Well, just a quick update from my iPhone (love this WordPress application for it, although sure limits my being able to post long posts).

I’m really going to miss being able to post during the day, and I can’t copy n paste on iPhone, so that limits the ability for me to react to articles or the like. I’m going to try to post in the evenings, but it’s difficult after work around making dinner and studying, before falling asleep on my books.

Hopefully later this week I’ll do a review of a new album from one of my favorite artists and maybe a book or two.

Anyway, just wanted to post a reminder I’m still around! Stay tuned.

I started a new job a couple of weeks ago: “E-Media Specialist.” Pretty fun. I get to do all the computery stuff I love (Web development, graphic design, playing with different e-media applications) without the stuff I’ve gotten to hate (computer repair).

Unfortunately, it’s completely stopped my RSS/blog reading and writing. In my last job it was easy to just take a few minutes each day and read the latest newsfeeds and if inspired by something, spend 5 to 15 minutes as a break to write a blog. Well, that’s when I was in control of the network. Now I work at a place where the ‘net is monitored and my PC can even be VNC (remotely viewed) stealthily. So, no news/blog reading and no posting.

It’s annoying, but I’m not angry about it: it’s their job to have strict ‘net policies. In my opinion (and practice as Network Admin at the last job) though, if the work gets done and done well and on time–I didn’t care if an employee of mine (and I only had two) did some non-work stuff now and then. Hey, some people in the office went out to smoke every 20 minutes, I and my minion browsed nerdy Web sites. The tough thing is I just don’t have any more time at home to do it than I do at work. As soon as I get home in the evenings it’s right to dinner making, then cleaning up, then an hour or so of homework before I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. This is the first moment I’ve had in a while to write–and I shouldn’t. I have an important presentation next week to work on, a paper due soon, and comprehensive exams questions to research and formulate. Ugh!

Well, I’m inspired to say something briefly in a moment on another subject. Enjoy the babble.

It’s pretty sad when I have so few good conversations on here that when I do I feel compelled to make a blog post about it. I guess I actually need to link to my blog in my emails and message board postings and stuff more often…

Anyway, there’s a conversation in the comments for my post:
♦ On sexuality, feminism, and being a man, baby.
with Amy from the site Stands to Reason (as ironically named as “The Discovery Institute”, but she sure seems very nice and reasonable), that starts talking about sex and religion and ends (as usual for me) discussing the absurdity of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Then over on Soujourner:
♦ Where Does ‘Ought’ Come From?
Mark calls naturalism’s claiming that there are “oughts,” that is, moral and ethical behavior, “a bunch of hogwash.”
So, I call him on it as he tries to deflect the issue into a false dilemma and complete and utter mischaracterization of the naturalist worldview. He’s comfortable attacking and mocking something he has no interest in actually learning anything about; but like most believers, ignores reasoned and rational challenges to their attacks. Ignores, moves the goalposts, or deflects. I will guarantee you that within 90 days he’s going to have another post attacking and mocking naturalism and he’s going to use the same misrepresentation and false understanding with no attempt to understand what he’s attacking.

Like how Ray Comfort still uses his “banana argument” to prove God’s existence and ridiculous drawings of duck-bunnies to ridicule evolution, even though for literally years he’s been shown how fallacious and absurd his arguments are in pure logic, not even with refutations with counter arguments or positions or evidence–his banana shtick is utter garbage from a purely logic point of view. His duck-bunny pictures are laughably…I’m sorry, stupid and gross misunderstandings of what evolution even claims to describe. But, he has no interest in changing or learning or understanding or reasoning. He’d rather go blithely on with his absurdities, thinking he’s got it all understood while people are literally laughing at his ridiculousness.

Even people who are supposed to be more educated and intelligent, like Michael Behe, ignore evidence that disprove their claims. Behe made challenges to evolution in his early books (books, not scientific journal articles or science symposium or conferences where real science debate happens). And then slews of response was generated with painfully detailed and evidence supported refutations of his claims. But not only has he subsequently ignored these refutations, but has the audacity to claim his challenges have been unmet by the scientific community!
You really have to ask yourself, do these people really exist in their own little worlds? Are they that deluded and honestly don’t see the evidence? Or do they see it, but choose to ignore? Which is worse? Delusion or willful dishonesty?

In Comfort’s case, I think he’s delusional. Behe, I’m not sure I can give him that much leeway.

I happen to be writing this post on my knew iPhone! The Web browser is phenominal, and the virtual keyboard works great, even with my fat thumbs! (the auto-spellcheck is way better than Firefox,I have to admit).
Although, the lack of being able to block and copy text is annoying. But, the one huge advantage the iPhone has over the Blackberry Curve (the other phone i was seriously looking into) is the fact it’s software is completely upgradeable, meaning Apple (and soon even 3rd-parties) can add and change any functionality at any time.

Well as much fun as this is, typing long sections does get tiring. Time to go see what else this can do! (OK, the inability to copy textmakes adding links to the blog or images impossible. Oh well.)

OK, so my 3rd blog is up and running now:

♦ The GrogMonkey

Here’s the “About” page on the site:

This blog is designed to feature my work in English/Cultural Studies education.

I’m currently working on my Master’s Degree in English with a focus on Creative Writing. While I don’t plan, at the moment, to put any of my fiction up here, I do plan on publishing my non-fiction works–of which I’ve done more this last year and a half than I would have thought I’d have in me two years ago. After my M.A,, which should be finished in another year and a half, I plan on going on for my Ph.D. with a focus in posthuman fiction and cultural studies. (Over on another page I plan on profiling some of the people in the field that I’m modeling my career path on, such as Slavoj Žižek.)

I plan on submitting some of what I will be placing on this site to journals (both academic peer reviewed and otherwise), and some I wouldn’t normally want anyone to see–but there may be something to it that compels me to put it out there for critique, entertainment, or for some twisted sense of vanity. (Yeah, that’s probably the most likely reason.)

I encourage anyone to read what I’ve put out, comment, and even debate or argue some of the presented points with me. Some of what I’ve written and will write about I’m only scratching the surface of my understanding and would love to better my apprehension of the subjects in the crucible of debate (how’s that for some fancyshmancy grad student prose?)

While this blog is pretty esoteric and comments on general issues: tech, news, politics, etc., The GrogMonkey is going to be only for my scholarly work. Probably mostly reprints of papers, occasional posts on issues and events that deal directly with my studies and education. I anticipate that site will have even a smaller audience (than the 2 or 3 this one gets…) but that’s OK. I’m doing it mainly for my own benefit. (What that benefit is, I don’t quite know yet.)

At the moment there’s only one post up there. I have probably around 10 to 15 papers I can upload, but I don’t want to inundate the site just now–I’ll probably upload a file a week. If you’re interested, check it out.

Been really busy lately, so I haven’t blooged much of late. In quick news, I’ve been having a discussion online regarding anarchism, socialism, and capitalism which I’ll share here later, and I’m thinking of applying for a job with MoveOn. Anyway…
I came across this blog the other day:
♦ http://www.stephaniegunn.com/
an interesting blog in its own right, and so is her LiveJournal page.
But as I was looking at her site, I noticed the image of the forest at the top later in the afternoon and was pretty certain it was more daylight earlier in the day. I felt certain of it. (See past blog entries on how our brain plays tricks on us and our too often certainty is too often incorrect.) I was certain her top page image was changing lighting as the day went on. While I would later realize that wasn’t happing at all, I thought that was a really cool idea.

So I wrote a script into my blog that changes my top blog image throughout the day. Every 4 hours it gets lighter or darker depending on the time of day. It’s kind of subtle, but I think kind of cool.
But I really love the idea of doing it with an image instead of just some silly swash of color. Once I find the image I like, I’m going to get all Photoshoppy on it and made it change daylight throughout the day…and even seasons throughout the months! Oh that rocks. =)

Evidently a science blogger broke a recent story about possibly hazardous chemical used in artificial popcorn butter. The Associated Press properly attributed the story to him, but The New York Times evidently decided bloggers don’t deserve credit for real journalism.

♦ New York Times uses story, neglects to mention blogger is the source

My blog tends to exist in this hazy middle-ground between pointless drivel and high-minded op-ed.
(Let’s be honest: it’s all drivel and there’s nothing here that can be confused with “high-minded.”)
What I mean is, nearly every time I post, it’s something that’s 500 words long and attempts to pontificate on some important subject, whether politics or religion or social awareness. I’ve been toying with the idea of having two blogs–one for the quasi-intellectual rants and one for just pointless personal stuff.
But, I realize, I have a lot of odd Internet service accounts all over the place. If I add one more Web 2.0 thingie, will it just get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of my e-interests? I think have about 5 online radio accounts and 10 unused free e-mail addresses (did I think I’d ever use liam@deism.org?) and have signed up on many profile pages but have never bothered to set up any info.

Here’s a few that I do actually pay some attention to:

• Facebook profile
• last.fm radio profile (I’ve added a last.fm widget up there on the side that shows what music I’ve been listening to. Kinda cool.)
• MySpace I rarely check (I irked off this former co-worker who once asked me if I was on MySpace–I said, “No, I’m neither an emo teen nor a pedophile.”)

I know I have a Blogger account and LiveJournal, and some other accounts, and they can be pretty cool. Some interesting features, so long as you can get an ad-free account. But, nothing quite beats developing your own blog space with the help of a WordPress template and making whatever changes and adjustments you want by editing the scripting yourself.

So do I want to try to separate the blog into one where I try to only include those serious and important issues as I strive to become more journalistic and professional and critical in my writing, and another where I can randomly say “I’m listening to a lot of The Tea Party right now” or “boy ‘Rome’ was a good show,” or do I continue to put it all in one blog and deal with the random bouncing between trivial tripe and serious analysis?

I shall think on this.

Well, I just realized that on good ole Internet Explorer, my blog is horribly misaligned.
I’ve been using Opera and Firefox, so I haven’t realized until now.
So if you’re reading this in a terribly messed up layout, stay tuned as I fix it later today.
UPDATE: Well, I’ve been trying, but I simply can’t get the layout to look right in IE. It keeps wanting it to put the main text below the menu. Looks great in Firefox, though.
So, sorry to the two or three of you who read my blog. =)
I’ll try to get it fixed after I get back Sunday or Monday.

There was a time in which Cascading Style Sheets didn’t exist…and that was the age I learned HTML in. Circa 1995. It was all TABLE and FONT tags, baby!

Well, a few years ago I finally stopped using FONT tags and started using style sheets for all my font stuff at least. But I’ve been reticent to go all out. I’ve learned how to make border boxes, but I still use tables for all my positioning and widths.

Now this blog. Well, this blog software, WordPress. I’ve been using MoveableType for a few years and except for a few of my own manual changed, had used a downloaded template.
I’m still currently using a downloaded template with this new blog, but at its very core WordPress is so customizeable that I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to get it “just right”. And that requires not only my more than mediocre knowledge of PHP *grin* but a crash-course in more advanced (read: “standard”) CSS’s.

For example. Blockquotes. If you’re reading this blog while I’m using the “borderlinechaos” theme, then you will see the blockquotes style like this:

All this text you are reading right now is in “blockquote”. It brings the margins in and separates the text from the main body of the blog.
The appearance of this blockquote is very different than what it originally looks like in this theme “off the shelf.”

I’ve gone into the CSS of the theme and added margins and a background and borders and padding to make it look “better” (according to me.)

(The big problem with this blog entry, is it’s very likely that within 30 minutes I may be using a different theme entirely. I’m trying first to learn what all I can DO with a theme, with what features I can add and create, for example, over there to the side with the various menus and lists. Then, I plan on finding a theme as close to what I want and then revamping it to what I want permanently. This borderlinechaos theme, if that’s what you’re seening now, is fun, but it’s temporary.)

Anyway, I’m having alot of fun playing with CSS. It’s a little daunting, like learning a new programming language (hey guess what? It IS! *g*) But it certainly does make doing large or comples visual changes a LOT easier!

This is a potential problem. I just discovered this post waiting for my approval…and I didn’t write it.
There may be scripts out there that spam blog posts…not just comments!
I’m going to have to see what settings can prevent this.
In the meantime, this really IS a cool site. =)

..:::YETISPORTS:::.. by chris hilgert // powered by edelweiss medienwerkstatt

OK, this site is way too much fun!
Beware the time wasting potential!

Well, I’ve switched from MoveableType to WordPress as my blog software.
Nothing really against MoveableType…it was a fine piece of software for a couple of years, but the spam and comments issue has just gotten to be too much. I looked around and found WordPress appears to have the best comment solution.
It has a site registration feature so if a commenter is registered it will auto-accept their comments. Plus, it seems the templates are pretty heavily customizeable.

So, while I get things setteled around, just ignore all the weird changes you’ll see. =) Thanks!