Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Last night while goofing off on the computer I heard the coyotes outsdie begin to howl. Soon the neighborhood dogs were barking up a storm in jealous rivalry. Obviously, the coyotes had found yet another meal in the wilderness that is South Pasadena.
After work and dinner today, I took the girls for a walk behind the house to the righ-of-way area where I last saw the coyotes. I told them we were looking for coyotes and coyotes signs. The said, “What are coyote signs?” “Dead animals.”, I replied.
Off we went. Not 100 yards into the walk, did we find the first cat remains. I poked at them and we discussed what part of the cat they were. The girls weren’t squeamish, just eager to find more. After a bit more, we found the first skull.

Obviously a cat skull, the coyotes must have had a nice meal from this little feline. As we wandered were found the remains of at least four cats, possibly six. Four different furs and large distances between the remains mean well fed coyotes. We found a second skull that was even larger and still had stink coming from it.
We found several places with feathers strewn about. Even Bluejay feathers, so the cats were quite busy as well. The best was finding a cat collar that was still closed. There were teeth marks on the leather, so you know the coyotes played with it a while as they devoured the poor kitty.

Here’s what the remains of a leg looked like. It didn’t smell bad and the fur still felt smooth.
When we got home, we told Michele about our adventure and she wants to go see for herself. Perhaps we’ll head up to another unexplored part of the right-of-way tomorrow.
So get your ass up from the computer, get yourself outside, and see what carnage is going on in your neighborhood.

If you were one of the people that lost their weblog at weblogs.com I’d like to help get you back on your feet.
I pay for server space that is home to 30+ friends and family sites. Adding another 4-5 people won’t kill me. It’s full featured hosting with shell access.
So if you need some webspace, and you are one of the weblogs.com homeless, drop me an email. I’ll formally offer a year of hosting for free at a minimum, no editorial interference. I’m busy enough providing tech support to my wife and mother’s sites, so I hope you are semi-tech proficient.
I can’t help everyone, but I’ll do my part to help a little.

Let’s see here.
SixApart announces they will charge for their software and the Blogosphere comes unglued.
Dave Winer kills several thousand weblogs and barely a peep.
Here’s a Netcraft article on the debacle (via Halley)
So in summary:
SixApart gives away something for free, addresses money concerns, announces pricing scheme that includes free version, community views them as a ‘sellout’.
Winer gives away something for free, address money concerns, kills several thousand weblogs with no warning, community says ‘people should be grateful’.
WTF?

Matt (not my brother Matt, he stopped blogging, the lazy f*ck…) had a photo contest to give away a few Gmail invites. He posted the winners today. Check out all the images, they are pretty neat.
I have to say that one of the winning photos is amazing. This picture of the sun is outstanding.
Here was my entry…

Lots of stuff to debrief you about…
Riddick
Michele and I went to see Chronicles of Riddick. If they remove the middle third of the movie it would be great. In the middle, they go to some planet full of cool special effects, but entirely lacking in plot or storyline. Sure, red space lion things are cool, but why are they in the movie.
If you want to see Riddick kill lots of zerging mullet-headed space bag guys and take his sunglasses off many times, go see the movie.
Daughters
My daughter spent most of their weekend with Michele’s mom. They are tired but happy. I feel so blessed that Zoe and Mira have 6 loving grandmothers and grandfathers in their life. The see little anger and tons of love. With a childhood such as this, we know that they will turn out to be wonderful adults. I feel like a bad dad when I say things about going to bed, eating too much candy, and brushing teeth, but it’s my job.
Bruce Sterling’s daughter is posting on his weblog. Cool stuff. To top it off, she plays Lineage II and uses the word ‘suxxored’ correctly. I can easily see my daughters heading down this road in a few years.
Internet guy
There’s a guy on the internet that invented some cool stuff several years ago. I appreciate the good work. Since then it appears to me that he has mainly sat around and whined daily about the rest of the world. Other smart people like Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, Gene Spafford, and other have quietly continued to work toward making the net a better place with their ego firmly in check. This other guy’s ego is out of control. It kinda pisses me off that other people think he’s someone that people should listen to about current issues. It’s fine if he wants to rest on laurels, but he should stop taking pot shots at people trying to do good new things. I removed his feed from my aggregator and will stop reading his constant stream of effluvium. I suggest you do the same if you have any idea what I’m talking about.
Cargo
The latest issue of Cargo is out. It remains a Cruft Recommendation. Articles on cocktail gear, laptops, the science of anti-perspirants, and even a convincing article on pedicures. Squidly says to look at Sync Magazine, but until then, Cargo still gets the thumbs-up.
Fahrenheit 9/11
I watched the trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11. Boy, the conservatives are going to come completely unglued when this comes out. While I may not agree with everything Moore says and does, I have to agree with Teddy Roosevelt that “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Last night I went to a City Council Meeting to speak publically as I am wont to do.
The basic issue was whether the city should replace a stable that borders the Arroyo Seco Park with the 13th soccer field in the city. I think not.
At 6:30PM the meeting convened,

The special committee that worked for seven months presented their results to the council and the assembled masses. The committee recommended that the stables remain and felt there were serious problem with the soccer plan.
The crowd was 90% made up of stable supporters.

One after one the public got up and spoke there piece. After a number of these meetings, I’ve come to realize that most people don’t have a clue on how to make a point. There are basically two flawed methods they use, the Ramble, and the Script Read. In the case of the Ramble, the person gets to the mic and simply can’t make a point, they wander off into personal anecdotes that mean nothing. In the Script Read, they start rattling off a list of facts a figures quickly, making no eye contact and lacking all emotion.
I prefer the Previous Support method. When trying to convince the Council of something, you need to tie it to their previous support of another issue. By mentioning their stance on another issue, you appear to show respect and agreement with them. This makes them suggestive to your point. You then make an apt compairison to the current issue, explaining how their previous reasoning still applies.
The majority of speakers were in support of the stables and the general tone was running against the soccer fields. The last public speaker was the owner of the stables. Rather than basking in the warm glow of support, thanking his supporters, and offering to work with the city to address any concerns, he took and angry tone. Stupid move. He stridently argued about how he was doing nothing wrong and how the city had failed him in settling things. Deeper and deeper he dug his hole.
I left after three hours, while the council was still discussing what to do. In the end, they are probably not going to put in the soccer fields, but most likely they will entertain other offers on running an equestrian center there.
I tell you, the more I see of politics at the local level, the more I both love and fear it. Do yourself a favor, go to the next city council meeting in your town. You won’t be disappointed.

In the comments of my last post, Jason mentioned that my RSS feed did not have full posts. That’s true, but not entirely. The confusion is over what feeds I have and how they are declared.
Jason and I emailed a bit over this and I’ll steal from his replies liberally to explain things. I briefly met Jason at SXSW and he’s quite the web/blog/syndication saavy guy. Consider him getting full props for the meat of this post.
What Jason mentioned was that my RSS feed did not have full posts. The RSS 1.0 feed I was using didn’t.
I had three different feeds:
RSS 1.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.rdf -> not full feeds
RSS 2.0 -> https://www.cruftbox.com/index.xml -> full feeds
Atom -> https://www.cruftbox.com/atom.xml -> full feeds
So there were two things I was doing wrong. I didn’t think that RSS 1.0 could have full posts. I was wrong, you actually can. Jason shared with me a RSS 1.0 Full Post template for MovableType that I put in place.
The second thing I was doing wrong was that I was ‘advertising’ that I only had a RSS 1.0 feed. The syndication aggregator I use parses the page looking for possible feeds, so I never saw this problem.
In the main index of the page, there are link tags that explicitly call out where feeds are located so that an aggregator knows exactly where to find your feeds. The only link I had called out was the one for RSS 1.0.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.rdf" />
I wasn’t specifically calling out my Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds. To do that, I added these lines to my main index file.
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="https://cruftbox.com/index.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="https://cruftbox.com/atom.xml" />
I decided that while I wouldn’t get rid of the RSS 1.0 feed, I wouldn’t advertise it any more. For all intents and purposes, I am telling the world that I only have Atom & RSS 2.0 feeds.
Make sense? Thanks again to Jason for his keen eye.

Many of you people that read here, I read your sites. Some of the time I use a news aggregator to read your sites.
The trouble is many of you don’t provide full posts in your RSS feeds. I can only read the first few lines. So, if it would’t be too much trouble, would you please replace your old RSS 2.0 template with this one:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="https://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:sy="https://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
    xmlns:admin="https://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns:rdf="https://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:content="https://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
    <title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
    <link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
    <description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
    <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
    <dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator>
    <dc:rights>Copyright <$MTDate format="%Y"></dc:rights>
    <dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date>
    <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="https://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" />
    <admin:errorReportsTo rdf:resource="mailto:<MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries>"/>
    <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
    <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
    <sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>
<MTEntries lastn="15">
    <item>
      <title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
      <link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link>
      <description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
      <guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$></guid>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<$MTEntryBody$>]]></content:encoded>
      <dc:subject><$MTEntryCategory remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></dc:subject>
      <dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date>
    </item>
</MTEntries>
 </channel>
</rss>
That’s a Movable Type template, so if you’re not using Movable Type it’s not for you.

Nigritude Ultramarine

A few months ago, my buddy Paul mentioned the fascination with multi-bladed razors.
I recently ran out of my regular razors and stopped by the supermarket to pick up some new ones. I was surprised to see a FOUR BLADED RAZOR.

Yep, you read that right, four effing blades! Of course, I had to buy it.
When I got home, I examined the package a little closer. I was happy to read all the vital info.

I’m just the kind of man that needs “maximum shaving power” from “The Most Souped Up Disposable Razor — Ever!“. Four blades AND four lube zones! Who can ask for more?
You simply must love the terminology that has found it’s way into razor advertising. Note that this is an ‘All Terrain Shaver’ and has ‘High Endurance’. What these two things have to do with shaving I don’t know, but they do make you feel more manly if you buy it.
Some light shavers or women may not know what a lube zone is, so I will explain. To make razors more complicated, manufacturers have added these little strips of gel to the tops of razors. When the razor gets wet, the gel dissolves slightly and leaves some sort of coating on the skin. It never made sense to me because anyone that is shaving with a razor has shaving creme slathered on their face already. But hey, it ‘soups up’ the razor, so whatever.
Take a look at the razor head and indeed, there are four blades.

That stuff in pale green are the ‘lube zones’.
I’ve shaved with the razor twice, and to put it succinctly, it sucks.
The blades really don’t shave that well and I had to go over areas a couple times to get things smooth. This is bad since it leads to razor burn. When using a good razor, you can feel it cutting and know that it’s working. This razor feels like a plastic bar moving over the skin and you aren’t sure if it’s actually shaving.
The lube zones turned my face into a slimy mess. All the green crap covered my face and I literally had to scrub it off with a washcloth. Way too much slime.
Now that I’ve tried one kind of four blade razor, I guess I have to review the others…