When you ask your users to click on ‘Find Friends,’ and then ask them to enter an email address and a password, you should:

1) Explain why you want an email address, and

2) Explain what sort of email address you’re talking about (because you already have my email address, don’t you?) and

3) Explain why ‘that email is not supported,’ even though it’s the email address you use to contact me, AND is the email address YOU PUT IN THE DIALOGUE BOX and

4) Not block the ‘back’ button and

5) Give the user a way to click on something to go back to the rest of Xanga without click-holding the back button to go back on the menu.

Here’s what I surmise: Xanga will let me use ‘friends’ lists from other services, perhaps can match email domains. So instead what should happen is this: You click on ‘Find Friends,’ and it shows you that you have ‘friends’ on Xanga (without listing them), based on your email address, and explains why this is so. And then you opt in by giving your password, or you turn off the feature.

Wouldn’t that be much better?

Bad Spock DRAWINGS that is.

I found this while searching for Soviet sci-fi films from the ’50s and ’60s. Google works in mysterious ways.

I’m off to Scarecrow to see if they have a copy of ‘The Silent Star,’ which was re-cut as ‘First Spaceship On Venus.’ I’d also like to find ‘Battle Beyond The Sun,’ despite the fact that it was re-cut by Francis Ford Coppola.

You’ve gotta love a hex editor called 0xED.

(I’m going to explain why this is funny. ’0x’ means the number that follows is in ‘hex notation’ or the base-16 number system. The base-16 number system includes the digits 0-9, and then the letters A-F. So in hex, ED is a number. But it also spells the word ‘ed,’ as in ‘editor.’ Isn’t that clever?)

In a dream, I would wander down the hall and the far wall of the house would be ripped off, as if by a tornado, and I’d climb down a ladder into a field, like in ‘Stalker.’ Dreams by Tarkovsky.

There’d be a place, and the light would diffuse through the leaves of the trees, and shadows would flow like water. The streambed would have salmon running back to their home, and if you look closely at them, they’d grow in size and be floating through the air.

Through the air, over the patio, over the deck. Past your outdoor grill. Beyond the ice chest. Sure as two plus two equals four, you’d want to grill a salmon, but these salmon are different. They look at you, with steely eyes that, in a single glance, a single moment, implore that you learn how to live your life.

You sit down at the table, and the light is diffuse again, imbued with the hue of the walnut tabletop, catching your features just so, bouncing off of her, and she laughs as though the light tickles.

Rock stars who think about things.

Sean asks if Brian Eno counts as a ‘rock star,’ and as a point of data, I offer this video of Roxy Music in 1973. Eno is the guy in the feather boa (or whatever that is) playing keyboards. They invented a little thing we now know as ‘glam rock.’

Detecing iPods Programatically.

Just fer reference, y’unnerstand….

Via boingboing: seeqpod.com.

The freely-available mp3 search engine. It only finds media files that are already available on the web, and gives you a nifty playlist/player thing. It can also show you related music videos, but I don’t see myself using that.

Update: Har! Forgot to add the link.

I went and saw the new Harry Potter movie last night.

It’s really, really good while you’re watching it, and mostly unremembered after it’s over. What strikes me most about it is how completely these kinds of images are taken for granted. That is, when you go to the movies now, you expect to see computer-generated characters and astonishing special effects. I remember when ‘Tron’ was a big deal, and now if your movie doesn’t have at least three computer generated characters in major roles, it’s just not up to snuff.

I kept thinking about how far we’ve come from this (the real fun starts about 3:14):

We live in insane times. The Washington Post, in which David Rifkin describes how US Attorneys are figments of Bush’s imagination, and therefore subject to executive privilege:

[..] David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel’s office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a “unitary executive.” In practical terms, he said, “U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president’s will.” And in constitutional terms, he said, “the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch.” [..]

Anyone who’s buying this is divorced from reality, and is completely unaware of the rule of law. And this is but one reason that Bush must be impeached.

Via Greenwald.

Someone’s spamming using my domain name again. So I’m getting about a million non-delivery notification bouncebacks to random email addresses.

On the up-side, however, I should check and see if I’m in Nigeria, handling the multi-million-dollar estate of a recently-deceased warlord or something. You never know….