My complete and daily online activity for you to go all voyeuristic on.

	8:00am	Creeva shared a link on Google Reader. Enjoy the Sounds of Classic Arcade Videogames
	8:00am	Creeva scrobbled 2 songs on Last.fm. (Hide Details) leolaporte – TWiT 180: How Is Babby Formed leolaporte – TWiT 181: I Am Not Spock
	8:22am	Creeva posted 8 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar [none] [none] [none] We Are Having A Baby [none] [none] [none]
	9:30am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent tired and cranky.
	10:59am	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x.
	11:00am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x
	11:02am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	11:27am	Creeva posted 14 photos on Flickr. (Hide Details)
	11:27am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1122
	11:38am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. 02-26-09_1128
	11:54am	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	12:36pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent so much to do, so little time.
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 12 links on Digg. (Hide Details)
	1:24pm	Creeva dugg 2 links on Digg. (Hide Details) Riding the Rails? Know Your Hobo Signs (PIC) Will Ferrell & Mark Wahlberg Team Up For A-Team Spoof
	2:34pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent water – it does a body good.
	2:48pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi.
	4:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:55pm	Creeva published 4 blog posts. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby We Are Having A Baby LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar
	5:55pm	Creeva updated their status on Facebook. Brent We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme.
	5:56pm	Creeva bookmarked 14 links on Delicious. (Hide Details) No description available. LeVar Burton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia No description available. No description available. Burton’s Star on Flickr – Photo Sharing! LeVar Burton — Because 140 characters isn’t always enough Diggnation — Revision3 The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte Twitter / BrentSpiner Twitter / creeva Twitter / levarburton LeVar Burton Adobe – Adobe Flash Player
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 tweets on Twitter. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 6 Jaikus on Jaiku. (Hide Details) tired and cranky LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar – http://s3nt.com/da0x so much to do, so little time water – it does a body good This weeks chain mail of the week is about a drug recall from 2000 – not even worth blogging about, so just sending out an fyi We Are Having A Baby – http://s3nt.com/dbme
	5:56pm	Creeva posted 2 items. (Hide Details) LeVar Burton, The Internet’s Latest Superstar We Are Having A Baby
	5:57pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby
	6:54pm	Creeva posted a note on Tumblr. We Are Having A Baby

Image from here

Google reader, I love you – I also hate you.    You are like a bad relationship that I can’t break.   You save me so much time on the web since I no longer have to jump from site to site.   You however do not give me any good reason to use you and save items.    You are a cruel mistress who mistreats me and wastes my time.   Here are things you need to work on.

The first and only thing you need to work is how saved “starred” items work within your interface.     I have been trying to clear out “starred” items since the list was getting unwieldy for me.  Let’s start off by how I use starred items.   I use it to save personally interesting stories that are not relevant enough for me to share the story.   They are also too mundane in most occasions to e-mail to myself.    Yes I know this is in essence using you as a bookmarking service – a service mind you that Google has not officially ventured into.  You are designed to display information rapidly from multiple sources and your saved items is really an after thought.    Or it it?

You attempted to rectify some of this with tagging, the first problem I have with tagging – is other then by using search I can not find a way to find the “folders” made by creating a tag.   It’s all fine and great that we can create tags, but if you can not quickly get to them, what is the point other then to give me hope.   Maybe I’m just retarded when it comes to tags, but tags do not answer the second problem I have, only the bookmarking aspect (and answers it extremely poorly).

The second thing I use you for is saving stories that I can come back and read later.   I get in on Monday morning and I have 367 unread items that have shown up since Sunday when I cleared them out.   I don’t have time to leisurely read the stories, instead I go through and star the ones I want to come back and read later.   By Friday I have over one thousand story I want to come back and read, but who has the time or effort.  The other day to get back to my oldest starred items it took me over 5 minutes of scrolling all the way down and waiting for you to load.   There has to be another way.

A few methods I came up to help the starred overload issue:

Saved feed items by date – if you could categorize items in folder by month/week/or even day that you starred them that would be fantastic and save on a hell of a lot of scrolling.

Starred item by feed it came from – by being able to filter our starred items by source feed would also be awesome.   This would allow me to quickly dig into the stories I want to read when I sit down.   Sometimes I don’t feel like going back to starred items from feeds 6, 5, 89, 90, etc. – when all I want to do is read stories from feed78.     There should be a simpler way to do this then forcing me to tag or search.  I can set up labels and see them on the left in Gmail, why is the reader data so different?

Well next week I plan to publish articles of some of the saved links I have saved by subject.   I’ve been working hard, but like they say you go two steps forward and you end three steps back.     We’ll see how it goes.

Love,

Creeva

Image from here

I know I just gave a post on using creative commons based works, and about the problems of dealing with international public domain laws, but Youtube has cracked down on me.   Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting e-mails from youtube that say the following:

Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video [redacted]. The audio content identified in your video is [redacted]. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

Now in theory I could fight this, but I know I am in the wrong.  I had videos on my profile that did include copyrighted music.   For the most part they are not videos that I created, I was merely archiving them in a central location so people could find them.   All the videos that have been taken down are Machinima videos that were “filmed” in Star Wars Galaxies.  I can’t really take them up on the music swap suggestion, since the person that originally made the videos had a specific intent that went along with the chosen music.

This all goes into the idea of fair use and when is it ok to use something to create something else.   This argument is a bit out of scope for this post.   What I can say is all of these videos still exist online, archived in far off pages.   It is sad that they can’t be displayed to wider audiences since most of them do have true genius in their design.

I thought this apt to add before anyone thought I had a holier then thou attitude in anyway because of my recent conversations.   I knew the risks and issues involved with posting these pieces.   I never claimed any part of the work was mine, and the most important thing is – I knew where it stood in the grand scheme of things before I did it.   I’m not saying you will never run into a spot where you won’t ever use copyright material.   Just be aware of what you are doing if you do.

On Friday Google rolled out a new favicon to the world. This news seems to be so powerful that it inspired a Slashdot thread with 183 comments and a story about this received 1451 Diggs at last count.  I however think just smacks of slow news day syndrome, but what can I say – I’m writing a useless story about how other people found a useless story interesting.   Maybe this will be the post that makes it to the front page of Digg.

BTW:

Google’s new favicon

That’s for those that have not gone to Google.com and seen the new favicon in the address bar.

The above picture has nothing to do with this article.

A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with one of my family members about web site design and blogging.   He stated that he was going to be starting some sort of manga/anime fan site based on a certain character.  I stated that he should be a bit wary about the images he used that he may have to worry about copyright issues since the images were trademarked and copyrighted.   Keep in mind this was the same brother that wanted to setup a website for a girl so you couldn’t download the images (and I called him out on the futile nature of that).    Kind of ironic when he wants to control it, he thinks one way – but when he wants to use it he thinks another.

Another family member piped in that they thought if it was online it was public domain and free to use.   Now I corrected them, but so everyone else knows – just because something is published online doesn’t mean it’s free to use.   When I don’t use my own pictures I always use creative common licensed images and put an attribution link beneath the image (sometimes I do use public domain images and don’t attribute).   I even had an online scuffle with someone who licensed her work via creative commons and didn’t know what it meant.

I gave my family the two minute off the top of the head review of current copyright law and how creator’s rights worked under our borked legal system.   Essentially if you are in the US anything made 1923 or earlier is free game – anything after that is the life of the creator plus seventy years.   Unless the page it’s on states otherwise you have to assume the work is copywritten.   Then we get into fair use, which is a whole other ball of wax entirely that I’m not going to touch right now.

Image from here

I’m the crossposting whore – I write once and I have everything designed to publish everywhere (well at least when things aren’t broken like Ping.fm to Myspace blogs).   This however is not syncing, it’s distribution and publishing.     A true sync across all platforms would be amazing.

The example I would love is I make an edit to a blog post, then every place and profile that I’ve published that post on would update with no manual intervention.   Since I can’t do that, Creeva.com is considered my authorative location for all blog posts.  If I wanted to edit those other sites I would have to do each one manually.  Granted I’m sure without using syncing it saves on bandwidth.

Things that I can sync?   Well my contacts and calendars with Plaxo, but that kind of is just the tip of the iceberg.   My biggest issue write now is syncing Flickr photos to Facebook.  I am aware of Flickurbook, but this still uses your local machine – there is no reason this can’t be done “in the cloud”.    It’s all soooo sloooooow.   Seriously at the speed it moves I could just reupload all the pictures to Facebook faster then this thing goes.  It’s free, it’s the developers fault, it’s great what he did; but it’s not the solution I’m looking for.

Finally using my distribution chain I chase all over the web to answer comments.  I don’t mind doing that.   However, wouldn’t it be better if across all platforms and services these comments were kept in sync?   Then I could use the spam filters I wanted to from a central location.  I could reply to comments from a central location.

I’m just pipedreaming again…..

Stargate Atlantis Season 3- more Stargate goodness.

Amazon Synopsis:

With Stargate SG-1 now permanently off the data screen (except for a TV movie or two) after ten productive seasons, it appears that the fate of the universe is now the responsibility of the Stargate Atlantis crew. Based on the latter’s third season, whose 20 episodes (plus a wealth of bonus features) are made available here on five discs, we’re in good hands.
Three years into it, Atlantis has retained numerous familiar elements while continuing to evolve steadily. The core cast is intact, with the cocky wiseacre-hero Lt. Col. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and the egotistical, neurotic genius Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) still the most entertaining of the bunch; as the series explores the characters’ personal lives and backstories, we even meet (in “McKay and Mrs. Miller”) the latter’s sister, who’s every bit the wiz that he is. On the other hand, the roles of team leader Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) and members Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) and Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa) are neither especially well-written nor well-played. The return of Richard Dean Anderson (and his sense of humor) as General Jack O’Neill, the SG-1 mainstay during most of its run, for a few cameos is most welcome, as is the presence of the Wraith, the series’ principal villains (SG-1 fans will also recognize the “sentient machines” known as the Replicators from that series). With their flowing white locks, cat-like eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, ultra-fine black leather dusters, and, in one case, shades that would make a Hollywood hipster envious, the Wraith remain the coolest bad guys on the sci-fi scene. We already knew that they feed on humans, but this season brings some startling new revelations, particularly in “Common Ground,” an excellent episode that finds Sheppard and a Wraith (Christopher Heyerdahl) forming an unlikely alliance against a mutual enemy; we also witness the return of the Wraith known as Michael (Connor Trinneer), who was the subject of the Atlantis team’s ongoing “retro-virus” experiment (designed to make Wraiths human) in Season Two and plays a significant recurring role in Season Three. Other developments are apparent as well, but most dramatic of all is the death of one of the team’s key members.
Stargate Atlantis isn’t the most original TV show ever created; in fact, elements of The Running Man, Alien, The Abyss, Enemy Mine, and other sci-fi works are sometimes so obvious that the characters themselves mention them in dialogue. But as always, the action sequences, special effects, models, and other technical elements are first-rate, as are the bonus features, which include episode commentaries, featurettes, and photo galleries.

Stargate Atlantis Season 2 – more Stargate goodness.

Amazon Synopsis:

If Stargate Atlantis isn’t the coolest sci-fi series on television, this five-disc, 20-episode box set from the second season (2005-06) offers ample evidence that it’s right up there. The writing is good; the stories are intriguing, and the science part of the equation is credible enough to justify our suspension of disbelief. The characters are for the most part well-defined, and the acting, while perhaps not Emmy-caliber, is just fine. The action is exciting, the effects work impressive, the costumes and sets first-rate. But what Atlantis really has going for it is the presence of some of the baddest bad guys in the cosmos: the Wraith.

With their flowing white locks, cat-like eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, and teeth so bad they’d make the British blush, the Wraith rock. They also have a constant need to feed–on humans, of course–and are a serious threat not only to Atlantis but to the entire known universe, including good ol’ Earth. And although there are occasional diversions, the producers and writers have wisely kept the focus on these implacable antagonists; in fact, the newest member of the team, one Ronon Dex (played by the dreadlocked and hunky Jason Momoa), is a “runner” who escaped the Wraith’s clutches, was a fugitive for years before being found by our heroes, and specializes in dispatching the villains with cold precision. In the course of the season, via single episodes and several multi-parters, the Stargate team, commanded by Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson in the show’s least interesting role) and led by insouciant Major John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan), with genius-neurotic Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) handling the scientific intricacies and yet another doc, Carson Beckett (Paul McGillion, affecting a Scottish brogue), overseeing medical matters, deals with the enemy on many fronts. Lt. Ford (Rainbow Sun Francks) defects after assuming Wraith-like characteristics. The team experiments with a “retrovirus” designed to turn Wraiths into humans (the results are decidedly mixed). They encounter a human who raised a Wraith female from childhood and insists she’s just like us (she’s not). They’re captured and imprisoned on a Wraith “hive” ship. And in the final episode, the humans and the Wraiths even form an alliance of supposedly mutual convenience (the episode is a cliffhanger that awaits resolution until Season Three, but anyone who thought this “partnership” was a good idea for our side clearly hasn’t been paying attention). As was the case with the Season One set, bonus materials are generous, including audio commentary (by actors, directors, and others) on every episode, various featurettes, photos, and more. Now if only there were a few Wraith interviews…

As far back as I remember when I went to someone’s house the first question my mother asked me when I got home was never “Did you have fun?” Maybe that was too plebeian for her and her non-bourgeois ways. She didn’t want to be like every other mother on the planet and ask the obvious question. The question she did ask? Well that was “What did their house look like?” My mother was obsessed with other people’s housing decorations and using her eight year old son to do her scouting for her. I was a bad a scout thought, my answer until I was eighteen and moved out was almost always “It’s a house, with stuff in it”. She tried to grill me further and if she was lucky she sometimes got to pluck out some of the details she wanted.

Whenever my mother went to a house she seemed to case the joint like a burglar. What she wanted to steal though was not anything tangible they owned. What she wanted to do was find something that either she could use in her own decor, or talk about with her friends about how much she disliked it. If you didn’t fit in one side of the spectrum you immediately fit into the other side.

If something was featured on Oprah as must have, my mom would scheme to buy it. I can only assume she owns both a Wii and Kindle. I don’t know why she would buy a kindle though, she doesn’t read. I’m not saying she is incapable of reading, only that she prefers every bit of information spoon fed to her through network television compared to any other avenue. I swear my mother thinks the purpose of the newspaper is to hold her shopping advertisements.

She attempted to justify her moronic decision to make the first room you enter in the house being the dining room because one of her friends did it. This was one of those moments where you say, if all your friends are jumping off a bridge would you do it? (My answer to that question has always been “How high is the bridge? Is there water underneath it?” How many friends are we talking about and have they all survived?”) Either way a stupid design choice is a stupid design choice, copying it just makes you dumber.

The correct answer to why you do such a thing? Well I could say it fits until our routine better, it makes the house more functional, who cares about the norm or aesthetics, or it’s my house and I like it. However hiding behind that your friend does it so you decided to do it? That shows you have no thought in the problem other then some selfish little need of instant gratification that you are trying to get fulfilled.

I understand why my mom wants to decorate or own things that other people do. It’s called a psychological term called mirroring. If someone mimics your body movements your mirroring them. It allows for a repertoire to form, a link if you will. People like people that are like them. In some mis-guided learning my mother thinks she needs to dress, talk, and live like everyone else – otherwise she is non-existent. If she isn’t acknowledged because she isn’t like everyone else she get depressed. The whole problem is when you live your life by mirroring all those around you all the time, you are no longer an individual. You are a member of society, but your not going to help further it or challenge new and original thought.

Every single idea my mother has had for house design or money making has been because someone else has done it first and she thinks she can do it also. Mind you she doesn’t think she can do it better, she thinks she can do it just as well and get the same compliments for it. Because of this my mother doesn’t do anything well beyond “keeping up with the Jones’”.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

My mother is obsessed with her house.   She thinks it is the most important thing in the world.  Above keeping adequate food in the house even.   If she needs something she’ll beg, plead, and cry until she gets her way.   She is as spoiled as she has made any of her children.

Her rational seems to be that people will look at her as a better person if she has a nicer house and furniture (a screwed assessment in my belief). Not only will they look at her as a better person, I honestly believe that she thinks it does make it her a better person. Should could have been Mother Theresa and feeding starving children on the streets of Calcutta and she would still be a terrible person in her mind if she didn’t have the greatest modern style in her house.

My father did amazing work remodeling the house of my parents originally bought it. In the end it was a useful, functional, and livable house. My step-father isn’t too shabby at work also, yet his designs are not as well thought out. He (with I’m sure my mothers chiding) turned half the garage into a ten foot by ten foot dining room. It was cramped and never felt right. It also negated half the garage and made it so you couldn’t pull a car in any longer. To make matters worse he had to put one to two wall jacks for various services into each wall in the room. Idiotic for a dining room. If you need that kind of outlet space get a surge protector, because I know her didn’t put a better breaker in the house.

My mother must have reached the realization at one point that this was a bad spot for a dining room. So she turned the front living room into a dining room. At first line this doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize there is no atrium or anything, so the dining room is the first room you enter when you walk into the house.

The last time I was there the house was so transformed you could hardly recognize it anymore. What used to be a livable space that felt like a lived home is slowly being transformed into a model home that just has residents. It is not a place you would ever feel comfortable in. While it doesn’t look bad, it looks like no one lives there except for the mess, maybe weekend renters that haven’t cleaned up yet. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here