I recently came across a fantastic op-ed in the NY Times about the state of the music industry.  As an early adopter of music-related internet technology, I've had front row seats as the RIAA has slowly crashed and burned . . . and lashed out at their own customers.

I know, most of you don't come to this blog because of my random political rants.  You come for news about the family.  Well, here you go.

In response to another email from my friend Aaron.  (He's really a great guy, don't hold it against him.)

A friend of mine recently forwarded this opinion piece written by former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  Before I get into it, I want to make one thing clear.  Raise your hand if you're from a country with public health care.  No?  Well guess what: I am.  That's right, I was born and raised in Canada (although I'm also an American citizen, own a gun, etc.).  Republicans like to claim that the Canadian health care system is bad, but guess what: it's fantastic.  So are the health care systems in England, France, Germany, and Japan.  Sure they're not perfect, but guess what, neither is ou

The "Friend Test" is similar to the "Girlfriend Test" or the "Mother Test."  In this case, my buddy Rob had a very old Dell that ran horribly.  I installed Ubuntu Linux and he's thrilled.  The computer is fast and responsive again.  He was a little worried about running the software he needs, but he's very happy with Firefox and OpenOffice; he can even read his .docx files from work.

I reorganized the photos of Nathan so they make more sense.  My old gallery (using the Coppermine software) had this strange structure where it insisted that photos could only exist in albums, and albums could only exist in categories.  It forced me to do things like put miscellaneous photos in a "Miscellaneous" photo.  You know how hard "miscellaneous" is to spell?  There's a reason people only write "misc."

Nathan did several cool things recently.  Unfortunately I didn't bring a good camera but I did have my camera phone, for what it's worth.  Here's a rundown.

I was preparing this week's bible portion for reading at the CW reenactment this weekend.  I was speaking with the chaplain at the last event and he invited me to do a reading at the Sunday church service.  I told him I'd like to do the reading in the original Hebrew and he agreed.  I was reading through the portion when I came across this section, in which God commands the Israelites to wage war against another nation.  This war has explicit religious overtones, and the army is commanded not by Joshua, the secular leader who usually leads the army (and will lead the entire nation after Moses dies), but by Pinhas, a religious leader.

The ethics of warfare is a debate that has raged since well before the Civil War.  The current debate--involving CIA hitmen--hinges on what is ethical during wartime (a question with which this bible portion concerns itself as well), but the bigger question is whether war is ever ethically justified.  The bible's answer is yes.

A friend of mine from Hastings has just set up her own law firm in Los Angeles.  If you need an attorney for employment / business / construction law or litigation, I highly recommend her:

http://gallenberglaw.com/

I have a kid but no camcorder (yet).  That leaves me with my Blackberry when I want to take videos.  Blackberry actually does this very well (considering it's a telephone), but it leaves me with odd .3pg files.  Not sure if anyone else in the world can view them, so I'd like to convert them to a more common format.  But I'm not a video whiz and I want something quick and easy.

The solution: WinFF.  Available for Windows and Linux.