It took me the better part of about 2 hours to figure out how to get everything to work correctly, but I am finally done with my program, GNaughtyNice. It figures out how naughty or nice a word is by using the Google search API and searching once with the porn filter on and once with it off. You can access this great feat of programming at http://server.ericsbinaryworld.com/GNaughtyNice.html

I think it’ll probably make a pretty god party game. You also need a Google search API key because I only get 1000 searches which could get used up quite quickly if this were to become popular enough.

last.fm has had a facelift! It looks quite a bit more sleek! The biggest change seems to be adding artist and album pictures near all of the stats. Check out my last.fm page.

To any French readers I may have out there, Happy Bastille Day!

To see a graph of search trends of any search term on Google, just mozey on over to www.google.com/trends and separate any search terms by commas. It’s quite a bit of fun!

The most important thing for me when it comes to sharing my photos is getting them seen. After all, there’s no point in publishing my photos if I didn’t intend for others to see them. I could have kept them on my computer for that purpose. The desire for others to see my work intensifies with photos I’ve put any kind of significant work into. Whether I’ve converted it to black and white and then spent some time burning and dodging or have created a complex composite work of art, I really desire for others to see the outcome of my labors.

As I have often claimed, Creative Commons is of most benefit to unknown artists. Bands, photographers, and painters (to name a few) will remain unknown if they charge for their work. Why? Because human nature is not to purchase something if you are unsure if you will like it. When an artist places their work under the CC license, they allow others to experience and use their work and share with others without financial risk. Later, the happy customers will very likely donate money or pay for that which they receieved and enjoyed. (Just ask Magnatunes)

Here is the latest batch of quotes I have gathered up:

Found in the winehq irc room 1. Knowledge is Power 2. Power Corrupts therefore Study hard and become evil

“How many kamikaze missions have you flown?” “Fourteen Sir!” “Shouldn’t it be just one?” -Early work of Douglas Adams

Apple for style, Linux for security, Windows for Solitaire

[‘a’, ‘b’, ’new’, ‘mpilgrim’, ‘z’, ’example’, ’new’, ‘False’]

> “False” in li True

Thanks to Danny, I am now a member of the yet another addictive internet site. Last.fm, which works with the Linux music player amaroK will collect all the songs you listen to. It will then display it on a webpage such as this one. If this was all it did, it would be mildly fun, but it combines the best of the social web phenomenon involved in web 2.0. Clicking on a song will tell you how many users listened to that song from that artist. It also has a “neighbors” feature where it lists other users that have the same musical taste as you. This should be interesting given the variety of music I listen to. Also, I have added a plugin to the sidebar here so that you can see the latest songs I’ve listend to on my Linux computer. These are the invasions of privacy I don’t mind since I’m volunteering this information. It’s when programs, websites, and ISPs take this information without asking me that I get annoyed.

Alright! Google Earth 4 has been released. This time around Google has not let us Linux users high and dry! In fact, they have released Windows, Linux AND Macintosh versions of Google Earth! I think I will finally download it - I had been waiting for the rumored Linux version. Read the exciting announcement here and look for me to be blogging about it in a few days.

The computing industry has lots of euphimisms, but one of the ones that gets me really miffed is “trusted computing”. It is a process by which computer companies are trying to exert THEIR control on machines WE have bought with OUR money! Trusted Computing is the way they show they don’t trust us, but not allowing us to do whatever we want on our machines. This goes against the very love of tinkering that drives so many of us. It’s why more and more people are turning to the BSDs and Linux distros in order to be able to have the FREEDOM to tinker with THEIR OWN software as they wish. Instead, the industry wants to tell us how we should experience their items! I don’t want to hear it! If I want to buy a CD or DVD and rip it to my computer and put it on my iPod, then that’s my own business! Especially if I have PURCHASED IT! There have always been and always will be pirates. If you embed these systems into our hardware, you think it will stop us from experiencing our media the way we want to, but it won’t! There’s not a thing you can do to stop the resourcefulness of computer geeks, CS, and ECE majors. You can push congress to make it illegal, but that just means another DVD Jon in Scandanavia will figure it out. Just let us do what we wish. There has always been piracy and somehow you’ve still managed to make money anyway.