Rules for Play
Alright, corporate-types and marketing suits, listen up. If you give a geek a computer and tell him/her what NOT to do, you're just asking for trouble.

Maybe video game makers and Hollywood studios should simply be grateful that so many people out there are actually consuming and enjoying their products?

Well, technically, the DeCSS case can be construed as stealing, but only because the MPAA hasn't seen the need to develop a quality decoder to play DVDs on Linux and FreeBSD. But the stealing of movies on DVD has been going on a lot longer than the whole DeCSS fiasco. Please draw your own conclusions.

re: you're fired
Ever hit "reply" when you really, really meant to "forward" an email? Or worse, selected "reply to all"? Or maybe autocomplete dropped in the wrong name, the worst possible name ... the name of your boss or the CEO?

Don't worry. You may be out of a job or in the middle of a messy divorce, but at least you're not alone.

(completely un-web-dev-related) jeers and cheers
When bumping into someone in a school hallway is considered worthy of a lawsuit, especially when a full-grown, adult-sized teacher is the sue-er (sewer?) and a 90-pound boy is on D, you really get that "what is the world coming to" feeling. On the flip side: This world also has room for a training bento boxes, which is encouraging.

Geek me
This is Mike speaking. I'm only going to show you this shirt because I think it's so damn cool. As a career technical writer, I cannot think of a more appropriate display of snarkiness. Now you have to promise me that you won't buy one and wear it because that would significantly decrease the coolness factor of me owning one. Got that? Good.

the old switcheroo
At first it looked as though a politically motivated hack was responsible for the chop-Photoshopped Hussein/Bush rasslin' pics that suddenly appeared on the Dear Raed blog, but it turns out it was just an angry maintenance man at an over-taxed image-hosting site. Punitive image-swapping isn't a new phenomenon, though: Some people have raised it to the level of an art form.

Harvard Blogs?
Have you heard about the Berkman Center for Internet and Society? Part of Harvard's law program, the Berkman Center boasts such fellows as John Perry Barlow and Dave Winer. And, of course, when scripting.com's Dave Winer is involved, you can bet your bricks and ivy that blogging will be discussed.

It's good to know that even bloggers embedded in the aged halls of high academia can post peace march photos and stories about their trip home for the holidays. Am I the only one with visions of "ENG251: Blogging as Literature" showing up on the Harvard class schedule in the near future?

using a hammer to push in a tack
If Martha Stewart can do macaroni and cheese then what's stopping you from using the mighty powers of a US$609 program like Photoshop to recreate the low-tech chic of a flea-market LOMO camera?

when the lights go down in The City
It's been an awfully strange, tough day today, what with all the crazy stuff going on both in the world and right here in San Francisco. The trip to work was a complete Odyssey, what with war protests snarling traffic to a complete standstill just four blocks-ish away from Webmonkey HQ (the protesters that were vomiting for peace were a bit further away). And once we finally managed to get in to work, we found it pretty difficult to concentrate -- I'm sure it didn't help that we stopped every five minutes to check the various news sites and blogs. Anyway. Here's hoping this all ends as soon as humanly possible, and that in the meantime, you and yours are safe.

-The Webmonkeys

meme wars
So six different people have forwarded us the Weight Watchers Recipe Cards, and we've received the wacky interpretations of the Ready.gov's emergency "Visual Guides" only four times. Which means the recipe cards have it! (For now, at least -- a few straggler forwards could make all the difference.)

how about "bloggy-back riding"?
A direct quote from the genius that is Cardhouse: "03mar15. I was thinking about people who want to create their own weblog, but don't want to be involved with the set-up, etc, and I figured if you're really lazy you could just start your own weblog in the comments section of someone else's weblog. I call this concept a 'virusblog,' because everything needs a name." Hahaha!

Now what's the name for the practice of lifting an entry from someone else's blog, slapping some quotes around it, and pasting it into your own? "Blog Burning"?

Light 'em up, ladies!