Relativity is everything.

Do yourself a big favor. Take some time today or tomorrow to feel small. Grab a chair and sit outside for 15 minutes. No cell phone, no laptop, no music. Sit. Observe. Use your senses.

I did that tonight. I grabbed a banana as soon as I got home and went out on my upper balcony. I sat in a chair and I observed, and it made me feel good.

The sky straight above housed the moon, a few stars, and was a deeply saturated blue. As it lowered toward the horizon it first faded to a light blue, then to a pinkish orange, finally making it’s mind up and settling on orange and red, with pink clouds distributed sparingly above the mountains.

I traced a plane blinking across the sky high above me. I noticed how the tree over to the right seemed to be entirely black and two dimensional. I could hear people with destinations driving somewhere off into the distance and healthy people trotting by on the sidewalk a few stories down. A porch light turned on as someone was heading out to pick up dinner.

All of this made me think. Being raised a christian, my immediate thought turned to a man behind the scenes before correcting my thoughts — something a born-christian, converted-atheist apparently has to do pretty frequently. The longer I sat and observed, the more I realized there’s way too much free will all around us for this to be scripted. In my life, as much as I’ve tried to believe that someone has their finger on the dial of this celestial train set, I always come back to logic and reason. I’m an intellectual person, and I have always had trouble trusting my mind to the status quo. As such, I question. I sit, I observe, I question, and I reach my own conclusion.

Being raised a christian has embedded in me that God exists. My doubting nature has been the opposition to this constant, though, and about 5 years ago I switched from christian to agnostic. We, as humans, will never be able to know if God is around. Some who claim to know are really only talking about the strength of their faith. The fact I keep running into is that we cannot know, one way or another. The only truth I do know is that if God is out there then we haven’t heard from him yet or been able to observe him with our physical senses. In my mind, though, everything I know and have experienced has taught me that such a being cannot exist in this world… and so I changed my religious status to Agnostic-Atheist.

This post, which started out so descriptively worded, may offend religious people. That’s not my intent. I’m not a heartless, wreckless person out to destroy morals. I have morals of my own and my parents made sure of that. I’m not evil.

I’m actually anti-war… war means killing, and unlike most of the middle states, I don’t believe in mafia style justice and deregulated hunting of human beings. What this country has been through is bad, yes… but we have to look at what we’ve done to the rest of the world. We’ve been on our high horse for a while, but we’re not invincible.

These are just a few of my thoughts. Taking a few minutes to myself has given me a little dose of reality. The world keeps turning, and I strongly suggest taking some time to yourself this week to relax and observe it.

Ok, so my little story about Jakob Lodwick and Norbum made a few waves. It has taken off quite a bit… and so far no one is talking. A few people know, but again, no talkie. It is fun to guess, though.

First, I don’t think David Karp is involved. He’s having fun with it, but I think involving him in the initial speculation was inaccurate.

Mareen Fischinger has given me a fresh idea, though. In a recent tumblr post, she put up a picture and called it “The beautiful town of Norbum”. This picture has fueled my next guess.

Jakob Lodwick is moving to the valley.

Is this it? Recently single and jobless Jakob may be looking for a fresh start, and what better place than Silicon Valley to work on his next project? In the process, Jakob may have acquired himself a nice little house, which is where Mareen’s picture was taken from.

So why Norbum? What is a Norbumist? What is Norbumism?

Northern California is often referred to as “NorCal”. So, perhaps Jakob is planning a little venture, blog, tumblog, etc. about life in Northern California… maybe “bumming around”? Is Norbum the name of the new Lodwick palace? Are party goers nicknamed Norbumists? Is the practice of attending Lodwick parties now called Norbumism?

It’s a stretch, I know… but it’s fun to guess!

Ok, so I don’t have an award show, or even an awards ceremony… or even an award process. I just wanted to share with you what I consider to be the video of the year. This video will make you want to work at Vimeo. The employees of Vimeo are the ones who made this video… enjoy!

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

I’ve been lightly following a certain set of stories regarding Adobe phoning home whenever you start up CS3 products. The basic idea is this; When you start a CS3 product, it sends a few packets of information to 192.168.112.2o7.net, which is actually just a subdomain for the website 2o7.net, which is owned by Omniture, a statistics company.

I’m not saying they’re giving away my social security number, I’m not saying there are even any privacy issues here. However, two things are awry in this scenario. The first is that they’re trying to hide the website address by disguising it as a local-looking IP address. The second is that they’re phoning home, no matter what the information is, without my permission.

Guess what, Adobe? THIS IS SPYWARE.

John Nack, the product manager for Adobe Photoshop, took it upon himself today to write a blog post about the situation. In this post, Mr Nack is lashing out at users and customers without providing a single answer.

The main point that John keeps bringing up is that a lot of people are on holiday, so it’s the perfect time to put up some major speculative post, because the companies involved won’t be able to respond. He likens it to 2 posts that have occured in the past two consecutive years… which are also about Adobe.

John, I think you’re a little too concerned with yourself. The prior posts and this one occurring around the holidays are merely coincidence.

In addition, John, you quoted Doug Miller saying that “There are only 3 places we track things via Omniture anywhere in or around our products”. Given that this 2o7.net example was not listed, it makes this statement inaccurate and therefore quotable with a grain of salt. You can’t deny that the products are contacting 2o7.net… so there are 4 places you track things via Omniture.

Nowhere in your post do you address the following; 1) Why is the address intended to be hidden? 2) What information is Adobe collecting?

Instead of peddling the idea that your customers and users are crying wolf, and instead of defending yourself to the point of insulting your customers intelligence (Crying wolf?? No common sense??), you should concentrate on finding out the real reason behind the 2o7.net domain.

Until then, you should probably shut your mouth before your foot ends up in it. Oh, and run your post by HR next time if you want to save a bit of face.

I’m starting this with a disclaimer. This blog is not about politics… generally it’s about web stuff. However, I need a platform, so if you’re a regular reader and this offends you, ignore it please.

Time to cut to the chase. If you support Ron Paul, you MUST DO THIS FOR RON PAUL TO EARN THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION.

(Read more…)