I was looking up the word Sedevacantism — a word I had never read before — and I came across another term, I did — Tridentine Mass:

“While the Vatican does allow the use of Latin Masses, it insists that the latin version of the new Missal be used rather than the older Tridentine Mass, which only can be celebrated with a special dispense. These Parishes are approved by Rome and their local Bishop. There are now Parishes dedicated to the exclusive celebration of the Mass said according to the 1962 Missal, itself based on the original Tridentine Missal of 1570.”

And Mom, don’t worry, I can say certifiably I don’t truck with these splinter-Catholics. It’s just interesting to me, the history and controversies.

I find the efforts of groups to splinter away from any religious group fascinating. The whole of the history of Christianity is of groups seeing things differently. My wish would be that people learn to agree to disagree in peace.

Check out the slow evolution of San Diego Bloggers.:

• Fool’s Eye Blog
• Osten.net
• Joanne “Living Out Loud” Van Meter”
• urbn
• NoDice
• John K. Davis, Technology Advocate
• KM Blogger
• TUUN
• Okie in San Diego
• etalkinghead
• Search Visibility Report
• State of Khoandary
• My. Syndromes
• Anita4Real
• Cuppa Tea
• Sebastian Holsclaw
• The Vance Tran Website
• The Cheese Stands Alone
• the m-pire strikes back
• God’s Lonely Man
• Union Tribune Fire Blog
• Do you have that in my size?
• Haywood Jahelpme (aka Tech Support Hell)
• Blogs of Peace – Fair and Balanced

Lots of new additions. I had a dedicated email address for keeping up with that site, and it was 99% spam. I’ve killed the account in favor of using my feedback form. This gets rid of lots of the crap.

Apologies to those of you whose blogs have been so delayed.

about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl “accident”…

Does CBS think we’re that stupid?

Ever feel like you’ve been cheated?

“I’ll wager you anything you like, if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight! ”

— J. Algernon Hawthorne, in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Pop Review | Stew: A Troubadour Travels in Circles, With Lives Tangled in His Own: “Onstage Stew was as much an actor as a singer. His voice is genial and adequate, but he had the rubber-faced presence to make each song vivid. He set up songs with droll introductions and turned himself into a secular preacher, a befuddled tripping teenager and a frustrated gay Ken doll who would prefer G.I. Joe to Barbie. Without cynicism or naive optimism, he understands human weaknesses and all the fascinating trouble they can cause.

I miss Stew. He’s in New York now.

joe crawford dot com is launching. It’s an online business card. An old school “one page” website . it describes my two main professional activities.

The “BIG SECRET” I’ve been referring to is basically that I am now an Evangelist for LAMP Host, who is a great hosting company located here in San Diego. I’ve been a customer and have referred people there for a long time, but never had any sort of formal relationship. Starting last week that relationship began full time. My role will be the sales and marketing of top quality web hosting from LAMP Host. At the moment I’m working on my elevator speech and beginning to do networking in earnest. I attended a rather small computer consultant meeting tonight, and got to practice and start putting feelers out there. It felt pretty good. Last week I spent a great deal of time learning the ins and outs of the business, getting a feel for the underlying technologies and systems. It’s good stuff, and I’m excited to represent it.

In the interests of “eating my own dog food” — a phrase coined to describe the process by which companies actually use what they sell — I’m slowly migrating some of my websites to LAMP Host. So far I’m liking what I see.

The other big thing I’m doing is freelance web stuff — building websites, fixing bugs, that sort of thing.

If folks have any questions about all this, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for listening.

SDSUniverse covers a San Diego Blogger: Bernie Dodge Puts His Life Online. Bernie has a SDSU Blog as well as his own personal blog: One-Trick Cyberpony.

Bernie’s been linking to SDB for a while. Blogs good he does.

I start School today. I’m nervous. I’m excited.

I need to download the Mac version of jGRASP.

It went well. Spanish in a bit. Busy busy. Good good.

// This is my first Java Program — today

public class JoeCrawford
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.print(“Hello Joe!\n\n”);
System.out.println(“\tThis is fun?”);
System.out.println(“What is the . . . \1 \2 \3 \4 \5 \6?”);
}
}
and…

¡Hola! ¿Como te llamas?

Muy bien, ¿y tu?

(I got to read this in advance — it’s a good one) .. WritersMonthly.US- Puking at 30,000 feet

I’ve gotten two noted from people about iTunes Error: “The iTunes Music Library file cannot be read because it does not appear to be a valid library file” — saying that reinstalling iTunes was not necessary. I’ve added a note indicating that step as optional, but if the instructions fail, to reconsider reinstallation.

Thanks internet!

HIGH BIAS — Stew: “Stew didn’t really write this”

Today is so so so busy!

Giving Users A Preference Widget for Opening New Windows

Has been implemented on San Diego Bloggers.

I don’t say this often… but… BOO YA!

The Daily Californian interviews William Hung. See also: WilliamHung.net.

(via waxy)

Web Design Meetup — Calling all Web Designers in San Diego, CA

First Time Caller

Today I walked to school. Not bad, and much better than what I did this week, which was drive and park.

City College stinks for parking. Why I didn’t walk before I don’t know is that I thought it would be easier, and I was lazy. It’s less than a mile from here to there. Not too bad. But being able to drive gives me the ability to come and go from campus however I wish.

Web Design Meetup San Diego, California — only NYC beats us.

Java: Failure or Crime?: “Only one fate can be ignominious enough to expiate Java’s wrongs. Java must be consigned to use as an undergraduate teaching language.”

Socal Free Net is doing some great work to provide free wireless in my neighborhood.

Unmaking of the President – 2004:

According to CPI, the three largest fundraisers in the presidential campaign at this time are Howard Dean with more than $25 million; John Kerry with more than $20 million; and, of course, President George W. Bush with $85.2 million (as of Sept. 30, 2003).

As has been reported, Bush plans to build a war chest of some $200 million for the election. His top major donors include financial firms Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston, UBS Paine Webber, and Goldman Sachs Group. The President’s top career donor is the scandal-ridden Enron Corp.

Kerry’s top donors include Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Time Warner, and a variety of major law firms. Time Warner, as we know, is the world’s largest media conglomerate. Among a variety of media outlets, it also owns Internet giant America On Line and CNN – a virtual cheerleader for Kerry.

The research Center does not cite any major donors for Dean. As we know, the majority of his contributors are ordinary citizens who donate an average of $77 dollars. Dean’s ‘special interest group’ is the American people.

Hm. George Bush: The Enron President?

(File under: Posts that were meant to be but never were)

1. COALESCE() – the ANSI standard
2. ISNULL() – the Microsoft T-SQL standard (only takes two values)
3. IFNULL() – the MySQL standard (only takes two values)
4. NVL() – Oracle / Informix PL/SQL standard (only takes two values)

Got that from a message board.

Basically it takes a query result, and in order of the parameters, if the first is NULL, then it uses the second parameter (often a string or ‘N/A’ or whatever.

SQL Server: Coalesce()

SQL Server: Isnull()

Kind of useful when you want to munge strings — because anything + NULL is always null, you can avoid that by doing

COALESCE(TABLE.WHATEVER,”)+ ‘anything’

I was able to enjoy good coffee, internet access, and good conversation (not necessarily in that order) via Golden Hill Free Web, available at the coffeehouse. I dug it.

(Can you tell that today I’m doing “spring cleaning” on stuff I meant to blog before?)

YouÝCan Make It With Plato – Bush’s difficult relationship with reality. By William Saletan:

This big-picture notion of reality, existence, and the world as it is dates back 2,400 years to the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that what’s real isn’t the things you can touch and see: your computer, your desk, those empty barrels in Iraq that Bush thought were full of chemical weapons. What’s real is the general idea of these things. The idea of a computer. The idea of a desk. The idea of an Iraqi threat to the United States. Whether you actually have a computer or a desk, or whether Saddam Hussein actually had chemical weapons, is less important than the larger truth. The abstraction is the reality.

Plato’s successor, Aristotle, took a different view. He thought reality was measured by what you could touch and see. That’s the definition of reality on which modern science was founded. It’s the definition Colin Powell used when he told the world Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It’s the definition David Kay used when he set out to find the weapons. Kay and Powell are dismayed by our inability to see and touch the weapons. But Bush isn’t. He isn’t going to let Aristotle’s reality distract him from Plato’s.

from diveintomark.org: The myth of RSS compatibility:

There are 9 versions of RSS, all of which are incompatible with various other versions. RSS 0.90 is incompatible with Netscape’s RSS 0.91, Netscape’s RSS 0.91 is incompatible with Userland’s RSS 0.91, Netscape’s RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 1.0, Userland’s RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 0.92, RSS 0.92 is incompatible with RSS 0.93, RSS 0.93 is incompatible with RSS 0.94, RSS 0.94 is incompatible with RSS 2.0, and RSS 2.0 is incompatible with itself.

The Black Commentator – The Awesome Destructive Power of the Corporate Power Media – Issue 75:

This commentary, however, is not about the merits of Howard Dean. If a mildly progressive, Internet-driven, young white middle class-centered, movement-like campaign such as Dean’s – flush with money derived from unconventional sources, backed by significant sections of labor, reinforced by big name endorsements and surging with upward momentum – can be derailed in a matter of weeks at the whim of corporate media, then all of us are in deep trouble. The Dean beat-down should signal an intense reassessment of media’s role in the American power structure. The African American historical experience has much to offer in that regard, since the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were born in a wrestling match with an essentially hostile corporate (white) media. However, there can be no meaningful discussion of the options available to progressive forces in the United States unless it is first recognized that the corporate media in the current era is the enemy, and must be treated that way.

I’ve been pretty disgusted by the manner of the de-annointing of Dean by Corporate Media. He does unprecedented things with financing (NO HUGE CORPORATE DONORS) and for this, he gets media punishment. But some of us aren’t buying this nonsense. I’m remembering this lesson about the media very well. The media cannot be trusted anymore than they can be thrown.

Red Door Interactive acquires AVENCOM. NIFTY. I’ve worked with both companies: as an employee for AVENCOM and a contractor for Red Door. I think it’s a good fit.

BoingBoing points to the eTech Wiki, the eTech main page, and BloggingETech.com

Of the folks I read: Dori, Doc Searls, and Brianstorms.

Also check the Technorati Profile of the main conference page.

I had intended to go, but I’m way busy.

Halcyon: Carl cried “Dolphins!” on Sunday.
Joanie: said “What Dolphins” on Sunday.
And on Monday I was working on a redesign of LAMP Host which includes the MySQL Logo, which features a dolphin.
Janece: talks about IMAX Dolphins on Monday.

Is it that I’m merely noticing mentions of dolphins? Or are dolphins entering the collective unconscious somehow?

There are a few mentions in the news.

Mere coincidence, I think.

The latest Beyond the Beyond has Sterling being rather poetic about wandering in the desultory urbanity of Modern Turkey.

I like it…

USPS – Track & Confirm by Email.

I recently sent off for a renewal of my passport, and I did delivery confirmation, and I get notifications that they got it. It’s so cool.

San Diego Bloggers now includes Google Adsense Ads. I have pondered including advertising in some of my sites for some time, and now SDB includes them, as of yesterday. I’m curious to see how well they work — or don’t work.

The New York Review of Books: Now They Tell Us:

“Since the end of the war, journalists have found no shortage of sources willing t criticize the administration. (Even Colin Powell, in a recent press conference, admitte that, contrary to his assertions at the United Nations, he had no ‘smoking gun’ proof of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.) The Washington Post has been especially aggressive in exposing the administration’s exaggerations of intelligence, its inadequate planning for postwar Iraq, and its failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Barton Gellman, who before the war worked so hard to ferret out Iraq’s ties to terrorists, has, since its conclusion, written many incisive articles about the administration’s intelligence failures.

The contrast between the press’s feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and reporters don’t like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus, stories about the increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq–both American and Iraqi–are usually consigned to page 10 or 12, where they won’t cause readers too much discomfort.”

Groupthink sucks.

My Demonstration of oncontextmenu Event Handler has been updated with the information that the code works under Safari 1.2 and Firefox 0.8. Thanks Joe Xaxo for this information!

Ashes to Ashes Diamonds
Welcome to the LifeGem Home – www.LifeGem.com Memorial Diamond:

Here you will find everything you need to know about this wonderful memorial. The LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life.

Inside you will find complete explanations on everything from how this unique process works, to where and how to obtain your own LifeGem diamond – whether the need is now or sometime in the future.

(via my colleague Mari)

Leah‘s response: “That’s a bad idea.”

I agree with that.

San Diego’s main newspaper, the San Diego Union Tribune, or rather it’s online arm, SignOnSanDiego, has a moblog — San Diego News moblog. Also they have a sports moblog.

Apropos of my Ashes to Diamonds story: Eternal Reefs, A Cremation Memorial Option

(via Meg)

[IP] Don’t snoop on us:

In the name of national security and of protecting us from the mad men of our times they spur the Congress to pass laws that strip away citizen’s rights to privacy and civil liberty.

The phrase ‘Don’t tread on me!’ expresses the attitude of a mentally healthy public that understands that all governments, given the chance, will try to reduce the ability of the people to remove them from power. They do this by brute force, as in the Iraq of Saddam Hussein or, a nibble at a time, as now in the U.S., until they have sufficient powers to tread on us all.

Yeah.

Designing for Civil Society: Top 10 Open Source Tools for eActivism: “Top 10 Open Source Tools for eActivism” — all these would work on LAMP Host.

Bruce Schneier: Crypto-Gram: February 15, 2004

In the last issue of Crypto-Gram I published a couple of security essays that had a political component. I was surprised by the number of e-mails I received from people accusing me of bashing Bush (or worse). American politics may be getting vitriolic, but I think it’s worth stepping back and looking at the political security landscape.

I believe that the Bush administration is using the fear of terrorism as a political tool. That being said, I’m not sure a Democrat would do anything different in Bush’s place. Fear is a powerful motivator, and it takes strong ethics to resist the temptation to abuse it. I believe the real problem with America’s national security policy is that the police are in charge; that’s far more important than which party is in office.

Some of the Democratic presidential candidates for president have been more rational about security, but none have discussed security in terms of trade-offs. On the Republican side, I’ve read some criticisms of Bush’s heavy-handed security policies. Certainly the traditional Republican ideals of personal liberty and less government intervention are in line with smart security. And have the people who accuse me of hating Republicans forgotten that the Clipper Chip initiative was spearheaded by the Clinton administration?

The Republicans don’t have a monopoly on reducing civil liberties in the United States.

Rational security is not the sole purview of any political party. Fighting stupid security does not have to be partisan. Bush’s White House has done more to damage American national security than they have done to improve it. That’s not an indictment of the entire Republican party; it’s a statement about the current President, his Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a statement about the current political climate, where the police — and I use this term to encompass the FBI, the Justice Department, the military, and everyone else involved in enforcing order — and their interests are put ahead of the interests of the people. My personal politics on non-security issues are not relevant.

Bruce S’s position here is interesting. He’s a security guy. He makes assessments about security. To say that he makes an assessment and is then “bashing” or “anti-Bush” says everything about our current political climate.

We must be free to speak our minds and make criticisms without people assuming we are “bashing” everyone and everything about those we criticize.

In a country with free discourse, this is the baseline. Unfortunately, the way things are spun — by media, by politicians — everyone — this is getting harder.

George W. Bush and John Kerry both spent their mid twenties in uniform. The similarities end there.

Ashes to Diamonds… Reefs… Space!
Send your ashes to space

(via Ken)

Great Nations of Europe Lyrics

Blogging Basics with Movable Type

Today my candidacy may come to an end–but our campaign for change is not over….

Bitter taste. Kerry the fait accompli? I like Edwards a whole lot. Maybe Kerry/Edwards. Time will tell.

Tom Bickle asks:

Now that you’ve been at it for a few years, what do you think is the single most useful aspect of keeping an online journal? Self-reflection? A “backup-brain?” Form of expression? What do *you* get out of it that you most value?

I think the thing that’s best for me is as an “outlet” — a kind of pressure valve when things get rough. In good times, it’s nice to be able to write, but when things are bad, writing is a great mechanism for articulating my feelings and letting off steam.

Second best is indeed as a junk drawer for my thoughts and when things happen. When did I take a leave of absence? When did I move? It’s in the blog. What was that link for the funny David Hasselhoff video? When did I work on such-and-such project? It’s in the blog.

Great question Tom.

01 – Voltes V Opening Theme … Voltes V
02 – I am Jullandar Shere … Cornershop
03 – Serenata Nortena … Los Lobos
04 – California … Mylène Farmer
05 – Falsas Esperanzas … Christina Aguilera
06 – I Zimbra … Talking Heads
07 – 99 Luftballons … Nena
08 – Cielito Lindo … Los Lobos
09 – Piel Morena … Thalia
10 – 2 Become 1 … Spice Girls
11 – CA Plane Pour Moi (This Life’s For Me) … Plastic Bertrand
12 Sarabai! Happy Hen … Azumanga Daioh
13 – Mais Que Nada … Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66
14 – Fotos Y Recuerdos (Back In The Chain Gang) Selena

In the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Squinting at the present”:

“I remember [in the early ’80s] seeing posters for the small, semi-portable version of the Apple IIc,” he says. “Quite a lot of what I subsequently imagined in my early science fiction simply came from seeing that ad in a bus stop. I didn’t know anything about it technologically. I just thought if it’s that small and that nicely styled, everything is changing.”

…

The creative process for him has two stages. The writing is preceded by a long period of “sitting grumpily, staring out the window.” That explains why his nine books, all of which are still in print, have appeared at unpredictable intervals. “The typing on the keyboard takes about a year. The staring out the window can be any length of time and is usually harder.” He’s now grumpily contemplating his next novel, another present-day tale.

The instructions here for getting GPG working on Mac OS X are EXCELLENT! Configuring GnuPG (Mac OS X). So slick and so useful when one needs to communicate securely.

New Header. Thanks Leah for the great photos I can use for my occasional flights of fancy. You can see some other headers based on her photography at: 11/11/2003, 11/02/2003, 09/23/2003.

Man am I busy. I guess this latest header is something about fast motion, the deluge, overloading.

But classes are going well, LAMP Host is great, freelance is fine. And it’s raining like crazy, still. I like it. It’s scary, it’s fun.

“When the rain washes you clean — you’ll know”

“You will know”

Lent has begun. I scarcely noticed.

Sacrifice is a good word. Time to take stock. It’s a good thing, to examine oneself. Find out more about Lent.

San Diegans — enjoy the rain! It’s good to get washed clean.

I have not been particularly reflective here in the blog of late. I think it’s time to do more of it. I’ve been coasting too long.

Today my thoughts are scattered all about. There’s Spanish class, Statistics and Java. There’s python. There’s 1997 websites (you can’t have enough rollovers!). There’s laundry to be done. There’s a W-2 from last year that still has yet to arrive. There are lists of TO-DO’s a mile long. And the thing I have to remind myself is: one thing at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. Goals are great, but life must be experienced step by baby-step. (And yes, I am making a What About Bob? reference there.

So on this wet night, I bid you good night.

Onward.

This Hackles is pretty darn cute. Nerdy fun!

Rare 1968 TV Highlights

Leah and I will never make Hot Dutch Tuna Buns.