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By
Mark Boudreau
01 Mar 2002
Wow. Mention your web site on Rush Limbaugh and you get a lot of visitors. The president of my organization understood this (Even when he implied that you could get a free copy of the Constitution/Dec. of Independence from our site), I’m sure, but we really weren’t prepared for the onrush of people. The web site (Apache/Linux) held up pretty well, even with load times over 1.0, but alas, our firewall couldn’t keep up. So things are/were pretty slow for most of this afternoon. I’ll be interested to see just how many people came as a result of the publicity.
By
Mark Boudreau
27 Feb 2002
“Without concord, one option is left: Congress must step in to protect valuable creative works on the Net and thereby benefit consumers by giving them another choice for movie viewing.” — Jack Valenti
<p>Umm. You know what he is asking for don’t you? He wants <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50702,00.html">Fritz Hollings to save the day</a>. I want to know why the fact that movies can’t be “distributed securely” on the Internet is a justification for the government regulating an entire industry.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to preach to the choir. But Fritzy is holding hearings on this topic this week, and it very well may come to pass that the government and the entertainment industry dictate how our computers can be set up. In addition, it would already be illegal to bypass the security that they’d like to place on <span class="caps">OUR</span> computers. Ugh.</p>
<p>And just because some of you may live outside the US, <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50658,00.html">don’t assume that you are safe.</a></p>
By
Mark Boudreau
21 Jan 2002
I saw the Royal Tenenbaums yesterday, and I must say that Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson created a wonderful film. Wes Anderson has the ability to create a world in his films that seems a lot like ours, but it is trapped in some time which is a mix of now and a previous decade. In the Royal Tenenbaums that decade is the 70’s, as opposed to the 60’s motif of Rushmore. It gives the film a quirkiness that keeps you chuckling and enough details to keep your eyes dancing around the screen looking for past treasures. The performances were as delightful as the setting. The story seemed more of a vehicle for the characters more than anything else. And these characters were worth having such a forum. I definitely look forward to seeing it again.
By
Mark Boudreau
16 Dec 2001
Dan, John and Nick visited this weekend. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, you probably did not go to Bates College and/or in all likelyhood you didn’t know me either while I was at Bates. I took a couple of pictures:
<p><a href="http://users.starpower.net/mboudreau/images/01-12/da-boys.jpg">Here’s one.</a> Yeah, my neck didn’t seem to hold my head up in this one.</p>
<p><a href="http://users.starpower.net/mboudreau/images/01-12/spooky.jpg">Here’s a neat shot of the guys last night.</a></p>
<p>We had a ton of fun this weekend. We saw <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0216651">Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust</a> last night. The animation was quite good and the dialog wasn’t bad either. If you liked the 1985 edition of Vampire Hunter D, you’ll like this one as well. New story, same lead character, and some wonderful fight scenes.</p>
<p>I now need a weekend to recover from my weekend though. But it’s all good.</p>
By
Mark Boudreau
06 Dec 2001
Am I paranoid or is Big Brother becoming more and more of a reality every day? Between the secret searches, monitoring of every communication, installation of face-cams, secret tribunals, phone tracking gps, national id cards, national databases, and all the other things Congress is thinking up (not to mention the similar steps being taken by England, Canada and others), the world is becoming almost Kafkaesque.
<p>Who knows. This post could be a crime now. I’m criticizing the government, does that make me un-American? I’m worried about our collective future, does that make me an enemy of the state? Maybe I’m just reading too much of <a href="http://www.politechbot.com/">Declan McCullagh’s writings</a>. I feel powerless. I feel like the governments can do whatever they want, and even if we catch them, it seems like it won’t matter. They’ll just use some pathetic patriotic drivel, and the heroes that caught the misdeeds will be demonized as wacko civil libertarians.</p>
<p>Sorry for ranting. I’m just frustrated. It makes me say “Grrr.”</p>
<p>Added Note: <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/06/inv.ashcroft.hearing/index.html">Ashcroft decided to answer some of my questions.</a></p>
By
Mark Boudreau
22 Nov 2001
Well, I had heard for a long time how nice IE was on the Mac. Standards compliance being one of the best parts about it. But I’m noticing other little things that I really like. For one, on drop down menus, the text in the menu expands to show the whole thing. Simple little feature, but pretty handy when looking at the recent comments menu on Thraxil. In addition, it’s cookie managment is quite good, although it’s missing some privacy features that are in the 6.0 version for the PC. Hopefully those will be added soon.
<p>The more I use OS X, the more impressed I am. Now if only this damn thing had a right mouse button.</p>
By
Mark Boudreau
19 Nov 2001
Well, I now have in my possession, a sleek new G4 Titanium Powerbook. I’ve had much disdain for Apple over the years, but they really did a great job with this system. Everything about it is just soooooo slick. The screen is huge, the system is light, the ports on it are plentiful (Mmmmmm firewire), and the GUI is beautiful…plus it has a command line. Wheee!!!!
<p>I’m really, not worthy. But I’m in computing bliss nonetheless.</p>
By
Mark Boudreau
09 Nov 2001
I almost feel like I’m back in college. I’m so tired and my brain just doesn’t want to function anymore. It’s probably because I’m becomming obsessed with chess. Reading chess books are almost like reading math books. Nothing is quite as bad as a math book though.
<p>Well, I can’t say it enough. thraxil is damn nifty. Is it the weekend yet?</p>