MindlessCode.net

Seen on a T-Shirt:

Geeks are people too

Oh, and what is this? According to this article, a geeks are:

Americans who use the Internet, have a home computer and own two or more high-tech gadgets.

Oh, come on.

Anyone have any geek “slogans” to stick on a T-Shirt? I’m thinking about making some…maybe.

All I can say is that AAA totally rocks. AAA is a local theatre group made up of a bunch of teens who do all sorts of amazing acting in a basement theatre (which is also amazing, but that’s a different story). I just went to see Wicked: The Musical a few hours ago…it was totally awesome. You guys totally rock(ed) my world! (Although if you actually read this, then I’m a little worried–but leave a comment and say hi!. :))

Yeah, yeah, so you all already know, but Google released Google Checkout today. It doesn’t exactly seem like a “PayPal” killer, in that it’s an easy way to move cash around. Instead, it’s a way for people to buy stuff without creating a million account/password pairs and sending out their credit card info to everyone. Very Cool Stuff. It’s got what looks like a decent web API, which I’ve been toying with. I’m not sure if I’ll make www.wildgardenseed.com use it yet… Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably yes, though.

It seems like it might require some serious osCommerce hacking, as Google Checkout isn’t just a way of paying…it’s more a way for users to keep track of their web orders, view info about them, etc, all in one place. This means that the merchent needs to send the order data to Checkout in the form of a base64 encoded XML file. This means that the user isn’t entering all their info into osC, which means the order never shows up in the osCommerce admin section. I guess with a lot of hacking, it could be made to show up, but it would be hard. So…I’m leaning toward just having the product show up in Google Checkout and manually dealing with it there. We’ll see…

Need new music? Go check out Jonathan Coulton. You’ve probably already heard of him–his song Code Monkey was posted up on Slashdot a few months ago. Anyway, go check his music out! Chiron Beta Prime, Till the Money Comes, Madelaine, When You Go, The Presidents, Furry Old Lobster, Curl, and That Spells DNA…check them out! And the other too, of course.

Sleeeppp…iissss…gettttiinng…meeeeeeeee.

Dammit, Google is always "stealing" "my" ideas! When you go to http://www.google.com, they must use some fancy AJAX scripting to suck the contents of your brain out through your fingertips and into a secret government database somewhere. And they get to take a look at it too.

Whatever, that probably looks really stupid.

But yes, I did have an idea very similar (almost exactly the same?) as Google’s Browser Sync Firefox extention a few months ago. Right down to encrypting/decrypting the info client-side. Let’s call my idea “OpenProfile” for now. My idea was to have a decentralized system where users are identified by their email address (e.g., tajmorton@gmail.com). The client would try to connect to gmail.com and log in with tajmorton. If it failed because Google wasn’t running an OpenProfile server, then the client would go and ask a centralized OpenProfile server who is responsible for providing service to tajmorton@gmail.com. The client would then connect to that server like normal.

Although this makes the system somewhat centralized, the entire network would not fall over if the centralized box went offline. It does encourage use of a universally unique identifier (no two people can have the same email address), which I think is really needed. It would be so nice to be able to go to any forum, blog, website (slashdot, digg, kuro5hin, etc), and webservice and not have to go through the same hassle of registering, choosing an username, filling out your email address, name, etc, etc, etc. [1]

OpenProfile wouldn’t just be for your Firefox profile. My idea was that many applications could store their configuration in your OpenProfile account, and you could go from computer to computer carrying around your config info. Apps that could use OpenProfile off the top of my head:

• Web Browsers (bookmarks, saved passwords, etc)
• Email clients (account info)
• IM Clients (account info)
• RSS Feed Readers?
• Newsgroup readers?

Obviously other apps, too. For some applications, carrying around settings without data wouldn’t make too much sense (word processors, for example). OpenProfile would be for people on the road who just want to check their email and chat with their friends, not those who want to write their thesis/book/code at a cyber cafe computer. I guess OpenProfile could end up being a whole remote file system, but network file systems are always so terribly slow (unless a genius designs them).

That’s my rambling nothingness for the night…

[1] I guess this is what OpenID is trying to achieve, however they chose a website URL instead of an email address to identify people. I don’t fully understand the logic behind this, but it seems a bit weird to me, as not everyone has webpages, and some people have more than 1. Also, adoption currently sits at ~2 (LiveJournal and Blogger, TMK).

Wow, I haven’t posted here forever. I’ve been buried under the bureaucracy of the DMV and school system. Here in Oregon, you can’t get your “Learners Permit” (a kind of semi-drivers license that lets you drive, but only if you have an adult in the car) unless you are enrolled in a school, have a high-school diploma, or a GED certificate. Being home schooled, it’s a little hard for me to prove that I’m enrolled in school, so we decided that I might as well just take my GED and get it over with. However, you can’t take your GED until your 16! So, this April, we started slogging through all the bureaucracy. First, we went to LBCC and got my GED authorization form. This we filled out, then sent in, they screwed with it, sent it back to us, we filled it out some more, and then sent it back to them. They then sent me my “Authorization to test for the GED”. Then, we went to the DMV to get my Photo ID, so I could prove that I was actually Taj Morton when I went to fill out more GED forms and take my test. However, we didn’t have my “real” birth certificate, only the one from the hospital (which apparently isn’t legally valid). So, after getting my real birth certificate from vital records, I got my ID. Then, we headed out to LBCC, where I filled out and signed a million forms. The result? I’ll be able to test in July.

Anyway, here’s something that I found pretty cool: GUIs on ToastyTech. All those old OSes that you weren’t alive to see. I found it very cool…finally I know what Microsoft Bob looked like–ugg!

Yay, we’re going to all 3 fiddle camps. They’re all in July, 2 of them are back-to-back. Fun!