Both of Us .org

I have written about making sushi at home here and here, but if you want a fun lesson about eating at an authentic Japanese sushi-ya, check out this movie.

Technology is slowly but surely changing the way we enjoy media and communication. The first time I downloaded music from Napster, I was sure that this would revolutionize the way we get and listen to music and other audio content. Years later iTunes and the iPod have solidified the revolution that was bubbling over from peer-to-peer (P2P) programs and the early adopters who listened to music on their computers when this was still novel and new. Podcasting is the newest name for this phenomenon. This is becoming more and more popular because it is so easy to subscribe to podcasts and listen to them on an iPod or computer.

You have probably heard about the internet telephony technology called Voice Over IP (VOIP) and the plethora of new ways we can talk with people around the country and around the world including Skype as well as companies that emulate traditional telephone usage using broadband, such as Vonage. Even instant messenger programs like Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger now have speech communication capabilities built in. This trend started years ago and will continue to be more and more common place.

Another movement in consumer internet technology is Television over IP (IPTV) which promises to create waves for television and film in ways similar to how VOIP is changing voice communication and how MP3's and iPods have been changing the way we listen to music. Video over the internet has been around for a long time, but for the most part it has been in the domain of early adopting nerds (like me). It the early years it was again mostly via P2P networks, but with the advent of bittorrent technology these very large video files, including film and television programs became quicker and easier to download. Although this method is gradually becoming more popular, even for non-techies, IPTV is really being pushed by the big players in tech today, such as Google Video and iTunes Video. Microsoft appears to be starting to offer IPTV in Germany in what could signify their next push into the consumer market. While the eventual plan is to offer cable television-like offerings via computer (perhaps requiring you to pay for each program and to opt in to a restrictive digital rights management scheme) for now this is more piecemeal and you can pick up lots of free video programs in addition to the kind that you are asked to pay for.

You can find any almost content you might be interested from the latest episode of your favorite TV program to Hollywood films to full length adult films using bittorrent search engines such as ISOHunt or the The Pirate Bay, these offerings operate in a legal grey area. Millions of people are downloading freely from these torrents and it is impossible for the organizations that represent the copyright owners to do much of anything about it. I am not advocating that you infringe on copyrights, but be aware of the facts: people around the globe are downloading, it is almost risk free to do so, and it does not cost anything. Copyright was created to stimulate innovation, but the current system actually stifles innovation. It is my opinion that we need to drastically change copyright law if not scrap it all together.

Cartoons and other programs aimed toward young males seem to be leading the types of programs that are free and available via corporate channels. Adult Swim from the Cartoon Network has lots of shows available for you to watch from their website as does toy maker Hasbro, including the latest Transformer and GI Joe cartoons among others. Independent offerings like Ask a Ninja and Diggnation are also a new ingredient in the mix. These shows lack big budgets, but still deliver amusing and entertaining programming serving their niche markets.

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied--
"If you seek for Eldorado!"


-from Eldorado
by Edgar Allen Poe

Surprise yourself with some truly wonderful images of solar eclipses and great commentary about them from a woman who describes herself as having "a touch of mindless obsession" with these celestial events. The images are at Wendy Carlos' Eclipse page. In addition, Wendy Carlos is the composer of the musical scores in Tron and The Shining among other films.

More interesting developments occur in the situation around Milosevic's burial. I think that this is why he committed suicide, he was aware that his death before the end of his war crimes trial would cause far more of a ripple in Serbia than the eventual guilty verdict. He cared more about influencing things in Serbia than he did for spending the rest of his live in prison. I think that this sort of thing is exactly what he had in mind and that perhaps he even orchestrated the currently unfolding events before he killed himself. He knew that a martyr is much more powerful in death than a convict in life. Slobodan Milosevic Poisons Life in Belgrade

If any of you meat eaters are looking for a reason to give up your addiction to flesh eating, I can think of several, but the most timely of these is that mad cow disease is set to become a real problem in the USA. Confirmed cases now mean that it is now a when, rather than an if, infected cows go into the American food chain which will cause people to die of the human form of this disease, vCJD.

I have been a vegetarian/pseudo-vegetarian since the summer of 1997 and I have never even considered going back to eating meat. I am not a purist, so when people have prepared meat for me in the past few years I will sometimes taste it, although the idea of eating any substantial red meat or foul is disgusting to me. However, I do eat sushi, and occasionally other fish and this places me firmly in the pseudo-vegetarian camp.

The primary reasons I gave up eating meat:

• Meat tastes nasty.
• A vegetarian diet is healthy.
• Eating meat is inefficient. When we consume meat there is less food for the rest of the planet. See also: environmental vegetarianism.

Now I can also add:

• Avoid mad cow disease.

The news is all over the mainstream media now, so check out these links or have yourself a Google.

Alabama cow tests positive for mad cow disease - MSNBC

Mad cow disease found in Alabama - CNN

This website has been going since August of 2005 with few changes to its look. I asked a few people what they thought of the old layout and they said that it gave the impression of being old. Well, since we are not that old, and since change is good, I have been working on changing the style to create a fresher and hopefully more interesting appearance.

Our old style was based on browns and muted greens. I liked our portraits done by Cees Vermandel behind our links, but those images made it more difficult to read the link text. You may remember that what it looked like. Our old appearance was based on a Creative Commons template by Martijn ten Napel called Easter Island. I think that we may see a slightly altered version of our old template show it's face occasionally, perhaps if I get nostalgic.

The new style is based on red, orange, black and white tones. It is white text on black rather than the more traditional black text on a light background. While I am not yet satisfied that it is yet finished, the new style should be easier to read and more modern. This color style is based on one of the designs at CSS Zen Garden called Wilderness by Aadesh Mistry. I would also like to use some of the images from his wonderful design.

Since CSS [cascading style sheets] make it so easy to redesign one's site without altering the content, I may undertake changing the appearance of this weblog more frequently. I like the sense that things change with time, and as spring is now on our doorstep, the seasons are clearly changing.

For a variety of reasons I have been paying attention to the War Crimes Tribunal and their genocide case against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. I was floored this morning to read the BBC headline Milosevic found dead in his cell. This is bad news all around, as it will likely boost the popularity of the dead former Yugoslav President in his native Serbia at a time when there is renewed tension regarding the international community's response to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

It is interesting to note that only a few days ago there was buzz about another Serbian war criminal, who died in his cell. This brings the total number of Serbians on trial for war crimes found dead in their cells to three. The Scotsman and other papers name Milosevic's death a suicide based on information from the Dutch authorities.

Update: The BBC reports poison or other strange substances in his blood.

Since February 21, my computer and I have been participating in the BBC Climate Change Experiment. The experiment models Earth's weather system and examines how adding greenhouse gases over time will affect the world's climate. Each computer will independently cover 160 years of time and calculate how the planet climate changes according to one set of modeling data. The model will examine change over time from the year 1920 through 2080. This project takes time and alot of computing power, so the BBC is asking for our help. With the spare processing power of people's computers around the world, this experiment will be the largest experiment on climate change modeling to date. So far my computer has been working on this project for over 210 hours. I am between five and six percent of the way through the experiment, and I am only up to April of the year 1930.

The program is great and you can use it as a screen saver. You can also view the clouds, the precipitation, the air pressure, greenhouse gas emissions, and the temperature of the sea and air. You can even see earth spinning on a backdrop of stars and watch light traveling around the globe as hours and days pass. The project uses grid computing and does not interfere with my computer use in any way. Over 100,000 people are running this experiment from their computers.

I applaud the BBC for their attention to science and to preventing climate change. Since the Bush administration still has done nothing and will not even admit that global warming exists, it is up to us to examine all the evidence. It is exciting to think that in some small way I am helping to fight climate change.