Samuel Clemens

Recently I come across a number of references to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and I have been reminded that he is not just "that guy who wrote Huckleberry Finn" but was a social and political activist and was far more prolific in his outspoken and controversial opinions than the average person is taught to believe.   Here's Wikipedia's summary:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),^[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an Americanhumorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called theGreat American Novel,^[2] and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations.^[3][4] During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.

Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."^[5]

Alas, like so much of what is said in the world, America has chosen to pick the idyllic and beautiful things to commemorate and brushes the realistic and sometimes ugly truths under the rug of time and sheer mass of human accomplishments.   In Mark Twain's own words:

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), 

Letter to Mrs Foote, Dec. 2, 1887

I can just taste the sarcasm in that quote . . . yum!

About the tenth thing in the past few months that I have run across by Mark Twain is this cartoon clip from a claymation film titled The Adventures of Mark Twain.  Where I saw it originally, the author remarked that "it is definitely not for children."  I very much disagree.  Hiding the truth and "all things in the least bit unpleasant" from our children does them no favor.  

I feel that much of the time people use that as an excuse because they don't want to take the time to sit with their children and talk to them about it.  Give the children a chance to give their own thoughts about the story, and to speculate about what the author might have had in mind.  Discuss it.  And, Oh my God, THINK ABOUT IT!   

I believe doing that gives the next generation an opportunity to create their own thoughts and opinions -- instead of having ours forced upon them.   It gives them the opportunity also to see and understand moral questions and to gain the experience to make their own decisions of what is right and what is wrong.  

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some things kids do not need to see . . . gratuitous violence and most erotica are some of those things.  But this piece doesn't fall into those categories by any stretch.  

Mark Twain titled this unfinished story The Mysterious Stranger.  It is a moral story.  It is a comment on the "damned human race."  When a stranger with unusual powers comes to town, be careful what you wish for . . . you may get it.

It is a beautifully done animation.  And even though it is adapted and presented in another media, I believe it keeps to the spirit of Twain's original:

There you have it.  Mark Twain.  One of my heroes.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

DicedLife.com World Premier

Back when I met Jeremy and Joe almost 10 years ago, one of the first things that they showed me was a bunch of handwritten comedy skits that they called DicedLife.    The skits were a hybrid mix of comedy and parody that is ever so slightly twisted.   There's "Mentos" the parody of the candy where instead of inspiring love it inspires hate in the sucker [sic].   There's "Licks-All", a parody on Lysol which kills 99.9 percent of bugs.  Unfortunately the .1 percent fights back.  And then there's the guy who sets his Car "Alarm" when he goes to take a nap in the drivers seat - just to make sure he wakes up.

They guys had a lot of imagination, but no resources.   They lacked the budget, camera and production facilities to edit, produce and publish them (that was back in the days before YouTube and WebCams.)  

Ever since then Joe has been wanting to do it,  and a lot has changed since then, with video editing being available as a "standard" option of Windows and YouTube being the publishing center of the internet world.  (The vidiots united.)

Finally about a month ago Joe bellied up to the bar and put money down on the domain names DicedLife.com, .mobi, .tv and .net,  and the last couple of weeks I've been creating a web site for him and Jeremy.

Working with a monthly budget of zip, limited time, and hosting them on my hosting platform, we have pieced together a decent site.   I even learned CSS for this one.   And we went live on "August 30, 2008 . . . a day that will live in infamy . . . " 

One of the developmental challenges has been to ingegrate other services into the site, such things as forum, store and a news feed.   I love getting into a new thing and learning it, but it takes so much time and I can't always afford that, so I keep my eye open for solutions that are easier, but still full featured.

Recently I think I found a "canned" solution to the forum that will work for us.  Lefora.com is a new forum hosting company which is offering free forum hosting (with minor ads) and they are running a promotion so that we can set up a sub-domain as forum.dicedlife.com and have it redirect to Lefora.  I hope it all works, as the forum is easy, simple and actually looks good along side the site design for DicedLife.  Also, you can tweak the CSS, so I can go in and make changes there as I make changes to the DicedLife CSS.  Here's the "publicity" post for DicedLife.com:

 

DICEDLIFE.com - OUT TO SMASH INTO EVERY FUNNY BONE IN SIGHT!

DicedLife.com is really coming at you now.  We've got all the skits and clips together in one place, we've got the regular LoTechTV shows in production and we've done our first Live Broadcast!   Things are moving and changing daily, and give us a month and we will be sneaking up there on the charts.  Look out all you comedy sites!  We're on the move.

Soon we will be announcing our new forum for people who visit our site.  Watch for it in the news.  We're using a relatively new forum hosting company called Lefora.  They got fed up with all the "sameness" of the other forum software out there and started their own fresh approach. (Sound familiar? DicedLife?)   We wanted a place where we could administer it without spending hours setting up the forum and where our friends could come and post without all the hassles and signing up like most forums.  They have a great fresh look for forums that's different, and we can customize it easier than silly old phpbb and vBulletin.  Besides they host it for free!  

You can get free forum hosting by lefora by visiting their site. 

Other things in the works are more graphics, and preview pictures of the skits.   As we add new features to the site, the site will evolve also so it's more snazzy and easy to use.  But watch out - - it'll never stay the same long.

DicedLife . . . smashing into your funny bone since 1995 . . . now with a .com version! 

I really hope that Joe and Jeremy do well and keep on it and keep improving.  I'm meeting with them on Tuesday to show them how to encode video and get better results on the web.  They have worked so hard for so long.

Google Browser Sync

Many of you are painfully aware of the fact that Google have discontinued the Google Browser Sync extension as of the release of Firefox 3.0. I wrote a post to the Google-Firefox-Extensions support group ranting about Google and they chose not to approve the message and it did not post to the group.

Here is the original message as I received it back from GoogleGroups when I submitted it:

Subject: Discontinue Google Browser Sync Suddenly = The Worst Possible Press for Google

This is all my personal opinion except where noted.

FACT: Google has revealed less than a week before Firefox 3 release
that it will not update the Google Browser Sync (GBS) extension to
work with Firefox 3, leaving thousands of users who wish to take
advantage of FF3 and the enhancements it offers.

That makes me *begin* to doubt Google. Yahoo used to be a great
service with many great features, and the leader, but now look at
them. Before that Lycos and AltaVista had a good share of the
market. Each one lost market share when they failed to keep up in
the quickly moving internet application development and public
perception marketplace.

Google has remained on top now because they are good. And they remain
good. They keep up. They develop more. Their applications are more
innovative.

With the discontinuance of GBS they have put doubt in the minds of
thousands, if not a million users: Will Google do this to the product
I rely on? Personally I use Gmail, GBookmarks, GHistory, GNotebook,
GDocs, GCalendar, and many more.

Within the past few weeks, I have not only become aware of backing up
my valuable data, but to actively search for alternatives. If this is
now the policy of Google, to abandon users with little or no warning,
then I need safer alternatives.

I may find better alternatives, but I suspect in some cases, I will
not. I started using Google products because they were good, not
because they were Google.

I point out one fact that Google has failed to take into account: You
said in your announcement that the team that had developed GBS had
"moved on to other projects." That is because they could. They built
a good product. The users had little trouble with it. It didn't
require massive amounts of support. THE USERS USED IT, THEY LIKED
IT, AND IT WAS GOOD. Now, the world has moved along a bit further,
and what you did then is no longer current technology. It needs to
be updated. Make it good like it was. So users will use it, they
will like it and it will be good. Isn't that the Google Way? Or is
that being discontinued too?

Google: Take note: You have lost more than just a little bit of
image. Time will tell. So will the actions of Google from this
point on.with GBS. I implore you to update it. It will be worth more
to you in the future than you can see now.

There may be other alternatives on the horizon, they may ultimately be
better. Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on you, Google. Whether
you support your users now while the development of other alternatives
is still a non-stable concept. Who knows, you may update your product
so that it is ultimately better and easier to migrate upward than will
the Mozilla Beast. If you fail to try, you fail not only the users,
but yourself.

I went on and posted a few variants to this on other sites, including Lifehacker.com where the "original/official" announcement of Google's decision was posted.

Google still hasn't released my original post, but they did release a number of posts made after.

One of those posts was a link to a hastily prepared code.google.com repository of the Google Browser Sync source code.

I hope one of the users out there have the time and energy to update it for Firefox 3. I won't have time to even think about it until next week, and I'm not sure I can dredge up enough lost knowledge to do any serious coding again.