You in?
http://somdgc.org…

Tying a little bit better to the concept of my previous post, I present you with a link to a useful* tool called Geocities-izer (*useful = fun). You can get some cheap laughs at the expense of the practices of a time past. You can make anything look old! Especially fun to toy with news sites like CNN, New York Post, MSNBC, or you can even make Drudge Report… -oh wait…

Do you wish to remember the old days of the World Wide Web?

Before background images could take up your whole monitor? Before images in a page could have alpha transparency? When Javascript was a selling point for a new browser? Some people do.

Websites had to start somewhere, even big names like Amazon, Google, and MySpace. Ah, should we embrace the rich history or sweep it under the rug? A timeless question.

Okay, I know I’m the 408,283rd person to post this, but…

http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/help-stop-sopa-pipa/ They have a nice video to break it down.

It’s time to take away the state’s power to give orders to the internet service providers. No business should have to be an unpaid law enforcement agency. I know internet service providers get in bed with the state, and shame on them for not speaking up against those thugs.

Do you really want to see the government have even more of a stranglehold on this industry? Do you want an arbitrary group of people calling themselves “the state” to tell you not to do business with certain people (such as advertising with them) and then threaten to throw people in a cage if they don’t go along with it? Remember that all political power comes from the barrel of a gun. All laws are backed up by threats of violence. It may take a while, but they will come after people with guns if those people don’t do what they want them to do.

This just once more shows that the purpose of the state is to create a “protection racket” for big business.

Got an email from 1and1, which I use as the hosting service for this website. So, apparently they “got the memo” that SOPA is bad.

Content here: 1and1′s Stance on SOPA

Props to them for standing against it. Despite being one of the largest web hosting companies in the world, they did not take the same protectionist stance that GoDaddy did!

*disclaimer: I do not currently receive any money from 1and1. I just think it’s a good service.

You can help me empty my shelves once again of the excess Pokémon merchandise! I’m selling them of the fabulous and reputable Pokémon internet forum known as PokéGym!
http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=158754 Auction ends on January 3rd, 11:59pm.

http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=158752 And this one is not an auction; there is no end date for this one. Lots of fun stuff.

One more reason not to give any money to GoDaddy.

SOPA Bill 2012: GoDaddy Reveals Support

• If you host a website on GoDaddy, you know the interface is full of ads. ANYTIME you try to do anything on the GoDaddy website, it is full of ads. There are so many, it is actually quite difficult to find things and really do anything with one’s GoDaddy account.
• GoDaddy is costly. The cost of basic service is 80% or more of comparable service from other websites. If you want cheap, reliable web hosting, with no extra frills or ads on the interface to ruin your experience or slow you down, there are plenty of choices. I chose 1and1, and am very happy.
• GoDaddy’s hosting services come with SQL databases which can take up to 45 minutes to create.
• GoDaddy’s servers are not automatically enabled to run PHP application.

Anyway, don’t support GoDaddy. Don’t give ‘em your money.

A few weeks back, I mentioned implementing a method for protecting this website’s comment system from spam-bots using a text-based CAPTCHA which I was going to write in PHP. Well, in turns out that I did not have to write it because someone has already made it! It is a WordPress plugin that, instead of making users look at a hideously distorted line of text to prove they are human, it asks them a question.

After downloading and implementing it, I went back to the page to see if the creator had a tipjar or something like that (because his PHP application has made managing my website much easier!) but I did not find any.

What might your reasons be for donating to the world’s largest open compendium of knowledge? I saw the banner at the top of wikipedia.org today, donated and provided three:

1. Though many college instructors do not recognize it as a valid source for papers, information from Wikipedia can be a good starting point for what kind of information to think about or look for. Wikipedia has made my college experience much more pleasant by helping me with my papers.
2. Wikipedia has helped me improve my happiness and overall quality of life simply by informing me of things I didn’t even know exist.
3. Wikipedia has been key in proving to the world: crowdsourcing/collaborative media works!

I do not want to see wikipedia become subject to the will of a small handful of donors or even have to become ad-supported.

Check out the letter from the programmer, which they were using to raise funds. I find this very important, so I will quote it here:

When we have access to free knowledge, we are better people. We understand the world is bigger than us, and we become infected with tolerance and understanding.

Apparently Google has invoked the power of CSS3 to make the user’s screen to make a 360 degree rotation, when the user types “do a barrel roll”.

It’s CSS3, so it currently does not work on IE 9 of course.

https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?q=google+does+a+barrel+roll