Via Linuxmatt’s Flickr photostream:

I got bored and was tired of the standard iPod disconnect procedure: squeeze and pull. And not showing off my toy for the world to see. Then I remembered a Lego dock for Nintendo DS that I saw on the internet. So I pulled out an old, dusty Lego set and put this together. Yeah, it doesn’t look nearly as good as the iPod, but it works and was free. Heck of a lot better than nearly $40 dollars. I may eventually get the dock if I decide I want to use one of the dock-only features like the remote control, but until then, this is just fine. The two things at back swivel, so It should accomadate most iPod sizes, but I’ve only tested it with my 30GB iPod Video.

technology

Via truthout:

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Details of Rove’s discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.

politics

Short gameplay sequence from E3 2006 for the upcoming xBox360 game Mass Effect:

Google Trends proves what we all have known for a long time – file sharing is not necessarily a problem localized to just the United States. In fact, in many instances, searches for file-sharing apps in other nations drastically outpace those in the U.S.

For years the RIAA have attempted to reform American copyright laws in an attempt to curb what they consider gross piracy among Americans. They have even lobbied to push those laws overseas in an attempt to create a more uniform code of laws that will prevent piracy globally.

However, who is really using the internet to pirate copyrighted materials? Using Google Trends, I set out to answer, or at least address, this very question.

Who is using Google to search for bit torrent? Take a look at the results here:

1.	Vancouver Canada
2.	Manchester United Kingdom
3.	Edinburgh United Kingdom
4.	Perth Australia
5.	Sydney Australia
6.	Toronto Canada
7.	Sheffield United Kingdom
8.	Birmingham United Kingdom
9.	Montreal Canada
10.	Santiago Chile

U.S. cities don’t appear at all on this list of top 10 cities/countries producing search inquiries into the popular fire sharing method.

Next, let’s see who is searching for Limewire, another widely used file sharing client:

1.	Edinburgh United Kingdom
2.	Manchester United Kingdom
3.	Brisbane Australia
4.	Birmingham United Kingdom
5.	Perth Australia
6.	Sydney Australia
7.	Montreal Canada
8.	Toronto Canada
9.	Amsterdam Netherlands
10.	Melbourne Australia

Again, we see the U.S. doesn’t even appear in the top 10 cities/countries searching for Limewire using Google. Countries searching for MP3 are also surprising:

It should be noted that piracy cannot be solely measured on Google search terms by region. But, this does offer ample evidence that a very large amount of users overseas are out-searching Americans for popular piracy-related materials. And while Google Trends is still in beta and its reliability isn’t 100 percent, it’s important to keep examining web trends to determine the truth.

technology

RHCP fans are miffed at Apple iTunes for apparently not receiving codes that make them eligible for concert ticket pre-sales as promised:

A large number of Apple Computer’s iTunes customers, who paid in advance for rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers’ new album “Stadium Arcadium” in order to receive a Ticketmaster code that would allow them to purchase advance tickets for the bands upcoming tour, did not receive those codes before ticket pre-sales began on Tuesday and are now enraged with the iPod maker.

Hundreds of the angry iTunes customers are convening on the company’s support forms, demanding to know why they did not receive their Ticketmaster pre-sale code Monday evening as Apple had led them to believe.

via AppleInsider

While fans have reason to be upset it should first be determined who is reponsible for the blunder. It may be a problem that falls on the ticket broker in the event they didn’t properly distribute the codes to purchasers following the sale. Either way, this is going to be a marketing and public relations headache for all entities involved.

music
apple
itunes

Ruidoso, N.M. is under a heavy fire advisory. Nearly every public area in Lincoln National Forest is closed for hiking and camping. Fishing has been restricted to the north side of the Grindstone Reservoir.

My Flickr photoset of Ruidoso (click for slideshow):

The forest floors we examined we covered in several inches of kindling. The monsoon season, still two months away, is expected to be of little help in delivering moisture. Ruidoso, it seems, is going to burn very soon.