Tom Dalton :: Doer of Good

Here's the toughest job interview question I have ever been asked.

Question: Tell me about a moral decision you faced where you came down on the wrong side.

Answer: (In real life, I paused here for a pretty long time.)

Websites for Composers and Musicians

How about a design and hosting business that specializes in sites for musicians? A service to take recordings and convert them to MP3, to offer PDF samples of sheet music, and build a website around them? I think people would pay for that -- probably an upfront design fee and then a minimal monthly hosting fee.

Steganography

Okay, and this one is less a "business" idea and more just a fun thing I'd like to do: e-Steg.

A standalone, easy-to-use interface to create eBay auctions whose sole purpose is to carry covert messages. With the eBay API and a collection of Java steg classes already available, it just needs someone with the skill and drive to create a front-end and make it work.

I happen to know just such a person... Hee hee...

It really bugs me when I see a result in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) that looks exactly perfect -- then I click it and get redirected to a page telling me to "subscribe and see the full article!"

So I figured out a way to get around it, at least in certain conditions.

This is the single best "forward" email I have ever received.
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Literary Elements in the Movies

Lord Of The Rings -- Fellowship of the Ring

It all started in a little village called the Shire. The Shire has a little forest much like a meadow with trees. The houses are not bigger 6 ft. It's always a hot day and at night was a always nice and cool. The people that lived there were called hobbits. They weren't any larger than 3 ft. It was a little village as you can tell. The Shire was the only place that you would ever find a hobbit. The nice and calm village was not going to be the same. There was a nice and bid celebration for a hobbit named Balbo. Balbo was turning 115. See 115 is way to old to stay alive and imagine this he was as healthy as ever. Well to me he didn't look his age, but much younger. Now as the movie goes on they talk about a certain ring that kept Balbo living for along time. This is when the wizard Gandalf and the little hobbit Frodo comes in the picture. Now Frodo, Gandalf, and Frodo's friend Sam all go on this adventure to get rid of the ring. This is much trouble and the owner of the ring is going to kill who ever takes part of the ring. The setting in the movie is not so great now. All of a sudden it starts getting dark and ugly. Now the Frodo and Sam are really young boys. Their about 15 and they have a big adventure ahead of them. There is a big risk in both of them dying.
Frodo is the main character in the movie. In the beginning he was a happy hobbit but all the eh days that he has spent with the ring he turned in to an evil hobbit. He was much to protective over the ring that he would want to kill who ever came near it. There was a lot of war starting over a ring and Frodo was the cause. See if you ever put on the ring the god of the ring will scence you and will sonly kill you. To everybody it was a gift because you live longer but in Frodos case he won't live so long. Long months pasted and the people who traveled couldn't handle the weather changes.
The ending of this long movie was the worst. A big war erupted and caused more than 1,000 deaths. The armies of both sides were huge. The war lasted for 3 days. Don't you see something so small can do so much damage to other peoples lives. At the end of the movie Frodo and Sam returned to the Shire. Thank god everything was over they said. Frodo was back to his regular self and nothing had changed him from then in. I learned that you can have the most precious thing in the world but it's not the risk to get killed over. Especially if it harms the people you love most.

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Say what you will about the media and its ability to cover tech news... This is the coolest darn headline I have ever read:

'Killbit' Workaround for Zero-Day IE Flaw Available

That's just awesome! What a combination of words.

TruckTalk

Outfit truck drivers with special, hands-free cell phones that allow them to indicate "free" or "not available." Then, while they're driving and on dull stretches of road, they can switch to free and accept incoming calls. They could be tech support, or just companions for lonely people, or offer counseling. It would be a way for them to earn extra money and keep busy.

MazeMove

A game where two or more people can shift rows like in those number-scrambler games, moving tiles in a maze and allowing them to go to different parts of it. They would have to collect various goals through the game and then escape.

Organic Tetris

Just like Tetris, but with higher resolution and organic pieces. Curves, odd shapes, and maybe even separated pieces. Maybe Alphatris? Letters of the alphabet? Or it could be modded. Anything you want! Little people, or animals -- like Noah's Ark! Fit all the animals in the belly of the ark. Whales and squirrels and snakes and cows.

Q: There are a number of sites I've seen that have more META tags than just
description and keywords. Are any of the others (such as revisit-after)
valuable?

http://www.html-reference.com/META_name_revisitafter.htm

A. Good question. I'll answer it, and give you the helpful Parable of the Retarded Newspaper Boy to help answer many of the other questions that you might come up with.

(And no, you're not the retarded one for asking.) (And I use this analogy with a keen awareness of the political incorrectness of so doing -- please forgive me; I mean no harm.)

I was reminded of this the other day, by a particularly hilarious "literary analysis" of Lord of the Rings. This is the best book report I have ever read:

Dune, by David Lynch, is the book I've chosen to read for my book assignment. Dune, which contains many hundreds of pages, is a really freaky book about the future. This one particular guy had to put his hand in a box, and he trips like it's burning up. Then, he had to learn fighting from a guy who reminded me quite a bit of Captain Picard. This fat guy with insane acne is trying to take everything over, somewhat like Darth Vader. But unlike Darth Vader, he got kind of gay on this other guy in a chapter of the book that was not my particular favorite. There's also a talking slug in a tank that you have to see to believe. The spaceships had cool design and the girl was pretty cute. You should read Dune or, even better, Starship Troopers.

(No idea where it's from, and it's hard to find on the Internet anymore. Never let it be said I didn't do my part to preserve history.)

It needs to be secure, and it needs to be on the Internet.

What could go wrong?

Google: [inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="]
Google: [inurl:"view/index.shtml"]

Here's what went wrong:

Stuttgart Airport, in Germany