the weblog of m.kelley

{Machine gun training at E3 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!}

Xeni’s a badd ass….

Anyone need a programming job? Have experience with WebTrends and other analytics? SEO and Usability too? This is in Chattanooga, TN and if you get the position, you’ll be working in the cube beside me.

Leave a comment here and I’ll give you more information.

I’ve been swamped, but I’m still keeping a list of links that interest me.

1.) Project Access Partners Provide More Than $6.5 million In Low-Income Healthcare – I developed the original logo for this organization, don’t know if they use it or not.

2.) I’m using Konqueror under KDE on SUSE and GNOME on Ubuntu. Safari/Webkit nightlies under OSX. KHTML on Windows using VMWare Player, seems to be the only way I’ll ever have KTHML/Konqueror under Windows.

I’m not sure where this new-found interest in Linux came from. I’m guessing that it’s because I’m back in the Windows world and quite shocked at how much more progressed Linux has become. I’d say it’s about equal with Windows 2000 currently. Still not the easiest thing to mess with, but it’s still better than nothing at all. The installs are much better and the support forums, Ubuntu for example, are sooo much better than dealing with Slackware or Red Hat hackers 10 years ago.

I’m even to the point of considering a Linux-based laptop as my next machine. The Powerbook is nice and I really dig OS X, but for my needs I can handle having a Mac for Photoshop & file server needs and using Linux for web browsing.

3.) “Is there a way to easily have browsers seek out the new css page now?” – Great solution…..

4.) What happened to MacEdition?

5.) Concord Road Residents Object To Cell Tower – Invoking the “important to Homeland Security efforts.” line, is the weak way out of a weak argument.

6.) I have a lot on my mind about everything from gas prices, to Tom Cruise pulling a Michael Jackson and trying any/everything to have his name in the news, to the NSA spying being more widespread than thought. I just don’t have the time right now to jot anything down.

My basic question is, “When will we say we’ve had enough”? When will a 31% approval rating, thousands of deaths in Iraq, $3 gas, and internal spying make us rise up and make a change with votes or by calling our representatives?

(more…)

{Slashdot Mockup2} – via

I like it. Of course, I don’t see geeks really liking this design. It’s clean and people who can’t match their clothes wouldn’t care anyway, because they’re still using Lynx or Netscape 4.

As a web designer/programmer for a huge-ass site, let me say that I fucking hate IE7. I tried it once. Hated it. I’ve thought that some of Microsoft’s browsers were amazing…. I used IE 5 starting with a very very early developer’s edition. I was actually hoping they would come out with an awesome browser that could compete with Firefox as well as my personal favorite Safari or Konqueror (daily builds of webkit on OSX w/ K on Ubuntu).

I honestly wish that the browser team at Microsoft would import some developers from some of the Mozilla branches. Get some of the K-Meleon guys to contribute. Get some of the Camino team too. But, don’t use Mozilla to build. Get these people on your team to show you how to think outside of the Scoobleesque Microsofty talk and build something that the world will love. Honestly, someone needs to rattle the Mozilla cage a bit, just to keep them on their toes.

{BYOL?}

It means “bring your own laptop.” Not a bad idea if you’re not working with a lot of high security systems and buildings…kinda like where I’m working now. I can’t even get webmail at work. But I’d love to be able to use whatever laptop I want. My ThinkPad (win 2k) isn’t bad, but I’d much rather have the choice of using my Powerbook or even a PC laptop with XP or Ubuntu.

I bought an Xbox yesterday, wasn’t really planning, but it was on my “next purchase” list. Not really thinking about using it as a game console, but more of a media center…like this. I work with a couple of people who’ve hacked the hell out of their xboxi with the Xbox Media Center while I’ve been looking at it in parallel.

Originally, I had been thinking about either cobbling together a media PC from what I have at the house or purchasing something like a Mac mini. Remotes are cool, I would have just pieced together a directory listing on a webpage that triggered movies. I wanted something that could hold my huge (to me) MP3 collection as well as rip DVD and could play everything through our cheap-ass surroundsound system. Then I started reading about the XBMC and then my co-web knowledgeable geek at work, said he had it on his Xbox and that I’d need it.

Well, I went to a pawn shop yesterday and wound up purchasing an original Xbox. Nothing fancy, came with two controllers (one wireless), an a switcher box. The wireless control is shit, doesn’t work with new bats…finally found the user manual online…in chinese. The standard control has seen better days. So the first round of improvements will be new controllers and that cheap DVD remote. So for around $30 that part of it will be good.

Next up, will be a modchip and a new hard drive. I know of a guy through a guy who mods Xboxi for $50. So, now I’m figuring up that I’ll spend around $250 for this entire setup…about half a Mac mini and about what I had planned to spend anyways.

In the future, I’ll probably get a $30 wireless connector, since my ether is on the other side of the room.

Granted, I remember playing the Xbox and the PS2 side-by-side and liking the PS2 more. But the game I’m playing now, Call of Honor (european tour), isn’t bad. I’m not a real “into it” game player. I’ll play a video game a few times a year. The wifey is more of the game player. I’m usually a console behind. Anyone want a Dreamcast?

Mobility Today, The Cult of Mac (Wired) and Gizmodo don’t check sources and make up false statements in their stories.

{Blogger Buzz: With Apologies to Mike Judge…} – “There once was a router so crappy
That it made all the Bloggers unhappy”

Reminds me of my little saying (remember I’m not Kurt Vonnegut or Cobain for that matter)

“Every Windows box I touch
I usually say ‘what the fuck?’
because something dumb will crash
while my Mac sits, kicking ass.”

As of today, Sacred Cow Tipping officially supports ATOM as our official way to get syndication to our readers. We cannot officially support this political quagmire known as RSS. While the url is the same, our syndicated feed is now an ATOM feed. We did this over at the old blog and should have continued doing so when we moved over here.

Of course, some of you might wonder WTF is Syndication?