Design vs. Develop

The Times-Picayune staff certainly hung in there for a quite a while.

Michael Graham, recently fired from local radio station WMAL for making anti-Islamic comments, evidently attended ORU and “was kicked out on a couple of occasions.” You’ve gotta be pretty tenacious to get kicked out of ORU and re-enroll, only to get kicked out again.

Could they actually have kicked him out for being too conservative?

…the formerly-known-as Mambo group picture!

Hey ORU kids… guess what I saw this evening while heading to the Foggy Bottom
Metro stop? Some guy wearing a dress shirt, lime green tie, and faded
jeans! I somehow resisted the overwhelming temptation to ask him about
this signature combination.

Next to our house, there is this dual-trunked tree with dead branches
hanging from the limbs. There was one particular dead branch that
always worried us, as it was very high up, somewhat thick, and on the
verge of falling down at any moment. Early on Saturday morning, my
little brothers were awakened by a sound from outside. Later on, they
discovered that an entire half of the tree fell onto the two cars
parked in the driveway. Hours later, I arrived with my slowly dying
Ford LTD on an unrelated (but now timely) mission to rid myself of the
car.

Mambo, the content management system I adore, the one that fed me for a year, has split from Miro: its commercial sponsor. OpenSourceMatters.com is the new home where the core developers have congregated. (ArsTechnica
has written an article where you can learn about the events heading
towards this.) As someone who’s contributed documentation, free
third-party components, and some occasional advice to new users, I
hope that the community will remain as helpful and open as they have in
the past.

I’m also continuing work on my podcasting component, despite moving
twice over the summer and adjusting to a full time job. A fresh beta
should be released (on jlleblanc.com) by the end of next week.

I almost blogged on this Washington Post article when I saw it earlier this morning, but GetReligion has already done so.

I used to get "email forwards" all of the time when everyone first had
e-mail. Once in college, these trailed off and I assumed they were all
but dead, as spam has now become such a nuisance. Not so. I’ve received
three forwarded e-mails within the past two weeks. However, instead of
getting e-mails from girls trying to earn coveted gift certificates to
the Gap, I’m getting the "emotional appeal" messages from adults I
respect. Before this becomes an epidemic, here are some guidelines for
spotting e-mail hoaxes:

No Link: If there’s no link in the e-mail to a website where you
can find information, there’s no way you can verify if the information
you’re reading is up to date, or even accurate. If the information in
the message is genuinely crucial, someone would have at least thrown
together a quick website so that there would be a permanent record for
easy access. With free blogs and websites commonly available, there’s
simply no excuse for an e-mail only alert.

Desparate emotional appeal: Don’t let yourself get caught by an
emotional appeal or a "What if this happened to your family?" line. If
you still feel bad for not forwarding the message along, think of a
fourteen year old piddling away his Saturday morning devising pranks.
It took him ten minutes to write this thing and he’s just looking to
see how far it will go.

Instructions to forward to everyone you know: Yeah.

All of the above, with the name and phone number of an employee of a large company or public office: This is usually added to make the e-mails sound more legitimate.

In the event you are forwarded some information that is useful or important, look it up through Google
first, then send the link to your friends in a separate e-mail. When
you forward e-mails, programs typically attach all of the headers and
envelopes from the previous e-mails, which spammers love.

There are several things you can do to stop the flow of FWD’s:

Don’t forward stuff: Obviously.

When you get something from a friend, look it up: If you pull a
key phrase from the e-mail ("Free dinner at Cracker Barrel") and run it
through Google, the first three or four listings will usually be
extended explanations of the e-mail’s veracity. Also, the Urban Legends Reference Pages are fairly comprehensive (and entertaining!).

Let forwarders know about hoaxes, privately: People who forward
e-mails usually intend well, but just don’t know any better. Let them
know privately and encourage them to give everyone else the heads up.

 This
morning, I officially signed off of my old apartment lease (which they
had no record of in the first place). I now live in Virgina. Visit me

During this
episode of G’Day World (a podcast about technology, blogging, and other
related topics), I was unexpectedly treated to an interview with Darren
Rowse. It turns out that Mr. Rowse was formerly a Baptist minister and
is now involved in the emerging church movement. Worth a listen…