The highlight of my last day as a teenager was definitely winning a Schwinn Sting-Ray scooter at Super Bingo tonight. It’s been a while since I won anything, and it was a good night for us; four of us sitting in line on the Stillwater Canal Co. bar won a total of six things. It was a really good night overall.
Does this mean I should start buying lottery tickets again? Last I checked I’d netted out on them.
I’ve been looking through sites like the Live Music Archive lately. That site in particular uses the noncommercial performances of a band to distribute music for free, and the best part is that they make sure it’s OK with the artist first. I started downloading some SHNs of the no-longer-existant Rustic Overtones (whom I first found on eMusic). In fact, one of their offspring bands, Paranoid Social Club, will be at Bumstock this year (even though they can’t spell “Maine” right on their site). My friends all know how anti-piracy I am, so I think this is an excellent alternative. I love that there can be free distribution of information and content on the Web.
Another good site: Legal MP3 Downloads, done by the people at David Lawrence’s Online Tonight radio show. Free and cheap downloads of well-known people. Can’t get any better than that… or maybe you can: there’s an RSS feed there.
Wouldn’t it be great if the new model of music distribution would be the same as the Overtones’? Their response to the LMA when contacted was
as long as no one it turning a profit on it, I have no problem with trading shows … Thanks for asking, good luck with all.
What is it about late March? I’ve been to a bunch of birthday parties in the last couple of weeks. Happy birthday, Chad, Laura, and Matt… I’m almost birthdayed out. Not quite, though.
I made a new skin today; it’s supposed to simulate a sunrise over water. I’ve got a couple others I might do soon, too. It’ll be listed in the skins page soon.
I’m also working on a printable format for pages. Coming soon.
Ben & Mena, as you may have seen in my iTunes module, is my new favorite song. Sorry, Linkin Park. It’s catchy and it’s about blogging… if you don’t get what it’s all “about”, listen to the song.
found via Chris – my sheep link of the week, but it needed to be mentioned
My favorite song on Meteora (other than ‘Somewhere I Belong’) is ‘Faint’.
The whole album’s great. It was actually the first album I’ve ever purchased on the release date. I actually really like starting classes at 11:00; I made an entire trip to Bangor to buy Meteora at Bull Moose. I also got some OJ and water. On top of that, I borrowed Matilda (after I saw the movie; I’ve also always wanted to read the book) and Cryptonomicon. I’ll be reading for a while.
I’ve decided that I’m going to use NetNewsWire to keep up on my news instead of visiting sites from now on. Sure, I’ll still drop by from time to time, but for the most part it’ll all be through NetNewsWire.
Here’s what I have listed in my subscriptions:
Personal Blogs
Chris
Leo
justinrussell.com
Headline Aggregators
Boing Boing
CNET News.Com
Scripting News
Slashdot
thisjustup.com/techtv
thisjustup.com/umaine
Other
MoreStuff4Less
Any I’m missing? I’ve suddenly had the urge to start reading stuff again. I checked out a couple of books from the Fogler Library today, and I’m headed down to the BPL tomorrow to get a couple more. I also have to read Cory’s book. Sometime.
This post brought to you by the new-and-improved RSS feed, now with HTML goodness.
My faith in Bangor area restaurants has been restored.
I’m still not hungry after the fish ‘n chips / brownie wonder combo I had yesterday at Dysart’s. Not only were the shake, coleslaw, and rolls delish, but so was everything else. You just can’t beat Dysart’s around here. Stop by sometime when you’re in the Bangor area. Turn left on exit 44 if you’re coming from the south.
Remember CueCat, that strange thing that came along at Radio Shack a few years back? It read barcodes with a little scanner than sat beside your mouse (get it, cat, mouse, haha!). Other than the obvious spyware issue that you know had to happen with something like that, I thought it was a really good idea. I got one when they first came out and used it a few times. What was the problem with the doomed CueCat?
I think there were two problems, actually: you had to get the scanner and you had to have special CueCat barcodes to read. If I recall correctly, you could scan standard barcodes, but the CC’s codes would go directly to special offers and more.
So think of this: a webcam barcode reader. You hold a barcode in front of your webcam, it recognizes it (which wouldn’t be terribly hard to program), looks it up in a database, and whisks you off to a site. Companies could even hook their database entries to special offer for a fee (read: profitability) and have customers go directly to a special offer or something. And if it’s done right, you could just send the code into the database and not any personal or serial information. It’d be nice to have open-source freeware for it, too, but I might just be dreaming.
As is standard on the Internet, someone’s thought of this before. The CamKat software doesn’t seem to be available in many places now (I found a link to it here). I think it could really work if done correctly. Lots of people already have webcams, and it wouldn’t be that hard to use. But could advertising work if it wasn’t annoying? Hmm.
Take your pick:
1) I’m very determined and creative
2) I’m crazy
That basically means I made another site. This one’s called blogRATE. Features: rating blog posts, displays for an individual blog or the top rated posts on all blogs, random rating. It’s a lot like RateMyPage, which I have to update sometime. Anyway, this one wasn’t too hard to code and it should be good from here on in.
Go on over and add your blog. It’s free and stuff. I think it could really be a good way to quickly see the best posts that have happened on a blog. Oh, and by the way, newer posts are favored; the ratings drop over time as entries age. Rate my posts by clicking on the blogRATE link of a post from the front page, and give me feedback if you have any ideas about what could happen with the site.
That’s it. I think I’m gonna take a break from web design for a while. Maybe for a couple of hours, at least (so many ideas…).
2010, Justin Russell. All content (unless otherwise specified) licensed under CC BY-NC.