Ploafmaster General

Another fine link from Ze Frank to a song to which I feel compelled to listen over and over by the very young Beirut:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjeh6P4sRfw&w=425&h=350])

You'll just have to trust me when I say that the new name for the Developer's Working Sessions just worked out to abbreviate as PHP. I'm honestly not that clever on my own.

So anyway, here's the scoop:

Programmers' House Party, week one.
Time: 7-10 pm, Wednesday, August 15th.
Place: My place, the dining room.

Patrick and Trey have directions to my place, and guests are welcome - but a reminder of what this is all about:

The purpose of these meetings is for web designers/developers and programmers (web or otherwise) to have a space and time blocked off where they can work on pet projects or freelance work. I believe a change in setting will help us all focus better on our own work. I hope these are fun and informal, and some networking will naturally occur - but I don't want this simply to be a chill-fest :-)

So bring your laptop, and lets see if we can overwhelm my wireless router!

Ze Frank linked up to this hilarious and very well done parody of a speech from our president:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0JcSTOwHNA&w=425&h=350])

Holy cow...this Johnson and Johnson vs. The American Red Cross issue must be hot, because news sources seem eager to gather public opinion on the topic...including mine, apparently :-)

You see, today I discovered that my post on the affair was linked and quoted on The Chronicle of Philanthropy. When I contacted the piece's author, he told me I was linked up on the New York Times' lede blog! That probably explains the extra comments from people I don't know :-)

Perhaps it's time to start keeping track of how many visitors I have? Will my daily readership balloon from half a dozen to three quarters of a dozen? I'll have to wait and see...

CNN Money is reporting on a lawsuit that truly infuriates me: Johnson and Johnson is suing the American Red Cross because the charity is using the red cross symbol on certain emergency/first-aid products that it sells for fund-raising.

Now, apparently, Clara Barton herself signed some agreement with Johnson and Johnson in 1895 about the use of the symbol on medical supplies. But let me ask you this: what do you think of when you see that iconic red emblem? I tell you what I don't think of. I don't think of band-aids, or gauze, or other home medical supplies. I think of a humanitarian organization. You see a red cross with four even-length sides? What do you call it? A red cross? Yeah, I thought so.

Way to go, Johnson and Johnson. Sue the charity. You look great doing it. You look great fussing your way right into the Corporate Embarrassment Hall of Fame. You almost make the RIAA look noble. Well, not really, but this is downright shameful.

I know this thing is already making the rounds in Interweb land, but I figured it was ingenious enough to embed here, too:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=266383&server=vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich and Vimeo.

Those loyal half-dozen readers of mine may notice today that I have a new link in the side bar (unless you're pimpin' the RSS goodness).


Gentle Graffiti is the online presence for a little arts magazine published by my friend Stephanie DeSocio and her cohorts. The web site is updated with reasonable frequency and typically contains entries about photography, music, art exhibits, and the like. Quite fascinating, and a lot of it quite up my alley. I hope you feel the same way. Go check it out.

One of the funniest editorial cartoons I've seen in quite some time:

Just my luck. Scientists at Oxford may have discovered the gene that causes left-handedness, but it may also be responsible for an increased likelihood of going bonkers!

Okay, so the risk isn't actually that high, and more than this one gene is responsible for mental illness, but still - do we lefties really need more stigma? :-)

Looks like the viral campaign is kicking off for next summer's The Dark Knight; the quirky website now displays a flash box for the first teaser. Was that really Heath Ledger's voice as the joker?

Great googly moogly!

If you haven't heard of Simplify Media's software (named after the company), you should hit up their download page and grab the joint.

Got it now? Good. Well here's what it does...

Well a lot of folks may not be aware the iTunes allows you to share your music over a local area network. If you're at work, and several folks have iTunes, you can listen to each others' tunes. Pretty slick, eh? Well with Simplify Media's software running in the background, it allows you to share music across the entire internet. All you have to do is add your friends to your list, and then you can see each others' music as if you were on the same local area network.

Let that sink in for a moment...

Do you realize what this means? That means that if I'm in Paris and my buddy Patrick grabs the latest album from his fave underground indie hip-hopper, I can still listen to it as if it was on my own computer. Yeah, for real. The sound quality is excellent, but you can't actually save the tracks on your computer so it's not piracy. It's simply extending existing iTunes functionality.

Currently, the software only works with iTunes, but on both Windows and OS X. They're working on adding support for Winamp and Windows Media Player in the future, but considering the broad reach of iTunes, I'm sure plenty of you out there can use this.

Holy crap...crazy big props to my buddy Chris for pointing the way to this video:
http://www.factoryfilms.net/films/quicktimes/FuyijaMiyagi_AnkleInjury.mov

Thanks to Dan Cederholm, I just laughed my butt off (and was thoroughly amazed) because of this YouTube clip he linked to in a Twitter posting:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYxuV2dVzw&w=425&h=350])

I think this speaks for itself:
http://update.videoegg.com/flash/proxy.swf?jsver=1.4

Thanks to Fake Steve Jobs for pointing out this hilarious parody:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4dF3EGSCI&w=425&h=350])

Couldn't resist:

They call me the Hiphopopotamus.
I got flows that glow like phosphorus, poppin' off of the top of this esophagus.
I'm not a water-dwelling mammal from Africa that's moved to the metropolis and been taught how to break dance.
Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
Did Steve tell you that?
What's he got to do with it?
What kinda of rapping name is "Steve"? Steve?

I've found myself quite into the musical comedy duo, Flight of the Conchords, lately. They recently landed themselves a show on HBO (as of last night with four episodes). While the television production is fairly funny, it appears mostly an attempt to rehash (so far) their songs in the context of a strange sitcom.

Where they really shine, in my mind, is on stage such as this performance of "Albi the Racist Dragon":
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jVAHAuiS4&w=425&h=350]

Some of their stuff has some profanity and some lewdness, but on the whole these guys are funny because of genuine wit. Be sure to look for "The Hiphopopotamus vs. The Rhymenoceros" on YouTube as well.

Alex King created yet another amazing plug-in for WordPress blogs - Twitter Tools. Now, whenever I post a blog entry a twitter post will automatically generate with a link to that post. Including this one.

Rock on.

So I noticed a funny little detail on my own Facebook profile page:




See that last line at the bottom? I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here and say that it's an accident. But it's pretty funny either way.

Yes, Facebook: I am online. Now.

I think if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I'd eat this today:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfbTO0GlONU&w=425&h=350])

Earlier this week, Joshua Blankenship posted about Google Maps' ability to easily retrieve a link to the current map.

Today I discovered another feature that's pretty sweet:

In confirming the route/time for tomorrow's trip to New Jersey, I noticed some text at the top of the side bar, indicating that I could drag and drop the blue route line to modify the trip! This is fantastic if you know part of the route and want to optimize the directions to avoid certain roads, or to simplify the directions for somebody else (who may not care if it's 5 minutes slower - they just want fewer turns).

Pretty rockin', and a new reason for me to love Google Maps even more.

Yesterday Steve Jobs made a HUGE announcement for Apple Inc. at his WWDC '07 keynote address: Apple's web browser, Safari, is now available for Windows. Well, a public beta version is, at least.

Apple is finishing up an upgrade to version 3.0, and decided to add a Windows version. Several people have expressed different potential reasons for such a move, but I ultimately think it's pretty sweet. One more browser available to the rest of the world should shake up the market quite a bit.

An interesting side note...Apple's website (and Jobs' keynote) indicated that the software would be available on Windows XP and Vista. At work, however, I'm stuck on Windows 2000, so it was with nervous excitement this morning that I attempted to install the beta on my workstation. Thank heavens - it works!

It's a little surreal seeing the Safari shortcut on my Windows desktop, and the UI looks so foreign on my computer that I'm a bit distracted. Of course, I typically use Firefox at work, and even on my Mac at home, so this is more to play around.

Here's hoping that another taste of Apple flavor on Windows machines will convince more folks to give Macs a second look.

Okay, so this commercial that my boss just sent out is really funny and lifted my spirits (no pun intended) quite a bit at the end of the day.

It's kinda rough (but totally bleeped out), just a warning.

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJL5dxgVaM&w=425&h=350])

So Twitter finally worked with the Facebook folks on some integration. Sort of.

There's a new Twitter app for Facebook, and while I was hoping this would mean I could use Twitter to update my Facebook status. Unfortunately all it seems to do is display a little Twitter module on my Facebook profile with my latest Twitter status.

Here's hoping for more real integration rather than a little tack-on widgety thing.

How do you solve a problem like Maria? A hilarious post on McSweeney's seems to have some ideas...