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I try hard not to have blog envy. Mine is what it is, I am what I am,
etc. Just now I read Patrick Neilsen-Hayden’s Electrolite for
the first time in a while, and I have the envy. I wish mine was more
like that. It’s good reading. I really need to either set Plucker to
download this every day or else get some kind of RSS aggregator
going to facilitate reading it regularly.

Zoe is supposed to do that, but I’ll damned if I can figure it out. It
requires an OPML file, but that seems to be an outline file rather
than a channel definition type file. I’m new to this kind of stuff, so
anyone who has some kind of clue, please mail me and explain it to me
(pointing me to a good reference would be just as good and less work
for you.)

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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Here’s a link to another friend, writer Mark Bourne. He has the
sweetheart deal of reviewing DVDs for The DVD Journal (low pay, I’m
sure, but free DVDs!). Here is a collection of his articles
for them. I’ve long enjoyed his writing, since even before I knew
him. In one of those small world things, the first night I was in
Portland I went to a party at his house (I read the general invite on
SFF.net and just showed up, knowing almost no one there save Mary
Rosenblum and K.W. Jeter, both of whom I had interviewed.) Years
later, he and I were coworkers at WellMed. I remain a fan of his
writing (his recent story “Action
Figures” is an absolute ass-kicker of a story, highly recommended)
and an admirer of him personally. Getting to hang with him was part of
the draw for going to OryCon last year.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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Also from Sff.net, my longtime friend Kevin points out an article in
Wired about Google
being used by hackers to find information. The notion of people’s
filemaker DBs getting index by Google is scary, indeed. I wonder how
many of those folks did not realize their databases were exposed that
way (or still don’t?)

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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On SFF.net, John Bartly points out the story of the
Dr. Pepper
“Raging Cow” weblog. I hadn’t seen the actual story, but I had
read about it on Doc Searls
weblog via Plucker on the Handspring. Not being able to follow the
links is a definite downside of reading weblogs that way. It will be
interesting if the blogging community rises up in revolt. I predict
that this part of their campaign will fall very flat. The weblog
community, methinks, will be hard to manipulate. Not because they are
brilliant, but because the information flow is heavy that it is hard
to “pull the wood over our eyes.” (sic Pacino in Donnie
Brasco) These kinds of media manipulations kind of implode
when everyone can know so thoroughly when and how they are being played.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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I’m sure this is being heavily blogged, but here is a link to the
story about the man
arrested for wearing a peace t-shirt. Quick thought experiment, if
you heard of a story of someone being arrested for wearing a garment
deemed improper and told that it occurred in either Iraq or the USA,
which would you have thought? This country is getting scary. It is
time for those who love liberty and freedom to reclaim it before the
founding fathers spin right out of their graves.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.

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Here’s a great thing that I’m going to start using ASAP: SneakEmail. It is an e-mail
obfuscator type system. You register with them and then can generate
disposable e-mail addresses. They know your address, but the people
who use the disposable one don’t. Mail to that address gets forwarded
to you, tagged appropriately. If you reply it goes back through their
system, replacing your address with the disposable one. The use I see
for this is posting to Usenet. Rather than putting stupid spam
blocking text in, just use a disposable address. After a few months,
turn that one off and go to a different one. By the time it gets
harvested and on spammer lists, you aren’t using it anymore. I love
it! I’m starting it today.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father.