There wasn’t much to go on on the YouTube when I was trying to learn this tune for the Pleasant Valley Boys, so I slowed it down for other bass players out there. In the name of more bass and banjo duets!

emailGrid is a starting point for creating a bulletproof email template. You are welcome to use it for any project and customize it to your heart’s content.

I’ve been professionally creating and sending email newsletters for years, and I decided to share my grid template on Github. It’s intended to act as a starting point upon which you can build your own beautiful email templates, and integrate them with your favorite mailinglist management service.

While it’s in a usable state now, watch for updates in the following weeks. I will be doing lots of testing with it.

A friend of mine who has recently gotten back into the double, asked me about gut strings the other day. Like most bass players, I struggled (and still do) with choosing strings for my instrument. I don’t know if classical or jazz players struggle as much with this issue, but for Americana music, string choice can directly affect what styles of music you can effectively play on your instrument, and how long you can physically endure playing it.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty for NPR:

Religious conservatives see an escalating war with the Obama White House. One Catholic bishop called it “the most secularist administration in history.” Another bishop says it is an “a-theocracy.”

As far as I can tell, the Obama administration may very well be the most secularist administration in the history of the United States. And yes, it better damn well be an “a-theocracy.” Anything but is a direct violation of the United States Constitution — specifically, Amendment 1 (emphasis on the relivant portion):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That means the United States government cannot establish an official religion for the nation, be it any sect of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, or anything else. A Theocracy not only establishes an official religion, it’s governance is wholly dictated by the chosen religion. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia are examples of Islamic theocracies today.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty:

Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, believes the First Amendment is clear: The government cannot make people choose between obeying the law and following their faith.

This is clearly an exaggeration of what the first amendment says. Yes, the government cannot prevent the free exercise of your religion, but there are limitations. The biblical scriptures that call for the execution of homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13) and stoning to death of women who are not virgins on their wedding day (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), for instance, violate US law. These parts of the Christian religion cannot be freely practiced in the United States.

These points aren’t the real issues here, though. The actual situation is that the theocrats here don’t want religious based entities to have to cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion in their benefits packages. They also don’t want religious entities to have to provide their services to people in homosexual relationships. Many of them also want to continue to receive federal dollars to help fund their organizations.

I personally don’t have a problem not forcing religious organizations to provide services that go against their teachings, provided they also do not accept public dollars to run their organizations. To my understanding, this is exactly what the current deal is.

We secular folks find many fundimental religious beliefs to be as horrifyingly immoral as religious folks find our beliefs to be, but we have a secular constitution. If you don’t like it, maybe the United States isn’t for you.

Your code in space.

Fast Company’s round-up of gadgets and applications with creative interfaces. My favorites are the devices that show just how lame the status quo is in an established industry. Namely the Peel, and the Nest thermostat. I’m also partial to the Planetary music app, through.

The International Space Station (ISS) is cool. It’s a multi-section science lab in low Earth orbit (about 240 miles up), constructed and manned by personal from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It travels at over 17,000 miles per hour, completely circling the globe every 91 minutes.

See? Cool.

When you are too high tech for a mortar and pestle.

Plug the coffee grinder into the APC UPS that still has some power left, turn it on, grind the coffee, then turn it off to conserve its power.

About a month ago, I tendered my resignation at ground(ctrl). The experience has been surreal. I contributed a good portion of my life to the cause there. While I’m extremely proud of the team we assembled and what we were able to accomplish in five short years, it has been a relief to have a few weeks off to reflect and decompress without the pressure of what has to be done when I get back.

A hero, contrarian, and defender of free speach is gone. We knew it was imminant, but this makes it no less easy. These are my thoughts on the great man which I regret not making public before his death.

Stephen Colbert interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is worth every second of your time. 5,082 seconds of your time specifically.

Lots of people site Mail.app as one of the best new features of Mac OS X Lion. I agree, but it seems to be for the opposite reason.

Lindsey Buckingham is best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of Fleetwood Mac. He also has a healthy collection of solo albums under his belt. Now he’s partnering up with ground(ctrl) to help manage some of his web presence.

I don’t know if this is a fortunate coincidence or a well executed plan, but two of my favorite people have been placed in a small room together and told to talk about astrophysics.

You can listen and learn more about the interview by clicking the title, or simply download the Neil deGrasse Tyson interview by John Hodgman in MP3 format.

I discovered a bug with Safari 1.5 (7534.48.3) that effects text color of block level elements that have a double border with an rgba color value that has an alpha setting lower than 1. Video inside!

New advancements in pro audio suddenly blow me away. I forgot how useful electricity could be when applied to musics.

I made a video of my AeroPress. Music by the West Nile Ramblers.

Phil Plait on Abell 2744:

… by taking the data from a fleet of telescopes on and above the Earth, telescopes that see across the electromagnetic spectrum well beyond what the eye can perceive, we can piece together a history of an object with hundreds of trillions of stars spanning quintillions of kilometers of space and hundreds of millions of years in time.

And that, my friends, is what scientists do. And that’s pretty cool.

My bass bag was featured on the Bagcheck blog. This site can be pretty addicting.

William Lane Craig wrote a piece that attempts to justify the slaughter of the Canaanites in the Pentateuch. Greta Christina calls him on his terrifying logic and in doing so, beautifully illustrates a favorite bit of religious hypocrisy among us apostates:

And atheists are commonly accused of moral relativism: of thinking that there are no fundamental moral principles, and that all morality can be adapted to suit the needs of the moment.

But it isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, genocide seems wrong... but under some circumstances, it actually makes a certain amount of sense.” It isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, infanticide seems wrong... but looked at in a certain light, it really isn’t all that bad.” It isn’t atheists who are prioritizing an attachment to an ancient ideology over the clearest moral principles one can imagine: the principle that entire races ought not to be systematically exterminated, and the principle that children ought not to be slaughtered.

Justifying genocide and/or child murder based on an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife is not reasonable behavior. Please be reasonable.

The above is the longest, and quite possibly the best joke I have ever heard. At nearly 11,000 words, the setup may take you a few sessions, but the payoff is epic. (via @mrgan)

Alex Walker demonstrates how to use prime numbers to generate non-repeating patterns from repeating images.

Keeping the ‘cicada principle’ in mind, I’ve made three square, semi-​​transparent PNGs of 29px, 37px, and 53px respectively, and set them up as multiple backgrounds on the HTML element of a test page.

As you can see, the tiles overlap and interact to generate new patterns and colors. And as we’re using magical prime numbers, this pattern will not repeat for a long, long time.

Exactly how long? 29px × 37px × 53px… or 56,869px!

This article optimizes everything I love about front-end web design; Math-powerd design patters for calculating artistic randomness. Simply badicle. I think I will be applying the Cicada Principle on a refresh of the Glee Tour site I have in my queue next week.

Your deep appreciation is due to those survived by Salman Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti and others who recently gave their lives in the name of free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

It is your right to believe in invisible sky monsters. It is not your right to murder those who criticize your extraordinary beliefs. The truth is important. Only by freely exchanging our ideas can we find it.

I linked to a piece earlier this month where Robbie Fulks spoke candidly about his feelings toward Ryan Adams. Today, he applies reason and critical thought to critics of his criticisms.

Non-extraordinary claims don't need much evidence. And, in matters of taste, the formal protocols of dispute, as the Latins pronounced in one of their all-too-typical maxims that somehow manage to be both perfectly concise and utterly incomprehensible, don't apply.

Or do they?

It’s peppered with nuggets of free thought fundamentals you find in skeptic and atheist literature. I may need to finally get around to booking him for a private party this year.

Jacob Nielsen:

Once users reject a design technique due to repeated bad experiences it's almost impossible to use it for good because people will avoid it every time.

The first example is our beloved spash screen. This time used in a positive way but with poor results due to general hatred of the technique. The study shows people don’t read splash screens even when they contain relevant information.

I made myself a canned response to long-winded email messages with multiple recipients that contain one or more non-disclosure email signatures. In the name of efficient communication, I encourage you to copy, modify and reuse this message liberally.

Do kids still say shreds these days? Archiving this for Ollie. I want to get him back on the bike this spring.

Robbie Fulks on Ryan Adams:

As a former North Carolinian, I am sincerely aghast and I apologize to the planet.

“But if,” indeed.

Her phrasing and dynamics are dead on. Her little-girl-ness is adorable.

Amazing video of the February 24th launch from cameras mounted to Discovery’s solid rocket boosters. From lift-off to splashdown, you see the WHOLE thing! Notable shots at 2:26, 6:04, 10:10, and 28:06.

Really incredible perspective.

Discovery’s final launch captured on video from inside an airplane. So very cool.The Captain bought a round for everyone to celebrate.

Danny Barnes has one of the best music blogs I have ever read. This piece is worth it’s weight in gigs. The message:

play great and be easy to get along with

The WHATWG’s HTML5 specification for web developers. Your new instruction manual.

The most illogical, impractical, yet common of all arguments for belief in gods thoroughly discredited once and for all. Direct all future abuses to this URL.

She beat Justin Bieber. What? The Grammy’s are real?! Is there hope for pop music again?

Some amazing tricks in here. I checked out the HTML5 Boilerplate months ago, but thought it was pretty overkill for my taste. There is definitely reason to reconsider now.

Money quote:

You can't present good evidence that says evolution is not a fact.

(via @thinkgeek + @sanbeiji)

She’s touring with a bad ass almost all-girl band. She is so dreamy. (via The Upton Report)

Frannie Kelley for NPR:

The singer, who was born Charlie Elzer Loudermilk and became well known as one-half of the country and western duo The Louvin Brothers, died Wednesday morning. Louvin, who had continued to perform even as he battled pancreatic cancer, died at home in Wartrace, Tenn. He was 83 years old.

I never saw him play.

One of Carl Sagan’s lesser-recognized gifts to mankind was nurturing this man’s excitement of the cosmos. If you aren’t already a fan of Dr. Tyson, this video will convert you. If you are a fan, you’re probably already raising your kids to be just like him when they grow up. Just enjoy the interview.

A jQuery-powered, multi-file upload widget that gracefully degrades for clients without javascript. (via Jake Bellacera)

Kim Gordon is 57 years old, ladies and gentlemen.

A great primer for combining typefaces from Douglas Bonneville at Smashing Magazine. Very useful in this brave new world of @font-face. (via Scott Pargett)

When everyone has easy access to their favorite diversions and every diversion comes with a rabbit hole’s worth of extra features and deleted scenes and hidden hacks to tumble down and never emerge from, then we’re all just adding to an ever-swelling, soon-to-erupt volcano of trivia, re-contextualized and forever rebooted. We’re on the brink of Etewaf: Everything That Ever Was—Available Forever.

And his message is packed to the rim with nerd-culture references that would make Seth MacFarlane blush.

Simurai has created a toggle button that uses CSS3 and zero javascript. Next level shit.

“Don’t use some home-brew CAPTCHA syste that requires compound eyes to read.”

In a recent project, I wanted to apply a CSS transition to the hover state of a table row and some menu items. The problem was that my hover state used a gradient background and I wanted the gradient to fade in and out. Background colors can be faded in, but background images can only be moved around. My solution was to fade in a background color and animate the position of the background image.

I was unaware of the CSS triangles technique! Bad ass!

A pretty, passive aggressive website on preparing Photoshop documents for developers.

I’m not a fan of Google’s decision. I’d rather browser vendors supported open source and established open standards.

We are putting more and more carbon dioxide into the air while decimating more and more of the forests that consume it. Isaac Asimov had been studying this greenhouse effect for 20 years prior to this speech.

Bill O’Reilly played his tides go in, tides go out card again the other day on his show. Neil Degrasse Tyson made a surprise appearance on the Colbert Report to clear up the confusion for America. The segment starts at 11:00.

This issue has been coming up for projects lately. I thought it was time for a reminder.

Many of my friends have said 2010 was a bad year for them. I can surly empathize. I’ve had my share of rough years; not 2010, though! I was fortunate to have had a very enjoyable one. Here are some highlights and maybe a little perspective.

Whitechapel is a deathcore band from Knoxville. We love partnering with young, aggressive hard-working bands. Those of us in the ground(ctrl) dev cave are pretty hardcore Whitechapel fans to begin with, so we were all pretty excited to work on this one.

Lindsey Buckingham is best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of Fleetwood Mac. He also has a healthy collection of solo albums under his belt. Now he’s partnering up with ground(ctrl) to help manage some of his web presence.

The Imagination Movers are a group of guys from New Orleans inspired to create their own children’s show. It became a local hit and the Movers were eventually picked up by Disney. The band has a pretty deep catalog of material and tours pretty extensively.

Their management hired ground(ctrl) to design and build their new website, and we ended up tacking on a few extras features to make management a little easier for them.

In the spirit of International Blasphemy Rights Day 2010, I wish to direct your attention to a video of Muslims attacking Lars Vilks during his talk at Uppsala University in Sweden.

I’m beefing up the “Tweet this” option in an event calendar CMS I’m working on for a friend, and I needed a quick way to determine the next Auto_increment value of my events table to provide a link to the event on the website. The query for this is totally easy:

SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'events';

This query returns all kinds of useful information about the given table, including the current Auto_increment value. Learn more about how I applied my newly learned trick inside!

A study of people reading long-form text on tablets finds higher reading speeds than in the past, but they're still slower than reading print.

Enjoyment level was comparable with printed books. I find this to be true in my experience:

Users felt that reading the printed book was more relaxing than using electronic devices.

I love technology and reading on the iPhone and Kindle, but I also love printed books. I struggle with which format to buy every time. I should avoid the dilemma and just get a library card.

Happy Flag Day, USA.

In an opinion piece for the Daily Democrat, Pastor Andy Flowers for the Calvary Baptist Church argues that evolution by natural selection requires just as much faith in the unknown as his job as a Pastor. In it he sites some common creationist arguments against evolution that have been thoroughly addressed and dismantled over the past few centuries.

This is pretty status quo for a Baptist Minister. Normally I wouldn’t pay much thought to an article like this in a local newspaper’s Faith column, but Mr. Flowers is grossly misinformed about one of the most basic tenants of biology, and he is teaching this misinformation in my community. I feel I need to at least put the truth out there for people to see it.

Evolution through natural selection is a fact. There are proven, testable examples of it all around us. An endless supply of peer reviewed research supports it (as does the fossil record). Here I will address his main arguments, and offer some alternative reading to the Creation Answers Book that Pastor Flowers is offering for free.

My career has never been more exciting.

There should be celebrating in the streets, dancing on the ceiling, Ewoks, and the firing pistolas in the air. For years we've had to preach and defend the gospel of web standards to the mouth-breathing masses who have been drawn to twinkle lights and really bad house background tracks. No more will we have to spend precious time debating the merits of presentation layers being divorced from markup, usability, and every day common sense to a communications major who would really rather be producing ads for television.

I have been pining for a definitive, stock solution for managing my calendars on my iPhone since I got my first iPhone. I have a combination of MobileMe and Google calendars that I use. I didn’t like the idea of having an unused calendar app on my phone, so rather than look for a third party app to manage calendaring, chose to suffer with having read-only calendars on my iPhone.

No more! My boss found the mystery solution and passed it on to me, and I, in turn, am passing it on to you.

Divya Manian has some really good use cases for using CSS generated content on Dev.Opera. I think my favorite is rendering icons for file formats and external links using CSS3 substring selectors. It’s a well documented, concise article. It made my bus ride this morning.

I would purchase copies of these for my personal library, were they available.

U is for Uhura and Ultraman on a unicorn underwater.

via Michael Lopp

A huge repository of independent music performances. There is way too much goodness here to do anything else for the rest of the year. Subscribe.

My buddy, Ivan made flickr’s Explore page (refresh until you see Dunnigan Hills) today with his fantastic shot of the Dunnigan Hills. This shot is my favorite to date, mostly due to the fond memories of this commute to the best job I ever had. The place really looks like this in real life, folks.

I got sick again. Just in time for a double bill show.

More tumblr magic. This time from the folks who brought us three frames.

My wife and I skim interior design magazines. This is next level shit.

I’m learning Dear Old Dixie for the new Pleasant Valley Boys album we’re cutting. Our schtick is authentic traditional bluegrass, so the recordings we’re pulling our arrangements from aren’t exactly the highest of fidelity. Capo by SuperMegaUltraGroovie has come in quite handy.

My buddy Scott turned me onto Die Antwoord a few days ago. I wound up with an advance of their forthcoming album, “$0$” and can’t stop listening to it. I haven’t been this completely blown away by an album in quite a long time. Maybe a decade.

I’ve been using NetNewsWire for years and years. It has a framework that allows you to make skins for the articles. I finally got around to making one.

Here are a few TextMate snippets I made to streamline (X)HTML markup and CSS. They are described in detail below. To use them, download the archive and double click the snippets to install.

I have taken pride in my paperless workflow for over six years. When I say paperless, I also mean CD/DVD less as well. I simply don’t print and don’t burn. That is until last night. My wife bought a fricken laser printer (the kind with a fricken laser) on a whim at BestBuy.

Michelle Setzer teaches kindergarten at C.E. Dingle Elementary School in Woodland, CA.. She’s a remarkable person. She taught my daughter Ella’s class of 25+ rowdy kids while with child and never showed anything less than 100% enthusiasm to be doing so. She is currently teaching my son. We hope to get Poppy into her class in 2015 ... or would that be 2016?

At any rate, it turns out she is even more remarkable than we may have initially thought. She started blogging about the inner-workings of the American Public School system last month, with the aim of inspiring citizens to push for reform. The best part is that she’s doing this the scientific way—by publishing statistical data and factual information.

If you didn’t already know, the bureaucracy of the American Public School system makes Innotech look like a well oiled machine. If exposing abuse with facts and stats gets you revved up, this is going to be a bottomless pit of inspiration.

Back in July, I linked to an article about Atheist Ireland’s plan to publish a formal blasphemous statement to challenge Ireland’s new blasphemy law, which goes into effect today. The law imposes a €25,000 fine on any person or organiation who utters or publishes a blasphemous statement about any religion in Ireland.

I said that I couldn’t wait to hear the zinger. Well, they decided to publish 25 blasphemous zingers by a whole slew of notable public figures including, Jesus of Nazareth, the Prophet Mohammed, Pope Benedict XVI, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, and many more.

Why you should care: language in this law is being used to pass a similar restriction on the UN for discussing anything negative about Islam. That one is Islam only, though. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. would still be fair game here.

I’m not really one to think more than a week or so into the past or future — I’m mostly a today guy — but since we are at the turn of another decade, I thought I would take a second to reflect. You know what, a lot can happen in 10 years.

One of the best bands in the world finally gets the interent makeover they deserve. And by one of the best web designers in the industry, no less.

Complete with sweet Webkit CSS transforms. View with Safari, Chrome, or a webkit nightly for best results.

My dad got another opinion piece printed in the Daily Democrat. I wish they would hire him permanently. He’s good and always gets me thinking.

Awesome! But can you call in an airstrike?

21st Amendment is on Virgin America. Yet another example of why cans are the superior beer container.

I took the plunge. Check out my 1961 King Moretone!

I’ve been saving up for a new bass for nearly three years now. During that time the economy tanked and I noticed a marked increase in prices from the luthiers I had been keeping my eye on. My budget has now caught up to modern times and an instrument just popped up on my radar that has given my that tingly feeling.

Another cool band photo from the the early 80s. This band played a big roll in my coming-of-age soundtrack.

I recently stumbled upon this classic photo of GBH. I was a huge fan of their music in my punk days. Actually, I still am, although I haven’t purchased an album since 1987 or so.

I’m in the process of building a website for my Bluegrass band, Matt & George and their Pleasant Valley Boys. I set up the server last night and whipped together a minimalist temporary page.

The White House debunks myths about their “health care” reform plan on a new Reality Check section of their website. Topics covered include rationing, cost, seniors, burdening the government, and more!

I have submitted a request to the White House address the controversial excerpt of page 16 that all the right wing pundits have had a field day with lately.

Personally, I am fine with any solution that will reduce my health care expenses by any degree. Since we are already being rationed by insurance companies, I see no down side to a government option. Paying for health care is the single most cumbersome aspect of being American.

Armin Vit on the new Radio Shack “The Shack” campaign:

Radio Shack needs a major overhaul and it should take advantage of the idiosyncratic products they carry that you can hardly find anywhere else, a sort of geek thrift store. The Shack campaign is insipid at best and harmful to the brand at worst.

As is usually the case, I mostly agree. However, the notion that Radio Shack needs a major overhaul is subjective. They are, after all, possibly the most profitable electronics retailer in the country.

This is the full version of Sam Harris’ piece for the New York Times on Francis Collins’ appointment to the National Institute of Health. This took me three days to get through, but it was intriguing to the last drop. As to be expected, Mr. Harris’ case is dead pan reasonable.

Cold Stone Creamery Gotta Have It PB&C Shake. 2,010 calories. 131 g fat (68 g saturated). 153 g sugars

I love reading these articles. It makes all those high calorie beers I drink look light by comparison.

Just stumbled upon this group who helps support a non-profit prostate cancer education and support group called Us TOO. Drinking beer just got a whole lot better for you, boys.

... by decriminalizing personal possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

I, myself, am in favor of decriminalizing all of the above drugs in America. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. I tend to favor ideas that have been proven to work.

PZ Myers stumbles upon an elegant rebuttal video to Fox News coverage of Amsterdam’s so called decay into corruption.

Ireland just passed a new blasphemy law. Say something offensive about a christian god and get a €25k fine. Atheist Ireland is going to test it:

Atheist Ireland members voted to test the new law by publishing a blasphemous statement, deliberately designed to cause offence. The statement will be finalised in the coming days.

I totally can’t wait to hear this zinger.

Evolutionary psychologist, Hank Davis tells the National Post (Cananda):

We name our daughters Faith and Hope. We never name them Doubt or Skeptic. Those are not valued traits. I believe they should be.

The subject of Dr. Davis’ new book is a topic I think a lot about. The interview is short and sweet. The book is now at the top of my to-read list.

For all you TextMate web developer people, I’ve rounded up some of my more useful CSS snippets, with a few handy snippets for proper quotes and apostrophes thrown in for good measure.

I. Need. This.

Kevin, the pseudo himalayan monal pheasant from Pixar’s new movie, “Up” was based on a specimen at the Sacramento Zoo.

Last week, Google announced Wave, their new big idea in internet communication at their annual I/O developer’s conference. This project is absolutely impressive and has the potential to really improve the way we communicate and collaborate on the web, it’s just hard to tell, because the of the very long and very boring video Google is using to promote it.

Google just announce a new project called Wave. It is essentially the new email. Real time communication, collaboration and much more. This isn’t just a new service that Google is offering, its essentially a new open communication protocol and framework. Just as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Apple are email providers, they can also be Wave providers.
This video is very long and a little painful to watch, but I really think this is going to finally make email obsolete, among many other communication protocols.

Juan Forero had a great four minute piece on Morning Edition today about a weekly TV show that Hugo Chavez has been doing for the past ten years. He is the host. He is producer. And apparently there is no limit to how long he will go. His previous record was 8 hours. He’s currently in the middle of a LIVE four day broadcast! If you ever had any doubt as to the level of sanity of Venezuela’s presedent, well … there you go.

The California Supreme Court will issue an opinion in three cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. The cases in question are Strauss v. Horton, S168047; Tyler v. State of California, S168066; City and County of San Francisco v. Horton, S168078.

Also related, I saw a really cool new equal rights sign on the news this morning, but I haven’t been able to find it on the internet. It's a circle around an equal sign.

Peavey has a line of audio products (and a web site) that caters specifically Christian churches. Smart niche, but kind of creepy.

I was just notified via xScope’s check for new versions on startup that version 2.2 has just been released. The new version adds some global hot-keys, more ways of copying various things to clipboards, and much more. I use xScope just about as much as I use my keyboard. It is THAT much a part of my workflow. If you are an interface designer and don’t use xScope, you are a stupit.

On the subject of my recent how-to on hiding CSS from IE 6, Andy Clark has gone a few steps further and is serving the same universal CSS file to IE 6 from all his sites via Google Code. I’ll be implementing this post haste. Thanks Mr. Clark!

Two great things that taste great together! via TMBG

Remember web developer folks, people generally upgrade their computers when they no longer work. Browsers are no different.

Boy have I had a fun day with Internet Explorer 8! Faruk Ateş has too. He posted a comprehensive piece about IE 8’s X-UA-Compatible header mechanic. I got down to the paragraph on the blacklist and quickly paused my reading to figure out the necessary IE conditional comment syntax to hide style sheets from all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Come inside. I will share.

I’ve been going through a bunch of websites that I maintain in the newly released IE 8, and I stumbled uppon a inconsistently documented bug with the line item element. This is a brief summary of my findings. 

Kristyn read the following excerpt to me in this morning’s Daily Democrat about a new state of the art electric car charging station in town:

Six of the ultra-modern Tesla Roadsters were brought to the charging station by Tesla Motors representatives from Menlo Park. The sleek, low-slung sports cars are capable of traveling 250 miles on a single electric charge. The cars themselves can go from 0-60 miles an hour in 4 seconds.

There is no other car I have been more excited to see in person. While I would never spend $101,500 on an automobile, there certainly are many people who would. And those people who have purchased them have provided the research and development capitol for the auto maker to produce the Tesla Model S. A sedan that starts just under $50,000.

It can only be a matter of time that a $25,000 Tesla auto is available to the masses. A failing GM will have a much harder time lobbing against the electric car this time.

Loren Brichter, creator of Tweetie for Mac OS X and the iPhone on Adobe AIR in an interview with Macworld:

And AIR apps are like modern day Java applets... sure, they run on every platform. But they also suck on every platform.

I have been dying for a native, elegant, multi account Twitter client for Mac OS X for months. It seems that the Adobe AIR runtime was invented for making Twitter clients. Tweetie is the best, and I couldn't be happier that Loren Brichter feels the same way I do about Java and Adobe runtimes.

Dustin Pedroia, second basemen for the Boston Red Sox, and one-time Woodland resident was quoted in Boston Magazine with a few negative remarks about my home town. I don’t follow sports myself, but I’m told he is sort of a big deal in the baseball world, and people in town look up to him with pride ... well, that is until now. 

Ella brought this flyer in to me saying it was jammed in the screen door. Upon first glance, I thought it was a flyer for a death metal show at the Stag or something. Then I realized it was just the church down the street threatening us with torture and mutilation.

The inner struggle within me to not purchase this instrument right now is so great, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I’m officially leaving BKWLD for ground(ctrl). Bitter. Sweet. The building is only one block from my bus stop, and I’ll have a window, but I’ll miss my fancy digs in the BKWLD bldg, and my friends and projects I’m leaving behind.

Game Informer outsells Time, TV Guide, Sports Illustrated, Cosmo, Playboy and O in the US. This doesn't actually surprise me very much, but I'm always happy when the popularity of gaming makes the news in some way.

Papa Roach is a four-piece rock band from Vacaville, CA. Papa Roach has been a long time client of BKWLD and now ground(ctrl). They were one of our beta testers on the version 1 system and played a big part in us getting our big platform off the ground.

Papa Roach’s new album, Metamorphosis is available now on Interscope and has officially made the Billboard Top 10 in the US.

My fare went up from $2 to $3. While the reasons Yolobus gives for these increases (pdf link) do make clear sense, Yolobus does need to consider that these extremely steep rate increases are sudden and come at a time not all of us can afford to pay them. It is their choice to risk reducing ridership rather than cut hours or stop routs that no one uses.

Spiderman + giant robots + ninjas + a sweet 70’s soundtrack = my speechless ass quivering in ecstasy. I cannot wait to share this with my kids.

via S.britt

The Dead Milkmen have decided to reunite for some shows. My brother in law brought to my attention that it has been 21 years since Beelzabubba was released, which was the last record of theirs that I bought. I was in Jr. High then.

Will they actually kill the keypad altogether? I had better stock up before it’s too late. I never have been comfortable using the numbers on the typing half of the keyboard.

The Backstreet boys are a pop band that had huge popularity in the mid 90's. They recently decided to get the band back together and start touring and recording agin. The needed a new online fanclub, so naturally they called ground(ctrl).

Most people claim to love movies, and a large majority of them admit to some sort of love/hate or love/love infatuation with the Academy awards. I never considered myself a movie hater, but given the rampant obsession most folks seem to have with the medium that I don’t share, there can only be one explanation.

Besides the dwindling value of my various IRAs and 401ks, I've been largely unaffected by the economic down-turn thus far. That is until Yolobus announced their 37.5% 2009 rate hike (PDF link)! I think it’s finally cheaper to drive again. Time for some more math.

Speaking of Flood, if you’re in the New York area at the end of the month, TMBG will be performing all the songs from their platinum album, Flood, at Le Poisson Rouge on February 28th. They will be performing all of their albums on the last day of every month this year at the LPR.

Their kids music is fantastic, but if you haven’t bought a record since Flood, you have some seriously exciting catching up to do.

I’ve never liked webmail. I’ve always looked at it as a hack to get around the rules of your over-bearing corporate IT department. Many of my friends consider Gmail’s web interface to be the ultimate email application. While I do applaud Google’s innovation, I prefer Apple Mail. This is why.

Lux Interior died yesterday morning of a heard condition. He was 62. I need to start reading fewer nerd blogs and pay more attention to music.

Props to @writegrrrl for breaking the story in my twitter feed. She’s good.

Kobe Bryant is an NBA superstar that plays for the Los Angeles Lakers. He was voted MVP for 2007-08 season. Kobe’s management team called ground(ctrl) to set up a website that would provide a more personal means to connect to his fans.

What do you mean he’s high?

On the weed!

Who’s this cat, anyway?

Kudos to Joe Lewis for making my morning...

The Hot Club of Cowtown played The Palms last night, and I got to go! It was my first time. Their bass player, Jake Erwin, is the closest thing someone like me has to a guitar hero. I got a rare chance to talk to him about his set-up and was slightly jarred by what he had to say.

There are a few important differences between the box on the left and the box on the right. Allow me to highlight them for you ...

I converted to the metric system last year. I quickly found that the trick was not to think in terms of conversions to the American way, but to simply stop using it. Today's XKCD is funny because it's true.

Google is finally jumping on the ditch IE 6 band wagon! Welcome to 2001, global IT departments!

I have always been a fan of taking direction to the utmost literal level. It has gotten me into lots of trouble, but if people are challenged to communicate clearer, society progresses. Link via Derek Sivers on Twitter.

30GB Zunes poop out for new years. Users are told to run their batteries down and wait until noon on January 1st to boot back up. Sort of like a Zune hangover.

Everyone is publishing their top picks of everything for 2008. I thought it would be fun to suspend my boycott of top _____ lists, and publish a list of music I loved the most this year. However, rather than contaminate my picks with what I want you to think I’m into at the moment, I have published actual statistics from my Last.fm profile.

Barack Obama has chosen a respected Christian preacher to give his inaugural invocation. I think this is a smart move, despite the fact that Rick Warren creeps me the hell out. Let us also not forget that Barack Obama is a same-sex marriage opposing Christian.

Every Sunday, we have dinner with some friends of ours who are very agreeable Christian folk. Our kids are close to the same ages, and the dad and I have been good friends for many years.

Our family isn’t religious, and we have yet to have the big Jesus/Mohammed/Zeus/etc. talk with our kids. When our daughter, Ella (6 years old), sat down with her friend (also 6 years old) to a pretend dinner in Ella’s bedroom last night, her friend suggested they bow their heads and pray to Jesus before they eat, and she began to fold her hands.

Ella looked at her hands with some confusion, trying to mimic her friend. When she couldn’t figure out what she was doing, she suggested, “How ’bout we rochambeau?”

This beer has been on my to-do list since John Gruber blogged about it 3 years ago. I was ecstatic to stumble across it at the Davis Food Co-op. This beer is as good as I had hoped (if not better). Extremely well balanced, easy to drink, and still hoppy enough to satisfy a Northern Californian pallet. And yes, the can is a vastly superior container to the bottle. This beer’s tap-room freshness is concrete proof.

We made it through the first week, and it was surprisingly less hard than I expected.

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” is available for download and has some hugely useful new features like comment moderation and replying from the dashboard, a “Post This” applet that lets you create entries from web pages with a robust blog GUI break-out window (a must see), a new plug-in browser with one-click installs and upgrades, and probably the best new feature: one-click upgrades right in the admin area. They even threw in a few features I put in the custom CMS for this blog.  While it is still way too overkill for this site, I look forward to using it for client work in the future.

We have another girl! Oh, boy ...

Kristyn is scheduled for a caesarean section tomorrow morning. ”Cut time” is at 8 AM. Yeah, it’s totally weird ... but in a cool way.

The first stapler is said to have been made in the 18th century. For 300 years, mankind waits in torment for Joonhyun Kim to rescue us from our sloppily stapled page nightmare. This stapler could almost make me rethink my paperless lifestyle. Almost.

2K Sports is a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. They specialize in sports games, high-profile licensing, and killer promotional events.

Today is the second annual Blue Beanie Day. Show your support for web standards and accessibility by sporting your blue beanie in a self portrait and submitting it to the bluebeanieday2008 pool on Flickr, then setting that photo as your avatar in all your internet places.

In my household, we don't travel for Thanksgiving. It's just Kristyn and I and the kids, and any friends who don't have anything else to do on the holiday.

My sincerest kudos to Amazon for their daunting Frustration Free Packaging initiative.

It takes a lot of work to stay motivated in a part time band. These are some of the things the Bottom Dwellers struggle with from time to time. 

I was inspired to start taking the bus to work a few months ago. Recently, I got over my lazy morning routine and went for it.

Moxicode System’s TinyMCE javascript rich text editor is my choice for the content management systems and web applications I build. It’s highly configurable and widely supported. It’s also ugly as fucking sin. So I made my own skin.

My take on three classics by Andrew from benicetobears.com. Click continue below to listen to all three songs

A terrorist falls in love with Miss America. Unrequited love in the terror community ends with the destruction of a country. I wrote and recored this song in August of 2000. Any similarities to the events of 9/11 are purely freaky.

Smoke alarm batteries always fail at night. Even if you play by the rules and change your batteries at the beginning or end of daylight savings time, non-direct wire alarms often fail before the year is up. All we ask is for a reasonable notification when it is time to change our batteries. A pleasant chime, a sexy voice, a cute icon, a reasonable hour ... it’s time for a redesign. I decided to use the 30 to 40 minute intervals between the chirps of my failing alarm batteries this very early morning to bring it up with customer service.

I’m finally WordPress free! thebigreason is now unified and powered by a 100% custom blogging engine. My blog, my portfolio and my music now live in the same place, and there is plenty of room left over for anything else I want to put here as well

The Bottom Dwellers are an alt-country/classic honky tonk band I play doghouse bass for. We play all around Northern California and sell some CDs. This website helps us do those things pretty efficiently. 

Suretone Records is an independent record label in Santa Monica California.  There catalog includes titles by Chris Cornel, The Cure, Shwayze, The Pink Spiders, and more.  The website provides tour dates, press materials and of detailed information on artists and their releases on the label.

Nugget Market Inc. is a family owned, full-service grocery store founded in 1926 in Woodland, CA. They currently have nine locations in the greater Sacramento area, and have made FORTUNE Magazine's Top 100 Best Companies To Work For.  I made their website.

After upgrading to WordPress 2.5, my blog's admin area has become mostly unusable. There will continue to be lul in new posts as I move to a custom publishing system. WordPress has regularly disappointed me for years. The fact that I stuck with it for this long is a testament to my laziness. 

Expansion on Craig Hockenberry's comparison of iTunes Store partnerships and App Store partnerships. 

When I was 14, I got really into Wasted Youth. The band ... The English band from the UK, not the hardcore band from LA. They're kind of obscure. So obscure, in fact, that iTunes, Amazon.com, AllMusic.com, and Last.FM, can't seem to tell the difference between them. 

In the United States, gays and straits currently have the same restrictions to marriage.  Neither can marry their same sex, both can marry the opposite.  What your actual preference is, is arbitrary.  Let's stop arguing for a second and think about the logistics before we dive in. 

The following is a re-published product review I posted to uptonbass.com. I'm not sure if it took or not, so I'm cross posting it here because I spent so much time on it. 

I haven't been able to access my Google Calendar in Safari for nearly two months. I probably spent about 20 to 40 minutes a week over the past few months trying to track down the cause or a fix. Today I finally found the solution in the Google Calendar Help Group. It was posted on January 29th of this year. I don't know why it took me so long to find. I looked pretty hard.

Logic Pro 8 has some sweet new bass loops! 

Craig Hockenberry with one of the most concise and accurate analogies of the current state of the recorded music industry:

[...] the best thing for business is to make sure you have the best product available. That’s both the beauty and the challenge of any “try before you buy” system. Good products win, bad products are quickly forgotten. I suspect that the root of the music industry’s problem is this: they have been able to produce sub-standard product for many years. I know there are many albums in my collection that consist of few great tracks along with a bunch of crap that I’d rather not listen to. 

Who are you voting for for the President of the United States? Many of the people I know seem to be pretty much decided, depending, of course, on the outcome of their party's primary. Most are affiliated with the Democratic or Republican parties. A handful are Greens. I'm one of those decline to declares (that's Californian for no party affiliation). There are two parties that I'm drawn to, but they are largely on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Neither one trumps the other with a significant enough share of the issues that are important to me to pull me in one direction or the other. 

Microsoft will purchase Yahoo. It hasn't happened yet, but the bid is now officially on the table, and it will happen. My previous experiences with unsolicited takeovers have shown me that they are usually best measured in terms of when—not if. 

Zeldman on version targeting:

• With version targeting, IE stays on the path of web standards.
• Without it, ineptly made websites “break,” putting IE’s standards compliance at risk.
• If IE were to stop supporting standards, standards would stop working.

The following is an example of how poor bar gigs can be for bands to play. What I have done here is calculated my portion of the expenses and share of the compensation for a recent Bottom Dwellers bar gig. It was our poorest bar gig to date.

Hold down the command key, click and drag the icon off of the menu bar, and let go. Poof.

My buddy Ivan and I ditched out on work at the last minuted yesterday and tooted down to San Francisco for Macworld. We missed out last year. Both of us had started new jobs and were wary of bringing up the subject of a frivolous day off to our employers. That was completely lame, though. Since both of us actually use, and make/help make purchasing recommendations for just the kinds of things they hock at Macworld, there is an actual professional benefit to us going. So we did, and these are my impressions of the things we saw.

After ditching out on work yesterday, I came in to find my desk all rearranged ...

What is the purpose of syncing your data? What is the definition of sync?

I can't live without xScope. I use it every single day. It greatly increases my productivity and it is a pleasure to use. It does everything I want it to do, and there isn't anything that I wish it did that it currently doesn't.

Hoorah! I finally brought my household into the 21st century. A brand new shiny iMac is blazing bright in the corner of our living room. It replaces a dual 800MHz PowerMac G4 Qucksilver that was the super hotness back in 1999 or something.

I've been waiting two years to justify the purchase of an XBox 360, and justice finally came last Wednesday. Most of my friends have been killing each other on XBox live for years, and have urged me to jump on the band wagon at nearly every opportunity. Being the only breadwinner in a four-person family, it just wasn't an easy thing to work in. But a year of working multiple jobs has paid off ... almost.

Today is November 29th, 2007. 2,285 days (well over 6 years) have passed since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), and it is still one of the most widely used browsers on the internet today.

I installed Leopard on my MacBook today. It took two hours to make a full clone my hard drive. It took two hours to run the upgrade. It took two hours for me to realize there was no way in hell I was going to get MySQL running today. I estimate two hours for my Tiger restore to complete.

Do two 800 MHz PowerPC processors count collectively against a single 867 MHz PowerPC system requirement? In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, 800*2 != 1600.

We have our business email routed through Google's Gmail with their Google Apps for businesses. I hate Gmail quite a bit. Besides its interface (which I find to be atrociously cumbersome and staggeringly unintuitive), I'm one of those people who likes managing all of my email accounts in a stand-alone email application from multiple computers and my phone. IMAP is the ideal protocol for this, but Gmail only allows POP access. This means that you have to separately download every message to every device you need to view it on ... separately. Even the threads of messages you have already deleted from your other computers and devices.

A portion of visitors to blog.bigreason may notice a pinkish hue to things around here. Your eyes do not deceive you. There is a hue. A girlish hue. This is intentional, for I love girls, and October. And pink, after all, is the color of October — or at least the color of breast cancer awareness. And October is breast cancer awareness month.

13% of my annual income goes to providing health insurance to my family. This doesn't include the money I pay to cover the portion of medical services my insurance doesn't cover. Last year these costs exceeded $3,000. For those keeping track, medical costs for my family exceeded 18% of my annual income last year.

I actually finished something today at work, so I treated myself to a flickr Pro account and geo-tagged a bunch of photos in my account. Let me tell ya, Renfro Hole weren't too easy to find...

Last night after back to school night, Ella and I kicked it on the couch and talked about our long days.

A new image editor from Flying Meat has just poked out its head!

I don't believe I've ever mentioned this on The Big Reason, but to those who know me personally, it's no secret that I hate to fly. I would venture to say that I probably hate it more than most people do. I detest every last thing about it with every fiber of my being. I would have to say that the thing I hate most is the ungodly force of terror that gores its way through my body as a result of being blasted through the sky at such an unreasonable altitude.

A new Jacob Nielson article reveals eye-tracking results for recent banner ad studies. As should be expected, there is some really valuable stuff in there. Obviously banner ads do work. People actually do click them. MySpace wouldn't have sold for $580 million if they didn't work. The real issue is that banner ads aren't for simply looking at. The are for taking you somewhere else. You don't spend as much time looking at something you are clicking as you do looking at something you are reading, just like you tend to spend more time sitting on the couch than you do walking through a doorway.

Last night, I got to open up a show for one of my county heros. Last week, the Bottom Dwellers got a MySpace message from some sweet girl in Portland wanting to set up a small show for Dale Watsonand his boys in between a few bigger dates. Naturally we jumped at the chance, despite being booked to play Richard March's Americana Ramble (something we wouldn't normally do, Richard. Honest.).

Ha! The first thing I thought as I read that Jason Santa Maria had moved to Brooklyn was, "Sweet! They Might Be Giants are from there." Then he went ahead and mentioned it, too.

I don't actually know him—so it's none of my business—but if I ever found myself in the same situation, I always pictured myself doing the exact same thing.

With everyone and their mother chiming in about the iPhone, I figured I should probably say a thing or two about mine.

Today we're eight! I love her.

Dude. I'm so wired right now...

After reading Craig Hockenberry's little piece on Safari for the iPhone's lack of support for fixed positioning—despite the fact that Safari 2 on Mac, and Safari 3 on Mac and Windows do—I got a bug up my butt to stay up late last night to find a workaround. Not only did I not find a workaround, I found that Safari on iPhone had a few bugs up it's butt as well. Unfortunately, these bugs are much bigger and yuckier than the fixed positioning I set out to fix hack in the first place.

Look who has a new boy named Ollie that isn't short for Oliver!

I had the option of working today and taking Friday off instead. I opted to do the American thing, and take her day as it was meant to be taken. All but one of my coworkers opted for the three-day weekend, and I think Dan mostly did it for daycare reasons.

Calm, cool, and collected, I'm back from the 2007 cabin trip and back in action. It was full of the usual fun, and without any of the danger or discomforts of the past. With each trip, you learn a little more about how to make the next one that much better.

With my last visit to plumed facilities out of the way, I'm ready for pickup. Or more specifically, for the pickup that will be taking Ivan, Dave and I to the Spinas cabin for the weekend.

It's double the double bass at the Yolo County Fair! At least for me. I'll be playing back to back shows with my two favorite bands, The Pleasant Valley Boys at 2PM, and Bottom Dwellers at 4PM. Do I know enough songs to fill three full hours? I believe I can fill 8. Do I have the stamina to play that much blistering twang for such an extended period of time? Wouldn't you love to stop by and find out?

A new They Might Be Giants album nearly released under my radar! Actually it slipped well under my radar, as it seems to have been available via iTunes since May 16th. And indeed, nearly released, as it doesn't actually come out for real until July 10th. I guess the iTunes artist alert feature doesn't apply to pre-release items. As one who prides himself on purchasing the previous 9 TMBG albums on or slightly before their release dates, I still feel okay about being a bit tardy to this pre-release.

I don't know which is worse, the teaser video or the song...

Happy birthday, sis. 

Today, someone emailed me an addition they wanted to be made to the "links page" of their website.

This is the Sammies showcase for the Country/Bluegrass category.

BKWLD is one of the featured studios in Taschen's Web Design Studios 2. The best part is that one of the sites I worked on pretty extencively is one of the featured projects: thebeachboys.com

Ella at dinner, asking for a glass of water:

Daddy, what do you say you hook us up with somthin' tah drink?

Two weeks after it's release, it looks like "From Beale Street to Oblivion" is still only available onAmazon. In CD format.

Yesterday's Floating Foam really got me thinking. Specifically, thinking about getting old, and seeing myself fall behind the curve. I mentioned in the comments that it wasn't the technology I saw myself falling behind, but the purposes behind the newest thing.

Are you a seasoned, graphic designer, web developer, video editor, or multi-media guru? Are you excited about the new Adobe CS3 products? Do you already know which CS3 applications you want to upgrade to? Are you a little frustrated that not all of the applications you want come bundled in any of the CS3 Suite packages? Do you need help determining the most cost effective way to purchase the CS3 applications you know you need? I am and I do. I thought others might be too, so I made the Adobe CS3 Configurator.

We use 37signals' Basecamp at work. I totally love it. I also totally love their blog. The "Screens Around Town" category is my favorite. I have a screen shot of something that has always bothered me about Basecamp.

I made an EP out of a few old songs on virb. If you don't know virb, you should sign up and be my friend. It's like myspace without the completely stupid and horribly ugly parts.

Neill Cumpston:

That’s what GRINDHOUSE is. It’s a taquito buffet that you puke up after getting hit with a motorcycle, and it turns into a bikini chick that blows you and kills your boss with a hammer.

After reading John Gruber's thoughts about Tantek Çelik's Three Hypothesis of Human Interface Design yesterday, I felt compelled to contribute to the subject. For those of you mildly interested, but scared of large words, I recommend reading the Daring Fireball post. You'll get the general idea.

At first I considered sending an email to John Gruber about how I overcame iCal's short comings. He is understandably irritated by the interface and all the damned tabbing required to add an event. But then I got to thinking about how drastic a change it was to interact with iCal this new way, and how much muscle memory factored into the process. I thought it might be more helpful to tell the whole internet.

A recent project had me describing the particulars of zip code searching—or more accurately—the accuracy of the results of zip code searching. The client wanted a location search feature in the side bar of their site where the visitor enters a zip code, and is presented with a list of the nearest locations to them, like the one in the sidebar of Walmart.com.

For those of you who are feelin' a little festive this Saturday afternoon, put on a little green and stop by Dillian's Bar & Grill in Lincoln for a little Blue Grass action by TV's Matt & George and their Pleasant Valley Boys. I'm one of the boys.

The particulars are below:

Saturday, March 17th @ 2PM Dillian's Bar & Grill 605 G St Lincoln, CA 95648 (916) 434-8171

A nice frothy Guinness, 1940's style bluegrass, and green socks. Now isn't that just the most delightful way you can picture spending your St. Patty's day?

Ella, as I prepare a bedtime nightcap:

Well, I like strawberries in my princess whiskey.

Well, Wayne Hancock passed through San Francisco two days ago, unbeknownced to me. Again. I try to check the calendar as regularly as humanly possible for me to remember, but again something went up between that day and this morning with a date scheduled right in my back yard for last Sunday. To any professional musicians out there who may be reading this, people who like your music want to know only two things of you at any given time...

My kick ass boss treated us all to the premiere showing of Frank Miller's 300 at the Sacramento IMAX (it feels weird typing that with a capital "i") theater last Friday. I haven't been able to stop thinking about the movie since I left the theater. It was that good.

As being in part of Matt and George's Pleasant Valley Boys, I had the privilege of joining them onSacramento & Co., a local Sacramento morning show. It was my first time on a TV set. Not physically on top of an actual television device. I grew up in the generation of console televisions, after all. TV's were built for climbing on back then. I mean in a studio where they produce live news casts and things.

This one totally caught me off guard, but is a topic I always love to see get media attention. I dream of an America that does't put up with this treatment of women. By put up with, I mean buy oil from, of course.

I've been cranking out a serious number of content management systems lately. You know, those little back-end, password protected parts of your blog or website that allow you to change content on the front end? Different clients have different security needs, and I've certainly seen my share of inconsistent requests lately.

Yesterday's Pleasant Valley extravaganza turned out to be pretty darn cool. We kicked off the day at KDVS for a little guest spot on Robyne Fawx's "Saturday Morning Folk Show." While we were there, we took the opportunity to set up a camera and film a few of the songs for YouTube posterity.

I've been moonlighting with some Dixon bluegrassers, while the Bottom Dwellers continue their winter hibernation. One has to keep his fingers seasoned, you know. The Pleasant Valley Boys will be pickin' at Ludy's Main Street Barbecue this Saturday (2/24/2007 @ 6 PM). Tell all your friends who like beer, barbecue and bluegrass to put their pleasant valley shoes on and prepare for a fat slice of authentic Americana pie. We'll also be performing on KDVS 90.3 FM on this same Saturday somewhere around 11 AM if you prefer to try before you barbecue.

Steve Jobs just served the world a big fat slice of DRM reality pie:

• iPods play music purchased from stores besides the iTunes Store.
• Apple does not lock down music to keep their iPod on the top.
• 97% of music on iPods was purchased somewhere other than the iTunes Store.
• 90% of music sold by the "Big 4" does not have DRM protection.

The biggest, most exciting remark was to urge the industry to put pressure the Big 4 to stop requiring retailers to sell DRM protected music. He backed up this statement by saying that Apple would jump at the chance to sell music in the iTunes Store without DRM protection. I'm thinking big changes are afoot.

Precision Logo is your answer to high quality, original designs at economical prices.

A am equally horrified and awestruck. I am reminded of David Byrne's genius E.E.E.I. project, but I am also tortured by repressed memories of Microsoft Office's WordArt. I implore each and every one of you to dive deeply into their portfolio. Never in my history as an artist, designer, and web developer have I encountered such a blatant and equal disregard for artistic vision, usability and semantics. It is beautiful.

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.1, and I totally dig it. I mostly dig the code name, "Ella", but the biggest mind-blowingly welcome improvements are what they did to the WYSIWYG editor.

Bingo! I win! Just got my results from the doc. Not one smidgen of cancer to be found. The gaping hole in my abdomine still keeps me from expressing the full magnitude of my relief, though.

More in the gouging of parts saga... I had my dermatology follow-up appointment the other day, and ended up having another mole removed. That particular one had been spooking me out a bit, and was the main reason I started this whole process.

My boss played this recording of a Verizon billing complaint yesterday. If you relish in the intricacies of clear verbal communication, you will love this as much as I did.

Twitter is all the rage. I've had an account for about a week. While I personally find it distracting and somewhat egocentric, I still see its benefits and feel obligated to give it a fair try. The iconfactory just released a freeware app called Twitterific that lets you tweet (post) and stream the tweets of your friends in a cute little floating window. Unlike most things released by the iconfactory, it's not quite up to snuff.

I was just downloading the Macworld podcast of Cable Sasser and John Gruber from Macworld.com and spotted an ad for a website I spent the last few weeks building out. I'm sure Dan and Greg (project manager and designer respectively) will be equally as tickled to see the fruits of our labor being hocked above two of our favorite Mac bloggers/Developers.

Sorry if I embarrassed you in front of the ladies, guys.

I was cruzin' around the Google Earth this morning and found the Woodland Wikipedia entry floating menacingly over Oak Street like a bright white death star. Woodland California is the town where I live. I was wowed by the following trivia entries in the article.

The XBox 360 outsold the Wii and PS3 combined last month.

I think it probably goes without saying—although Jeff Croft already has, but I will. The iPhone runs OS X 10.5. This is probably one of the reasons it's not shipping until June.

Holy Shit.

The results are in. The thing on my arm came back negative for life altering bad news. Now I just need to get these dang itchy stitches out.

Twenty years ago on this day, a new phase of my life began. My parents gave me a shinny, black electric bass guitar. The year was 1986. I was 13 years old.

Mike Davidson has a bookmark thing. Here's mine:

I'm going in to have a few things hacked out of my flesh this morning. Something common for people with my skin type, or so I've been told.

Hair care or digital audio? I got 12/14. How 'bout you?

Fielding questions and pre-conceived notions of the ins and outs of "Web 2.0" has nearly become the bane of my existence. May this post serve as my official, and professional explanation of what Web 2.0 is.

I think the goon has finally kicked into full "monsters in the closet" mode. I have been impressed up to this point. Scary shadows abound in that room of hers. This week, though, it seems that they are finally starting to make an impression.

Somewhere around 1998, Jutta Degener created the document, Dangerous Words. Nine yeas later, how often do you see many of these words and terms floating around with the exact usage cautioned against in this document? I'd have to say quite a lot.

I'm trying my first beard. We're starting week three today. I think it's coming along pretty well. I like the way beer bottles feel on the mustache, and the snuggly feeling under the chin. Beard people aren't necessarily upfront with that kind of info when you ask them, so I thought I'd share.

Good manners are how you show the people around you that you respect them. Ivan says that safety is a lethal version of manners. I think he has a good point, but they often overlap.

This song is about a stalker. I wrote it a very long time ago about my friend Jeannette who thought she was being stalked.