Cloudy Days: The Fall of Khart Haddas

... she asked me "how's the air up there?

The image you see is the view from my office in Pasadena. I just moved into a new office, and I'll admit that it looks pretty good. I even made my own whimsical version of Megadesk.

This is not what we're here to discuss.

The day has come, as was foretold with prophecy even in the light of delays and hold ups. Google's Blogger service is canceling their FTP support, and I'm out.

I've had a privately hosted website for many, many years (since 1999, if memory serves) and I love the privacy and freedom it allows. Set up a password-protected directory for information about a party, and then tons of embarrassing photos from said party? Done. Upload musical tracks for people to use as the theme for their fresh new web show? Easy peasy. Keep decades of writing and showcase my experience in multiple industries with an information architecture that borders on the pristine? I'm all over it.

Blogger wants me to come have my site hosted by Google. Now, you know I believe Google is reaching too far with their cloud concepted shenanigans. I don't want that much of my information in Mountain View, held secure by people who can't even get their own phone right. I have worked with my hosting company for years, they're as reliable as death and police oppression, and I'm not inclined to go with an entity that's clearly on the wrong path.

So my wonderful wife and her delicious design company are reformatting a Wordpress theme and I may be able to freak that ... or I may go back to manually FTPing HTML files and making my own RSS. I can't say today.

What I can say is that The Hundred and Four as you know it will be undergoing its latest transition. First it was an "online symposium and writing journal" for what I thought would be the next generation of brilliant voices, taught to be professionals by the likes of me. That failed miserably. Then I revamped it as my own window into the world, taking my own personal, more introspective blogging to my Soapbox, where I've had plenty to say about plenty since 2000 (yeah, I've been blogging that long, at least).

Now? Well, the main page (which will get a redesign as of, oh, let's say Bastille Day, its original launch date) will become a kind of aggregate -- my linkroll, (it's not ironic that I use Google for that, I don't mind them knowing what I look at, I just don't want them having what I create), an RSS feed for my CBR column and my Twitter feed when I get back to it, links to people I believe need to be linked to ... it's ultimately gonna be my experimental area, where I'll create and destroy worlds that most of you will never see (freeing up precious disk space on my main website).

But in a way, we'll be saying goodbye to this, at least together. I'm not deleting any files here, so it'll all (sooner or later) be searchable again. But for now, for today ...

Shade and sweet water, traveler. See you on the other side, or maybe one day you'll come visit me where I live, in the day after tomorrow.

Playing (Music): "My Hood" by GemStones

Technophilia: The Nokia N900 Review

This header makes more sense down the road, trust me ...

What up? The Nokia N900 is a Linux-powered smartphone from Finland heralded for its idiosyncratic operating system. It uses a 3.5" resistive touchscreen (800x480 pixels resolution for 16 million colors), 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics on the dual LED flash, video recorder with WVGA, a MiniUSB power/data connection, Bluetooth 2.1, full QWERTY via a slide-out keyboard and a 3.5mm jack for stereo sound.

That's a good thing, right? No cloud computing necessary, 32GB of onboard memory (expandable via 16GB MicroSD card to a total of 48GB on your hip), completely open source OS which allows a wide variety of customization options, you can remove the memory card without taking the battery out, multitasking is available. Go on, install Firefox (Fennec or Icerocket), the code's fine. It can natively view virtually any media format you can throw at it, its web browser comes pre-loaded with Flash 9.4 (you can see almost anything on the web, like a real computer), wi-fi speeds are awesome, 3G speeds are pretty good, the application MaStory offers amazing integration with all leading blogging services, there's a built in FM Radio transmitter and receiver, tethering to a MacBook Pro is a 20 second affair with T-Mobile, you can have full MS Office emulation from OpenOffice with an optional installation of Turbo Easy Debian ... there's a feature list as long as your arm and a sense of freedom you can't find in any of the market leaders.

What's the problem? It costs between $530-$650 in cash with zero carrier subsidies available, and is extraordinarily rare in retail (Nokia has stores in New York and Chicago, outside of that you'll have to rely on having it shipped to you). The actual phone usage? Not so good in less-than-optimized reception areas (no call in Pasadena, CA has ever lasted longer than 30 minutes, sometimes dropping off as quickly as fifteen). The battery usage is intense -- keeping the phone plugged into a computer while on conference calls is a must. Outside of the phone itself, there's not much that works in portrait mode, not even the virtual keyboard (so forget about one handed texting unless you're blessed with intense dexterity -- 18+?) and sometimes the performance can be a little sluggish if you're doing way too much (downloading multiple channels) at once. The web browser, which is robust, can hang a little on the likes of Google Reader and Gmail, making for some frustrating delays (could be Pasadena connectivity again).

The full story: Let's start this way: I love this freakin' phone. I will also add that this love has virtually nothing to do with talking and hearing voices -- you know, the phone part.

After being a Palm user of ten years' standing and migrating out of a Treo 680 (ah, the love, the tragedy, oh the effervescent tragedy), I had a great deal of trepidation, moving my data allegiances to another continent, another platform, another world essentially. My fears were largely unfounded. I migrated all of my contacts (more than 700) over within five minutes and resolved all the conflicts within a day. After wrestling with a Bluetooth drama on a temporary phone I used for a while, I was able to get online and tethered so quickly that it was almost easier than my homebound wi-fi. Again, I love this phone.

Let's break that down into key areas ...

• Web browsing


• Word processing & productivity


• Blogging


• PIM/data management


• Entertainment/multimedia


• Voice calls

... and that way we can be systematic. Let's go!

Web browsing

In a word: wow. Thus far, there's only one thing I've browsed to that would not work exactly the same way as it did on my MacBook Pro, and that's Hulu's actual show pages -- the front page, subscriptions, preferences and the queue all work fine. Both of my websites (this one and The Operative Network) look pretty much perfect. YouTube? Flawless, and exactly as it appears on my MacBook Pro. Even the big test, Hulu, looks great right up until you try to play an actual episode. See the browser here (and Firefox, and until I prove otherwise, Iceweasel) only work up to Flash 9.4, and the main website for video runs on Flash 10.1 (so the ads can work and pay for the joint). I've never had a mobile web browsing experience like this, and it's freaking amazing. If you want it, Firefox gives you tabbed browsing too. I can't say enough good about the online experience with this device ...

... even though sometimes, depending on connection speeds, there can be some freezing based on Java load times and what not. OTOH, I get that at home and at work too, so it's not like it's a big deal. Plus, sweet spirit, let it connect to wi-fi and watch it go! No complaints whatsoever on the web browsing, likely the best mobile browsing experience available.

Word processing and productivity

Here's where things get tricky ...

The public word is that "there's no built in word processor on the N900." Okay.

So I followed a link or two (or seven) and installed something called Turbo Easy Debian on my phone. It essentially installed a different kind of Linux package alongside the operating system I'm running. Sweet. Guess what that automatically installed. Open Office in all its glory. Full support for M$ Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint, the whole shebang. Fantastic. A little slow, and the emulation of a mouse's effect on a cursor isn't so smooth, but it's in there like Prego, baby.

Then, for kicks, I tried something. I created a new "note" using the built in software, and pasted in my weekly comics list for my reviews. I saved it on to the SD card and then plugged the thing into the nearest computer around via USB 2. An HTML file was created that I could read anywhere. Interesting.

Then I got ambitious. I decided to try and use the "open" feature in notes to crack open one of my development files on my current novel. I write stuff in either plain text or HTML (often HTML code in a plain text file) to preserve my usages of italics and what not while still keeping things fairly universal in their application (as I go web first in many instances). However, the notes application on the Treo 680 could only handle 2000 characters. I didn't think this one would be much more robust ...

WRONG!

The built in, plain jane, Notes application on the N900 can open up huge (and I mean really large) text files, copy, paste, and do whatever you need. I've been cobbling on my novel ever since. Is it Word files? No. I never used those anyway, I just wanted compatibility. It is fast, it is accurate, it is readable on every computer I come across and it is -- in a word -- awesome. Go you Finnish bastards! So for flexibility and usability, I'm gonna give a big thumbs up to this section. I am so in love.

Blogging

This one deserves its own section, due to the wonder of MaStory. Let's say you run a blog. Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal, Drupal, doesn't matter. You enter in your data (even if your blog uses FTP access, so get it together, Google!) for your account ... and start blogging. You can edit existing blogs. You can post. You can add images. You can add video. All from a client that is downloadable from the machine and works seamlessly. I've now posted three blogs, and aside from me forgetting a break tag, I haven't had to go on a desktop at all for any of them ... including this one! If I was a full time journalist, or trying to do live entertainment reporting, this would let me scoop almost anybody. The speed and flexibility of it are alarming. Outstanding work here, especially given that it's all open source work.

PIM/data management

Ah, finally some areas where all the skies aren't blue. Contacts are fine -- you'll never go into the cloud here. I exported my entire Palm database as a vcard and saved it on to the MicroSD card. I was then able to import it all -- more than 700 contacts, again -- and resolve all the conflicts within 10 minutes of looking around.

I will note that I have just barely tested IM, which is threaded into the "conversations" tool. I didn't notice them any differently from text messages, which pop up as a window in a corner that I can click or ignore and benefited from my skillful mobile typing skills. Don't try it in traffic, as portrait mode doesn't serve messaging and the on-screen keyboard is not so wieldy. Maybe fixable in upgrades.

Now my calendar ... that I haven't figured out yet. Most of the things I learned were done by others first. The Nokia Maemo community is super supportive and very quick to communicate their success. I haven't seen any word on Palm Calendars (or maybe my Google searching skills need some sharpening) so I'm slowly re-entering everything that wasn't a birthday or anniversary (all of which came through with my contacts). Moreover, the alarms for the calendar are silent when the phone is silent, so without vibration I can miss 'em. Not so cool.

I also miss being able to assign ringtones to different contacts and not having an incoming text message sound that's distinctive (the one here is very wishy washy and doesn't get my attention at all, even with the less-than-robust vibration), but given all I get in return, I'm coming to accept that. A solid "B" in this area, as I'm making it work and not complaining on a regular basis (and Palm had some world-beating calendaring going on, so that's tough to top).

UPDATED: As mentioned in another blog, with the amazing help of Dave Smith and the gang at talk.maemo.org, I now have all my calendar and contact information regularly synchronized with my MacBook Pro via the Unofficial N900 iSync Plugin, a work of love and community that makes me so happy I could wet myself. All done without ever trusting a single bit of data to the cloud. Eat me, Android! On the laptop side, it's sad that what Palm Desktop did in one application takes probably three to do otherwise. Still, upgrade that grade for the N900 to "A-" for PIM and compatibility!

Entertainment/multimedia

Okay, top ratings here. The built in browser handles YouTube and lots of other things like a champ. Being Flash 9.4 instead of 10.1 (which people keep saying is on its way any second now) is a bit of a limitation, in that I can look at what's in my Hulu queue, but not watch the shows themselves.

The machine natively runs lots of video formats, and I've been watching movies and video files formatted for my PSP with great success (I normally use Handbrake to rip DVDs and then convert the files into mobile-friendly mp4s with PSPWare). The music player, stock, is a little weird, and doesn't have much playlist support, but we'll see what GoGadget has to say about that.

The built in FM Radio is great, because now I can listen to the New @ 2 mix for the first word on new music every day and never interrupt anybody else. It's weird, because the phone uses the plugged in 3.5mm headphones (which took some getting used to, as they can block out a lot of external sound when you use both, but are pretty good) are the antenna for the darned thing, but I'll tell ya, it's great, preset stations and all.

Voice calls

Ah, now here's a problem. I work in Pasadena, and use this as my primary phone. The reception? She's no so good.

"Cellular data not available" is something I see a lot, when the numbers on the signal indicator change from "3.5" to "3G" to "2.5." I don't know why this phone doesn't like T-Mobile service in Pasadena (I was once on a four hour conference call on my late, lamented Treo 680) but I have yet to be on any call longer than 30 minutes while in the city of Pasadena before I get kicked off. In the LA legal limits, I've had better success, talking to my pal Craig for 42 minutes (one of the longest phone conversations I've had in months, but we hadn't spoken in some time, so we took a chance to get caught up).

Being a phone is not the strong suit of this machine. However, I'm an anti-social bastard anyway, and most of my calls are either to my wife to check in during the day or to food places to order something and say "I'm on my way." Coverage matters for this, so in this area I'd have to give it "B-" rating.

Overall ...

I am absolutely gay for this phone. I would make out with it if I could. From the desktop search widget I found (that can search Google, maps or search, Wikipedia and eBay) to the blogging and productivity tools to the relaxing ability to watch movies and listen to the radio to the great contact management to the wonderful presentation of contacts and apps on four big desktops ... this phone is fantastic. I like Ovi Maps for its GPS/directional steez, but I can just as easily use Google Maps in the browser and know my way around.

It is also not for the weak of heart -- the apps installs sometimes come from crazy places or are beta software, in worse case scenarios you may be encouraged to go into the command line, hearkening to the days of DOS. If you're afraid of getting your hands dirty, suffer on an iPhone. For the brave and determined, your persistence pays off so hugely.

I'm still learning it, and getting new things (FTP, P2P, et cetera) all the time. It takes screen shots and screen casts, and stays hooked up via USB or Bluetooth to whatever computer I'm using bringing me most of my home computer experience with me everywhere I go. I've written/posted blogs on it, worked on my novel, used its flashlight function (really) ... it's amazing. The overall grade is a "A-" which can be improved upon by ...

• PORTRAIT MODE, UP AND WORKING! Let's size down that on screen keyboard and free up my hand when I need directions.


• Better playlist management on the road through the device


• More robust documentation of the community resources and solutions by Nokia -- can we get a freakin' wiki, dude?


• More ways to stop the machine if something's holding up (installs, what have you)


• Better indicators of what's happening (processing)


• A backout DVD-ROM in case you hack it into doing something too crazy

My wife has clowned me because of the apps I've installed, after my heavy "apps are traps" rants that I've done. I countered: "These are all free" -- like on my Palm, I didn't install much that needed money. Here's my favorite Maemo apps so far ...

• GRR: Google Reader application, helps immensely on downloading and starred items


• MaStory: Makes blogging through multiple services a breeze (haven't checked the Wordpress or other blogging clients)


• Touchsearch: Search Google, WebMD, Wikipedia, eBay and more from your desktop.


• Notes: Everything you need in a word processor built in to the OS. Outstanding.


• FM Radio: Combined with the recording app I found? Excellent.


• Recaller: Record the call you're making? Excellent.


• Sketch/Xournal: Actual writing and drawing? Nice!


• LiveCast Mobile: Combined with Twitter, this could be the future of live reporting.


• ForecaWeather: Having an idea of the four day forecast every time I open my phone. Outstanding.

It ain't for everybody, but it's the best thing possible for me.

Playing (Music): "All I Do Is Win" by DJ Khaled feat. Ludacris, T-Pain, Rick Ross and Snoop Dogg

Exodus: Movement Of The Bloggers

I have to get out of here.

Soon, Blogger will stop supporting FTP publishing, which means that my little experiment with "trusting" servers I don't own will soon end in tears and I won't be able to go to the web to post these crazy little missives. If you see the little orange and white "B" next to the URL of this site, you'll note that this is a Blogger-driven website. Change is coming to me whether I like it or not.

I am less than pleased about that, especially given that I don't have much time to do anything about it. I mentioned this briefly already.

A host (pardon the pun) of alternatives present themselves, each zanier than the last. A good, good friend installed a Wordpress server on my personal domain, where I'm doing some experimentation. Here's the options I'm debating:

• Go back to plain jane HTML blogging, manually FTPing files to my domain(s), creating my own RSS feeds (pain in the butt) and writing the blogs "on the road," transferring them from plain text to the blog when I can sit down at a computer ... retiring The Hundred and Four in the process and moving all blogging operations back to the mothership on The Operative Network.
  
• Let Google shake me down on The Hundred and Four for a custom domain and suck it up (less than attractive)
• Finagle the Wordpress install my homeboy did on my domain and somehow make it look like a page that doesn't make me wanna throw up in my soul.
• Taking my year-long sabbatical from social networking a step farther into getting offline completely. However, given how therapeutic and helpful for my writing it's been to shout from the digital rafters, that seems "un-possible."

I have to make a decision by March 26th, a date that's bearing down on my wife much harder than me (more on that in a bit ... scratch that, probably just links when she's ready to make her big reveal).

What's funniest is that this happens less than a year after I finally completely relented to "blogging engines." I'd done (literally) more than a thousand posts at MySpace and still considered myself keeping the torch burning since I was maintaining my Soapbox by hand, the way spirit intended you to. I created a client site which had Blogger integrated and was like, "oh, that's not so hard" and now I'm screwed. Stupid trusting Google to not change up the game!

Playing (Music): "The Great Divide" by Vertical Horizon

These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For: Cloud Computing is Bad Weather

Let's start out with a simple, yet largely unpublicized thesis: cloud computing is bad.

Many people, even many powerful and profitable businesses would love you to believe otherwise. They assure you their shiny, distant machines can be trusted.

" ...one of us, one of us ..."

From security failures with Google Docs to Paris Hilton's hacked Sidekick (as the biggest of many Sidekick-related tragedies, without even looking at the Blackberry problems), there's ample evidence that cloud computing is "chock full of fail."

The idea seems so idyllic. Create and store your data -- documents, music, whatever -- and store it "in the cloud," on distant servers you don't own and don't control, accessing your material via the internet. The problem is that, like, say, communism, it only works in an idealized state. When real life and real people are involved ... preposterous.

Why? Well, let's look at a number of elements ...

- I CAN'T GET ONLINE: You and your co-workers have a presentation to do on Monday morning. All week you worked on it, collaborating with Google Wave and posting the results on Google Docs. You're feeling confident about your work, and on Sunday night you're gonna fulfill your responsibility to download the file so it can be prepped for a laptop and tested on a projector, since you're first up at the meeting first thing the next day. But you live in Los Angeles, and the rains were heavy as hell and knocked down a tree, which snapped wires that fed your DSL connection (true story, happened to me). You're not getting online tonight, and you can't just drive out to a cyber cafe or something because, oh, your husband is sick and can't be left alone. You are, as they say, screwed.

"... and that's how I got fired ..."

- I CAN'T TRUST YOU: Let's say your phone is, oh, I dunno, a Verizon Droid. You enter your contact information into the device, or maybe you sync it up via Gmail. That means your contacts are on a computer somewhere, available to anybody smart enough to hack into 'em. Why do you care? Well, let's say you work for, oh, I dunno, a design firm that manages the website for a defense contractor, and you talk to lots of department heads to get sign off (true story, happened to someone I worked for). Suddenly, all your contacts -- name, your notes about them, job titles, et cetera -- are a national security risk. Good job, you just encouraged Al Qaeda! You are, not to put too fine a point on it, caught out there.

- I CAN'T KEEP WHAT I PAID FOR: Let's say you own an e-reader like, let's just say an Amazon Kindle. You buy a book that you love and bought wholly legally. One day, you go look to read your book to go do a report on it and whammo, your content got remotely redacted, player! As David Pogue at the New York Times explains: "apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price." When you spent your money, you didn't buy the book, you licensed it, and that license can be revoked with or without your approval or knowledge. You are, just for kicks, anally raped.

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

Some say that moving some content (entertainment based) to float in the ethereal nothingness is a fix for a season of The Office hogging up 20GB of hard drive space, and that "most average consumers are not going to ... buy terabyte external hard drives" to keep their purchases. Really? So, if I wanna keep the stuff I buy at the store, I'm not just gonna find a place for it at home, I'd expect the store to keep giving it to me when I want it? That kind of westernized laziness saddens me deep in my soul parts.

Me? I can't buy it -- literally. For years, I was elated with my Treo 680, which allowed me seamless integration of notes and contacts with my Mac, let me do web browsing and word processing, had basics like cut and paste, but most importantly let me manage my own security. Aside from the unavoidables of SMS and voice call records, I decided what went out and what stayed. Then, on one horrible December night before the birth of my latest daughter, my Treo 680 leapt to its death out of the camera bag I use as a "utility belt" and down the cold, cruel hard wood steps of my apartment's atrium. I was crestfallen at best.

Luckily, my research had already led me to what I believe is the best phone on the market, and as soon as my financial situation slows down a little, it will be mine. Not for the technologically faint of heart, the Nokia N900 once again keeps all the data local (being largely plan agnostic helps with that) while bringing me new 3G speeds, 48GB of hard drive space (I'm happy to keep my own files, thank you very much), Linux OS capable of installing OpenOffice and a video player that handles multiple formats natively, plus oodles of other bells and whistles. I tingle just writing about it.

Let me be clear that I'm not an anti-Google person (even though I am a pro-Apple person and recognize the antagonism between the companies as Nexus One moves to compete with the iPhone). I use Google Reader every day (as is shown in the right nav here). On an everyday basis, I would not search with any other engine (sorry, Icerocket, although I do go to Ask.com for specific things I can phrase properly). Also, as you see, I not only criticize Google's cloud aspirations, but Amazon and other companies -- and if you ask me about the iPad, I'd have similar concerns about not being able to control my own machine. Google just happens to be the public's vision of a leader in the drive for cloud computing, and I feel they're going in the wrong way (even if I understand their reasons). I have to paint them all with the same brush.

When I see "a bare knuckled bucket of 'does'" ads for the Droid, I think about what it can't do -- be free from the tentacles of the cloud (and yes, that's a weird mental image, but factual). I look at the G1 or the Nexus One (and how screwy is that thing, huh?) and I shudder. Avago Technologies chief information officer Bob Rudy told the San Francisco Chronicle that "The days of owning software are coming to an end." I don't think he, or anybody else, has the right to tell me what kinds of products I can't own (unless the products are people, because that's clearly not cool) especially based on decades of consumption. I'd no more trust a Photoshop in the clouds than I'd trust public transportation to get me to work.

Which, essentially, is what's likely to happen. Those that have to will live in the cloud, because doing it my way, the safe way ("the safe way is the slow way, Muadib") is both challenging (maintaining your own security, hard for a culture weaned from personal responsibility) and expensive (the phone I want has an MSRP of -- brace yourself -- $650 with zero carrier subsidy). The continued tiering of society in a "post-racial" world. Good luck with that.

Playing (Music): "Thank You" by Lupe Fiasco off of his Enemy of the State mixtape

UPDATE: Mere hours after this blog got updated, Nokia announced that they'll be shipping Maemo 6-based smartphones in the second half of 2010. Yes, the $650 phone I want is a Maemo 5 phone. I can't wait like Nu Shooz.

UPDATE 2/5/10: Google strikes back ... *sigh*

Blog Fu: The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

"... if you ain't hip to the rare house quake, shut up, already ... damn!"

- I've been increasingly concerned about increases in the crazification factor of people wandering around in what I indulgently will refer to as "western society." I've read recently about a 23-year-old pregnant woman found dead with (hang on) the baby cut out of her stomach.

Then there's the Texas death row inmate convicted of stabbing his wife and baby to death, ripping their hearts out, and while waiting for his first trial (brace yourself) plucking out his own right eye and eating it before being considered "clearly 'crazy,' but he is also 'sane' under Texas law," or so Judge Cathy Cochran wrote in a 14-page statement accompanying the court's brief order. Worst of all, he was Black. Like we needed that on our tally ...

Speaking of Texas, don't forget the woman who dismembered her newborn baby with a knife and two swords (wouldn't expect a baby to put up that much of a fight) before eating parts of his body and brain before failing to kill herself.

Oddly enough, the one that bothered me the most is the 51-year-old mother who took her teenaged son hiking, waited until he was looking at scenery and then shot him to death, first in the head and then in the chest before eating a bullet herself. This after methodically disposing of a family pet, calmly buying the gun and composing a lengthy suicide note ... that gave no reason why the boy had to die.

Now, anybody who's ever read my work can attest to the fact that I have no overly sentimental attachment to life, human or otherwise. Death happens. I don't think it's a big deal. I once told someone that the only crime I couldn't get my brain around was rape. Theft, sure, all day, makes sense, get yours. Murder? Well, yeah, there are times I can see people considering that the best choice. But these killings ... I don't get it. I'm nowhere near crazy enough to see the line of thinking that leads to these behaviors. Moreover, with the eye guy (who looks strangely like he could be related to Chris Brown, IMNSHO), the amount of focus you have to have to block out the make-you-pass-out levels of pain from plucking out your own eye, and then staying conscious through the shock and bleeding long enough to eat it ... that's the stuff of nightmares, in my mind. All this "oh, some people got shot" or "she ran them down with her car" stuff is pansy by comparison. I can't even write stuff this bananas. So that's been haunting me for a few days ...

- At least they didn't have sex with a horse ... repeatedly.

- In completely unrelated news, UCLA will no longer allow the three-times-a-year Undie Run. This "tradition" started after I was long done with college, and involved the students of Cal State Westwood to boot, so I'd never even gotten close to it. But it seemed like a fun and largely harmless thing (what's a few arrests, assaults and a burglary between friends?), so I'm almost sad to see it go in that it makes the city marginally less whimsical.

- Back to people getting killed, this at least made me laugh like a silly bastard: Cracked's Five Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a P***y. The Finnish sniper was fantastic, but the 19-year-old Yogreva Singh Yadav and US candidates Alvin York and Audie Murphy just made me giggle like a schoolgirl on E. All the fancy training, all the skills one can amass, and the second you find somebody who wants it more and catches you at the right time, boom, you're in a bag. Ask those Soviet or Pakistani or German soldiers. Hilarity.

- Apparently, due to science and da intanet and what have you, women are getting statistically more beautiful in the US while men remain pretty much as we always were. Yeah, okay. I've got no argument there.

- How cool is the idea of transparent aluminum? Aside from the idea of a wrap you can cook in and see through, it apparently "created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said Oxford University Department of Physics Professor Justin Wark. "Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth." Now that's cool.

- I don't need to go into the Skip Gates thing -- I've long said Yankee Black folk are way too comfortable with their fancy "freedom," and need to be more strategic. No, I'm more bothered by the Nuttworld case where a Black man got hit in the face by a piece of wood-wielding white guy on a Bay Area street, and the eyewitness didn't think to report it. Plus le change, plus le meme chose, fool.

- I am bothered, however, by how often I have to tell Black people that the great pyramids were not and could not have been built by slaves. Let alone that the only large influx of people into dynastic Egypt (Kemet) were not poor desert wanderers looking for freedom, but bloodthirsty invaders, so quash that theory as well. From non-Black people, this seems fairly predictable in a sad, mass-media-and-Charlton-Heston-influenced way. From Black people? It's a tragedy, IMNSHO, to have so little regard for your own roots. Admittedly, this was an area of fairly intensive study for me, but still ...

- Speaking of Africa, I'm consistently bothered by the fact that the continent is apparently connected to the net via an extension cord looped through the Nigerian equivalent of Pookie's back window, especially because of how often it stops working. I need to find out what's at the "good" end of that cable, and it's hard to do since the official site looks like it was coded in 1997. Oy.

- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get you. A military coup planned by Dubya's granddad? Scientologists raiding the IRS? Explosion-proof Hitler? Cracked also noted seven insane conspiracies that actually happened including the tragic fate of Guy Fawkes (one day, I wanna write an alternative history story where he succeeded).

- Foxes in Germany steal shoes -- pass it on.

- To celebrate his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, please enjoy the wit and wisdom of Rickey Henderson.

- I need to check out Street Sweeper Social Club, which is made up of Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello and the illustrious and praiseworthy leader of The Coup, Boots Riley. There's also a new free song for download I wanna check out from Goapele.

- I guess this and this mean I'm never gonna get the $200 I was owed from that Luniz review I did while Jesse Washington was editor.

- I love taking a nap.

- To be honest, I don't have a lot of the so-called 100 Essential Skills for Geeks ... but I know some people who do. Those people are extraordinarily useful to know.

That's more than enough for now, and my blog-fu file still has literally hundreds of links. Whee!

Playing (Music): "Cornbread" by Freestyle Fellowship

Blog Fu: Iron Monkey

The Hundred and Four* will, among many other purposes, serve as an information clearinghouse. The ancient art of blog-fu helps with that, practiced by many but mastered by few, and which I practiced for years aggregating content for CBR's Comic Reel column (now run by the illustrious and praiseworthy Erik Amaya, who I did my best to train in the Sith ways).

Let us begin with a quote from the brilliant but cancelled TV show Kings (much beloved of Entertainment Weekly's Marc Bernardin)** ...

Jessie Shepherd: "People with destinies, things don't go well for them. They die old and unhappy, or young and unfinished."

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin:

- Let's start with some news about living in the future. Like what? How about a computer that can read lips, which is a wonderful advance for all the Big Brother/Dick Cheney wet dreams of capturing information that wants to be free?

Not far enough for you? How about scientists creating a star right here on earth? Yes, that sounds outlandishly unsafe, but that's probably part of the appeal. Kind of a Venkman and Spengler sort of thing, doncha think?***

Why there's even practice for a mission to Mars, because so many of us are desperate to get away from this potentially godforsaken rock that people are lining up to take a ride even close to space? Perhaps they can see the writing on the wall about how it will all end**** and are trying to plan ahead like a macro-scale game of Civilization 2. Hard to say.

- Let's move on. Remember Friendster? Few people do.***** The numbers seem to indicate that MySpace is learning some hard lessons about obsolescence. Sure, 70 million users is far from chicken feed, but trends being what they are ... in my own limited experience, I'm seeing more young people return to or adhere to MySpace (judging from the customers at bars where I host karaoke -- more on that in a bit******) whereas more adults in their late 20s and onwards are Facebooking it up. Twitter? It plays by no rules I've seen (with its tools for power users, artists using it as an alternative revenue stream and even ways to share music, plus everybody knows I love Twitpic), and in my own idiosyncratic experiences, has kept the annoying outages to a dull roar.

Anyway, Rupert Murdoch-powered MySpace soon afterwards announced a big staffing cut, which makes MySpace look like a wounded elephant. Only important because our virtual homes are becoming more of where we spend our lives and interact, so looking at the management becomes relevant for a grasp of the zeitgeist. Developing ...

- Speaking of battling multi-million dollar companies, Google is ready to get into the OS game and Micro$oft strikes back with a web-based, free Office option. Whaaaat? It's all true.

Google's hippie PR and egalitarian image belies a corporate juggernaut, but one far less obvious and mean-spirited in its rapaciousness than the rowdies in Redmond. As a lifelong Mac evangelist*******, any attack on the House that Gates Built, Stole and Oppressed His Way Into******** gets a cheer from me, and this fight is a battle for the way people think digitally, so it's surely worth keeping an eye on.

- Fnord.

- What else is up? Well, of course that Philadelphia swimming pool incident proved that, Obama or not, plus le change, plus le meme chose (or as Talib Kweli once said, "conditions in the hood don't change with the president"). Racism? Discrimination? Prejudice? Alive and well even far from the fields of Dixie. One has to look no farther than the Inglewood police department (which, fun fact, is in a predominantly Black city, ha ha, funny old life) to see that in action every single day. Thanks to Boston's Dart Adams for the heads up on that.

- Don't think about escaping into music, pal. Not when those bastards at the RIAA wanna fine a 32-year-old single mother eighty thousand dollars a song for downloading. What's the total on that? Brace yourself -- one point nine two millon US freaking dollars. That had to be typed out so it'd be clear that the number of zeroes wasn't a typo. On a daily basis, you can see LAPD cops running red lights sans sirens or not using hands free devices to speak on cell phones as they drive. But they have more guns than you. Bend over and relax your muscles, it's easier that way.

- To quote the erstwhile Blade, "bu-bu-bu-but wait, it gets worse!" In "fan fiction goes horribly, horribly wrong" news, Eli Stone visionary and Green Lantern scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim is -- wait for it -- writing a new comic book for Dynamite Entertainment -- brace yourself -- based on Galactica 1980.

Get up off the floor. Yes, you read that correctly. This is really happening. Yes, someone thinks this is a good idea. Spirit help us all, yes, someone will probably buy this. What's next, a comic book adaptation of Hell Comes to Frogtown by Robert Kirkman? Listen, people -- some things just need to die. I know we all love the nostalgia wave ... well, some of us. Anyway, some things don't need to come back.

If Guggenheim creates a work of such awe-inspiring wonder that Eisner Awards will cloud around it like a butterfly crown,********* I will let Marc Guggenheim punch me in the stomach. Chances are, this is a catastrophically bad idea, even in the hands of a writer as skilled as this one. Oy.

- "Damn, Hannibal, you're awfully negative!" Actually, no I'm not. I have a beautiful pregnant wife and an adorable, brilliant stepdaughter. I have a job where I make good money and I'm good at it. I even recently closed a deal to bring one of my novels to life as a comic book and possibly an animated project as well. Despite a lot more gray hairs than I ever expected and quite possibly being clinically insane, I am essentially fine and dandy.********** The rest of you seem to be almost irreparably f***ed up. Don't blame me as I hold up a mirror to your lunacy.

How do I illustrate the new wonder of me, the one that makes so many so sick to see me so fly that NASA calls me for directions? I do it by sharing love, with all of you. How do I do that? With karaoke Skeletor drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon (thanks to Robot 6 for that one). I give you the opposite of gangsta. With you I share the statistics of red shirts, give you a peek at the awesomeness of a Death Star grill and let you know about the world's largest air sex competition.

I'm a giver. It's not my fault so many of you are cuckoo for crack-o-puffs.

In the end, who should you blame? I believe this*********** closes the book on that discussion.

Behave.

Or else.

FOOTNOTES:

* = Yes, I will bold the name everywhere. That's consistency of style. Learn it, live it, love it.

** = It's kind of scary how gay he is for that show.

*** = Yes, Ghostbusters 3 is happening, and you probably can't do anything to stop it. I'm sorry. Well, I would be, if I cared. Maybe.

**** = Would you have preferred accelerated heat death instead?

***** = Go on, Google "love" and "friendster." It's sad.

****** = Maybe not today. Maybe not even on this blog. But soon.

******* = My 15" Macbook Pro is called, by virtually everyone who knows it, "the precious."

******** = Please don't forget that the entire Windows OS is stolen from an early build of Mac OS, and then bloatwared to death. After Microsoft Word 5.1, that company hasn't done a single thing right.

********* = Like that call back to Kings? That's how you do it. However, whenever I see the show, I think in my brain, "have you ever seen a kingdom with a butter fly crown? Rulin' is a habit, get like me ..." Hm ... maybe I shouldn't tell people these things.

********** = Si se puede. Universal paradigm shift. Choose joy. Patent pending.

*********** = Anedge hirak Michael Joseph Jackson.