Austin Web Designer - Adam Freetly

..or the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and how things i hate have become things i like
current tune: harvey danger - happiness writes white
via Wil Wheaton

what's that? you hated "flagpole sitta"? so did i. but harvey danger has released their entire album, DRM Free, free as in beer, via bittorrent. by the way, the capital 'F' in free means libre, Free as in speech. yes, they even released the album in OGG Vorbis as well as mp3. so that's it. you're out of excuses. go download. the album is still pop, but that's ok. i have room for a little more pop in my heart. and right after listening to the clap your hands say yeah record, a pop voice feels very nice. They're calling this an experiment, so for my part i'll say that i'm listening to an album that i wouldn't have otherwise. In return, even if i don't go buy the album, i'll at least send a little free press their direction. both here, and in my AudioScrobbler listening chart.
Audioscrobbler is the new crack. This may eventually take over several of my other addictions, who've recently shown themselves to not be the shining examples of progress i thought they were. (you know who you are).

And now for the other example of "i used to hate you". Moral Hazard is one of my least favorite words. especially when applied to health care in the US, or the viability of tall buildings, post-9-11. but here's one place where it falls on my side. DRM. If the RIAA and MPAA could get all the hardware and software manufacturers on their side, and give us DRM on every movie, TV show, Radio broadcast and song, it would be a moral hazard. it would functionally, if not legally, extend copyright o infinity. no more public domain, ever. the 'industry' would get a free (as in beer) pass.

and on a completely unrelated note, i finally found an RSS reader for OS X that does what i want. its name is RSS Menu. it just sits in the menu bar, and shows me the number of unread articles in my friends journals. the menu shows the title of the enntry, and clicking on it takes me to the website. that's all i want. i don't want to read journals in an interface that looks like a mail application. i just want to know when there's something new to read. which, incidentally, also makes it a good gmail notifier. in panther, the default menu buttons don't behave properly, though, so here are icons that do:

i know you can't see the second one. that's because it's white, so that it looks properly inverted when you click on it. for the record, i still use firefox live bookmarks for slashdot, osnews, and the like, because i only read those when i'm browsing.