• For most it will mean blacking out their site entirely from 8am – 8pm EST because that’s what could happen if these bills are passed.
• For others like Google, they will be making a statement on their website with links to information but without completely blacking out their site.

WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

If you’re thinking “but didn’t they say SOPA was shelved?” PIPA is still set to hit the floor next week and SOPA could be revived. There are more people in congress who want the bills to pass than the number opposed to them. Congress stats: http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/
More details on why this still needs our attention: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech

WHAT CAN YOU DO? (useful SOPA/PIPA protest sites):
http://sopastrike.com/
http://americancensorship.org/
http://www.blackoutsopa.org/

Talk about it, draw attention to it, sign petitions, and contact your congress person if they still support the bills! (Plenty of links off of the above sites.)

#SOPASTRIKE

No copyright on this post – please feel free to copy and paste and use this content as you like.

Here’s what I wrote to my Congressmen:

I oppose SOPA and PIPA.

Why?
SOPA and PIPA would put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA would build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

And yet SOPA & PIPA will NOT PREVENT ONLINE PIRACY. Isn’t that the whole point of these bills? Watch this video and you might understand why.
vimeo.com/31100268

The part of the video where typing the long numeric address will still take you to the site, this is how people who actively seek to pirate material will access these sites if they pass and then leave the burden on those who aren’t.

The fact that there’s NO DUE PROCESS means that if your site is mistaken as a copyright violator, there’s no easy recourse. No honest “ack, let me take that down, I didn’t realize” or even argue that you properly own the copyrights!

And if you think I don’t understand what I’m talking about, here’s how I would get to my business site if SOPA/PIPA were to decide I (or many of my clients) violated someone’s copyrights:

http://67.225.128.201/~fascina1/

<<-- that is my IP based address. I would have to change some of the image links and the htaccess files on some of my other sites.

And yes because I have multiple domain names using the same IP address, if one of my clients violated copyrights, more than one business site would go offline.

THIS WILL HURT THE SMALL BUSINESS ECONOMY.

Tomorrow when wikipedia is back online check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Extensions

Annnnnd I think I started thinking about IP addresses too hard and got that bit about multiple sites coming down wrong. But it makes me want to go read the wording on how they expect to implement the removal of a copyright violating site. And also point out the the potential for human error in that process.

The photo isn’t great but it wasn’t scanning well either. I think because it’s on tracing paper. I don’t remember when I did it or if it was freehand or tracing over a photo.

Sounds good right? I’ve been stuck on this  book “Everyday Greatness” for quite some time. I’ve read 54 pages and skimmed other sections of the book and it’s just not my cup of tea.

I think I jumped the gun on ordering it from Thomas Nelson’s book club because it said “by Steven Covey and David K. Hatch,” not reading or realizing that Covey was only going to be interjecting some thoughts here and there. What is printed on the book cover is a much more accurate description, “Insights and Commentary by Stephen Covey, Compiled by David K. Hatch. Reader’s Digest.” That “insights and commentary by” were not in the image on the bookclub site:

The short inspirational stories don’t seem to have much depth to me and there are a lot of filler materials like entire pages of quotes. This IS Reader’s Digest material rehashed. On the back cover it says,“Works from such diverse people as Maya Angelou, Jack Benny, Henry David Thoreau, and Joe Paterno.” This line actually means quotes from these people. And in fact there are actually some excellent quotes in here but I didn’t think I was getting a book of quotes either (plus I would never want to read a book of quotes cover to cover.)

If you like reader’s digests but haven’t really read a lot of them then this is probably a good book  for you. If you like quotes, there are some good ones in here. But it’s been 2 years now, this is not my cup of tea and I’m just going to go ahead and admit I’m not going to ever read the whole thing.

I’m giving it 2 stars because I don’t think it’s a “bad” book per se, just not what I expected or enjoy reading.

The thing is, it was actually starting to get good and slightly darker but I can’t remember how old it was at this point.

I had had a discussion with @thebravetart about home made vanilla extract and it being weak and I thought there was a chance it could be reduced.

So into the pan it went.

I’m not exactly a precise cook. I don’t know how long I let it go but it was  on the lowest heat possible. About the time it took me to mount this shelf on the wall in the kitchen (yay, storage!)

The kitchen smelled delicious. The vanilla extract looked darker. I thought we were making good progress. So I let it cool and dug out some mini bottles, filled the bottles and then tasted a bit. Nothing, the flavor was gone. I had dark water.

So what’s the plan? Besides pouring this out?

Since it had been getting better with age: I’m going to get another cheap bottle of vodka, add some vanilla beans and pop it into the back of the cabinet where I will promptly forget about it and hopefully get a real batch of vanilla extract a proper amount of time to age. We’ll see if I remember to check on it in a year or so.

A few of these will look a lot better once I crop and adjust them. I’ll post them separately when I do that. I may not be an amazing photographer but there’s some in here I can work with and make better.

I have a few really fun videos are at the bottom of this post as well.

If anyone ever has to ask you what WTF stands for!
(and if you were looking for the real definition, this is NOT it.)