New Home

I just realized that I've left this poor little blog lost and alone for a very long time. I can now be found at kaidenshi.com for anyone interested in my writing. I do enjoy the Blogger interface here, even with the new changes to the backend, but I'm trying to consolidate all my writing onto one site, and at the same time utilize the extra control and usability of Wordpress on a liberal shared hosting platform. So, this will likely be the last post on Blogger unless something catastrophic happens to the main site. See you there!

AdBlock and My Favorite Sites

Ok so I know I haven't posted in a while. Vacation and other aspects of life have made me put aside a few pastimes. But, hopefully I'll get back to more (and more varied) posts now.

So, I haven't thought much about internet advertising, mostly because the first thing I do after I install Firefox is follow up with AdBlock Plus. Therefore, I don't see any ads and I don't give it a second thought. But lately I've been whitelisting some of my most visited sites, and after reading the articles for the day I will click on any ads that I see. It's just my way of saying "thank you" to the guys behind the scenes.

The New Haiku

The new Haiku Alpha has been released, and I've given it a spin in VirtualBox. So far, it seems to be fairly stable for a second Alpha release. I haven't had a chance to do much more than poke around, but I'll update this post with a better review soon.

Video Killed the Internet Star

So it seems the HTML5 video patent issue is worse than I thought. How can it be that nearly every U.S. citizen with internet access is now potentially liable to the MPEG-LA and subject to lawsuits? How did we possibly let it get this bad? Basically, if you've ever watched a Youtube video, you've used the h.264 video codec whether you intended to or not. Under our wonderful patent system, this means you potentially owe the MPEG-LA royalty fees, since virtually all Youtube videos have ads embedded in the stream which makes it a commercial site.

I don't know what to think. Of course, this won't come to a head until after 2015, as that is the last year of the MPEG-LA's period of amnesty, but what then? Is four years and change a long enough period to come up with something both unencumbered by patents, and good enough quality to compete? I hope so...

The Hackintosh Dilemma

So, I have a nifty little triple-boot machine with OS X, Linux Mint and Windows XP. I was lucky enough to receive a Gigabyte motherboard as a gift from a friend, and it happened to be one of the most compatible with OS X available. I've been a big fan of Apple's OS for a while now, so naturally I took the plunge and made it my main OS again.

It works very well, and as good as Linux Mint and Ubuntu 10.04 are I still prefer to work in the Mac OS. However, I've come to realize that not only am I committing myself to a mostly closed, proprietary system from a corporation, I am doing so quasi-legally. As I work in law enforcement, this presents a conundrum for me both from a legal and a moral standpoint. How can I consider myself held to a higher standard -- as all law enforcement employees are, even non-sworn personnel like me -- yet I skirt the law on this issue? Granted, it's far from a decided issue; it is a matter of breaking Apple's user agreement which so far has not been validated in a court of law. The fact remains though, that I am constantly living on the edge of having to switch operating systems at the drop of a hat should either the law change, or Apple releases a patch that renders my installation unable to boot.

With all that in mind, I'm pondering a final move to open source. I'm going to wait and see what Linux Mint has to offer with the new version, as it has finally knocked Slackware off the top of my list of favorite Linux distributions. Sorry Pat, Slackware still has its place just not as my main OS.

So it begins...

Such an ominous title for the first post of a mediocre blogging project. I'm nobody special, by the way; just a tech-oriented guy who has never (gasp!) had a personal blog before. I do maintain a local weather blog in my spare time, Paulding County Weather, but it is only one of many hobbies.

So anyway, I guess this will be a place for me to spew random thoughts and observations, and perhaps someone out there will benefit somehow. Or not.