The Blogosphere Speaks!
This is a really old “test” video I forgot about. Yes, it’s the blogosphere, live on Roblimo.com, in all its blogospheric glory. Now, at last, you know what the blogosphere looks and sounds like. Cute, isn’t it? ![]()
This is a really old “test” video I forgot about. Yes, it’s the blogosphere, live on Roblimo.com, in all its blogospheric glory. Now, at last, you know what the blogosphere looks and sounds like. Cute, isn’t it? ![]()
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You’d think our local developers and real estate investors would have learned a thing or two from our ongoing real estate market correction, in which the public en masse has decided not to pay $300,000 for $150,000 houses or to cough up $150,000 for repainted $75,000 houses in marginal neighborhoods. But it seems that some of them are still determined to live in a world of unreality and to keep building houses so far away from jobs and shopping that commuting to and from them will be insanely expensive for anyone silly enough to buy a place that requires a two-car lifestyle. And if that’s not bad enough, the rest of us are expected to pay ever-increasing fuel bills to haul the children of sprawl-area residents to and from school by bus. It’s time to say “no” to more suburban sprawl — or at least to make sure far-out developments pay their own way and that the investors who hope to profit from them post bonds large enough to clean up their mess if and when they go broke and leave empty lots and half-built, decaying houses behind them.
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Few people in the Bradenton area know that a lot of the videos I make — the ones for my “day job” — are about computer software. This is a fairly good sample of narrated software screen-capture video. It’s #1 from a set of 3. You can watch the others at Linux.com.
PS - If you need software demo or training videos, Talk to me. I love making screen capture videos, and I’m obviously rather good at it. ![]()
Florida politics are great fun. In this insignificant story, a neighbor of mine named Bill Johnson decided to run for mayor. No money… no poltical experience… but what the heck. He got around 12% of the vote, which meant that neither incumbent mayor Wayne Poston, with about 46%, or pre-Poston mayor Bill Evers (who has already lost to Poston twice but may figure the third times' a charm) got a majority.
Runoff time!
Bill Johnson milked his moment of fame for all it was worth, delaying his endorsement first one day, then two. Friday, November 9, 2007, he finally held a press conference that drew a couple of print reporters and a cameraman from cable TV's "Bay News 9" but no one from our one hyperlocal broadast TV station, Channel 7 in Sarasota.
Oh, well. Bill Johnson read his prepared statement, the Bradenton Herald reporter dutifully talked with endorsee Bill Evers, who mostly whined about how the Mean Ol’ Herald beats up on him all the time. And Poston supporter Janean Martin had some words to say, too.
This video is 9 minutes of local politics, Bradenton style. At least our (male) state representatives haven't been caught trying to pick up a male undercover cop in a public bathroom like the one over in Merritt Island.
I own and wear a lot of Slashdot t-shirts, so it’s no wonder that people I meet here in Bradenton often ask me, “What’s a Slashdot?” Sometimes I try to answer them, but since this part of Florida is for the most part in about 1997 when it comes to IT & WWW technology, I tend to get a lot of blank stares when I try to explain Slashdot. More and more, I tend to just say, “It’s a discussion site for techies and you wouldn’t like it.” So I found this video on YouTube that’s about Slashdot and decided to post it here. If you don’t know what and why Slashdot is, it’ll probably confuse you more than it enlightens you, but what the hey! Slashdot’s as much of a cult as a website. It’s something you either get or don’t get. And so is this video by Carl Davis.
If you haven’t seen the Politifact website yet, it’s time for you to check it out. My favorite section is the Truth-O-Meter, where the site’s editors check the truthiness (Steven Colbert word) of various presidental candidates’ statements. Don’t look for political bias here, because you won’t find it — just good old-fashioned fact-checking with a cool Web interface to make it more fun than bland words on a printed page…
One sad but salient fact about America’s current standing in the world is that lots of our old allies now dislike our country, and countries that used to mildly dislike us now openly hate us. Our next president had better be used to being hated and attacked and called names, and able to function competently in an international atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. Hillary Clinton has been repeatedly attacked by right-wing nutjobs, left-wing wackos, and every single candidate for president in both parties, yet she keeps on keepin’ on. Whether you love Hillary Clinton or hate her and call her names, you’ve got to admit that her ability to withstand hatred is a necessary quality for a post-Bush president, and that she deserves our respect (and possibly our votes) on that basis alone. But another necessary quality for cleaning up the G.W. Bush mess is managerial competence, and this is an area where Mitt Romney is the only shining star in the current constellation of candidates.
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