So I haven't been there, but Bonnie from Javalinas left me a comment saying that her shop now has wifi and looking for ways to promote that fact. I'm all for helping out places that have free wifi, so I figured I'd give it a mention here.

Now it's cool that Tucson places get in touch with me. I'm high on google for Tucson wifi, so that makes sense. But really, where are you LA wifi spots? I want places to go hang out and get work done.

I've been running a lot of errands the last two days, which is pretty exhausting. I especially tire of the ones that take me to campus, since that means having to either walk or get on the skateboard and head over there. Today I had to skate around campus for a bit carrying a wakeboard, which is a bit of a chore.

I wanted to get something printed at Kinkos, but didn't. I had the image as a tiff file, and they wanted $5 to convert it to a PDF. I wasn't about to pay them $5 for something I could do myself in a good 30 seconds. So I didn't print it. I will sometime. It's just a little sign for our waterski equipment locker. Other lockers have these cheesy little clipart signs, so I put this together to show off a little.

Tomorrow we do the move-in inspection for the new apartment downtown. I'm excited to get in there, but it'll be a two-week process moving out of here and into there. Complicating things is the fact that I've only got one refrigerator, so that's either going to be here or there, and wherever it is is going to be the better of the two places to be. Oh well. I probably won't move that until the 12th.

Today was a busy day for me. I started off making the drive out to Woodland Hills to Sports Ltd. The waterski team needed to spend the rest of its money before the semester was out, so I ended up buying two skis and a wakeboard. Steve's a good guy and gave us a great deal, so I was happy with what we got out of it.

First on the list was getting a ski for the ladies. We haven't had a good girls' ski for the team, so for them I picked up a 63" HO (flash site, you'll have to navigate in on your own) Odyssey with the Venom high wraps. It's part of HO's comp/freeride series, so it's a little wider and a little more forgiving than their regular competition line.

Next on the list was a good 66" ski. Here I got a Truth with double Animal boots set up left foot forward. The Truth evolved from the CDX, which is a ski I loved, so I'm definitely excited to get out on this one.

I wasn't planning to get a wakeboard, since we bought two last year, but it came to mind that we could really use a board with a flatter bottom for trick at tournaments. Tricking at a tournament is really entirely different than just going out and wakeboarding, and because of that you have different priorities in how you want the board to be set up. For normal riding you want the board to have lots of grip on the water so that you can cut harder and get more speed heading into the wake. To get that grip you see a combination of channels, molded fins (part of the board itself), and screw-in fins. For waterski tournament tricking, though, since you only have 20 seconds, a lot of what you score with are surface tricks, just spinning the board on the water. While you can get fins to break loose to do surface tricks with them in, it's a lot harder working against them than it is not having them there. The board I bought, a Liquid Force Litmus has only very shallow channels in the bottom of the board. It has six fins, but all can be removed. The middle of the board also has a rounded edge that makes it a lot less likely to catch on the water when you're doing stuff on the surface. That makes it a great board for tricking, and also a great board for beginners, since that's most often how they fall.

Now to get reimbursed for all that...

So today I wrote a 10 page paper in about three and a half hours. Unfortunately I only had three by the time I really got started, so I missed the class and have to turn it in to the professor's office. But that's neither here nor there.

To print the paper out I came to Annenberg, where I normally print things since they're cool and let you do it for free. Today, though, the lab was full, so they sent me down to the basement, to the Digital Lab. Why did I not know this was here? It's got souped up workstations with dual flatscreen monitors, attached DVCAM decks and firewire. I think normally you have to be in certain classes to get in, but I really need to find a way to get in here and transfer over a bunch of video I have sitting around on miniDV tapes.

Right now, though, I need to print a paper.

My cold beat me up last week, but it's been reduced to an occasional cough now, so I think it's about done. The end of the semester is no time to be sick. 15 more days and I'll be done (well, at least until my summer class starts up mid-June).

When I bought my laptop I also got a Linksys WPC11 pcmcia card for wireless. It was cheap, and people seemed to say it worked with Linux. Of course then I got it, and it turned out to be a version 4 card, which actually doesn't work well with linux at all. I sent it to Linksys, they replaced it with a version 3 card, and all was well.

Until recently.

Recently the card started driving me crazy by fairly frequently losing sync with the network and claiming signal strength was 100%. It would have to be ejected, reinserted, and then the interface re ifup'ed before it would work again. And about every fourth or fifth time it did this it would lock the machine up hard.

Last Tuesday night, after the card had locked the machine for the half-dozenth time that day, I got fed up.

So I threw the card at a wall, and the problems stopped.

Granted, the card also now didn't work. So today I bought a new card, this time a... wait for it... Microsoft MN-520. $29.99 at Circuit City and based on the Prism2 chipset, so it has great Linux support.

My desktop also has a Microsoft wireless IntelliMouse. Hmmmm... My keyboard, though, is still firmly Silicon Graphics.

Sometimes I wish I could just sit around and read about history all day. Today, while looking for nothing in particular, I ended up at losangelesmetro.net. That led me to experiencela.com, where I clicked around for a little bit before discovering their tour of the Figueroa corridor. Stop number four on that tour is the Stimson House, something I've passed by many times and always wondered about. Interestingly, the Stimson House is an example of Richardsonian architecture, the same as Hackley Public Library in Muskegon, MI. I only remembered it was Richardsonian because I was bored once and stood outside the library reading the historical information sign.

Anyway... Looking up more info about the Stimson House I happened across the fact that there once was a Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. I had never heard of it, but it was home to the Dodgers for parts of the '58 season and home to the Angels for '61. That means that my grandfather played there, which is cool.

Here's a question... Why can't I find a site that lets me look up the box scores for random old games? For instance, I know that the Yankees visited the Angels May 5-7, 1961, so why can't I look up those games?

It's kind of a weird feeling to not know where you're going to be living in just 25 days. My rent at City Park is up May 15. Conveniently that's just 4 days after my last final. The place where we want to live next year has a 2br available, but we need to move on it quickly. We've also been unable to so far find a third for the summer, which is annoying.

So, uhhh, if anyone needs a place downtown for the summer, let me know.

I'll be glad when all this is taken care of. Really, I'll be more glad when I graduate and can put all this behind me and just work like a normal person.

So I went off for the weekend, had a little fun at a waterski tourney, came back with a nice sore throat, and am now sucking on cough drops like it's a job.

It's still kind of amazing to me to go to these tournaments and hang out next to people like Jimmy Siemers. Take a look at that list of accomplishments. And here I am, out there on the same lake he is, theoretically competing in the same tournament, but... not really. It is kind of funny sitting at the lake reading the article about Jimmy in this month's Waterski Magazine while he's throwing a football fifteen feet behind me.

Now I'm back in the grind, trying not to die while catching up on schoolwork before the semester ends. This whole being sick thing really didn't pick a great time.

(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)

With the introduction of cable, broadcast slowly started to lose its prominence. This wasn't what it was meant to do. Initially cable was simply a means to get the broadcast channels to homes that for reasons of terrain were unable to receive them. The first cable companies consisted of a central antenna which through size or location was able to pick up the broadcasts. The channels were then sent over cables to homes which paid to be hooked up to the system. Over time cable evolved, adding channels from farther away, and then channels that weren't broadcast anywhere. A fundamental characteristic of cable systems is the requirement that the user pays the cable company to deliver programming to their home.

Satellite -- which in this case we're using to mean just DBS services such as DirecTV and Dish Network -- developed much later but shares this same characteristic. The user pays not just for the hardware, but also for a subscription. While satellite is "broadcast" in that the signal is wirelessly sent via the spectrum, the signals are useless without a subscription, which serves as a key to decoding the digital signal and accessing its content.

(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)

The FCC came into being because the early days of broadcast were unregulated, leading to a crowded and chaotic radio spectrum. In 1927 the Federal Radio Commission was created to issue licenses, regulate spectrum, and generally just keep the chaos from making radio unusable. The recipients of these licenses were then given certain requirements about what they could and could not broadcast.

These regulations were put into place with the justification that the broadcast spectrum is a public good and therefore the FRC (and then the FCC) must regulate it with the interests of the listening public, not the broadcasters. Licenses were granted to certain broadcasters in certain markets depending on market conditions and the type of programming the broadcaster wanted to offer. This second part is where the first ammendment comes in -- it's content based regulation of speech. If you say you're going to do one thing and the FCC grants you a license based on the fact that the genre you wish to provide is something underserved, they can stop you if you go and try to change your station into something else a little bit later. These days scarcity doesn't get the play that it once did, but it's still around. The court has said scarcity is less of an issue these days, but they haven't gotten rid of it for broadcast.

(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)

Just because speech is protected by the first ammendment doesn't mean that it is acceptable at all times and free from regulation. You can't yell fire in a crowded place, you can't talk about bombs at the airport, etc. We're familiar with these restrictions in day to day life.

Indecent speech is regulated far more heavily for broadcast than it is for other mediums. Again looking at the Pacifica ruling, the Court said that "of all forms of communication, it is broadcasting that has received the most limited First Amendment protection." Where certain indecent speech might be absolutely legal in other contexts, it can be regulated for broadcast. To justify this, the Court has used two doctrines: scarcity and unique pervasiveness. I'll address them both in a minute.

Regulation of broadcast speech can take two forms: content based (regulating on the basis of what's being said) and non-content based (requirements to carry something, not on the basis of what it is). Content based is pretty straight forward. That's the FCC saying you can't say certain words, or at certain times, etc. Non-content based is a little more esoteric, and usually comes up in the form of things like must-carry rules. Must-carry requires that a cable company transmit the signals of any broadcast stations in its area.

Non-content based regulations aren't subject to the same kinds of strict scrutiny that content based regulations are. Though those are currently a debated issue in regards to extending cable must-carry rules to satellite, I don't think they're that important and we're not going to get into them here.

(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)

The first thing you have to look at in this argument is whether the speech that the FCC is regulating is protected by the first ammendment. Everything hinges on that. If it's not protected Congress and the FCC can do whatever they want. If it is, though, then a variety of other questions have to be asked.

The type of speech we're talking about here is indecency, not obscenity. PBS has a really good resource on the first ammendment. In it you'll see the criteria for obscenity set out in Miller vs. California (413 U.S. 15 (1973)). That's the important criteria here. Obscene material does not have first ammendment protections, and can be freely legislated (well, to some extent anyway). In any case, obscenity is illegal for broadcast at all times.

Indecency, on the other hand, is protected speech. The Court, in the decision for FCC vs. Pacifica (483 U.S. 726 (1978)), said "But the fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas." Though indecency and obscenity are often taken as the same, legally they are very different.

I've talked a couple times now about the FCC, Congress, and attempts to extend broadcast regulations to cable, satellite, and possibly the Internet. I'm actually looking at all this for a paper I have to do for a writing class. The paper is supposed to be a position paper. Mine is going to be a letter to Congress telling them why they shouldn't (and can't, but Congress doesn't like to hear that) extend the rules to new mediums. Over the last few days I've been putting sources together and such, so now it's time to actually sit down and start outlining my argument.

Of course, once I started that it quickly got too big for one post. I'm going to post this in sections, and then once it's all done I'll probably pull it together to archive it somewhere.

First, just a comment -- Were this a real letter to Congress I don't know if a strategy of citing Supreme Court cases would be the way to go. Click for more about that...

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So I finally mailed my taxes today. I did them in February, but I owed Federal and Michigan, so I waited to actually send them. California owes me $1.41, but that's not much of a consolation. I'll be glad when I'm just a resident of somewhere and don't have to fill out non-resident forms for two states. That's a hassle.

I started writing a post today talking about the paper I'm writing on why indecency regulations shouldn't/can't be extended to satellite and cable, but then it turned into something that's approaching paper length itself and isn't done yet. That'll probably show up here tomorrow.

So I'll never understand the LAPD chopper. This morning it woke me up. I tried to just ignore it, to fall back asleep, but it kept circling. It was here for at least twenty minutes, every thirty seconds or so coming into view overhead on the northern edge of its rotation. It was flying pretty low, too, so it was loud. Then, all of a sudden, it started using the loudspeaker. I couldn't quite catch what it said as I moved out to the balcony to get a better vantage point. Immediately afterward it veers off and makes a bee-line for downtown. No clue what it was doing here.

In other news, I think I discovered today that pidgeons are trying to make a nest on our balcony. They're also undeterred by the openings and closings of the door.

So I'm sitting in class now, sort of listening to the lecture, but also still working on the intro and conclusion of my paper. I've got a body that I'm comfortable with, but I have no idea what my intro is trying to say. All I need is a good third of a page and I'll be happy. That and a small conclusion will give me a solid five pages, which I think is a decent day's work.

The paper's due in discussion at the end of class, which means I get to duck out at the beginning of the movie, head over to Annenberg, and print this out. That gives me about an hour to finish. I think I'll make it.

When talking about someone in a paper, normally you would introduce their full name and then use only their last name in subsequent mentions. What do you do when talking about Ice Cube?

"The role played by Cube is..."

Heh. That reminds me of a Simpsons quote, from last season. Flanders pictures himself in Hollywood, where he's standing along Hollywood Blvd. A man walks up...

Ned, I'm James L. Brooks.

Oh, can I call you Jim?

James L. Brooks is good.

Ah, Simpsons. In other news, my collection is now up to 321 episodes as I fill in early seasons I had neglected before. I think that just leaves me 10 or so short of having them all.

An LAPD chopper is circling overhead right now, close enough that I get a breeze every time it passes me. I've never quite understood why the chopper's here so often, yet so rarely do I actually see whatever it is it's watching from above. This one's doing wide passes, unlike a lot of times where you see them flying fast and hard to keep a spotlight on a suspect on the ground.

So the other day my roomate D4 had one of his all-time best ideas, bringing one of the old beat-up chairs from our living room out to the balcony for the day. Today I'm appropriating that idea for a location to write my paper.

One thing I didn't count on... Pidgeons. I've only been out here ten minutes and already two brids have been in landing approaches before I shooed them away. The first time they veered off and landed on the edge of the roof to survey the situation. The second time one got even closer. They're gone for now, but I highly doubt this is for good.

I've got a paper due in six hours. Well, really it'll be due in 9, but the class starts in six hours and I'd prefer to be there then (it's Casper and I hate to miss his lectures). The paper's supposed to be about postmodern film and its tendency toward rampant hybridization of genre. The films that we're able to talk about are Three Kings, The Iron Giant, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Glengarry Glen Ross. I'll probably use Three Kings and The Thomas Crown Affair, and maybe a third if I'm feeling desperate.

I'm not really sure how I think this paper's going to go.

I didn't touch a computer much this weekend, which was good and bad. Good to get away, but bad for the stuff that really should have been done.

Saturday morning several of us from the waterski team got up really early and made the drive up to the Buena Vista Auquatic Area up near Bakersfield. Lots of good skiing, and I've been feeling it yesterday and today.

I got back mid-afternoon, and then that night we had a little show at the Ragazzi Room with Lee Beth Kilgore and Justin Rosolino. Claire Holley also came and sang with Justin on a song. I wish I could have gotten more people out, but it was still a fun time. I really enjoy listening to both Lee Beth and Justin, so it was fun to get them together in the same place. And in a very "it's a small world" moment, the two share a good friend Lee Beth went to college with. I had my small world moment too, as I found out that Sally Smithwick and Joel Eckels from Paper Sun, who I've seen several times, are also old friends of Justin. They came out to see him play and I got a chance to say hi.

So, my roommate's name is Danyul Lawrence, but I call him D4 McBoob. It's sort of an evolved name; the D4 part came before school even started Freshman year, but the McBoob part didn't stick until sometime this year or last. McBoob has since become a very useful verb -- "He really mcboobed that one" -- but that's not the point of this point.

Anyway, the other day the Official D4 McBoob Fan Site! launched. It's mostly a product of boredom and the fact that I really wanted his email address to be d4@mcboob.com.

Not that much to the site, but I laugh every time I read the front page.

Still sitting in the library. Someone at the next table just booted up his laptop and I can hear the fan from here. I can hear it ramp up the speed at times, too. That's crazy. I'm ten feet from his machine, and I can hear it loud and clear. My laptop's sitting right in front of me, and I can't hear it at all.

Oh yeah, that's because my fan's off. It can do that because my cpu's just chillin' at 54 degrees C, my power draw's low at 1.2A, and my drive's been spun down for a while now.

I can't really understand why so many people carry around what are basically luggable desktops. His machine must weigh 10 lbs. And what's he going to use it for? To write a paper? To browse the internet? Oooh... That's heavy-duty.

I'm sitting in the big room at Doheny Library right now, doing research for an upcoming paper. It's supposed to be a position paper, so mine's going to be addressed to Congress reminding them of all the reasons that cable and satellite (and the Internet) deserve the full first-ammendment protections awarded to print rather than the watered down rights given to broadcasters.

Anyway...

On March 8, 2004, TelevisionWeek had an article titled "Barton Targeting Cable, Satellite." It talked about how Representative Joe Barton, R-Texas, was looking for some action from the cable and satellite people to curb violence and indecency. Here's my favorite part:

But the measure applies only to broadcasters. Cable and satellite are exempt from the indecency regulations, and that's a problem for Rep. Barton.

During hearings late last month, Rep. Barton voiced concerns that a unilateral crackdown on broadcast indecency might simply "move the more objectionable material to satellite and cable."

At the hearings, the concept of extending the crackdown to cable and satellite got enthusiastic reviews from several broadcast network TV executives at the witness table.

"It's indispensable that everybody who provides the content be a participant," said Alan Wurtzel, president, NBC research and media development.

First off, the concern he voices is exactly what I was hoping for last month. But that's not what I found funny. What's funny is that broadcast execs were "enthusiastic" about applying censorship rules to cable/satellite. You better believe they would be... The networks see what HBO's doing and they hate the fact that they can't do the same. So what's the solution? Take freedom away from everyone equally.

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With my renewed bike kick still swinging (it is only day three, after all), yesterday I got it in my mind that I wanted to ride from USC to the Farmers' Market. Today I did that. It's only 6.75 miles, and there's no appreciable elevation change end-to-end, so it's not that bad of a ride. The bikemetro route put me up Vermont to Olympic, west on Olympic to Hauser, up Hauser to Burnside, and then west on 3rd for a block or two. Aside from the fact that Burnside's an apartment complex and not a street these days, that route worked out well. I didn't pay attention to what time I left on the way there, but I clocked the way back at 34 minutes. In any traffic I'd expect it to take 20 in a car.

Wireless internet at the farmers market was down -- the lady at SitckerPlanet said it was out for upgrades -- so I didn't get a ton accomplished. I finished up a paper and did sit and just write for a bit, which was fun. I've put what I wrote up in thoughts as Mid-Day at the Farmers' Market.

So I mentioned yesterday that mod_perl and I were at odds. Well, today I took things into my own hands and tracked down what was going on. Basically the xml output module was infecting non-xml content because a tied output wasn't getting cleaned up. I won't really explain more than that, since it's funky perl and pretty convoluted, but if you really care the changes are this patch in the eThreads arch repository. Summary: those ugly visible   should be a thing of the past.

I love getting to work on my bike, because it means that I have to ride back, and the ride back's all downhill. I actually followed the bikemetro directions this time, and they led me on Arroyo above the golf course, park, and a view of the Rose Bowl.

The train was cool, even though I forgot to bring anything to read today. On the Gold Line there was a dad and his son, probably about 7, sitting nearby. They were talking and joking the whole time and one time the kid said something and the dad just cracked up. I enjoyed that. On the Red Line there was a little kid who kept falling over when the train made a stop. The last time he was so convinced he was going to prove he could do it without holding on, and then he got that little jolt when the train comes to a complete stop and his mom/older sister had to catch him.

Riding down Vermont on the way back, negotiating the game that is riding in lanes in LA, I managed to beat the rapid. He passed me first, then I passed him on the right and he honked at me. I don't think I did anything wrong so I ignored him. He passed me again, but then I passed him at a stop around James M Woods or something like that and never saw him again.

My bike was having fun changing gears on me, so getting back I dropped it at Lions Bike Shop, the same place I got my tire put on this morning. An hour and a half or so and $10 later my bike was all tuned up. Little bike shops right near by are very cool.

I need to get some padded shorts. My saddle's definitely a little hard, and I'm feeling it right now. I can't bring myself to wear just bike shorts on the train, but I'd wear 'em under a pair of board shorts.

I carried my bike over to the bike shop this morning and they put my new tires on for me. I also picked up a Kryptonite lock cable for my front wheel, so maybe I can hold onto this one. On the back I've got a Kryptolock Combo and I've been happy with that.

Anyway, with all that done I hopped on the bike and headed toward work. I meantioned the other day Metro's site http://bikemetro.com. Today I tried out the route that suggested, and was pretty happy with it (if you want to see the route, click read more and I'll give you a start and destination to use). I missed a turn and deviated from the prescibed route a bit, but on the whole it worked out just fine. It was great riding weather today, nice and cool.

For some reason the first leg, up Vermont, really got me worse than my Pasadena climb. I guess I was just pushing it way too hard, and the sugar cookie I had right before I left didn't help matters at all. My times were right in line with what I was riding it in during the summer, even though I took it lighter for the second leg.

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For the last few months I've been stuck walking. Six months or so ago I took the wheels of my skateboard, realized the bearings were shot, and promptly neglected to go buy new ones. A month or two after that the front wheel got stolen off my bike, leaving just me and my car.

In the last 24 hours that all changed. Yesterday, driving from Santa Monica to Venice to get a little C&O's (heh, little and C&O's should never go together), when I realized I was passing ZJ Boarding House, which is where I originally bought my board almost three years ago. A quick stop there and suddenly my skateboard situation was looking a whole lot brighter.

Then today I dropped by the REI Store in Manhattan Beach and picked up three boxes of stuff I had ordered online. In the boxes were an REI Morph Tent, a set of Continental SportContact tires, a Deore X221 front wheel and a nice light Delta Mega Rack. Tomorrow morning I'm going to pop over to the bike shop at the end of the alley (less than 100 yards from my apartment), buy tubes, and get them to install the tires for me. Then, just like that, I'll be back in the business of mobility.

I set up the tent in my apartment tonight to check it out. First impression? Very cool. It's a 2-person and not super-wide, so if you're sharing it with someone you better want to get close, but it's not like you'd be sleeping on top of each other either. The length is great. Definitely room for me to lay out and still have room at the end for a pack. The whole thing fits in a really small package, and weighs in around 5 pounds. I didn't try putting out the footprint or raincover, but the tent itself was really easy to put together.

This was my first real experience with REI, and I came away very impressed.

I have searched for some information on movie trailers and your name and pelican productions surfaced; I am trying to find a way to purchase new trailers on dvd or beta formats. If you have any information on this and can sell these please contact me to discuss.

Thanks,

KA

Ok, so a while ago I switched all this eThreads stuff over to mod_perl, to get some of that persistence speed-up goodness. And I did. And I like it.

But if sometime soon I go crazy and end up in a river somewhere (oh, wait, this is LA... the aquaduct?), somebody go blame modperl. It really makes a habit of acting in ways that make absolutely no sense. For instance, one bug that's been driving me batty for a while now is that every once in a while I'll load up this page and modperl will see some   tags and be like, dude, that would be cooler if it was   then it would show up on page when really it's only supposed to be a space. But it only does it sometimes. Just enough to really annoy me, but not enough to actually let me track it down.

Also, at some point modperl decided that it wanted to start double-posted if I tried to post here via it. Sure, the post code only gets called once, but why should that stop it? So I've been posting via a CGI version for the last while, which I really shouldn't have to do.

Stupid computers.

Wednesday night I finally ended my unintentional little hiatus from live music and wandered over to Hollywood to check out Indie Night 8 at the Hotel Cafe. I didn't make it there until around 9:30, so by the time I showed up Gabriel Mann was already well into his set. Though I didn't catch a ton of his stuff I did like what I heard. Saucy Monky was up next and I've written about them many times before, so I don't have that much new to say. Sally Smithwick from Paper Sun played with them on the keys, which was fun. You get the three girls up front and it's hard to even realize you've got a bass guitar and some drums back there. The Woods, whose website is one of the most barren I've ever seen, followed, and I hate describing music so I'll just point you to the music page on their site, where the one scrap of not "coming soon" is a full-length mp3.

Next up was Joe Purdy. We didn't stay for him, but I feel I need to explain that. It's not that Joe Purdy isn't good. He is. I really like his stuff. But if there's one thing he is, it's mellow. I was there with a friend from high school who had flown in from Michigan Wednesday afternoon, so at this point 11:30pm PST was feeling pretty late no matter what. Joe definitely would have put her to sleep, but in a good way. I've done this same thing before, so I felt I owed a little more than just saying we took off.

The whole night was really cool. Cynthia (from Saucy Monky and OlivoiL Records, who put on the show) had good things to say about what the night meant to her. Paraphrasing, it was a night to celebrate the fact that you can focus on one sale at a time, to one person at a time, and eventually end up with a sustainable career. The people there seemed to agree.

(Update: Heh... So, uhhh, it's the first and I'm tired and uhhh... I still agree with what I said.)

So today blogging.la announced its sale to LA.com, and therefore to some conglomeration of Gannett/MediaNews/whatever they are (hereafter BigMediaCo). Sean and co. get an office, paychecks, etc, all in exchange for a few more ads. The announcement comes straight out with plans to expand the concept to other BigMediaCo cities.

I'm not sure I like this.

Looking back, it's not that hard to see the signs leading up to this. Back when the la.com thing all went down, one of the main b.la responses was "hey, we're already doing this."

But I don't think they were.

la.com's "blog" has a paid staff. b.la's write because they can. A month or two ago the sentiment I heard was that if anyone's going to make money off of people's writings, it should be the people themselves. Now b.la's making money, does that mean they're going to start kicking a little of the wealth back to the people that are powering the boat?

Tell me how this whole thing is different than a record label. You can go do your own writing, doing your indie thing off in some corner of the web. That's all good and well. Or you can sign up with the big dogs, putting your work on a site where BigMediaCo is going to pimp it out and use a flashy ad budget to pull in more eyeballs. And if BigMediaCo happens to make a little cash for the stockholders along the way, all the better. Sign your deal and sure, maybe you'll make it big, but what you're really doing is just putting a little more money in a few more pockets that most definitely aren't your own.

I'm not anti-money or anti-corporate, that would be stupid. I'm all for making money doing cool stuff. I just paid my rent today, and I most definitely would prefer to continue to keep doing that. What bothers me is the trend toward finding ways to let other people make money for you. It's like, hey, let's create/buy/put in place this framework and then sit back and watch as these unpaid people create our product for us. I mean, what is b.la? Well, it's a movable type installation. But BigMediaCo isn't buying that. They could get that themselves. Ok, so it's a name, and a URL people already know. Ehhh, sort of. BigMediaCo already bought a name, and their ad budget can get people there. So then really it's the people writing. BigMediaCo comes in and buys "the rights" to the site's writers so that it can make money off their content.

Which is cool, I guess. I don't know that I'd want to keep writing, but seeing as I wasn't one to begin with, that's really neither here nor there and my opinion on the matter doesn't mean much.

I guess the success story for this model would be Slashdot. When Rob and co. sold the farm to OSDN, people made a bit of a stink. But then life went on, the site really didn't change any, and by now people just accept that that's the way that life always was. But will it be the same as the corps assimilate blogs? Gregory Block made this comment on onlineblog:

That hits the nail on the head, pretty much. While we're all happy that blogs are a big success, we've already watched one medium - the WWW - turned on its head by money. Unlike last time around, more people use blogs today than used the web then before it went commercial - so a commercialization of the style and scale that reshaped the WWW from what it was then to what it is today would affect a lot more people than the aforementioned transition.

I don't know how this plays out. The money's coming, but are the right people going to be getting it?

On my server I've been running a SMTP server called qpsmtpd. It's cool because it's written in Perl and supports some good hooks for connecting in plugins. The other day, fed up with the amount of energy the server was putting into accepting and bouncing spam, I decided to see what was out there ease the situation. I ended up installing the denysoft_greylist plugin, which implements the greylisting concept found here. The basic idea is that messages are soft-failed the first time around, so that the sending server has to retry. If the server retries after a set grey period, the message is accepted, and the server is flagged white for the next couple weeks (so that it's imediately accepted). Basically what this does is attempt to prey on the fact that most spam solutions are doing a fire-and-forget, trying the message once without waiting to see what happens or follow appropriate RFC's for how to deliver.

The result? My daily spam has gone from about 450 messages/day to maybe 15, most of which are bounced over by speakeasy's mail server from my account there (and which I really could just filter into a blackhole if I wasn't lazy). I'm happy.