Steve Gets A Life

googleme

you can watch the 60 minutes video online here:

be sure to read up on how its a bunch of bunk.

A Whole Lotta Nothing: Google on 60 Minutes

googlicious

Google Blog

The project stemmed from an idea I had a few months ago, and since then I've been working on it in my 20% time, which is a program where Google allows their employees to devote 20% of their working hours to any project they choose. What's really amazed me about this project is how in a matter of months, working on my own, I was able to go from a lunch table conversation to launching a new service. In my opinion, this is one of the things that really makes Google a great place; that the company's systems, resources and, most important, people are all aligned to make it as easy as possible to take an idea and turn it into something cool.

Plus, we have Segways.

i want to work for google.

"Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability."

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.

the dragon is watching you

im not sure if i posted this before. but its awesome.

the origin is here

fragola! stratciatella! montecito! ?

finally. a real-life gelato shop here in the US. no website to speak of, but here is the address:
Here's the Scoop
1187 coast village road
Montecito

had me some fragola and cioccolate. so good. even had those little spoons.
apparently there's also a good shop in long beach.

reminiscing again

uploaded some pics to flickr (you might notice the "badge" of pics on the side of this blog) last night.
its fun looking back at the europe trip, camping trips, etc.

this one is from a trip to big sur a while back.

brr

frick, it's cold in here.
what kind of central coast is this?

Checks & Balances

an interesting article from "the man" Bruce. a good way of pointing that the current administration has gone about committing its recent acts without intervention by the other two branches.
Schneier on Security: The Security of Checks and Balances

Presidential power as a security issue will not play a role in the
upcoming US election. Bush has shown through his actions during his
first term that he favours increasing the powers of the executive
branch over the legislative and the judicial branches. Kerry's words
show that he is in agreement with the president on this issue. And
largely, the legislative and judicial branches are allowing themselves
to be trampled over.

coolest map ever

too bad its only british

check it out here and be sure to mouse over the map. thats what's so cool.

(taken from alacrity)

so i might be a chump

but i signed up at freeflatscreens.com (same company as freeipod.com) and i think its gonna work.

now, i know what you're thinking: "steve, you're a chump" but im like 99% sure this isn't a pyramid scheme or anything like that. just annoying marketing that somehow makes someone enough money to give out TVs and ipods. so check out the following links for why i think its legit:

an actual wired article saying its legit

http://www.rekutyn.com/ipod.html
this webpage is a pretty good breakdown of reasons why it is legit, and how to jump through the marketing hoops they have set up for you.

so i signed up for dialup service through netscape. it required a credit card number, said it wouldn't be charged for the first month, and you can cancel before then. so thats the plan. there are other deals, all very similar with cancellation windows, etc. (eg colombia house)

so, who's gonna hook it up?

click this
just say "no" to all the optional questions, then sign up for a trial period of something at the end and thats it.
and to make it easier, ill send you a gmail invitation so you can sign up with a throwaway email account (so you won't get spammed) just like it did :) (note: gmail will sort email from this company as spam. just open your spam box to verify your account)
if you think im an idiot, tell me. otherwise just try it out and maybe ill get a TV out of it, and ill let you know so you can get one too. why not?

or do you want an iPod? sign up here

(you can do both)

dual-headed

recently i brought an extra monitor into work to extend my computer desktop. currently loving it. i have a set of starwars desktops that i had cycling between all the desktops for a while, but for now i've settled on The Masters.

oh yea, the extra whitespace is because my monitors are at slightly different resolutions (monitor from home is smaller)

web work

ive been working on a website for a guy in town. its a total ripoff of a dreamweaver template, but hey. check it out.

the site is for a book he wrote and the speaking tour he will be doing based on it. im just glad to be able to do a job on the side, and i get to play with dreamweaver templates and contribute. very cool tools for this kind of work.

bowling for terrorists

saw "Fahrenheit 911" at the Palm theatre in SLO last night.

aside: by the way, that's a pretty cool theatre. they sell hot tea for $1 and it is very small with a cool, mellow atmosphere.

it was pretty damn interesting. very one-sided, and i'd like to see a rebuttal made with the same amount of impact as that one. not to say that impact equals truth, but the topics brought forward with the movie were pretty serious, if anything is false, i'd really like to see a serious counter-argument, not just Condi Rice saying "its not true."

so where does one go to find some actual thoughtful commentary on things like this? googling for "Fahrenheit 911 commentary" is useless, i wouldn't want to go to the filmmaker or distribution companies websites if i wanted an impartial discussion. there are thousands of movie comment boards, but it would be nice to have a place that has well-thought, well-written, highly-regarded commentary on things like this. hm. i smell opportunity. or maybe its just the napalm in the air.

anyways, the whole "bush is bad" thing got a little tedious. we get it, mike, you don't like the guy. now get back to the research you've done. i was impressed by the documents he showed (the uncensored military record, for example) and the connections he made between oil companies, Saudis, Cheney, etc. I had heard that there were all of these connections out there, but this was a good way to put them all together in one place.

it was a very well made documentary i think, in a cinematic sense. i mean, the cuts were great, a lot of juxtaposition of greed and poverty, clips of repeated mantras by the government, etc. the scenes of families with members in Iraq were tough, emotional scenes. many in the audience were crying several times throughout the film. the interviews with soldiers were also very good but he could have emphasized the change in spirit of the troops after the whole "mission accomplished" day. initially troops were talking about how they were there to kick some butt and liberate, but by the end, nobody wanted to be there, people were dying, it was real war with no real cause. you saw that transition in the film, but it wasn't really vocalized or shown explicitly.

its stuff like this that makes me want to go into politics. not that i actually do, but i just wish i could make a difference. the scene with a retired Senator (or was he a Federal Judge?) that said "you don't think we read any of the bills we pass, do you?" was pretty scary. helped you understand how easily things like PATRIOT can be passed in the right context, with the right lubrication. bad things happen this way. dictatorships are not always won by military coups in 3rd world countries. Hitler essentially rose to power legitimately (maybe not entirely true, not sure). my point is, the lawmakers are people. they get scared too. they make bad decisions that we all have to deal with. when a group is in control, all their actions are so that they remain in control. put these together and you get a government intimidating its lawmakers (not to mention its people) into accepting rash decisions (eg iraq) that would (and should) normally take plenty of debate and thought. i hate that.

the worst part? when all that "war on terror" was going on (well, it still is), and the idea of invading Iraq was first starting to seem real, did you question it? did you think "why are we doing this?" sure you did. but then did you say "well, they must know what they're doing." kinda takes faith out of government when it turns out so bad, when odd coincidences about who profits, etc turn up later. makes you think. makes you want change.

gmail accounts

ive got a few available. i made a post at gmailforthetroops.com but if anyone else wants, let me know.

the best part, one of the troops in the photo collage at the top of the site is my friend shasta's brother. that photo is in a frame above their TV. (he's the one in the middle-left image, looking off to the left) pretty dang cool.

(pseudo-trackback: jen)

no mo' twenty-fo'

here's a funny quote from salon.com about the greatest show ever:

A springtime ritual came to an end at my house Tuesday night with the season finale of "24." All basketball and hockey playoff games get the pause-button treatment while the wife and I follow Jack Bauer through another hour of another really bad day.
He's had three real stinkers now, but you know what? I'd take a Jack Bauer bad day, I really would. I'd take the stress, the guns held to my head, the serial kidnapping of my only child, the requirement that I kill innocent people from time to time, the fate of millions in my shaky, heroin-addicted hands. I'd take it all if I could, just for that one day, have the cellphone reception that guy gets.

so anyways, that show rules. the last episode was pretty good, too. good ol' kiefer even showed a bit of emotional range.

redefining crazy

check out this nut.

When this over, the pagan part of the ceremony is over and the disco music, the dancing and eating can start.

uh. disco? your religion promotes disco? that does it.

24 rules

i dont know how better to put it. 24 is the best show ever.
im pretty sure that if i somehow found myself in the military instead of college and i didn't have moral qualms with killing people, id totally be a special ops dude. i wanna say stuff like "im going dark" and "ill volunteer, im trained to do that too."
i think its along the same lines of thought that made me want to be a ninja when i was seven and makes me love video games that let you be a sniper (counterstrike, splinter-cell, rainbow six, etc).

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on iTunes: Little One from the album "Sea Change" by Beck