Props to Emily

Now I'm switching Emilys once again and mentioning Emily Gordon - my dear friend linked on the sidebar. First things first, congratulations to her are in order for graduating from AID and promptly getting started seeking a career in the web biz. She's already telling me how I can improve s.o the day after she graduated, despite the fact that she and I have been friends since the site started. Goofball.

Secondly, thanks to her for resurrecting my profile picture! She has graciously hosted my little picture on the right in the absence of the pureimaginary server while Aroon's off herding his residents.

Some HL2 goodness

Well, not Half-Life2. But Counter-Strike: Source is just about done, and it's being released online next week, in Valve's latest announcement. Pre-order HL2 through Steam next week (I think you have to drop full price for the game, and it'll come in various flavors depending on whether you want DoD:Source or the HL1 redo) and it instantly grants you access to CS2.

My online addiction for the next several years has just been set in stone. Bring it on, bitches.

Donkey or Elephant, this is important.

The INDUCE Act is a bill being pushed through the Senate by Orrin Hatch at the beckoning of the RIAA and MPAA. The bill (S.2560) gives those two trade groups veto power over new technologies on the grounds that they could conceivably be used to work around current copyright law, and that these groups should be trusted to judge what is and what isn't potentially a copyright violation.

If you are a Texas resident, click NOW (that's immediately) to contact John Cornyn via email here. Let him know that you're a constituent and you want the passage of S.2560 blocked. If you're a musician, let him know also that not all musicians agree with the copyright practices of the RIAA. The same goes for amateur filmmakers.

Cornyn sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide on Thursday morning whether the bill will hit the floor. Hence the email Cornyn NOW part: you can't send him an email Thursday morning and expect it to be read by anyone in his office. According to the EFF, the committee is currently sitting around 50/50. If this bill dies in committee, it will be a major (more like necessary) victory for those of us who own CD/DVD burners, iPods, TiVos, and any other entertainment technology which uses digital copying.

Call me crazy... (cars)

but I think this interior looks pretty damn good.

the bmw 1 series.

The new 7's and 5's have awful interiors; they're impersonal and almost attempting to be abstract art. The Z4 is tolerable. The next-gen 3 series also promises to be terrible. But this one looks just right; like the proper evolution of an overpriced German car. If this comes out in the US in the next 3 years, I think I might have to jump down to the 1-series (but a coupe version, not a hatch).