It takes 7 acres to support a bisexual rabbit like me. (Yes, a bunch of tests, all blatantly snarfed from Firda. I’m having one of those weeks. You understand.)

Dan Gillmor continues to fight the good fight for freedom, privacy, fair use, and other forms of sanity.

That distinctive chirp-boop (choop) sound that nextel phones make when in walkie-talkie mode — as recently seen being ‘not-endorsed’ by multiple-Emmy-winner Dennis Franz, who should know better — has become, over the last few weeks, the bane of my existence. The sound seems to carry over any distance, certainly through two tissue-paper walls from a roommate’s bedroom at 3 AM, and I’ve also found that it’s nearly impossible to learn to ignore. And it is the rare combination of these two qualities, I believe, that impelled one of my fine-feathered avian neighbors to learn to emulate it so precisely.

When blocking ads with your hostfile, you sometimes encounter empty IFrames, which in addition to being ugly, make scrolling jerky and distracting in IE. This was almost the entire inspiration for the “Hide Anything” browser extension. Now, a better alternative: the Hide IFrames bookmarklet (DOM-capable browser required).

If none of the above made sense, scroll on down, and remember that you are neither a better nor worse person for it.

Ozzy’s ‘Haldol Shuffle’ explained. In fact, a whole lot of things about the show make more sense after reading this article. Its success, however, is not one of them.

Yes.

A cousin of my teacher tax credit idea has made an appearance on the senate floor. Debate seems to find no flaws in the idea aside from one I myself identified: ‘Why, that’s socialism!’ Which will, of course, be more than enough to keep it from passing. Ah well.

Coke for breakfast is apparently a
southern thing. I’m glad I stumbled across this article, as otherwise I probably
never would have discovered this fascinating piece of my own ‘southern he
ritage’, having known precisely one person who habitually drank carbonated
beverages with breakfast, despite living my entire life in the south.

Of late
I’ve begun to notice a trend which may have been long apparent to the thoughtfu
l reader: journalists, above all other species save politicians, have an uncanny
ability to irritate me.

$50 a spam. “I
n its suit, [San Fransisco law firm Morrison and Foerster] says Etracks broke Ca
lifornia’s anti-spam laws [and] asks for damages of $50 for each e-mail received
.” The statute is four years old, and only now comes the first test of it
in a court. Here’s hoping they get somewhere with this — by these figures,
my hotmail account alone is worth $6,600 a week.

Which children’s’ storybook character are you? Master Harry Potter, at your service. This explains many things, actually: the nappy hair, why teachers always either loved or hated me, the strange ability I have to attract large, hairy men.

Kidding aside, I only recently happened to pick up The Sorcerer’s Stone, after consciously dismissing the books as kiddie stuff for quite some time. I just finished the third volume a few days ago, and I’m now officially hooked. (Currently, I’m making my way through The Hobbit and the LotR trilogy — for the first time. Yes, I know, I am Not A Real Geek.)

Note: As the cipherpunk:cipherpunk login appears to have been culled from NYTimes.com’s user database, subtle alterations have been made to the NYTimesUber bookmarklet. I will now proceed to ignore the projects section for another six months.

New to me: W3C Link Checker. Coolies.

Potential Roommate Litmus Test #183: In regards to running cable down hallways for a potential shared broadband connection and subsequent home network, is the following a rhetorical question: “Well, what’s more important, interior design or bandwidth?”

Realism May Be Taking the Fun Out of Games. Though the thesis of the article is neither original nor compelling, its ultimate undoing is in this one sentence: “Lives there an 8 to 18-year-old — or an adult guiltily aspiring to that state of mind — who has not yet heard about the technological accomplishments [of the current generation of consoles].” I am so tired of this blanket dismissal of all, even casual, gamers as mental or literal adolescents. Just because the ‘leading lights’ of the community fit that mold, does not mean all do — just as not all conservative homosexuals are self-hating hypocrites. Okay, bad example, non sequitur, and cheap shot, but you know what I mean.

Dot com files $15M defamation complaint against mailing list members. Worse than the fact that businesses still think they can get away with shit like this, they apparently can: “‘I have three kids and bills to pay,’ says one defendant who settled. ‘It’s terrible when you believe in something so strongly, but you have to look at the reality of it, which is that I couldn’t afford my own defense.’ As part of the settlement, she turned over the rights to her domain. Other defendants had to run banners on their sites promoting Pets Warehouse.”