I'm not very good at writing obituaries. It's something my mind has a hard time with. I've met a lot of celebrities over the years, but I want to remember Ohad "Ady" Barkan who recently passed away on November 1st 2023. What you will read below is partly an assembly of other people's words, including Ady's, and partly my own, when I find them. Read on...
We just got back from the UK, from a whirlwind visit to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The rental car company deemed us as suitable guinea pigs to be upgraded to a fully electric vehicle. Last time we were in the UK, we rented a hybrid, which satisfied the ensuing panic of “what if there are no charging stations where we are going?” The hybrid did have all the bells and whistles, and the adaptive cruise control (I’ll talk more about this) no doubt stopped us from being in a multi-vehicle crash on the motorway.
One of the problems we have in the US is lack of imagination. One obstacle to getting single payer or universal healthcare is that people don't know what it's supposed to look like. I came across a the following video that was made to explain the how the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK would work. Read on...
Most of this CD was recorded live at the Industrial Revolution Conference near Toronto, Canada, and features David Ruis, Iain Lovatt, & Chris Janzen on vocals. David Ruis brought the live recordings down to Los Angeles where he partnered with Jason Halbert to finish the project. I wasn't at the original live event (I got involved a bit later as I'll explain below). Read on...
This CD/DVD captures a particular moment in time. It’s more than just a live band recording. It captures a typical “church service” at the time, with active participation by the congregation. Unfortunately, it’s no longer a place you can visit in person, as the lease on the building expired long ago. But it captures what was and is still possible. The alternative name for this album is “Live From The Loft”, and there's quite a story about how it came about. Read on...
Or "Necessity is the Mother of Invention". I’ve been involved with breaking, fixing, and expanding DNS since the very early days of the World Wide Web. Several books have quoted my work on DNS. One of the things I “invented” was the use of a “stealth server” to protect the root DNS zone of the Internet. I never really considered it an invention in the conventional patentable way, although it was new, novel, and a major breach of the rules at the time. It’s now regarded as a best practice and is well documented. Read on...
So I got dragged into the cinema last night. This was a little bit unusual in that I had no idea what we were going see.
"You'll like it."
"um... OK."
Read on...
There are a great number of people in the United States that think slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. It didn't. Read on...
I found another solid source of mashups. This one is especially fun and you won't realize until it's over. Read on...
Movement for a People's Party started out with a solid premise. Originally called "Draft Bernie" in 2017, the idea was to recruit Bernie Sanders to create a new third party, and, by tapping into the political revolution happening at the time, ending the two party duopoly enjoyed by the Republican and Democrat parties.
I should know. I was there.