[ NOTECARDER ] News. Thoughts. Links. 100 words or less.

[ Must-have Greasemonkey Scripts 2010 ]

2010-01-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

If you don't have greasemonkey for Firefox - start here. Then click below to add these awesome modifications to websites you use every day.

Google Search Sidebar for FF3 adds relevant results from Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, Flickr, and Youtube to Google search results page.
This script will enhance the look of Craigslist so that it is more pleasing to the eye, and doesn't look like a goddamn startup.
Craigslist image preview 2 When browsing craigslist, view a listing's images as thumbnails right below the listing. Images expand on mouse-over. Based on "Craigslist image preview" by Jeffrey Palm. Perfect for those fast porn sessions.
OS X Style for Google Reader makes it look beautiful!
Twitter Script: Nested Replies, Custom Search Tabs, Autocomplete, Pagination, RT button, Media Embed, URL Expansion, Hash Tag Search Links, Social Link.
Mailto links to Gmail: Rewrites "mailto:" links to GMail compose links.
Google Book Downloader

There are tons more. But these are my favorites.

P.S. Do you email your friends various links as your surf the web? Then use the Gmail This! Bookmarklet to make it even easier.

[ Notecarder's Signing Off ]

2010-01-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

I've decided to let my ownership of notecarder.com expire, because, let's be honest, the blog has kind of fizzled out over the last few months, and I don't want to pay for it any more.

Fear not! If you are interested in tracking my thoughts on the interweb (or looking into some of the best moments from the 2008 election, you can still visit notecarder at it's new (original) location:

notecarder.blogspot.com

or, as I've said before, you can twitter me, where I think you'll find I've set up a nice little 140 character shop.

Peace, ya'll.

[ TV I'm Watching Right Now ]

2009-08-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

...or why I might possibly, slightly be looking forward to the end of summer.

American Dad
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Family Guy
Flight of the Conchords
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Kings
Lost
Parks and Recreation
Reno 911
Saturday Night Live
The Colbert Report
The Daily Show
The Office
Weeds

To download all of these TV shows, I direct you to the feed I created via ShowRSS. For a complete guide on the illegal downloading of these items, see their FAQ's. Added bonus: No Commercials!

Also, if you haven't already, twitter me.

[ Portland Tutoring Collective Goes Live ]

2009-08-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to tell you about a new tutoring company I started. It's called the Portland Tutoring Collective and it's a co-op of professionally-trained tutors looking to offer a local alternative to the big box companies that are out there. It's not that Kaplan or the Princeton Review are so bad, it's just they pay their tutors obscenely low wages and make them sign restrictive "Non-compete Agreements", designed to keep them from negotiating higher rates or moving onto other opportunities. So... okay, they are that bad.

Basically, we were tired of it, and so my friends and I created an alternative.

In order for our scrappy start-up to have any chance competing against the Kaplans and the Princeton Reviews of the world, we need your help and your voice. Please show your support of me and this new project by helping spread the word. Here are just a few simple ways to root for the little guy and help make sure PTC will be a success:

- Visit our website at PortlandTutoringCollective.com to read all about us.
- Forward this to your friends and family, especially anyone who lives in the Portland area.
- Become fans of ours on Facebook.
- Follow us on Twitter.
- If you have a blog or website, please link to our site. It will give the google bots something to feast on!

Viva la resistance! And long-live Portland!

Cheers!

[ Passive Aggressive Notes ]

2009-06-22T16:13:00.001-07:00

...are cracking me up. Check it out.

[ The Velvet Revolution & the Iranian One ]

2009-06-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

"Walking around [Prague during the Velvet Revolution] the morning we arrived we were approached by three Czech students. After determining that we were not secret police—jeans, leather jackets, and American accents made us likelier to be secret police—they gave us some fliers. They implored us to carry the fliers out of the country with us when we left. They made sure we understood that we would have smuggle the fliers out. We would have to hide them from border guards. We would need to conceal them in our luggage, or rolled up and stuck in our toothpaste tubes, or in our underwear."

Dan Savage, sex columnist extraordinaire has an amazing story of his time in Prague during the Velvet Revolution. It's a must-read and also links to the words of Vaclev Havel on the whole Iranian matter.

[ Guess Who Fucking Said This? ]

2009-06-12T09:37:00.001-07:00

"If [a State] were to permit homosexuals to marry, these marital benefits would... presumably have to be made available to homosexual couples and surviving spouses of homosexual marriages on the same terms as they are now available to opposite-sex married couples and spouses. To deny federal recognition to same-sex marriages will thus preserve scarce government resources, surely a legitimate government purpose."

So who do you think? George Bush? Darth Cheney? Rush, right? Wrong. The answer is good ol' Barack Obama. Yeah. I can't fucking believe it either.

[ Quotable ]

2009-06-08T16:28:00.001-07:00

My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. -Pablo Picasso

[ You Have Already Seen This ]

2009-06-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

But it is hilarious.

[ Comic of the Day: Starbucks ]

2009-06-02T23:54:00.001-07:00

(click the image for a bigger view)

[ California Supreme Court Upholds Citizen's Rights to Discriminate ]

2009-05-26T11:28:00.001-07:00

You probably already heard that Prop 8 was upheld in California. Here's what my good ol' friends are saying on the book of faces:

embarrassed, disappointed and ashamed to be a California citizen today.
California Supreme Court : cowards.
's love for California is once again shaken by the arrogance of a few. Prop 8 is upheld...just to rub it in our face some more.
NOOOO! At least the 18,000 marriages are still valid... but this is a crappy crappy day. #rejectprop8
RT @almightygod Looks like a certain state is getting more wildfires and earthquakes in the near future. #rejectprop8
will be protesting the continuing ban on gay marriage at 5:30 today in response to the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold Prop 8. Information at dayofdecision.org
thinks we need to get our shit together, Cali.
When the highest court in California upholds the blatantly discriminatory Prop 8, who can we turn to for equal protection under the law? We have to rise up and put an end to the legal discrimination and bigotry against gays and lesbians in California. We have to rise up!
brain damage. (quite honestly, this one may not have anything to do with it).

[ I Have A Dream. Gay Rights in America ]

2009-05-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

I never watched American Idol, so I didn't realize the two finalists were a Christian Conservative versus a potentially gay man. The NYT thinks the fact that the Christian won means nothing as it pertains to the gay civil rights movement in America. There are theories, however, as to why Obama has stalled out on all his campaign promises on the issue:

The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to.

Personally, I think he knows he's going to take a hit in his nomination of the Supreme Court Justice (whomever it is), so he's going to take his time on the gay rights issue. What's interesting, though, is how the media keeps putting it back on the table. John Stewart. Rachel Maddow. Everyone's talking about it.

[ I Hate to Have to Do This To You... ]

2009-05-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

"...but can I put you on hold for a few minutes while I research this?" I wonder if the "I hate to have to do this to you" part was in their little script binder, or just an added line from the person I was talking to. In either case, it reinforces why I'm a mac person.

I have been on hold long enough, however, to bang out this entire post, so I must have really stumped them. This may be due to the fact that it's a made up problem and I'm just trying to secure a new battery for my computer.

[ Hubble Telescope Retired ]

2009-05-15T12:43:00.001-07:00

This is the final image the Hubble telescope will ever take. Endings are, somehow, always profound.

[ Antony and the Johnsons ]

2009-05-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

You've heard him before. He's collaborated with Bjork and Cocorosie and he's the fucking bomb. Here's the Teri Gross interview if you get as obsessed with him as I have become:

Antony Hegarty, lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, has a striking sound — his singing has often been compared to Nina Simone's.
Music writer John Hodgman once described Hegarty's voice as "somewhere between male and female, between childish innocence and weary adulthood, at once ethereal and earthy," while Chicago Reader critic Noah Berlatsky writes that he "frames his soaring, throbbing, mannered, and decidedly androgynous voice with complex chamber-music arrangements. ... [But he] doesn't do winking flamboyance or irony — his music is earnestly, languidly, overwhelmingly romantic."

Quick poll - did everyone think he was a black guy too? I certainly did...

[ Obama: Current President, Former Constitutional Law Professor ]

2009-05-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a really interesting article about Obama, the Constitutional Law professor as it pertains to the opportunity the President now has to choose a new Supreme Court Justice:

Former students and colleagues describe Mr. Obama as a minimalist (skeptical of court-led efforts at social change) and a structuralist (interested in how the law metes out power in society). And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions. This may be his distinguishing quality as a legal thinker: an unwillingness to deal in abstraction, a constant desire to know how court decisions affect people’s lives.

[ Comic of the Day: H1N1 ]

2009-05-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Click on the image for a better view...

[ Condoleezza Rice in Stanford ]

2009-05-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

After Condy got out of the White House, she went back to Standford - where she was once the provost - and answered some questions. Now, when a friend pointed me to this clip, she made it sound like Condy was positively schooled at her old school, but looking at it now... I'm not so sure.

[ The Lead Singer of the Silversun Pickups is Not In Fact a Woman ]

2009-04-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

That is all.

[ Youtubeage Up the Wazoo ]

2009-04-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

I have been posting a large number of videos on facebook lately, so here they are.

The first of which is the already viral 47 year-old virgin on Britain's Got Talent. Never been kissed is more than a "shame" lady, it's my fucking worst nightmare, but you are totally precious and have yet to cease to give me the chills.

Here is what happens when you rework the Different Strokes theme music with something a bit more... sinister.

Here is an amazing video about what it might be like to interact with 3D software in a 3D space. It's really poetic and quite beautiful. Microsoft should pay attention.

Here is the President reading Where the Wild Things Are to somebody's kids.

Here is the Where the Wild Things Are movie trailer.

[ The Obamas' tax rate was 32%. He paid $855,323 on $2.65 million earned. ]

2009-04-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

$800 grand in taxes is a huge amount of money, but it's not exactly the robust teabagging that happened all over the country today. Fox pundits were calling it the greatest grassroots demonstration in history, but I'm very skeptical. Apparently, corporate special interests were behind it, pretending to be grassroots.

Rachel Maddow reported a very funny breakdown of it, which my father would no-doubt decry as "librul meedya":

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I do, however, maintain that this photo is a much clearer representation of how well the day of teabagging worked out:

[ If you were a Photographer & didn't want to photograph an interracial couple & then you got sued, would you be Surprised? ]

2009-04-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

No? Me neither, and yet a photographer who got sued for refusing to photograph a gay couple certainly was...

MSNBC has an interesting article on the problems religious organizations are facing when refusing to offer their services to the gays. Now, I've written before how I think business owners should keep a certain amount of autonomy, but notice how my argument didn't include discrimination.

A business owner can't kick someone out of their store for being black, such should be the same for being gay... and had said organizations come to the table when anti-gay discrimination laws were getting written, perhaps some exclusions could have been drafted in cases of religious objections...

[ Deconstructing the National Organization for Marriage Ad ]

2009-04-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

But, as the Human Rights Campaign Discovered, these people are actors:

And you know what else? Everything they say is bullshit...

[ What Happens When Your Pro-Choice Politics Conflict with Your 1st Amendment Priorities? ]

2009-03-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

You get DNC Chair Tim Kaine who signed into legislation a Virginia law allowing pro-life activists to buy a special license plate that says so. The revenue from the specialty plates will go to crisis-pregnancy centers, which many abortion-rights backers believe proselytize against abortion and encourage women to keep unwanted children.

This has, of course, infuriated pro-lifers. I, on the other hand, am thrilled -- these license plates will be just another way to discern who I never need to hang out with.

[ I Gave a Lot of Money to Democratic Candidates Over the Past Year & They're Not Getting Any More from Me Until Pot Is Decriminalized ]

2009-03-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

... from the comments section on a Huff blurb about legalizing weed in this country.

I find it very interesting that at the intersection of a failing economy and a violent war in Mexico, calls to legalize weed have been increasingly public lately. They were debating it on MSNBC the other day, and the guy who was against legalization was such a stupid douche, saying bullshit like "if we legalize rape, then there wouldn't be any rapists either."

To be clear, smoking a little dope, a drug that - unlike alcohol - can never kill you, no matter how much you use, is a little different than raping someone.

In related news, I've gotten into a habit of going through the comments when I read articles online. I think it offers a context that's sometimes more instructive than the article itself. I suspect historians twenty, thirty years from now will mine these comments for clues about the national mood.