, that about sums it up. Facebook does none of that, more, and does it right. Let's go along for the point by point, shall we? All images link to full screen versions

Ads, Dear Lord, the Ads

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the seizures you've been having are MySpace's fault. I can't begin to explain how intrusive the ads on MySpace are. Instead, I want to show you something, you see, I am technically competent enough to swim my way through the shit code that mySpace uses to layout its pages. Using said geek prowess, I have taught my web browser how to hide all the ads on MySpace -- not just the obvious "Punch the monkey" ads, but also the "sponsored content".

Here is a side by side comparison of what it looks like when your not being sold up the river to their advertisers, and when you are being assulted by flashing, blinking, winking, and sexing-you-up ads:

Users: Faked, Hacked, Annoying

Now, I'm not saying that I find all friends on MySpace annoying, but the way the account system is run at MySpace is failing -- horribly. Accounts are hacked on an extremely regular basis and fake accounts are being created even faster, and the MySpace staff can't squash them in kind. I'd like to show you what my Inbox typically looks like after something like only 2 days away from MySpace:

Not one single person in this screen shot is:

1. A real person
2. A friend of mine

It greatly peeves me that this is such a common problem with the site, because the image is fairly typical for me.

And this brings us to the hacked accounts. Now, I don't doubt the intelligence of any of my friends, but the internet is a tricky place and unless you are as innundated by it as I am, you're not going to catch every single scam and malicious link. And it only takes one before your account is suddenly hacked. Here's a screenshot of my bulletins a few days ago, 3 of these bulletins were not posted by the person who's picture is next to it, but by someone who had their password and was posting it in their steed:

In the past month, 3 people in my amazingly small 34 friend circle have had their accounts hacked. That's a startlingly high figure, and one that MySpace is almost entirely responsible for because people are slipping malcicious code into bulletins that should have been stripped out.

Profiles: The Power, the Abuse

One of the greatest things about MySpace's lack of competent HTML filtering is that it lets through custom CSS code on profile pages. This allows anyone with enough skill to make their page look different from the default (read: horrendously ugly) layout.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, and when you entrust great responsibility to hordes or hormonally imbalanced youths, you've made a serious mistake.

Some people didn't go to overboard, I think my profile is pretty sane:

Some people actually spent a lot of time on their profile to make it very appealing:

However, the vast majority of users (sorry Lee!) abuse this loop hole and turn MySpace into a thing straight out of the "Big Book of Designer No-nos":

Between the auto starting music, javascript, tons of poorly coded flash, bad css, truck loads of animating dancing gif, and layouts that make my eyes bleed, the profiles on MySpace are one of the most amazingly abused spaces on the internet with almost no redeeming qualities.

Features: Half Planned and Poorly Implemented

No one can say MySpace is at any lack for features on the site: Video's, pictures, calendars, blogs, forums, group, etc, etc. However, as you will see later on, none of these hold a candle to what Facebook offers in comparison. Some of the comparisons rest solely on the fact that MySpace appears to have been designed by a monkey banging on a keyboard, but mostly the features are barely functional, with no regard to integration or how they fit into the site as a whole package.

Here are two shots which you'll want to keep in mind for later when they are drawn up for comparison, the "album" page and a "group" index page:

Just Fucking Broken

This requires no explanation outside of this screenshot:

Facebook: My Beginnings

I got onto Facebook before it was "everyone can join" days once I got a job at CNET. It was interesting, offered a nice setup, but it was 'closed' for all intents and purposes. None of my friends worked at CNET and because my school wasn't the greatest, getting school based emails was near to impossible -- so I didn't expect that route to work.

Since then, however, Facebook has opened its doors to anyone who would like to join, and as such, there's very little reason to continue using MySpace.

Facebook: Feature for Feature, Hands Down Better

Facebook vs. MySpace, feature for feature, Facebook actually loses, but I don't think users do. See, Facebook doesn't have Forums, or Videos on it -- but I don't think you'll miss these. I have forums elsewhere, and only really care to talk to my groups and friends anyway. Videos? Come on: you ... tube.

However, in the areas that I care about for my social networking, Facebook not only has everything MySpace has, but also does a better job.

1. Photos
   Not only does Facebook have photos and albums (which MySpace just got), but they do something really awesome with photos -- they allow you to 'tag' them with people's names. In this manner, you can 'tag' yourself and your friends in photos and then find yourself in other people's photos. I think this is a very, very cool extra that you really have to play around with. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:

   

2. Friends List
   You think this is pretty simple. On MySpace, yes, it is. But Facebook takes it up a notch. Not only does it look nicer, but it also treats you nicer and will tell you what each friend has recently updated. That's swell.

   

3. SANE PROFILES
   Maybe you really like the profiles being very unique and customized to a persons personality and such jazz -- I can't stand it. Make a video, take a picture, sing a song, make an art piece, but please, please, please -- let me view your profile without crashing my computer from loading 85 5mb gifs along with 12 flash movies and an mp3 background. Really. Thanks.

   

4. Networks & Groups
   In the same way that you can join a group on MySpace, you can also do some on Facebook. Facebook also treats "Networks" much like exclusive groups where only VIP's can be. For example, to join the CNET network on facebook, you have to verify an @cnet.com email address you own to prove eligibility. While neither Facebook nor MySpace offers a very clear advantage in the groups, it's certainly not a 'lose' for Facebook.

   

5. Status Updates
   Are you a fan of twitter.com? Let people know in a small sentance or two what's going on in your life. Just a quick "Heading to the mall" or "going away for the weekend". It's hard to explain how fun status updates are, so I encourage you to give them a try and see what happens.

   

6. Mobile Integration
   If you didn't catch it in the screen above, check it out -- you can have the status updates of individual people sent to your phone. And that's just one of the ways that Facebook allows you to interact with your social networks via your phone -- in a two way manner. I can text in status updates, photos, and new notes just as easily as I can receive status updates. It's a really nice selling point to Facebook that MySpace only dreams about.

Facebook: Where it is Lacking

Now, leaving Facebook doesn't come without some draw backs. First, you can't customized your profile -- this is a negative or a positive depending on your point of view. Secondly, Facebook doesn't have support for music in any way, shape, or form. So, if you use MySpace to run your band P.O.C., etc, then Facebook isn't quite ready for you -- I do, however, hear that this feature is quickly coming. So band heads, check in with Facebook in a month or two.

Conclusion

While not quite ready for a few select groups (bands), the vast majority of users at MySpace would be better served and less inconvenienced by switching to Facebook. Give it a try -- switch over to Facebook, get a few friends to hop over and see how it goes. If you don't like it, come back and tell me I suck, but I can honestly say you'll likely not want to go back to MySpace ... except because your friends are there.

But then, you can be like me, write a nice little article and tell them all to switch to Facebook today. :)

So the new parts for Gibson, my colocated server, showed up today. A 70 lbs. 3u server case, 2 hard drives, some cpu coolers, and a wicked awesome raid card (Areca 1230, google it.)

So, I had to transfer all the old parts that I was keeping into the new case and install the new parts as well. Here’s the after math photos:

Previous Server carcass

An overview of the “workspace” table

The front of the server. 8 hotswap sata drive bays drool

currently occupied by 2 150gb raptors and 2 WD RE2 400gb’ers — both sets will be in Raid 1

Taller heat sinks of the dual 285 opterons

These fans have a spot in the fan cage where the power sits so you can just swap the fan in and out without fussing with in-case wires. A joyous thing.

The current four drives all plugged in — the card has spots for up to 12 drives.

The SATA hotswap backplate interface

An overview of Gibson 2.0

I’m excited. Now Fedora just needs to finish downloading faster…

Here I am, getting all excited to build a neat little javascript managed, persistently stored¹, local bookmarking fun toy, and Mozilla goes and ruins my fun by not allowing me² to store bookmarks globally.

Guess I'll go sign up at del.icio.us. :/

My pet cockatiel, Pete, died today.

We believe he died from something toxic in a computer cable he chewed up while sneaking about. He may have been a jerk at times (well, most the time :D), but he was definitely part of the household and I'll miss him a lot.

While gawking at some of the really cools toys by Moritz Stefaner , I got particularly interested in his post about visualizing time gaps in data and had a moment of inspiration.

Instead of vertically gaping the data, you could "timeline" the data like we used to do in gradeschool. (I was also looking at some sparklines today too...).

So, I implemented the idea on the blog here. Now, this post won't serve well to illustrate the effect, but if you fly back to a post that had some activity, you'll find that as you read the comments, the yellow tick above each comment shows you the relative position in the discussion when the comment took place. Neat, out of the way, and very easy to grep. I like it.

For those who care, the code is really, really simple. For Wordpressers, in you comments.php add these lines right after <ol class="commentlist">

<?php 
$last_comment = $comments[count($comments)-1]->comment_date;	
$bar_length = strtotime($last_comment) - strtotime($post->post_date);
$bar_length = $bar_length + ($bar_length*.04); // 4% slack, width of each 'tick mark'
?>

Then, inside the foreach ($comments as $comment) loop and right after the <li>, add this:

<div class="commenttimeline"><div style="left: <?php 		
echo floor( ((strtotime($comment->comment_date) - strtotime($post->post_date)) / $bar_length ) * 100 );
?>%"></div></div>

Then you set up some basic styles for the bar (these will vary a LOT depending on your theme/style/etc):

.commentlist li {
position: relative;
_height: 1px;
}
.commenttimeline {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
height: 2px;
background: #666;
_width: 102.5%; 
}
.commenttimeline div {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
background: #cc0;
height: 2px;
width: 4%;
_line-height: 1px;
_font-size: 1px;
}

Yes, a few IE hacks were needed. :/

And ta da, instant comment timeline above each comment. Pretty cool.

I've always loved these types of photos. I took a spontaneous trip to, well, outside the other day. On my way around, I see a park on the GPS that looks interesting, so I veered over and headed up. I ran out of road and hiked the rest of the way up, what I believe is, Mr. Davidson. At the top I was confronted with a gigantic gross, and a nice sweeping view of the city. While sunrise would be a much nicer time to do a pano here, this one isn't half bad.

Warning: Large image ahead! If you'd like to see the whole, full size pano, be warned, it's a HUGE download. The image measures 15,945×2,613 pixels and weights in at 3mb! Nearly twice as tall as most monitors and easily wider by days :D BE CAREFUL: If you don't have a beefy machine and you click that, your poor browser is going to try and load that -- it won't be pretty.

Well, I'm glad I now know that one of the most popular business attires on the planet should only associate you with an "Axis of evil" leader.

Oh... Wait...

source

I was very surprised when I came home to a brown shipping box sitting at my desk. I was more surprised when I turned it over to see Google had sent me something.

I was giddy when it turns out they sent me a multi-functional digital photo frame! MP3's, JPG's, Record/Play, and even video can run through this sucker via internal memory or a SD Expansion card! How crazy awesome is this thing.

As I read in a few other places, this in an annual event for people who do well with the Adsense program. Well, thank you Google!

A picture sniped from elsewhere:

So far, however, I can't quite seem to figure out what format they mean when the manual says this thing displays JPEG's, because I'll tell you right now, not a single JPEG I export from photoshop is doing the trick -- and I'll be damned if i'm going to convert a nice little library of these photos using their one and a time "SunPlus PMP Transcoding" utility >:|

Any ideas?

( another lucky winner :D )

Run a deceptive, lie-based, destructive, and ultimately inflammatory war for the last 6 years while your buddy-buddy government friends hold control: Well and fine.

Once the House is against you and the congress may well be too: well, you best make for the hills.

It’s been a bit since I put up a set of photos. Hence, I’ve added 4 to the gallery section. I still find it amazing how I can take hundreds of photos and still only be happy with a few that came out.

I’ve a decent history of social networking sites. Friendster, LiveJournal, Xanga, DeviantArt, MySpace, LinkedIn, and now Facebook. Nearly every one of these social networks has a slightly different focus (such as art, music, career, etc), but almost every one of them has one thing in common — a “blog” space.

Let’s take my prime example here, my progress from DeviantArt to MySpace to FaceBook. At each of these sites I could write regular entries, which would be distributed to my friends, and they could then leave me comments. It’s a blog, pretty plain, but that added social network let’s the information permeate my network of friends very quickly.

A blog like mine here, however, has the problem that it’s “notification” system is decentralized. RSS is great delivery tool, and RSS readers are elegant and functional now, no doubt, but the system offers nothing near what social networking sites do in terms of ease and funcionality. Social networking sites simply seem to offer a more complete, enthralling experience.

If you were to go and look at my DeviantArt, MySpace, and Facebook pages you’d find I’ve written maybe once or twice in these “blogs” over the course of nearly 5 years — that’s pretty abysmal. It’s not that I haven’t been publishing online, the simple fact of the matter is I KNEW my membership at these sites (and even the sites themselves) are transitory*. I was never comfortable with the idea that my data (blog entries, and comments) was stuck behind each site’s individual “Tall Walls” — hence, I’ve always run my own blog.

I was suprised and elated to find that FaceBook allows you to run your “Notebook”, as they call their blog instance, from an RSS feed. I was excited because it meant that I wouldn’t have to publish several places, I could just use my blog and be done with it. Sadly, I was soon let down. As I described above, part of what you lose from service to service is the comments that people leave for you. I enjoy getting to read back in these as much as the entries themselves (if not more sometimes). In this instance, the RSS feed would show up in my FaceBook notebook, but all comments would be left in the Facebook data space — again running right up against another set of Tall Walls.

I dream of a day, some day in the far future, where I have a central service (hopefully of my own) to which all social networking sites can tie into for data distribution. I want blogs from here to show up in my myspace, facebook, and even deviant art pages. I want comments from all these sites to aggregate and mash up together so that no matter which service I am signed into, I can talk with whomever has read and responded.

I want the walls taken away, and I want my data. Of course, that’s a ways off. Damn.

* = And in some instances, these things AREN’T transitory, which can get you in trouble ;D

Yeah, I got hacked today. Somebody manages to slip in some JS onto my site. I don’t really know how — I assume some exposed old Wordpress vulnerability* that I hadn’t updated past. Bummer.

On the bright side, it gave me a nice change to clear out all my old, unused subdomains, blogs, and projects that had accumulated after far too long. So, yay for that excuse. And now I am tired and have sleep to do, for tomorrow I unleash changes over at Help.com unto the masses.

* Please note, I had 4 versions of wp scattered about this site — several of which were decrepitly old, so don’t read into “omg wordpress is teh hax” too much.

Take a moment today to pause and reflect upon the events 5 years ago today.

Where were you?
How did you find out?
Who did you share that moment with?

Send your thoughts and prayers out to those who might be in need of them today.

And move forward -- how has it changed us? Be it our nation's moral, political, international agendas and policies or yours.