Perhaps I should point out that I get a lot of pleasure from playing with new digital technologies, and how kickass cool the whole lot generally is. Today I was going through a old backup CD, looking at old photos and catching a little nostaligia, I came across some .wma's of a friend's band I'd copied some CDs for back in South Africa. They only made a few tracks before the band broke up, I thought they were good.

Now normally I know better than to make .wmas (windows media audio files) but for reasons pressing at the time I'd had to use a crappy beta of WMP9 that had compulsory DRM in it. I still have my copy of their CD somewhere, but rather than dig it out I thought I'd queue up the sound files.

No dice. Files wouldn't play in Winamp or w32-mplayer, which Microsoft graciou$ly allows to play .wma files. So I grudgingly load up WMP to see if that can play the things. WMP tells me I need a liscence (from microsoft) to play these files. Now I'm quite sure the band never gave microsoft or anyone else the right to issue liscences for their stuff. But I go to the MS liscencing site and get a liscence for each of the 3 tracks, which are issued with a smug message about how great DRM is and the veiled threat that it might not be free next time.

And I had to use microsoft software to get this liscence. And somehow this software is paid for, and the liscencing servers are supported, and the bandwidth is paid for. And the lawyers fees are met. And lots and lots of expensive ads come out for this liscencing stuff. Wonder who pays for all this stuff? Guess.

Maybe I shouldn't take it personally when big corporations try to extort money from me. And maybe I shouldn't hate the RIAA for doing what they do. They naturally assume I owe them money because I enjoy music, like that Osama Bin Ladin fellow probably wants me dead as an infidel. It's just the way things are. Heck, if I was more enthusiastic about trying to extort money from people I might have a lot more of it, but I've turned out a lot less mercenary than I thought I was. Paint a red star on me and hang me as a communist.

Usually the news sources I rely on are The Telegraph, CNN and [[A::http://neworder.box.sk::New Order]]. But today I was reading The Times, apparently European nightingales are suffering from noise pollution, in that they have to sing over the ambient noise of traffic and cities in order to get noticed by other nightingales. As a result these little fluffies can get really quite loud, 93 decibels loud in some places. Under the law this techically makes them a noise hazard that requires protective clothing, so a nightingale at full bast can be illegal. How cool is that :-)

Continuing of random things in the news, check out this study on [[A::http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0383/cDc-0383.html::chop stick wrappers]] on Cult of the Dead Cow.

Here is something I do not understand: why do people 'hide' strong words behind punctuation in print, f**k, sh!t, c--- and the like? The standard answer seems to be 'so that everyone knows what word you want to use without you having to use it'. Even if that made sense (think hard) I can't see any good in doing so.

If you dont have the conviction to use or quote a strong word [like vagina :-) ] then why prove as much? I think this mostly done to 'tone down' a quotation and make it 'fit to print'. But... to use a quote without the full color and implication of what was said can only be misleading.

Or, if a writer is 'above' using a perfectly good curse word in front of readers then that's just priggishness. And priggish is a very special kind of stupid. If this is self censorship for the sake of the readers then that implies they are the prigs, which is insulting.

Perhaps I should be $%^&ing the things I write? Does anyone actually think it's more polite?

Someone please email me and put me out of my confusion. It'll help make the universe make sense.

F--- it.

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Gratitous mixing of metaphors:
Is meaning better softened or sharp?
Do we make something bland in good taste?
If we tone down something colorful, are we aiming at grey?

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Another afterthought, there are several good reasons to dress words up for publication on the internet. Such as to circumvent censorship by chat-mod bots, family (ie, Christian) search engines and net nanny software. But these days most bots and even some morons know what you mean by 'pr0n' and (_o_). And I am convinced big brother has the best bots of all. Spiders that watch for talk of terror1sts b0mbing aerlyners, so you won't keep big secrets that way.

This reminds me, I must go flood a chat room I got kicked from by its bot once for swearing. It was a quiet night just like this about two years ago and I didnt know too much about IRC back then. How sweet is revenge :-) ...ciao

How do you design a blog anyway? They can get tedious and involved. I think I need something to put at the bottom right of pages, my logo in the top left is loud and that makes the bottom right empty. A signature would work, but thats an egomaniac thing to do. A red wine stain, like from the bottom of a glass could also look good, but I dont drink. A scribbled peace sign or a server logo would be too kitch. And... First good suggestion wins.

So... there I was. Watching an ancient Ace of Base music video over and over again. And I thought to myself 'Linn Berggren looks a little like Lisa Kudrow.' And then I thought to myself 'This is going to drive me stupid. Maybe I should start a blog or something'.

So here we are. I will write about whatever I am thinking about. And change my mind. And tack on bells and whistles. For this is how I design websites. Enjoy :-)

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I saw the sign - And it opened up my eyes - I saw the sign.

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