<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!-- generator="WordPress/2.8.4" -->
<rss version="0.92">
<channel>
	<title>Cyde Weys Musings</title>
	<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:53:02 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>Reminiscing about the naïve, spam-free days of the web</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Remember a long time ago when the web was free of spam?  I&#8217;m not talking about email, which has had spam problems for awhile, I&#8217;m talking about the web.  Nowadays, the web is festering with link-crawling spambots.  Anyone with a blog, Twitter account, or heck, even a webpage with a simple submit [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/07/21/before-spambots/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Right-wing terrorism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today, an anti-semitic terrorist attacked the Holocaust Memorial in Washington D.C. (I&#8217;ve been there, and yes, one visit is enough for a lifetime).  Last week, an anti-abortion terrorist assassinated a doctor.
Why is the media so afraid to use the word &#8220;terrorist&#8221; to accurately describe right-wingers engaged in the act of terrorism?  Is it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/06/10/right-wing-terrorism/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>My once-tiny GNU/Linux desktop morphs beyond all recognition</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Almost a year ago, I bought a cute little desktop from Dell with the intent of using it as a GNU/Linux desktop alongside my existing Windows desktop.  Its name is Vertumnus.  But things don&#8217;t always turn out as planned.  I quickly started using Vertumnus as my exclusive desktop PC, booting the Windows [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/04/14/my-once-tiny-gnulinux-desktop-morphs-beyond-all-recognition/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why I use Identi.ca and you should too</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Those of you following me on Twitter may have noticed that all of my tweets come from Identica.  I started off with Twitter but I quickly switched over to Identica as soon as I learned about it.  Identica, if you haven&#8217;t heard of it before, uses the same micro-blogging concept as Twitter (and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/03/22/why-i-use-identica/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Australia blocks my page from their Internet</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A couple years ago, when I was more active on Wikipedia than I am now, I was trying to prove a point by compiling a list of all of the risque images on Wikipedia (link obviously NSFW).  I don&#8217;t quite remember what that point is anymore, but the list remains.  It has even [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/03/18/australia-blocks-my-page-from-their-internet/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A Python script to auto-follow all Twitter followers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In my recent fiddling around with Twitter I came across the Twitter API, which is surprisingly feature-complete.  Since programming is one of my hobbies (as well as my occupation), I inevitably started fooling around with it and have already come up with something useful.  I&#8217;m posting it here, so if you need to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/03/10/a-python-script-to-auto-follow-all-twitter-followers/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Here&#8217;s a pretty bad Unicode WTF</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m doing some research on Unicode and compression algorithms right now for a side-project I&#8217;m working on, and I came across a highly ranked Google search result for a UTF-8 munging code snippet that is so idiotic I couldn&#8217;t let it pass without comment.  If this post helps even one person who would&#8217;ve otherwise [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/03/03/heres-a-pretty-bad-unicode-wtf/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The joys of 2 meter simplex</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m up in Parsippany, New Jersey at the moment on business travel.  That in itself wouldn&#8217;t be anything special, except that the eastern seaboard was just rocked by a huge snowstorm.  I had to leave a day early to ensure that I made it here for an important meeting Monday morning, only for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/03/02/the-joys-of-2-meter-simplex/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Pulse</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Frank quickened his stride and took a leaping jump onto the waist-high brick wall separating the sidewalk from the field.  Kathy rolled her eyes at him.  None of the other students busily hurrying to or from their classes registered a response at all.
&#8220;You know, this isn&#8217;t the playground at kindergarten,&#8221; Kathy teased Frank.
&#8220;Yeah, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/02/28/pulse/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>I caught the Twitter bug</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sigh.  A lot of other people at work were using Twitter, so now I am too.  If I join anything else, I&#8217;ll need to think of a good way to organize all of my web presences.  I guess this blog can be the mothership, and contain links to everything else.
So far I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/02/24/i-caught-the-twitter-bug/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A new, fictional direction for this site</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As you&#8217;ve probably figured out by now, the past several months on Cyde Weys Musings have been characterized by my extreme inactivity.  That wasn&#8217;t unintentional.  I just had to make enough of a break from the old direction of the site in order to feel comfortable taking it in a new direction.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/02/15/a-new-fictional-direction-for-this-site/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>For Want of a Bolt</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;So much for Her Majesty&#8217;s elite unit,&#8221; Lieutenant Nottingham said softly as he sank down into the canvas netting of the wall-mounted fold-up bench.  The electric lantern above his head drifted lazily to and fro.
&#8220;It was a great idea, only suffering from a complete lack of execution,&#8221; I responded, trying to find some humor [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/02/15/for-want-of-a-bolt/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Firefox continues gaining market share, software flaws</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Excellent news!  My favorite web browser, Mozilla Firefox, has gained market share yet again and now commands 21.53% of the market.  That&#8217;s a far cry from several years ago when Firefox was just coming out and Internet Explorer was by far the dominant browser.  I still remember all of those sites that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/02/03/firefox-continues-gaining-market-share-software-flaws/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>One Humble Cloth</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One night, on the precipice of sleep, a fragment materialized in my mind that I immediately aroused myself to record.  It led to the following account:
Why does this cloth billow so?  It has seen the sunshine of many days and the darkness of many nights, the twilights of oh so many yesterdays.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/01/30/one-humble-cloth/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The inauguration of Obama &#8211; you had to be there</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today was a long yet exhilarating day.  It started at around 7:00am when we woke up and boarded the Metro downtown to catch the inauguration.  We had purple tickets allowing us onto the Capitol grounds, but alas, the purple line was mishandled horribly, and we didn&#8217;t actually get in.  Frustration was running [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2009/01/21/the-inauguration-of-obama-you-had-to-be-there/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Parody is not license to be racist</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Recently, some Republicans thought it would be a brilliant idea to distribute a CD to members of the Republican National Convention containing a song titled &#8220;Barack the Magic Negro&#8221;.  The general response was about as predictable as the sunset, and rightly consisted of outright condemnation over such disgusting and overt racism.  But get [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/12/28/parody-is-not-license-to-be-racist/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How browser security exploits hinder exploration of the web</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s important to be able to feel safe while browsing the web, both in terms of what your software protects you against and what your own &#8220;web street smarts&#8221; protect you against.  Users who don&#8217;t feel safe will restrict themselves to big sites by recognizable companies and other sites that they already visit regularly [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/12/22/how-browser-security-exploits-hinder-exploration-of-the-web/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Tanks in rush hour</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This makes twice in one year that my commute home from work has been slowed by rubbernecking delays thanks to tanks being in the pull-over lane just south of the American Legion Bridge crossing the Potomac River along the Capital Beltway in Virginia.
The tanks are always on semi-trailers traveling in convoys.  It&#8217;s been too [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/12/10/tanks-in-rush-hour/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Batman Minus Batman</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You may or may not be aware of Garfield Minus Garfield, a mash-up of the comic strip Garfield that simply removes Garfield from all frames, leaving John Arbuckle as a lonely, psychotic man.  I bring it up because it serves as a useful analogy to discuss the film The Dark Knight, which I finally [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/12/08/batman-minus-batman/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Slumdog Millionaire &#8211; A movie in review</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My mother is plugged into the independent arthouse movie scene, so she&#8217;s always seeing (and raving about) movies that I&#8217;ve never heard about.  Yesterday, my cousin from New York City was in town, so we took the opportunity to see Slumdog Millionaire at the artsy movie theater in Bethesda, Maryland.  I knew precisely [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/23/slumdog-millionaire-a-movie-in-review/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The guilty pleasures of Ikea</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I can&#8217;t help it.  Ikea is one of my guilty pleasures.  I don&#8217;t particularly like shopping, and I would never consider shopping a leisurely activity.  So while I do go to grocery stores and other places where I purchase essentials, I very rarely go to shopping just for the fun of it. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/19/ikea-guilty-pleasure/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Bad, bad journalism</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This here is some really bad journalism from CNN:
(CNN) &#8212; A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages on Friday to a Kentucky teenager who was severely beaten by members of a Ku Klux Klan group because they mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
The jury found that the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/15/bad-bad-journalism/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The death of the Bradley Effect</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The results of Tuesday&#8217;s election give us reason enough to declare the Bradley Effect as outdated, wrong, and finally, dead and buried.  The &#8220;Bradley Effect&#8221;, named after black California 1982 gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley, posits that a significant number of whites are secret racists, who will tell pollsters they&#8217;re willing to vote for a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/06/the-death-of-the-bradley-effect/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Boy dies over XBOX360 punishment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I was going to say something really callous here, but thought better of it at the last moment, so I&#8217;ll just relate the facts and let you insert the callousness in your own mind:
A boy in Canada who ran away after his parents took his XBOX360 away as a punishment has been found dead in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/05/boy-dies-over-xbox360-punishment/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Today is a momentous day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today is a momentous day.
I can finally truthfully say again that I am proud of my country.
It&#8217;s an incredible feeling.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/05/today-is-a-momentous-day/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Fixing ordering bias of U.S. presidential election candidates on Wikipedia</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today, upon getting home from work, one of the first things I did was check the Main Page of the English Wikipedia.  It always has interesting content on there, and today was no exception.  For the first time ever, two articles were featured on the front page: those of John McCain and Barack [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/11/03/potus-election-wikipedia/</link>
			</item>
</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Dynamic Page Served (once) in 0.654 seconds -->
