Two Cents and a Thousand Words

If I wasn’t interested in web development, photography, and the environment, I’d love to be a modern history researcher.

One of our longer assignments in my History of Maine class is to read The Same Great Struggle by Andrea Constantine Hawkes. The book details the migration of a family from 1634 – 1997.

So yeah, it probably sounds pretty boring. What I’m finding, though, is that there’s a lot of interesting information that’s relevant to my area. The town of Unity, not far from where I grew up, was incorporated by one of the family members outlined in the book. One thing you have to understand about Maine: often towns are named after countries (Mexico, Peru, China…), famous people (Hampden, Castine…), or European towns (Belfast, Bath…). In central Maine there’s a unique collection of towns, though, that don’t really follow the rules: Unity, Freedom, Liberty, Hope, and others. I’ve always wondered where these towns’ names come from, and I found this passage in the book very interesting:

“Many of the men who came with their families to farm in central Maine were Revolutionary War veterans… The names they chose for their new settlements such as Washington, Freedom, New Canaan, Union, Hope, and Liberty reflected their politics as well as their hopes for their futures of the land. (Hawkes, 53)”

There ya go. According to the notes, that information was most likely originally found in Liberty Men by Alan Taylor.

After I decided to look it up on the Internet, I found something else interesting. I’d always noticed driving through Prospect that it was founded in 1794, the same year as Hampden. Apparently they were incorporated on the same day – a day when they were broken off from their parent town of Frankfort.

Apparently some of the new strains of the Big Four viruses (Netsky, Beagle, Welchia, and Sober) are getting a little smarter. I just got a Beagle.M-infected message. So what’s so good about this one? Here’s what the body of the message was:

Dear user of Mainesites.net e-mail server gateway,

Your e-mail account will be disabled because of improper using in next
three days, if you are still wishing to use it, please, resign your
account information.

For further details see the attach.

Password:

Kind regards,
The Mainesites.net team http://www.mainesites.net

Would be tempting if I didn’t OWN mainesites.net.

So, once again, DON’T OPEN ATTACHMENTS unless you SPECIFICALLY asked for them. If you have a question, e-mail the person who e-mailed you and ask if the attachment is safe. Be ESPECIALLY wary of attachments between 20 and 30 KB.

I ph33r the day when hackers learn good English and good social engineering.

Leo Laporte‘s last day of hosting The Screen Savers was tonight. Leo’s been doing the TechTV thing for six years, and his departure from a full-time TechTV schedule comes as Comcast bought the network for about $300 million.

I don’t think I need to relaunch into a history of how much I have loved TSS over the past few years (like the fact that I still have a spindle of 100 DivX’d episodes from 2001-2, that video I did a while back, and the 4000+ posts I have to my name on the Leoville forums). Sufficed to say, Leo’s helped me learn a lot and have fun while doing it. TSS was a regular staple in my TV diet for a couple years straight.

It’s funny, too, because I’ve still been trying to figure out just why I loved that darn show so much. The answer came to me while I was watching another one of my favorite shows from the past, Home Improvement. The Screen Savers IS Tool Time, and Leo’s Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor (just substitute the grunts with “Buy my book!”). It’s a show where you don’t even realize you’re learning; you just have fun watching, and the people who make the show have just as much fun as you do. It’s relaxed, it’s comfortable… and it works.

TSS will still be a great show; there’s a lot of talent among the crew (including the kilt-wearing Patrick Norton and the “dark tipper” Kevin Rose), and Leo will still make some appearances. Leo’s also been doing two weekend shows on KFI 640, a California AM radio station with an Internet stream available.

Thanks, Leo, and keep up the great work.

Apparently the new Unreal Tournament 2004 took a course from the Worms Armageddon school of design.

Not only do the interface elments of both games look similar, but they both use exactly the same hover sound (at least, as far as I can tell).

Frag your friends, and then hear this.

I don’t usually follow the high school basketball tourneys around here, but I picked up a copy of the March 7 Maine Sunday Telegram and found a great picture on page D1.

To see the photo, head over to the story about the Deering High win and click on “More” under the photo in the middle of the story. I’d love to post it here, but there’s that pesky copyright thing.

Human emotion is wonderful.

Way to offend human rights activists, Democrats, and just about anyone who wants the campaigns of the leader of the free world to… umm… follow the law. If this is true, it could be potentially embarassing.

Bush campaign gear made in Burma

As Lockergnome says, “Oops!”

“I’m shocked. To be accused of being a whore is one thing, but to be accused of being a weblogger is actionable.”

– Register reporter Andrew Orlowski, after being suspected of writing the anonymous Belle de Jour blog

Which would you prefer?

2:30 AM fire alarm or 12:30 AM fire alarm while you’re in the shower?

And wouldn’t it be funny if it was caused by the midnight breakfast that our hall’s governing board is putting on tonight? :-/

One of the problems with advocacy is that it often goes too far or gets too out of hand. That’s why I was relieved a new campaign around campus; screenshots from the Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen feature (a wonderful page) were taped to lightposts and later benches around campus, each focusing on a different fallen soldier.

It’s great to see that there’s a good effort out there to do this kind of thing. Two years ago, people around campus were angered when an individual or group spray-painted “STOP RAPE” on one of the sidewalks on campus. Campaigns like the current screenshot one aren’t blatant or accusatory; instead, they cause people walking by to wonder and think. That’s the kind of advocacy that’s needed.

From my Kelley heritage, happy St. Pat’s Day!

Now go listen to some Dropkick. You’ve got about 23 minutes.