Happy New Year 2005!

I've just come back from scouting what the various Hermosa Beach restaurants and clubs are doing tonight. And the lucky winner we'll grace with our presence tonight is ...

... Cafe Boogaloo from whom I've just secured their last spot for second-seating dinner! We get to keep our table all night if we so choose.

A Big Band has already set-up by the Hermosa Beach Pier. They'll be playing into the New Year! We'll likely check them out before the countdown.

Right now we're headed over to Daryll and Linda's, to wish Linda a Happy Birthday!

Speaking of birthdays, Brandy turned 30 Wednesday, I took her to the Little Door for a succulent dinner. We had a great time!

Are We Stingy? Nope. America Delivers.

It was only a matter of time before pundits would seize yet another juicy opportunity to lash out at the current American administration. Their latest stunt? Calling America stingy, at the very same time our government was opening its wallet for an initial pledge even before the extent of the Tsunami damages was fully understood by the world community.

Faced with the reality of donations pouring into various international aid organizations from American private corporations and citizens, these accusations are now being slightly revised and directed at the American Government being stingy, while it's now being reluctantly admitted that American People are indeed being generous.

The sensationalistic-headline-hungry author of this op'ed New York Times article appears to have completely lost track of the fact that unlike certain countries with a heavy extreme liberal heritage (socialism), our tax system doesn't gouge out its citizens and corporations. Donating to charities and non-profit organizations is an American way of life, especially in the Midwest and the "Bible Belt". Private citizens and corporations can in turn write those donations off on their taxes, which is money that would otherwise go to the Government.

This is where the gloves come off.

Why are pundits suddenly so eager to depend on the government to deal with global disaster relief? If you don't believe the American government is donating enough money, then pull out your own wallet. And get everyone you know to follow suit. It's that fscking simple. What ... is it so hard to remember those tax cuts that may have saved us a few hundred bucks here and there, pull out the ol' credit card, head-over to redcross.org and make a fscking donation? Or do we need Uncle Sam to be holding our collective hands?

NAH. let's just sit around and moan. Let's blame the government. Let's write stupid editorials that sell page views. Let's milk that political angle for all it's fscking worth.

The cold, hard, undeniable fact is, America is delivering.

When 9/11 had hit, Amazon.com had raised $6.8 Million through roughly 170,000 donations during the entirety of the fund-raising campaign. That was for a scarring event that happened in OUR OWN BACKYARD.

Just days after the Amazon Tsunami Relief campaign started, as of this writing, Amazon.com is about to blow past the $9 Million mark, with no signs of slowing-down. Yesterday morning, around 9am, it was at around $4.5 Million.

Even before the whole Amazon fundraising campaign gathered steam, the American Red Cross had reported it had already received $18 Million from American citizens, just 3 days after the disaster hit.

None of these figures are including corporate donations, which are also eager to hop on the bandwagon. You can hardly beat that kind of PR.

As far as the Red Cross should be concerned, money from the private sector is just as green as money from governments.

Tsunami Videos Torrents

update: (second batch) Austin's Blog has gathered more dramatic videos. Keep visiting his site for potential updates. You can download them all from this convenient torrent, courtesy of prodigem. If you link to the torrent, be sure to credit and link to his blog.

---

(first batch) Here's the link to the torrent file. (Get BitTorrent here).

I got those videos from Contemporary Unsanity before it got slashdotted (Mirror), so i figured I'd seed them as Torrents. Be sure to visit them, credit them, not me.

Be sure to donate what you can to the Red Cross. Here's a handy page i put-up to place an Amazon Tsunami Relief donation badge on your site, home page, or blog.

Gadgets: Delorme Bluelogger: Bluetooth GPS for $149?

This looks really cool. Any hopes of Mac OS X compatibility?

via Jeremy Zawodny's Linkblog

More Tsunami Relief Resources

Oakley Boren put together relief resources for tsunami victims, with emphasis on Thai resources.

I've added an Amazon plug box at the top right, per Brian Sullivan's suggestion. I've built upon his version a wee bit, feel free to get my version for your own site, here.

I threw-in two fitty. I'm broke now. :P

Geekstuff: Google Autocomplete on CPAN

CPAN got googled.

Jeff Jarvis: Bloggers Tortured in Iran

Jeff Jarvis helps expose Iranian bloggers torture.

Sweet Vacation - Light Blogging

I'm taking a cab to the airport in about 5 hours so i figured i'd throw-in a quickie :) I haven't been blogging but I've been regularly uploading pictures.

My vacation has been awesome. Alex and I have been taking turns invading Mamie in the 3 weeks I've been here.

Brandy came for a week and, once again, won-over everybody with her smarts and sweetness. I had an awesome time while she was here.

I've spent time with Mom and Dad teaching them how to do even more stuff on their respective Macs. They'll soon be getting iSights.

Dad showed me the genealogy research he's done on our family with the help of his brother, my Uncle John. Turns out I'm a direct descendant of this guy, through Dad's great-grandfather Leonard Holland ... --> Frank Leonard Holland --> Francis Marion Holland (3rd son) --> Dad --> lil' ol' me.

Off to the Country

we're about to go pick-up Alex at the airport before heading off to the country. I'll be offline until saturday night. *gasp*

Brandy's Here! :)

w00t 8)

Router Wars

On the heels of Juniper Networks' recent release of its TX Matrix Platform, Om Malik is giving an interesting overview of current and upcoming battles between protagonists of the Route Game, armed with their Terabit toys.

Broadband Bliss?

A very interesting article by Karl Bode over at TheBroadbandDaily.

Google Suggest

update: UberGoogleGeek Kevin Gibbs blogs about it. Aaaah. that precious 20% time. Chris Wetherell also mentions a google thread.

Those google guys. so hot right now.

---

Google is testing a suggestion interface. It's neat. Apple Safari users, hit command-option-a while interacting with the page :) It looks like it uses various remote scripting tricks.

While a neat feature, i can see it be a nightmare to scale for such a large user base. You're looking at an HTTP request on each keystroke. GAH! On the other hand ... this might be a more realistic feature for someone much smaller to look into.

I've been meaning to add support for remote data sets to this guy. Here's to additional motivation.

iPod Killer, Revisited

Resistance is Futile.

Yes, this is a reworked dupe of this older post. But i figured nobody read that anyway.

Nope, i still don't own any Apple stock.

meh!

Man Proposes with iPod

TheAppleBlog is telling the tale of a man who proposed with an iPod.

Let the SIP Revolution Begin

SIP addresses enable Internet users to get in touch with other Internet users in real-time. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol and provides a framework for real-time text messaging, voice and video conferencing, even file sharing. SIP addresses are to Internet real-time communications what E-mail addresses are to Internet mail.

While SIP powers many VoIP infrastructures, few companies out there seem to care about surfacing SIP addresses to their end-users. The article i just wrote for "The Broadband Daily" attempts to raise awareness of those important issues.

Jeff Jarvis: My Iraqi Friends

Omar and Mohamed.

it's 8am and i'm eating cheese

can you hear me go "mmmMMm MMMMMMMM YUUUUHUUUMMM"

Bonjour ... from Paris! :)

What's the best thing that can happen to you on an 10-hour flight from LAX to CDG? Scoring the exit row. Something to be said for arriving early at the airport. There are a few practical things to know about an exit row:

1. Arriving early still does not guarantee you the seat you want as someone may have already snagged it when boarding a remote destination and using your originating airport as a connection.
2. Even if you ask for it, and the person who assigns the seat to you says they got it for you, you may still find yourself one or two rows behind.
3. Mentioning a disability, physical condition (I've had knee surgery, I have a bad back), will almost guarantee you will not get the exit row seat, in which case, the person will smile to you, nod, and ... see #2 above. Why? because:
4. In case of emergency you've got to be physically fit to help the crew throw people off the plane, into a shark-infested ocean.
5. The plane fare you pay for guarantees you a seat, not the seat you want. If you do happen to score the exit row, be insanely grateful. If you don't, consider being graceful about it, as, rumors claim, complainers are typically the first fed to the poor, starving sharks.

With tears of gratitude streaming down my eyes I gleefully sat down. A few minutes later, 3 Italian men in their 40s arrived and threw a big fuss at the attendant, for they were told they'd gotten exit-row seats. A few minutes later, 2 American women in their mid 50s threw the same fit while repeatedly reminding the attendant they'd told the clerk they both had knee surgery in the past. One of them stormed off the plane saying she was going back to the gate agent to complain to them. I was hoping we'd leave her behind ... but weren't so lucky.

Mom, Dad and Annabel were all there to pick me up at the airport, which was an awesome surprise. Annabel is frickin' tall now. I couldn't believe it. After a delectable dinner at "Le Café Marly", by the Louvre Pyramid, Annabel and I left the parents behind and had a very nice walk along the "Quais de Seine" over to the "Caveau de la Huchette". Lots of swing dancers were there, we had crazy fun to the wild boogie tunes of Jean-Paul Amouroux.

Today I woke-up around ... err ... 2pm ?. Hung out with my grandma for a good chunk of the afternoon. Despite Annabel's incessant begging, I'm staying-in tonight, catching-up on e-mail, blogging ... and a good sleeping schedule.

Exit row baby, hooh hah hah!

Blogging from LAX

Los Angeles Airport offers boingo wireless WiFi service ...




... But I don't travel often and don't really need boingo service. I do however have 20 hours of free dial-up per month with the EarthLink DSL account, which I'm putting to good use on the powerbook by dialing-up over bluetooth through the sony ericsson t610 mobile phone.

Drawback? Imagine download speeds circa 1995. Still, it does the trick quite well :)

Seeds of Change: Nicholas Reville on Blog Torrent

On the heels of the recent launch of the preview release of Downhill Battle's Blog Torrent, Nicholas Reville further articulates his vision of a "TiVo for the Internet" in an interview by James Enck for The Broadband Daily. Nicholas touches on the P2P promise, various players, revenue models, and the healthy challenges coming Big Media's way.

Crazy Weekend

Friday evening Brandy and I attended Joe's wedding, it was a lot of fun. The following morning, Saturday, I met Will and Scott at Robert's place in Pasadena at 10am before meeting Scott's brother in Vegas. We all checked-in at 3pm at the Luxor, before engaging the jolly fun, details of which will stay in Vegas. I went back to the room around 2am this Sunday morning so I could get a couple of hours of sleep before dragging my arse outta bed at 7am, getting in my car, driving back to L.A. and beating traffic.

I finalized packing, took an afternoon nap. Brandy and I just came back from seeing Alexander.

I'll be headed to the airport at noon tomorrow.

Froogle Wishlist on Blogger.com Profile

Jason Shellen is damp from excitement. Dampness is good.

Via Jeremy Zawodny's link blog.

Om Malik: Introducing TheBroadbandDaily

Om Malik has charitably invited me to join his team of contributors to his new blog, TheBroadbandDaily. You can subscribe to The Broadband Daily News Feed here.

He's incredibly insightful and contagiously passionate about the industry he covers, and it's an honor for me to be in such great company.

Despite being a fairly early DSL adopter, helping numerous friends setting-up home networks since the first LinkSys broadband gateway came out, running a couple of linux (redhat, then debian) servers in my own home for a while, I'm definitely a Broadband Industry Newbie. Om Malik and his friends' blogs have helped me learn a lot about this industry and shed light on why Mom and Dad, back in France, have broadband connectivity that far surpasses mine for a measly 30-40 euros/month.

I'm hoping to occasionally contribute pieces on various practical aspects of broadband connectivity usage.