This is also the Prince of Persia trailer on youtube which they have converted to HTML5 and WebM, you’ll need to opt into the youtube html5 beta.

you can do this at http://www.youtube.com/html5

so without further wait. The video…

ok backstory…

The Mojave Cross is a memorial that was created in 1934, put there by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a memorial to World War I dead. It was originally made out of wood, but is now currently made out of painted metal. It was situated in public land until about 1994, it then became part of the 1.6 million acres known as the Mojave Land Preserve. In 1999 some Douchey Mc Douche named Frank Buono from the ALCU decided that his life wasn’t already worthless enough, and decided to complain. His complaint is that the cross is a symbol of Christians, and as a war memorial it wasn’t equal rights because not all people who went to war were Christian.

So they want the cross removed. Who f-ing cares? I mean seriously. Its a cross in the middle of the desert, that serves as a reminder to some people who went to war and sacrificed their lives for our country.  Its not about religion, it was about freedom. Who cares if there was a Jew, a Muslim, or any other religion. They fought not for any of those things, they fought for our freedom.

Just leave it, its not hurting anyone, if it is get over it. Its not like my neighbors wind chimes that offend my Audiology, make me want to call the ACLU. They are just wind chimes.

So let me get this right. Were broke, the economy sucks, natural disasters everywhere, war, and all the other crap going on in this country, we are complaining about a cross in the middle of the fucking desert.

I’m going to build a super high tech, crazy fast rocket engine, build me a space ship, and find me planet Common Sense.

So this super douche Frank, who used to work for the park service by the way, and is now retired and hates his pension, decides its a great idea to sue the government.  He took it to court, won, and they ordered it removed. In 2003 the Congress ($$$$$) decided to move land private. So now the big bad SUPREME COURT steps in and eventually refused to order the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross by a vote of 5 to 4.

I just don’t see the point, leave it be. Its called preserving history. If there was a penis carved in cement for 75 years on my front porch. I’d leave it. History is our lives, its how the world changed, and it changes by people, nature, moments, and things that actually matter like how we take care of the present.

Anyway the Supreme Court judges all made speeches on their person opinion. Which I think is very fair, at least we know they are still people. One particular Judge I found spot on. His name, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and he said:

“A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, notable contributions and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people”

Lets just stop wasting time on political correctness and focus on real issues.

I decided to throw together a pack of authors and their quotes.

Nook Screensavers19 picturesJan 5, 2010

You may download the entire pack here.

To load this onto your nook, just plug it into your computer and open the drive labeled nook, then extract the folder to the my screensavers folder.

You may have to reboot your nook in order for it to detect the new folder. To reboot your nook just hold down the power button for about 5-10 seconds until the screen turns off completely. Once its powered off, go ahead and hold down the power button for a few seconds. It will take about 2 minutes to start up.

You may skip this step however if your nook does detect the files, you can check this by going to the home screen, and then to the settings folder. Once you’re there go to display and then screen savers. Choose the one called Quotes.

If you have more suggestions for additional authors you’d like to see let me know and I’ll be sure to add them to the collection, just either send me an email at m...@exstatica.net or leave a comment with the author you’d like to see. It doesn’t have to be a new one, or an old one, it could be any author.

If you have any other ideas for additional screensavers or backgrounds feel free to let me know, I’d be happy to throw some together.

Thanks.

but really? hmmm, I think I’ll pick the more expensive less data one.

I’m a new e-reader. I’ve never owned one, I used to read on a cell phone 4 or 5 years ago, and then just went to plain books.

I’m reading,  Makers by Cory Doctorow.

I describe as, “An industrial view of the broken culture that hackers and geeks alike rebuild from the ashes of a collapsed technology paradise.”.

I’m sure there are plenty of summaries out there, but to put it simply its about the new age dotcom bust, and the culture of hackers and gadget geeks making it on their own, taking old technology and reinventing it.

So far I’m about halfway through it. The book is seperated into parts. I’m in the middle of Part 2. Its a little weird starting part two as it has some of the same characters, and the its continuing on, but it leaves you with this sense of waiting for some characters to return.

So far though I’ve had trouble putting it down, and find it interesting to say the least. I downloaded it off his site as its free, If he had only charged for it, the book would have been sort of ironic with the content and then the commercialization. Either way I think more and more authors should do this. Not that I wouldn’t buy a book, but if he charged a few bucks for it. I’d have no problem buying it in a heart beat.

Onto the Nook, since this is the only book I’ve read so far, I’ve broken down a few issues I have with it.

Annoyances:

1. Jump to page

There is currently no way to jump to a page number, only chapters, some books do not have the chapters broken out, but there are page numbers (nook page numbers) that you can see, yet there is no way to jump to a specific page number.

2. Page turning buttons.

This whole bottom set to go right, and top set to go left is kind of stupid if you ask me. When I first held the device I thought to go back I’d just hit the other side on the bottom. Apparently I was wrong since it takes you forward a page, Its going to be the first hack I write for this thing. Just doesn’t seem very logical.

3. Cover Flow

Books you buy show up on the tiny display  when you hit Show Covers, but not books you loaded yourself, even if they have thumbnails and covers and all that.

4. Page Refresh

This one is not that bad, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten used to it, or its speading up as I get more and more in the book. But I think it could still use a little faster page refresh.

Likes:

1. Battery life

The battery life seems great, Although I’ve only had it a few days, I charged it over night. I’ve been reading a book pretty much 2-3 hours on the weekends, and during the week about 1 hour in the mornings, and an hour at night before going to bed. Its still at 86%. It hasn’t had a full charge since Saturday. Pretty good.

2. Readability

I was amazed at how easy the screen is to read. The pages are formatted correctly, the text is easy to see. Although I think I’ll need to invest in a reading light. I wish it was backlit.

3. Subscriptions

I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, I can read the paper whenever I want. Go 3g!

4. Customization

Customizing this thing was a little fun. First I named by Nook “Breakfast”. Then I created a background for my favorite book, you can download it below. I’m still working on screensavers and I’ll get to it eventually.

Thats all for now, I’ll be sure to post another as time goes on.

1. User specifies a per month cost. (Say 20 per month).
2. User specifies a frequency (lets say once or twice a month).
3. Woot uses a Magical Random Surprise Detection Algorithm or Mrsda as I like to call it, to send me a package, it can use all or some of the monthly allotment, anything not used rolls over. In a month I may only get 1 item that cost 3 dollars, the next month however I might get something for 35. Users of course could choose to turn this on and off.
4. Woot ships me the package via fedex or unicorns, I prefer unicorns, on a random day of the month
5. Bam surprise!
6. ???
7. Profit

Now of course you should be able to choose some options, like I would enable it for both woot.com and shirts.woot.com and maybe even wine.woot.com (man I really want that Bonsai Tree). You would also be able to select types of things, like nothing USB, or Only computer crap, or only kitchen things. That way the surprise is tailored kind of to you. Plus if it it was built around the Pandora method then you could go online and rate your surprise, but maybe on a scale of one to 10 instead of thumbs up and thumbs down. Even if I hated the gift I could give it to someone else and make it their problem.

So Woot, how about it? I’m sure your amazing groups of item description writers could help with the Mrsda system and then I could start getting presents in the mail. Like Tiger Woods would say… Just Do her it!

1)  
LastPass; Multi browser, multi platform, and the last pass you’ll ever need. This simple to use extension works on nearly every browser, syncs between them all, cloud based so it works on multiple computers, and best of all is free. There is a subscription model for $1 a day. It includes extra features like, iPhone and Android applications, Ad free, and Yubikey support. I hear a Palm WebOS version is in the making. FYI, you should always build secure passwords.

2)
Xmarks; Now that you’re passwords are sync’d you you probably want your bookmarks sync’d across browsers too. Xmarks is your program. Also based on a cloud platform, it allows you to keep your bookmarks sync’d across computers and browsers. As with Lastpass it has a web interface and sharing with friends.

3)

Web of Trust or WOT; is a great extension for finding those shady sites. Now Chrome is great at detecting phishing sites, but WOT extension adds little colored icons next to each link on your search page and gmail. It gives you a better view of sites to just outright avoid. You can also read what others had to say about it.

4)

Adblock; If you’re a Firefox user then you probably know what Adblock is. If not, then it does exactly what its named. Blocks Ads. I however do not use it. I”m sure its a great extension but I like a more system wide approach. I use Privoxy. Its a small application that is basically a pass through proxy, it listens on local host, and you just point your browsers to it. It then filters out anything that passes through it.

5)

Google Quick Scroll; Have you ever been searching for something and you get to a page, but you can’t seem to find it on the page? Here comes Google Quick Scroll to save the day. Basically the way it works is when you click on a link from a Google search page, if relevant enough it dumps to you the right place on the page and shows you a box. Its a great simple little addon, that in my opinion should just be built into the browser. However since there people who use chrome, but don’t use Google search, I could see how this might be a conflict. Anyway back to this plugin, it uses Google’s Magic to decide when the quick box should be shown.  Somehow it does seem to be there when I’m looking for it, and not when I don’t need it.

Misc Extensions:
There are tons of plugins out there, and more every day, The few others I use are;

• Quick Calendar
• Stumble Upon
• Cooliris
• KeyboardNavigation

Call for Development:

So I’ve been thinking about how I’d use the web more and more, I know Chrome is a baby in the Browser war, but its already its approaching its terrible twos and going to wreak havoc all over your virtual house.  I’m sure there is already a plugin for Firefox, but what I’m looking for is an extension that can be a notepad per sites. I already use Chromepad, but its one pad for everything. I would love to be able to put notes per site I’ve visted.