Search Me.

Hey, take a look at the new badass custom search bar hanging out on the sidebar. That thing is a bloodhound for brilliance cause it only searches Daily Placebo articles. Added bonus: you get to do it all without leaving the safety of the placebo green background. Yeah, I know its awesome.

Store Updates.

Speaking of CafePress, I headed over there today to actually look at the Daily Placebo Store for the first time in... ages?  Its fun to have a chuckle at my oh-so-clever product descriptions, but amongst the classics like "short sleeved weaponized" and "ringer tee" they've thrown a bit of a curve.  There are a bunch of new colors for some designs, so you can get your babydoll in standard pink, or opt for green or yellow if that's the way you swing.  Dammit, anyone wanna buy a slightly used grey Placebo hoodie so I can order one of those shimmering white models?

• DPI: DPS

Dammit Boston.

You remember that "bomb" scare in Boston a while ago? Yeah, stupid.

I was all up ons Aquateens well before they were a guerrilla terrorist movement. Well I just got an email from CafePress about a couple bumper stickers I made like 6 months ago. I never got around to ordering them, but they've gone under the radar all this time. Now everyone is probably trying to make mooninites shirts and crap, so my junx got taken down. And I'll never have that sweet, sweet sticker. You see what you did Boston? Just cause you're paranoid I can't decorate my damn car. You selfish sons-of...

A Whole New Year To Complain About.

Well, my origami calendar ran out. Guess that means its a new year already, and time to pick a new calendar. But it seems like a lot of pressure. I mean, I have to look at this thing for a whole year. Should I go with puppies? Or tropical beaches? Or Windows error messages? I did like the origami concept because you used the pages you tore off every day. Although to be honest, I mostly just made cranes and not the lesson for the day. Which means now I've got a shelf of about 200 brightly colored cranes in my office. So, yeah, I used the pages. But they're just taking up space now. I figure I should decide what to get soon, because the longer I wait, the more wasted pages it will have. I wonder if calendar companies ever thought of prorating partially obsolete calendars...

Anyway, I know you've been saddened by the lack of posts lately. But I've been sick which doesn't really make you want to read about trivial crap all day. Its not an excuse, just a reason. Lets see if I can't find some dumb stuff for you. Oh good I've got like 20 things that seem like old news because they happened last year. Whatever, its new to you.

Sydney (AU, not MO) is going to pull a Mr. Burns this year and pull the plug at the end of march so that its citizens can see what dark is really like. Pretty sweet.

• Hugg / Sydney leading light in hour of no power

The Japanese are using a bustrain that rides on rail and roads. The tireless wheels retract like that truck in Lethal Weapon 4. Or maybe in Die Hard 3, I can't remember.

• Japanese train company to debut dual-use bus and rail vehicle - Engadget

This small town is tired of being out in the dark. Especially so in the winter when they get less sunlight than your unmentionables. So they've built a big-ass mirror to reflect the sun over the mountain to get a bit more daylight.

• Whole Town Solar Lighting (TreeHugger)

Back to Japan where the University of Tokyo has made a conductive plastic sheet. Sounds boring? Think outlet wallpaper. No more pluggin stuff in, just hang that tv on the wall and its good to go. The noteworthy part is that this material only routes power to the place where an object is demanding it, not the entire sheet.

• University of Tokyo develops expansive plastic power sheet - Engadget

Sneaky solar roofing. No longer do you have to ruin the aesthetics of your home to harness the sun with a big black box. Its kinda like using solar tiles in addition to the normal tiles.

• Old Country Roofing: The Mainstreaming Of Roof-Top Solar Power (TreeHugger)

Pro baseball players start professional video gamer league. Ummm... what? You're good at baseball, and its boring enough just watching you do that. You really think I'm gonna hang around watching you suck it up at Gran Tourismo?

• Techdirt: Professional Baseball Players Form Professional Video Gamers League

I've said it before: Solar tech is only getting better. 16% more energy with 50% of the area. (wait isn' t that just 32% more energy with the same area?)

• Hugg / SV solar inc. presents solar concentrating technology: 16 % more energy with 50% of solar cell area

Guy gets caught cheating at chess via blue-tooth headset in India. It took 18 months, but they finally caught on that his huge hat covered his ears was more than a lucky charm.

• Techdirt: Indian Chess Player Plays With Deep Blue...Tooth

California is looking to take the title of largest wind producer away from Texas. They have plans for a new 1500 Megawatt facility that'll get the job done.

• Maria Energia: Biggest U.S. wind power purchase made

The Bush admin has instructed Grand Canyon personal not to tell visitors how old the landmark is because that would eliminate the possibility that it was created by Noah's Flood. Seriously? We're not allowed to tell people about the factual evidence because it might upset them? Maybe this is why the majority of our country doesn't believe in evolution and fantasizes about their sisters at night. No child left behind means every child is the stupidest child in America. I bet GeeDub was a stupid child.

• Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: News Releases

Tag.

You ever played a game of tag and intentionally got 'it', just so you could walk away with 'it' refusing to tag anyone and the game would stop? I have, but maybe I'm just mean. Well I kinda wish I could do that here.

I was reading the old ZNF and ran across something called blog-tag. Now you know I hate the 'b' word as much as anyone who actually maintains a blog, but this concept may be even more irritating.

Some one gets "tagged" and they're sposed to name five things that not too many people know and then name five people to go next.

Odd. But ok. I guess that's a 'fun' way for all these annoying little bloggers to get to know one another- wait a minute. Its not just the "this is how I feel today" or "my hampster is the best" blogs. Well known blogs; blogs I use for news are falling prey to this noise.

Lookit, I may appreciate reading some things you write, or I may value you as a reliable source of information. But I don't need tidbits of you as a person filtering through my RSS stream. I've already evaluated your credentials, that's how you made the list in the first place. I don't care about you as a person, and I 'm a man so I use the Internet for information, not relationships. My only feed that this may be acceptable in is Steve's The Sneeze. And that whole site is just about Steve's life and amusing anecdotes, not news or technology.

In the course of my investigation I came across Mark Cuban's response to the phenomenon. Now this is one insightful motherfucker. He thinks its stupid and a waste of peoples' time. If its good enough for Mark Cuban to hate, don't you spose its good enough for you too?

It has the same intellectual resonance as doing The Wave at an event. You are embarrased if you do it sober, beligerant to non wavers if you do it drunk.

You know that? I already hate this. So before you accuse me of just being bitter about not getting invited to the party, think about this. This is the same as those emails that your friends fill out about what colors they like and what movies they've seen and if you don't send it back to them you aren't really friends. If you're my friend and actually expect me to fire that back at you, you're insane.

Also, this looks to expand geometrically like a pyramid scheme. 1...5...25...125...625 But its a pyramid scheme of idiocy, increasingly blocking the flow of valuable information until the Internet pipes are choked with with favorite burrito toppings and water parks and turn-ons and car colors and sneaker sizes and mustache lengths and abnormal toe numbers and cornbread recipes.

Whatever you say. Its not a big deal. I should calm down. Doesn't mean I'm not right.

Proper Representation.

Someday the world will tremble beneath the might of the DPI logo. Lifehacker has a link to an interesting article about designing logos incorporating letters. Its a pdf link but not a problem with your foxit pdf reader, right? Anyway I wish I was good at logo design so I liked reading it and appreciate the various tips it gave. I think mostly the best designs just come through messing around with what you've got. And refining and messing. Oh, and having some artistic talent may help too, I'm not sure. I sure wish I could make a smooth curve, as is evident in this little mock up of what I'm working on for a Daily Placebo Industries logo. (go get that Dauphin font so you know what d, p and i look like). I can't wait till its polished enough to be emblazoned on my private jets, satellites and volcano strongholds. Oh and maybe on a blazer with fine hand ticking.

• How to design a logo of letters - Lifehacker

P.S. Anyone know how I can make a bad-ass torch effect to dot the "i" with?

Beta Is Better?

Well I've made the switch to Blogger Beta. I'm not exactly sure why, except that they wanted me to. Sure there are a bunch of new features like WYSIWYG template editors and labels. But apparently you have to choose a Beta template to take advantage of any of that. So now I have to reimplement all my customizations in the new system to get anything out of it. Also some of the formatting is a little screwed up through the transition. There's a white space just south of the banner that shouldn't be. Oh and the blogger nav bar doesn't hide any more, so I need to move my logo. I thought that was a nice compromise, hiding the bar. But apparently I've got some work ahead of me to get back to normalcy.

Update
Maybe I can do labels without switching templates...

Update Too
Oh wow, no more publishing. If you've never bloggered, you don't care. But for the rest of you there's no 45 second - 5 minute loading screen after you write a post. They're stored in a database and the pages are rendered on the fly as readers request them, not pre-published when the changes are made. Now there's the kind of bad-ass improvement I'd expect when Google takes over.

Happy Freaking World AIDS Day.

Will they hurry up and cure this junx already? They've been soaking up my limelight for 19 years now and I'm getting tired of it. I mean, the world news outlets should be leading their headlines with "Anonymous American Blogger Celebrates Birthday" But noooo... someone had the bright idea to choose today as a worldwide remembrance of the worst infectious disease we have. I did pick up a neat tidbit today though; this is the 25th year since the first case of AIDS was diagnosed. Nifty! And on the downside I just realized I've never lived in a world without AIDS. Great. Way to ruin my day guys.

• World AIDS Day: The Fight Turns 25, HIV Has Killed 25M, Infected 40M, Since First Case Was Identified - CBS News

I Take One Freakin Day Off...

Yeah, blogger is double posting stuff from earlier in the week. I'm deleting them as fast as I can, just hold off with the pitch fork and torch mob till I figure out how to stop it.

If You Can't Trust Bloggers...

I remember back in the day when people used to write for the fun of it, before all this payola crap tainted opinion pieces from the common man. Now people have to wonder if you're being paid to say nice things about a company or product. PayPerPost is the end of trustworthy anonymous sources of advice and opinion on the Internet. I'm a big fan of transparency so the policy of optional disclosure, or the dilution of disclosure pisses me off a bit.

The policy on PayPerPost is that bloggers need not disclose that they are being paid to express a specific opinion about a product. Also, in an astroturf-like move, PayPerPost has launched DisclosurePolicy.org which helps people develop disclosures for their sites (and pays them to display it). The trouble is that they want people who have nothing to disclose to also display one.

This blog does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions. We write for our own purposes. However, we may be influenced by our background, occupation, religion, political affiliation or experience.

I'm not going to say that, because I'm writing my opinion, and of course my opinion is going to be influenced by who I am, that's why its mine. They're trying to desensitize readers to advisories like this, conveying that everyone has an agenda, and it shouldn't matter what motivates them. So as soon as the kickbacks start rolling in, I'm going to have a disclosure posted on every article.

But rest assured, I'm not going to stoop to this. Granted there's no reason to believe me; but if I recommend a product, its because I really like and endorse it. Not because I'm being paid to suck up. Unless you see me on a Subway commercial talking about how I lost 400 pounds eating chicken subs, then it will be for the money.

• Techcrunch » Blog Archive » PayPerPost Is Now Officially Absurd

The Treadmill To The Future.

Oh Internet, what will you do next? You have to admit that there's a change happening in websites these days, whether you believe in web 2.0 or not. And meanwhile I have to admit I'm warming a bit to the term itself. But there's quite a debate in trying to describe what it is (if anything). I'd like to venture a supposition that it depends on who you are and what you expect, which dictates what qualifies or doesn't. Since I have no interest in developing or capitalizing from this 'revolution' my concepts may be very different from an investor looking for the next money train. So here's a hybrid summary of 10 common attempts to constrain this ethereal (pun alert) concept.

• 10 definitions of Web 2.0 and their shortcomings at twopointouch: web 2.0, blogs and social media

I'm a hearty subscriber to the "marketing buzzword" camp. But there must be something else to it since its so easy to feel the presence (truthiness?) of web 2.0. Its like pron in that sense, "I know it when I see it." But there must be a way to say it. I think of it as new and exciting, but also a certain look and feel that couples with functionality. I also like to think that there won't necessarily be a web 3.0.

I you've ever worked with Artificial Intelligence, you know that the definition of what qualifies as AI is continually changing. A computer that will beat a chess master is no longer an acceptable test case. So maybe its like AI in that the definition changes as time and technology progress. Something that was 2.0 four months ago, is not now because there are a new set of exciting sites and services that are. We could just mean the slick bleeding edge of the web. So rather than a Road Ahead, its more like a treadmill and staying where you are is moving forward. Alright... that joke was ridiculous.

There is definitely something to the concept that there isn't a strict dividing line between 1.0 and 2.0, but a spectrum as to the "oh-ness" of a site. Daily Placebo, for instance, is currently at about a web 1.6 level. What with our swanky new banner, CSS, collapsing comments, DPmail, blogsearch, wiki, and shameless self promotion. Granted there's not very much user content control, but I'm pretty sure you guys are illiterate anyway.