Archives for February 2004

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stupid spam

I get a lot spam. Typically it's on the order of 330 or so a day. July of 2002 I installed SpamAssassin, and that definitely made email bearable again. Over the last week or so, though, all of a sudden many more messages are getting through than were before. I've gone from getting up in the morning to see 1 or 2 spams that trickled through to seeing 17 this morning.

Because of this, today I decided to get CRM114 a shot. Aside from having the cool Dr. Strangelove name, it's also been getting some good press lately. I'd say it's too early to really know how it's doing, since it involves a training process, but already it's grabbing most of my spam and throwing it into a seperate box. It mis-classified one message as spam, but it's allowed to do that before it has any built up data to work with.

I'm cautiously optimistic this'll help me out.

Music: Justin Rosolino <i>Wonderlust</i>

I got a copy of Justin Rosolino's new cd Wonderlust the other day. It's been quite a while since Justin's last album, so it's good to see something new coming from him. A lot of people come to my site looking for justin since his entry in whatsplaying shows up at #4 & 5 (3 & 4 until justin just put his site back online) on google.

The album is a mix of new songs and new versions of some older songs. I was really excited to hear his studio versions of songs like "Legacy" and "Anyone". Justin has an amazing voice and writes some really honest songs, and these still resonate with me like they did when I first heard them three and a half years ago. "Oprah" is a fun up-tempo new track. There's also a hidden instrumental track (track 29) which really struck me for how much it sounds like something that could be off a cd by Rodney Branigan. Definitely a cool cd, and worth picking up. Justin's going to be out here in LA in April, so we're working on hooking him up with a show then.

citywide wifi?

Over at LA Blogs they mention that the mayor of Hermosa Beach is going to be at tonight's SoCal Wireless Users Group meeting talking about his plan to have city-wide wifi.

Now, I don't know how much of a pipe-dream this is, or if he's really got the power to pull it off, but I think this would be amazing. I've gotten pretty spoiled having wifi access on campus at USC, and it's starting to be one of those things where I'm surprised when I go somewhere and can't find an access point.

It used to be my plan to move to the beach next year for my senior year. That's not going to happen (it'll be downtown instead), but I definitely intend to end up at the beach for at least a year or two after college. Wifi in Hermosa could definitely tilt the balance in its favor. Not that getting me to move there really means much, but I'd like to assume I'd not so abnormal that others wouldn't have sort of the same thought process.

another cool link

Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing linked to the paper. I had never heard of Marshall McLuhan, but he Bruce says I ask "some McLuhanesque questions about the nature of blogs." All I have to say is, that's one crazy bio.

starting a discussion

It's interesting to start seeing online response to my paper on blogs and corporations.

Sean Bonner instigated a lot of the spreading, on his site,, and Suicide Girls., a blogging site "produced daily by the Guardian Online team," has a very well-spoken take. I responded in the comments there, so be sure to give that a look.

MEMORI is in Dutch(?), so I can't really read it, but they gave mention as well.

I don't at all consider myself an expert, just the one who wrote the paper, so I'm really interested in seeing the debate continue from this.

getting ready

It's interesting to watch USC preparing for the democratic debate to be held here Thursday. Kerry, Edwards, Kucinich, and Sharpton will be here, debating live on CNN. Business Wire has an interesting release giving all the media instructions. Annenberg will be the post-debate location, so we've been getting emails with moved classes and limited access instructions for the building that day.

From the release, Soapbox will be be providing wifi and voice access to media during the event. I'm curious if that's just an indication of USC's limited involvement (clearly the USC bandwidth could handle adding reporters for a night), or just that it's easier to contract everything out rather than worry about setting up one-time systems. $350 for a press member to get a phone line for the evening. $145 for wireless internet (a steal compared to the $350 for hard-wired ethernet).

The DT had an article today about how USC's putting protestors in a little bit of Trousdale just south of the auditorium. You have to register two weeks in advance to protest, so it'll be interesting to see if a lot of groups did or if people will show up intending to protest and then get the boot from DPS.

I have classes Thursday afternoon, so it'll be entertaining to see the swarm of satellite trucks that descend on campus then.

geography and the Internet

My dad sent me a link today to a 'blog post' (it's a magazine. it's an editorial. we just went over this.) on entitled "The Web and the Exaggerated Demise of Geography". This is sort of what I was talking about in my paper I didn't write.

I think the global aspects of the Internet are amazing. Right now I'm working on a project with one developer in Spain, one in Michigan, and me out here in California. The other day all three of us were in an IM chat, talking about what needed to be done, sharing files, and doing things that pre-Internet were simply unattainable.

But the global Internet isn't what excites me right now.

Right now I care about the local Internet. I care about local food reviews. I care about local music. I care about local pictures. These things have a context that's important to my everyday life. It excites me to think about people all across my city adding content to their websites, content that can then find its way to my screen and help me understand the things around me. That's what's cool about the Internet. It's instant access to the information that is relevant to me.

The global stuff's cool, too, just in a less relevent to my day to day life sort of way.

Can Blogs and Corporations Co-exist?

This is the paper I thought about, got more confused about, wrote something totally different, and then finally managed to get my head around. I think it came out pretty well, and I've finally got it online in verbal intercourse. So check it out: Can Blogs and Corporations Co-exist?

update... it's alive

Today my phone appears to be working like a champ. An hour plus outside exposed to the rainy elements, and it comes away with no noticable ill effects. That's crazy.


Tonight, getting out of my car at church,I heard a sound of gravel as my feet hit the pavement. It was dark and raining, and I thought the sound to be just some loose stones underfoot.

In reality, the sound was my phone hitting the ground.

At the start of the trip I had been on the phone with Kathy, figuring out where to pick her up. I had eventually placed the phone in my lap, it being awkward to put it back in my pocket while seated. There it had stayed until my arising bounced it out into the cold and wet outdoors.

I found it sitting there when we returned to the car. By that point it didn't surprise me. I sort of figured that had been the case. My phone was lying on the ground, face up, button-illuminating lights shining but nothing on the display. I picked it up, removed the battery, and set it down in my car.

The parts of the phone I can touch feel pretty dry now. When I put the battery back into the phone and press the power button, it does indeed turn on, find the network, alert me that the time needs updating, and can even tell me that I'm receiving a call. As of yet none of the buttons work, and it doesn't seem to want to vibrate.

August of 2001 I got pushed into a pool with an Ericsson T28 World in my pocket. It vibrated as I hit the water, then went dead. I got out, toweled it off, and gave it a shot. I think it vibrated as if it were turning on, and that was it. The next day I went and got a new phone.

The T28 wasn't done, though. A day or two later I tried it again, and it went a little farther. A couple days after that, it would start up completely. Eventually the phone ended up working just as well as it did before, and a friend used that phone for months.

Hopefully the T616 shows the same resilience.

fun fun and taxes

So I did my taxes today. My taxes are made infinitely more complicated than they should be by the fact that I have a little contracting income, and also have income in both Michigan and California. I used H&R Block's free service to do my federal, which made life a bit easier. I did the states by hand, though.

Good to have it out of the way. It's not that I'm really this ahead of things (last year I definitely mailed them on April 15th), but I need them for a USC financial aid deadline next week.

big room, little crowd

Getting out to Ground Zero last night to see Saucy Monky reminded me how hard it is to run a successful music room in LA. Sure, GZ may get packed out a few times a year, but most of the time it's just as it was last night. There were probably around 20 people there most of the night, in a room that's sized to accept 60 sitting or who knows how many if it was standing-room. I get the feeling GZ doesn't know if they're a big room or not. The main seating (that people choose to use, at least) is a bunch of couches, but these couches are a good 25 - 30 feet from stage. So you end up with the few people you do have sitting far away from the stage, and nobody else up front. If I were in charge I'd take those couches 15 feet closer to the stage, turn down the mains and run the place like a coffee house instead of a rock club. But I'm not in charge...

Saucy was good, as usual. The sound guy was in love with reverb, possibly wanting to cancel out the effect of the dampening tiles in the ceiling and bring out the room's natural cement qualities. The band played some stuff that I don't think I'd heard before, which is always cool. Hopefully the next time we get them back to USC it'll be under much better circumstances. I really want to see them play one of the spring noon-time concerts that we have out in front of Tommy. I think they'd really be able to catch some walk-by traffic.