Charlton Heston, RIP

Charlton Heston holds up a musket at the NRACharlton Heston, famed actor, constitutional rights advocate, and patriot, died Saturday night at the age of 84.

Heston was the quintessential iconic male… using his rugged face and deep voice to play all manner of heroes and leaders – Marc Antony, John the Baptist, Moses, Ben-Hur to name a few. Of course, Heston was better in known later in life as being a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms as granted by the Constitution of the United States of America. He was president of the Nation Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.

What you’ll see from the life of someone like Heston is somebody who’ll stand up for what he thinks is right, period. Indeed it seems he chose the correct side of every issue he addressed. He was marching for civil rights, as he says, “long before Hollywood found it fashionable.” He stood for racial equality and against affirmative action, which is the only stance on those issues that make sense together – but the logic of which still seem to escape the left-leaning elite. He was against infant-murder for any reason, let alone convenience sake. He faced opposition by those who would render American citizens helpless to government tyranny – the crazy left-leaning gun-prohibition lobby and its cronies like Michael Moore and George Clooney, but that never deterred Heston who always seemed to maintain an air of class in the face of Hollywood idiots.

Indeed Heston was a man’s man… a conservative’s conservative. America has lost a patriot.

Parting words from Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the NRA:

Today, my heart is heavy with the loss of Charlton Heston. America has lost a great patriot. The Second Amendment has lost a faithful friend. So have I, and so have four million NRA members and eighty million gun owners. And so has every American who cares about the Bill of Rights, individual liberty, and Freedom.

My heart is heavy, but not without a sense of pride. Pride in a man who devoted his life to his profession with grace and dignity. Pride in an American who devoted himself to civil rights, to correcting injustices around him, and to standing up for what he knew was right. Pride in a friend who stood with me and stood with fellow NRA members to preserve our freedom for future generations. Pride in a patriot who believed with every fiber of his being that our Bill of Rights is the foundation of our freedom that makes Americans singular among the masses of nations.

And now, Charlton Heston has passed that duty to us – the next generation. I am as proud to continue his cause as I am to have known him as my friend.

But today, my thoughts cannot leave the Heston family. They have always had my utmost respect and admiration and, today, they have my deepest sympathy and most earnest prayers, And they will always have my friendship.

Charlton Heston, rest in peace.

April Fool’s Day // Negative99 Gets Hacked By Islamic Terrorists!

Today your RSS feed may have brought up a strange post on Negative99.com… just after a post critical of radical Islam.

hacked// asite NEGATIVE99 infidel

negative99 infidel hav hack pages ha ha

w. bush = 666 and satan _must disembark away the holy peoples oh to glorious allah

My site hacked by Islamic radicalsAnd when you go to Negative99 you see a page that has most certainly been hacked! Oh no! :-) But all is well… it’s April 1, and this blog – which sat out the last few April 1′s – decided to celebrate this one.

April 1 is a day of fun on the internet… when websites will post fake stories and feature special surprises. For example, Google started taking volunteers today for its Mars colonization program in partnership with Virgin Airways. :-)

So after I posted yesterday on my blog about the recent Fitna movie controversy (which was critical of radical Islamism) I decided that a GREAT April Fool’s Day joke would be to hack my own site! I opened up Photoshop and went to town putting together what I would do if I were to hack someone’s page (a weird feeling indeed). One of the hardest things about pretending to be a Muslim extremist – incredulously enough – was finding extremist material on the web to use on the site!? Indeed… what I thought would take 30 seconds actually took 30 minutes of pouring through google search results to try and find SOME terrorist website. I had to settle for grabbing images off of the terrorist groups’ MySpace pages (you can’t make this stuff up). I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like the next time I try and fly in an airplane after all the colorful search strings I sent through Google.

So, I took the hacked-site-image I created and made a special site theme (called “Infidel”) which would ONLY show a “hacked” webpage of my creation, but that would allow my RSS feed to continue to work. This morning before work I initiated the hack.

I was very heartened by the outpouring of concern today via cellphone and email. Many friends and colleagues picked up on the “hack” quickly and started calling me. I was also very flattered that most (about 80%) thought the hack was legit! Cool! :-) And really… in the hustle and bustle of the daily grind who has time to pay attention to the fact it’s April 1? I don’t always… and in fact one year a local radio station’s morning show (Wakin’ Up With the Wolf on PYX106) had me convinced they were bought out and replaced with a Spanish-only show. Oops. :-)

So rejoice, for what it’s worth Negative99.com has survived the clutches of fake Islamist ‘l33t h4x0rs.

FITNA Video Shows Islamic Appeasement Means NO MORE FREE SPEECH

Crazy IslamistsAs an American I love Europe. I love Europe because they’re on point. They’re on the cutting edge of “Oh crap, our land is filled with Muslim extremists!” They’re a sadistic social experiment that gives us in the States an idea of what will happen to us if when we let it.

So the Dutch politician Geert Wilders demonstrates some sac – and a little thing called free speech – by releasing a short-film titled Fitna, which means “division among peoples”. The film is a montage. It includes verses from the Qur’an (Koran, Currahn, Cor-anne, Quho’ron, Koh-ron’n???) that could be taken out of context to incite violence against non-Muslims. Interspersed with these verses are scenes from the media that you’d have to be a cave troll to have missed… cowardly acts of Islamist terrorism (September 11 attacks, Madrid train bombings, etc.)… Muslim children calling Jews “pigs”… Muslim clerics calling for death to Jews and Westerners… you get the idea – just the usual. [please don't confuse the clerics with Barack Obama's pastor... although they're close]

So I watched the film. The premise – that the Qur’an is being used (to some extent) in fueling hatred and violence in the name of Islam – seemed to be well demonstrated (proven?). Indeed, the point seems grossly obvious to anyone with a television. Sadly the point is in dispute. Violently in dispute. Violently in dispute?! Isn’t that a double-negative or a oxy-contradiction? Fortunately I didn’t need the film to see that Islam isn’t always very… umm… “peaceful”? And where would I get that idea?

muslim cartoon theproblem tolerance twist muhammed letterbomb

Remember the cartoons? Remember the Pope’s remarks? This recent brouhaha over Fitna has firmly established a grave pattern… that the very right to free speech can be removed – under threat from an extremist mob – when you have pansies in leadership.

From a Reuters article:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned as “offensively anti-Islamic” a Dutch lawmaker’s film that accuses the Koran of inciting violence.

Ban acknowledged efforts by the government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of the film, which was launched by Islam critic Geert Wilders over the Internet, and appealed for calm to those “understandably offended by it.”

“There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence,” Ban said in a statement. “The right of free expression is not at stake here.”

Did you read that? The UN Figurehead says that “The right of free expression is not at stake here”!? That there is no justification for this? How about no justification for answering an insult with violence? How about no justification for responding to a cartoon with killings? You see… the UN Figurehead knows that there are a small number of Muslims who are wild extremist animals – unfortunately a small percentage of a billion people is still A LOT OF PEOPLE! So instead of acknowledging the problem he jumps down the throat of the guy revealing the problem. Isn’t that just like today’s world leadership?

From a Breitbart article:

An Internet site said Saturday it had removed anti-Islam film “Fitna” by far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders after receiving threats to its staff amid protests by Muslim nations and the UN chief.

The Britain-based Liveleak.com said it pulled down the video, which can still be seen on other websites, including youtube.com. The film was posted to the Internet on Thursday.

“Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove ‘Fitna’ from our servers,” the site said in a statement.

“This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else,” the online statement said.

Wilders said it was “terrible that these threats deal a serious blow to freedom of expression,” but he told Dutch news agency ANP that he understood the decision to withdraw the short film.

So here’s the ploy… threaten the providers of the medium, and scare them into silence. Fortunately, in this case, LiveLeak.com ended up putting the video back up – I give them points for that. And really, this is what it takes. It takes standing up to the threats and the violence. It takes standing strong and saying that being offended is okay… you’ll survive.

I would be remiss here not to mention that although there are a small percentage of Muslims who are Satan incarnate, there are also a small percentage who are disgusted by the sickening and irrational animal displays of the former group. These are the Free Muslims, and you should read more about them.

And actually, another Muslim group that watches extremists – Islam Watch – recently uncovered some extremism that was just covered here in this FoxNews article:

A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.

A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.

“Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet,” the Imam says, according to the report. “If you don’t believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain.”

The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam’s position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.

Click here to watch the interview with Islamic lawyer Anjem Choudary.

“You are innocent if you are a Muslim,” Choudary tells the BBC. “Then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are not a Muslim, then you are guilty of not believing in God.”

Choudary said he would not condemn a Muslim for any action.

Anyways… without further prattle… here’s the Fitna short-film (courtesy of LiveLink courtesy of Google Video):

WordPress 2.5 Released!

WordPress - new release and site redesignWordPress 2.5 has been officially released! :D Rejoice, oh blogging masses!

As I stated in an earlier post (while alpha-testing the software) this is a major software upgrade with a gazillion improvements. As with any massive change there will be some broken WordPress themes and plugins to fix… but the sunshine on the horizon is nearly blinding. I really can’t wait to dive in on this release and start developing websites. I think the huge upgrades to the design and operation of the administration interface is paramount to customer adoption and usability (every developer knows that user self-sustainability cannot be over-stated, period).

And if the new release wasn’t enough, the WordPress website itself just got a sweet redesign too! Very nice, Matt!

From Matt Mullenweg‘s official announcement:

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

Here are some stats from Peter Westwood that he just posted about:

WordPress 2.5 has been released and includes a huge number of changes over the WordPress 2.3 series. Rather than list the changes in detail which would probably take me some days to write out I offer the following statistics and information about the WordPress 2.5 release:

  • In development for 185 days (6 months 3 days to be precise).
  • Changes to 364 files with 54008 insertions, and 29136 deletions for more detail you can view the diffstat output.
  • Patches committed from over 110 different contributors.
  • Over 1300 individual changes made for more detail you can view a complete changelog.

1&1 Internet Hosting = Colossal Suckfest (updated)

1and1 Hosting Sucks1&1 sucks.

I used to use (until 17 minutes ago) 1&1 Internet Hosting for all my websites, including this blog. Now, I’ve had problems with them frequently, but the past 3 days have been beyond anything readily comparable. Over the weekend the server that “hosts” my web content was up… then down… then up… then down. Since yesterday morning it’s been down – 19 hours and counting.

You may ask, “If you’re site is still down how are you blogging right now?” Great question. You see… since my site has been down I’ve had plenty of time to:

  1. Call GoDaddy.com and order REAL web hosting
  2. Migrate all web content (that I backed up manually with Adobe DreamWeaver) to GoDaddy
  3. Create new MySQL databases on GoDaddy’s servers and run SQL population scripts
  4. Change the domain’s DNS listings from 1&1 to GoDaddy
  5. Wait for the so-called internet to propagate my new DNS info
  6. Blog about the colossal suckfest that is 1&1

And I’ve made plenty of calls to 1&1′s Technical “Support” during my run with them… not the fewest of which were the recent salvo of a half-dozen hopeless inquiries. But calling 1&1 Tech Support puts the cliché back in worthless.

I have to go to bed for now… but I will update this post soon.

Here’s an update after a few days of calming down.

My entire set of internet property has been fully migrated – files and databases – to GoDaddy. Everything went smooth and is now working fine (there’s always a few rough edges at first).

After over 48 hours since I formally filed a complaint (which can ONLY be done by actually sending an email to complaint@1and1.com) they finally got back to me.

Thank you for contacting us.

I apologize for the delay of response. I understand that you have experienced downtime with your website. This is something I can only apologize for. The reason for the downtime was due to the issue with the server your sites were on. Our administrators were aware of the issue and have since resolved this matter. As a gesture of goodwill, I have added a month of hosting to your account.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

They added a month of hosting? I lost more than that in advertising revenue! :-( And I like the part about the administrators being “aware of the issue”… yeah, every time I called them I heard the EXACT SAME spiel – “Our server administrators are aware of the issue… they are currently resolving the issue so it won’t happen again”. Whatever… I guess won’t happen again doesn’t include two hours later.

By the way… if you need something a little more robust for your hosting you should check out Peer1 as a good option for managed and colocation hosting services.

WordPress 2.5 (alpha testing)

WordPress logoWordPress, the foremost blogging system used on the internet today, has just released their version 2.5 for alpha testers a couple days ago. I have been testing it… and I have to say that I am impressed.

I love WordPress. I use it for several websites (including the one you’re reading and my personal site). It is easy to use, very extensible, is open source, and you can find metric-butt-tonnes of plugins and ready-made themes for it. As a developer and designer I have been able to create websites whose very core functionality is purely built on WordPress and its hefty list of extras built by the masses for creative goodness sake. Trés cool.

Now, version 2.5 really does to the next level. The back-end admin interface is completely rethought from an admin’s perspective. The design is yet more intuitive than before, and the added features blow your mind. How about single click plugin version upgrades? Built-in Gravatars and photo galleries? :-) Pretty sweet.

It’s still in alpha (I keep telling myself) so you won’t see it on Negative99 for a while… and even when you do you might now be able to appreciate from the front all the beauty and genius that went into the inner-workings and into the back-end… but trust me, it’s there.

Here’s a snippet from WeblogToolsCollection.com.

WordPress Development Blog: 2.5 Sneak Peek I love the staccato description Matt uses to start the post: A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting? The first Release Candidate for WordPress 2.5 is out for those that have been waiting patiently to try out the new features. Matt details out the updates and the new features of 2.5 on the development blog and the good news is spreading in the WordPress circles.

Another article from BlogHerald article.

Eliot Spitzer Goes Bye-bye

Eliot Spitzer with wife - Call girl Amber Dupre on boat in FranceEliot Spitzer resigned his post as Governor of New York State in the wake allegations surrounding his involvement in a prostitution ring. [wikipedia - may be graphic] [AP] This scandal has really rocked New York politics, and living in Albany it’s all we’ve heard on the news this week.

Here’s the short version: Spitzer serves as NY Attorney General and gets the reputation of being a jerk to the business infrastructure… earning him the admiration of leftists and the ire of taxpayers and business-minded citizens. Time Magazine once named this guy “Crusader of the Year”… he was also known as the “Sheriff of Wall Street” and “Eliot Ness”. He was elected Governor of NY in 2006 on a platform of ethics reform and “cleaning up” state politics. His election win was a landslide, and he quickly enjoyed approval ratings of 75%.

Well… he got caught with his hand in the cookie. A federal wiretap got him wiring money to, and coordinating appointments with, a high-priced prostitution service called Emperors Club VIP. Federal investigators believe he paid $80G for prostitutes while Attorney General, and later as Governor.

I guess “cleaning up” is relative.

I was surprised at how many folks were shocked by this. Perhaps I should be surprised that I was NOT shocked. You see… I fully believe that attorneys-turned-politicians are lying to get where they are. I fully believe they blow sunshine at me to try and get my vote. As attorneys, they spend their time twisting the truth and contorting the facts to fit into legal loopholes and litigious tap-dances… scoring them mad cash from both the winners and the losers.

So, becoming a politician seems the next logical step in an attorney’s career path – that way they can start taking money from larger groups of people (called taxpayers). And isn’t it easier to lie to a camera than face-to-face to twelve jurors? Even better… lying to a camera while being flanked by people who know what you are saying may or may not be true – but who are going to benefit somehow – so they smile wide, nod at appropriate times, and clap frequently.

Well… it’s all over for our horny ex-Governor.

The identity of the young, attractive, and misguided girl he was caught with was also outed this week. Her name is Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a New York City singer/model/student/hooker who ranks as 3 out of 7 stars using the Emperors Club VIP rating system (whatever that means). And guess what… this scandal may be the luckiest break this girl could have ever gotten. [AP] She was previously a complete unknown… now her songs are playing on the radio… she is being courted by some modeling (and porn) outlets for work… she will doubtless be paid mega-mullah for a book deal, after which she’ll go on Oprah and be showered with sympathy.

And in the end I’m not surprised by any of this. This has all happened before. Politics/life/sin as usual.

Nitro Racers

Nitro Racers - Flash GameHere’s a great little racing game called Nitro Racers. You choose your car, track, and what type of race you want… and you’re off. You can choose weaker cars when you think you’re good enough to win with them. :-)

This game comes from the folks at GameTeam.com, a beautiful site with loads of Flash goodness, so head on over and show them some love.

[Click here to play!]

Fish

fish - flash gameThis is one of those starkly simple yet insanely addictive Flash games. It is called Fish and is from the folks over at Albino Blacksheep (don’t forget to head over there).

Similarly to the Squares2 game, you have to move you character to avoid “bad” things and hit “good” things. In this game you are a fish… and you must eat smaller fish while avoiding bigger ones. You will get larger as you eat more fish, enabling you to eat larger fish… and so on.

[Click here to play!]

Wasted Sky

Wasted Sky - Flash GameHere’s a great side-shooter called Wasted Sky, from those crazy guys at NewGrounds.com (a treasure trove of Flash goodness – so make sure to head over and show them some love). Wasted Sky is flashy, fast, and crazy… a space shooter that is great for those whose patience doesn’t last more than a minute. ;-)

[Click here to play!]