Tim O’Reilly on His Reasons for Supporting Barack Obama

Tim O’Reilly (A name probably recognizable only to those of you in the tech world), has blogged on his reasons for supporting Barack Obama. I thought they were interesting enough to point to.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/why-i-support-barack-obama.html

Note that I think we’re fortunate to have two options who both seem to be reasonably intelligent and not crooks. I have hope for the future either way the election goes. However, I favor Barack Obama myself. And although my reasons aren’t all the same as O’Reilly’s I think more fodder for thought is always useful.

Whatever your political leaning, be sure to research the issues and then vote. (Just voting, without actually putting thought into your vote, is worse than not voting at all.)

KazooKeylele

This I must share:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Hilarious, free (for a limited time), by Joss Whedon. What more could you ask for.
The first two acts are available, and the third act will be released on July 19. But don’t wait too long. They’ll only be available on this site for free until July 20.
So, go watch it now!
What are you waiting for.
Go.
Now.
Really, it’s funny.
Go.
And also, it’s a musical.

Don’t Talk to the Police – Professor James Duane

If you have a spare half hour, I found an educational and entertaining video of a law school lecture. It’s worth watching. There’s also the second part given by the police officer he mentions. Less entertaining, but still interesting.

Security Theater: In other news…

The TSA has made it official, they would rather let people who lie to them fly than to let people assert their rights.
There’s a reasonably good write-up on CNET news.

When does the fourth ammendment not apply?

For those of you who haven’t come across this one yet, here’s an ill covered news item to make your skin crawl. The EFF has an article about a footnote of a memo that states “… our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”

Whatever you do, be sure to keep paying attention to what your government does in your name. And don’t let subtle lies (such as the “War on Terror”) go unchallenged.

My first “Activity”

History lesson:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 is introducing a couple of new interesting features. The one I find particularly interesting is “Activities.” Also interesting: an extension for Firefox has already been written that supports this new feature!

For those of you who don’t know I’m an avid Firefox user. As a web developer I couldn’t live without it, and, as a user I like the flexibility, power and safety it gives me. I’m currently using Firefox 3 beta 4. Most of my extensions work in this version, but unfortunately the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension hasn’t been updated yet. I could go back to Firefox 2.0, but I’ve already gotten used to some of the nice new features of 3, so I’ve been living with using the bookmarklet to post to del.icio.us instead.

Ever since I discovered Activities it has seemed to me that Activities could be used to create an easy way to post to del.icio.us. It wouldn’t be quite as nice as the official del.icio.us Bookmarks extension, but it could provide some cool features. But I can’t seem to find one that anyone has written yet. Ok, I’m a little over eager I suppose, but it’s been weeks already!

I finally decided to check out what it would take to write it myself, and about 20 minutes later had figured out how to make one. I found examples here and started with the Facebook example. I looked at the URL created by the bookmarklet to figure out what information I needed to provide and in what format. I used the documentation here to figure out how to get the information I wanted to put into the post to del.icio.us. Also, thanks to this post for causing me to think that it’s time to write it.

Without further delay, here’s a page where you can install my new activity [Hosted free at Boxstr.com]. I hope you like it. If you have any cool suggestions let me know in the comments.

It’s time to start my own blog

I finally have enough motivation to start my own blog. And now you’re reading it.

This is not a topic specific blog. It’s just my place to share the bits of stuff I think are worth sharing. I’m reasonably likely to post computer programing or philosopy related items as those are most often the areas where I think I actually have something to say.

I hope you find reading it worthwhile.