I've Been Owned

I live in a neighborhood governed by a community association, which means I pay several hundred dollars a year for the privilege of being ordered by strangers to drag my trash cans into the garage.

Like any government, the association has found it much easier to expand its authority than to occasionally unclench, review the rules, and get rid of the more nettlesome ones.

In some ways, it's kind of entertaining, like having a busybody in-law who can't repress the desire to micromanage your life. My actual in-laws are delightful people I got to know for the first time when they took me to an Orlando nudist camp against my will. It would take a lot of neglect for this free-spirited pair to object to the condition of my home. Even then, they'd be more likely to drag the trash cans in than put their concerns in writing. I wish all my problems could be solved by annoying other people until they fix them.

I was informed by mail today about my unclean mailbox and four other "compliance issues." The letter, copied to the Compliance Committee, is worded masterfully, suggesting that I must make things right within 10 days or find myself in a world of hurt:

Perhaps you have already started to address the problem or are having difficulty in doing so. In either case, would you please call our office ... and let us know the status? ...

Otherwise we will assume that you are taking care of this problem and will make a note to check again in 10 days to see how you are progressing.

The complaints were so specific -- "treat turf for weeds on right side of driveway" -- I'm surprised I didn't see someone walking my yard with pencil and pad.

Centuries after our forefathers tamed a wild verdant frontier, I can't help but think they'd be ashamed at what's become of the land they killed millions of indigenous people to acquire.

I'm thinking about flying one of the "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsen flags in my yard -- a giant mustard yellow symbol of America's unquenchable thirst for freedom.

I just have to get it approved by the Architectural Committee first.

Politics · Jacksonville · Florida · 2005/05/16 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

My Friend the Warblogger

Michael Bolduc, one of my college pals from the University of North Texas, grew up to become a warblogger.

This was, of course, a source of distress for mother and I. You do everything you can to raise them properly, but ultimately all you can do is love them, cherish every day together, and hope they make the right decisions.

When Mike ventures into political subjects on his weblog, I'm pretty sure that we'll pick opposite sides whence comes the War of the Bloggers, then meet in a trench where one of us receives a gaping bayonet wound, the other a lifetime of guilt.

Until then, I enjoy finding things on his site that I missed because I am a let-the-gay-whales-marry liberal, such as an incredible essay by Gerard Van der Leun on the day he didn't kill anybody:

... as humans, we have an almost limitless ability to forget any hint of 'could' when it comes to horror. In those few moments when our forgetfulness fails us, we remain secure in our belief that we would never do such things to those we love. We know to an absolute certainty that anyone who could must not have been "in his right mind."

That's a common but still strange phrase -- "in his right mind." Everyone uses it as shorthand for things people do that are, large or small, somehow far outside what we normally expect them to do. Nobody that I know of takes it to the other side of that common phrase and looks at what a person does when he's "in his wrong mind."

It's a brilliant, honest, frightening piece, and I love the fact that he wrote it without a single editor pondering whether his thoughts merited a global audience.

Another mark in Mike's favor: He's riding Paula Abdul harder than a disqualified contestant.

North Texas · Politics · 2005/05/14 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Serving Files with a Cache to Save Cash

Some podcasters and other publishers who serve large, high-traffic files have begun using the Coral service to keep from going offline or going broke. The iPodder client added support in March.

Coral's a network of several hundred servers that can store and serve copies of any file on the web. To offer a file via Coral, all you have to do is add .nyud.net:8090 to the host name in its URL.

Here's an example -- the trailer for the underappreciated Brat Pack thriller Bad Influence starring James Spader as a passive yuppie and Rob Lowe as the devil. If Video Detective wanted to save bandwidth and offer the file over Coral, it could change the original URL to a Coralized version.

Coral's also a useful place to look for any URL that can't be loaded due to high traffic or some other problem. Just add .nyud.net:8090 to the host name of a request, as in mp3.example.com.nyud.net:8090/podcast.mp3. There are Coralize bookmarklets for browsers that can request any page from Coral's cache.

The long-term plan for Coral is to expand the network, adding any host who wants to serve requests. This brings up integrity issues raised in the debate over Google Toolbar's autolink feature, as noted by Wes Felter -- there must be a way to ensure that a Coral server is not modifying the original content in transit.

The NYU Secure Computer Systems Group that developed Coral has created an Apache module for signing web content. Clients could use this signature to verify that content has arrived in unaltered form.

I'm going to see if this module can be fished out of Coral, so I can sign content on Workbench as a testbed for the concept.

Security · Publishing · 2005/05/14 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

25 Will Enter, 5 Will Leave (with Books)

From around 25 entries received in the book giveaway, four copies of Radio UserLand Kick Start were mailed today to Rod Kratochwill, Ole Olson, Gary Secondino and Nick Starr.

Steve Kirks is working with UserLand Software on Radio 9, a major upgrade to the software. Though I suspect that the upcoming release will affect weblog publishing features covered in early chapters of my book, Kick Start emphasizes two aspects of Radio that are important to learn and unlikely to change much in the future: the object database and UserTalk scripting language.

A fifth copy of the book will be sent to Marinus as soon as I find one. I accidentally gave away more copies than I own.

Publishing · Radio Userland · 2005/05/13 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Weblog Comments Near and Far Out

I'm coding this weblog myself in PHP and MySQL, writing software that I will eventually release under the name Wordzilla. A new recent comments sidebar on Workbench makes it easier to follow active discussions on old weblog entries.

Running a weblog with open comments attracts some unusual discussions when people using a search engine find familiar names in an old entry. For two years, Workbench has hosted an ongoing soap opera between the current and former spouses of Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ron Martz.

The sidebar also will show how much comment spam I have to weed out, even though I refuse comments with three or more links and actively ban senders. In the last six months, I have banned 1,263 IP addresses used by spammers. They haven't gotten the message -- an additional 21,043 attempts have been rejected from those addresses.

Wordzilla · Php · Mysql · 2005/05/12 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Bob's Mother Won't Talk to Me

Ten years ago Melinda French Gates was a manager on Microsoft Home products such as Bob, Encarta and Expedia. Some reporters even claim that Bob was her baby.

Because bloggers are being hyped to the gills by the mainstream media, I figured it was a good time to start making interview requests of people who are ordinarily far too important to talk with the likes of me.

I began with Melinda Gates, hoping to clarify her role on social interface software like Bob. I even prepared a Mike Wallace question for the end of the interview: Why did you allow Bob to die in 1996 -- didn't you know anyone at Microsoft with enough pull to save the project?

My request was rejected, but I regard the speed of the reply -- under 48 hours -- as a recognition of the importance of the blogosphere.

"Melinda is not able to participate in this particular opportunity," according to a publicist. No reason was given, but I suspect that she may be preoccupied improving the lives of millions of people through charitable giving on a scale unprecedented in human history.

Microsoft Bob · 2005/05/11 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

My Needs are Modest

Newsweek gives me special recognition for missing out on the booming multimillion-dollar market in Internet domains:

When a Florida man, in anticipation of the naming of the new pope, registered the Web site BenedictXVI.com, the Vatican was in luck. Rogers Cadenhead, who has since used the site to publicize a nonprofit organization and plans to transfer control to the Vatican, could have been an investor looking to get in on a booming business: the domain market. Indeed, owners of similar sites such as Benedict16.com and PopeBenedict-16.org, are looking to sell to the highest bidder.

A few relatives share this view, believing that the cash value of your Catholic grandmother's love is paltry recompense against a 50,000 percent return on a $12 investment.

But so far, the financial windfall for non-altruistic pope domain registrants has been mixed. The owner of PopeBenedictXVI.Com auctioned his domain for $6,100 on eBay to a buyer using it for pay-per-click papal search results. The seller told me in an e-mail that if eBay had not cancelled the original auction during the press frenzy over the domains, he had legitimate bidders on the hook for as much as $30,000.

The Italian selling Benedict16.Com apparently waited too long to auction it, so he's having trouble finding a buyer. (I'm crying on the inside for you, Jacopo.)

On one level, it's nice to be recognized for my error in judgment, which I blame on watching too many ABC Afterschool Specials in my formative years.

I have my wife, my kids, my health, and my hair. I don't need a fully loaded 2005 Ford Mustang GT, Sub-Zero refrigerator, or enough money to send my children to the same Ivy League college as Katie Couric's kids. I can live without the Hewlett Packard Windows XP Media Center PC with the built-in DVR capabilities and the detachable Tablet PC monitor. I'm not bothered in the least by paying off student loans 14 years after graduating from a modestly priced state school. I can live without HBO until The Wire comes back next year. A perfectly good meal can be based around Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Some of the store-brand colas are delicious.

Even if I had earned enough to join the Sawgrass Country Club and knock a few in the water at TPC 17, can you imagine my discomfort when my new moneybag friends started talking about how we made our fortunes?

Donald: "I made my money in real estate development."

Thurston: "My family is in investment banking."

Me: "I was a popesquatter."

Domains · Jacksonville · 2005/05/11 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

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