Yes, the site was down for around 17 hours for reasons beyond my control, everything has been fixed now, and we shall discuss this… later.

For those of you unfamiliar with Flickr, it is a photo hosting site that, for reasons beyond me, grew well past being just a way to share photos, but almost reached cult like status amongst heavy Web users. So huge is it’s status, I even signed up for an account there many moons ago… and I have still yet to share one picture on it. I simply don’t get the excitement, but I am obviously in the minority.

So, imagine my surprise when earlier this week when Flickr announced they were adding video hosting… and all hell broke lose. Quite quickly, my Twitter feed filled with people saying it was a sign of the apocalypse, people were starting petitions, websites sprung up, people started tagging their pictures with “no videos”, I believe some claimed there were sacrifices of babies, dogs started thinking cats were all sorts of “okay”… in short, people over reacted.

Welcome to the 21st century folks; businesses do evolve, it’s the nature of the beast. So, Flickr added the ability for their PAYING CUSTOMERS, you know, the ones who pay $24.95 a year, not the freeloaders on the open accounts, to upload 90-second videos… get over it. It is not the end of the world, if you don’t like it, don’t use it, but for the love of everything… SHUT UP ABOUT IT!

I am all for people protesting for what they believe in, but aren’t there more important things in life than a website adding video support? How does this possibly harm you? It doesn’t! Sure, I heard someone say it would muddy up the photo pools, but come on, you can’t just glance over the videos?

I think iJustine summed it up pretty well in her video… uploaded to Flickr.

Let me just get it out of the way: I am 100% behind the idea of a free Tibet, and I am not thrilled with China hosting the Olympics.

That being said: Stop attacking the torch carriers.

Those of you who think that attacking the runners somehow furthers your cause, or somehow makes “a statement”, shut up, sit down, and get over yourselves. People have every right to protest the torch, but there is no need to go beyond signs, banners, chanting, etc; there is absolutely no reason why you should be impeding the runners, or laying hands on them. At this point you are endangering yourself, the runner and all of the people around you.

You do realize these are innocent people, correct? You also realize this is an open flame? The worst thing I’ve seen so far was the person in Paris in a wheelchair carrying the torch and people started scuffling around the torch. What if it had fallen in their lap? Are you willing to injure someone to make a statement? A person that is more than likely not even Chinese? I know I certainly wouldn’t be willing to see that happening.

So, again I say, protest all you want, Tibet should be free, but assaulting the runners is just wrong on so many levels that it is mind boggling.

In December of last year, I discussed that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had changed their position on the legality of making MP3s from your own CDs. While they had at one time said it was okay, in recent court cases that have been taking the tact that it is technically illegal to do so.

This is where it gets funny. As of this moment, and keeping in mind that you can not rip music from your own CDs, there is no legal way to have the music of the Beatles on your MP3 player. Yes, a deal is now in place for their music to be sold on iTunes, but it has not taken effect yet.

So, what should the RIAA do if someone famous, say, oh, I don’t know, the President of the United States, admitted to having Beatles songs on his iPod?

Credit goes to 9to5Mac for finding this. Now, I’m actually not saying the RIAA should go after him, but I do think this demonstrates just how silly this whole idea is. I certainly don’t think President Bush went on a torrent site and downloaded the songs, and probably some intern ripped the music from the President’s CD collection for him, but that just shows people don’t think twice about such an action, and in my thinking, they shouldn’t have to.

However, if the RIAA is going to make such a stink about this act, and even try to use it in court hearings, then I want to know they went after this evil-doer that has admitted publicly to having music on his iPod that could have only gotten there by illegal means. Come on RIAA… you seem to have big brass ones when it comes to picking on the common folk, you got what it takes for this case?

Yesterday I posted two April Fools jokes: The knitting list and “a Muppets video“. The video was an afterthought because as the day wore on, and I saw more and more people getting “Rick Roll’d“, I decided it was an excellent opportunity to explain and discuss the idea of “Internet memes” to those readers of my site who aren’t familiar with them.

I know I have many web savy/2.0 types who come by now due to my work at Mashable, but I also have a large number of readers and friends that come by and have no clue what it is we in the tech business are talking about sometimes. As fun as working in the Internet realm can be, I think we sometimes forget that not everyone who uses the net is privy to our own brand of English we have developed, nor are they “in” on a lot of our little jokes. Last night I had to explain “Rick Roll’d” to a very good friend of mine, who also informed me she had just discovered ICanHasCheezeburger, (”I just learned about this place ..I think it’s the same place the satanic verses prophesize”) and that made it abundantly clear to me that we may be getting a bit presumptive with some of our jokes.

So, before I go further, an Internet meme is any video, image, text or hyperlink that gets passed around from person to person until they reach a point where it seems like everyone is in on the joke, with some of the leaking into mainstream entertainment. The first time I can remember a meme going mainstream was the “Dancing Baby” videos that eventually worked themselves into a recurring character on Ally McBeal in 1997. That was one of the first times I can remember thinking, “Oh crap… the Internet is going to be one of the biggest things ever…”

There have been hundreds, if not thousands of memes since the dancing baby: Numa Numa kid, Star Wars kid, Hampster Dance (this one may pre-date Dancing Baby… not sure), and on and on, but I think as of yesterday, Rick Rolling took on a whole new level. The basic concept is that you trick people into hearing, or seeing the video of, Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song, Never Gonna Give You Up. You typically hide the video in a “blind” link, such as saying “I think this may help explain the quarterly reports better”, the person clicks the link, and it’s Mr. Astley singing away. The Muppets one I posted yesterday is a bit more devious in that it is “mashup” (a combination of two things on the Ineternet), so even though the YouTube preview shows Beeker from the Muppets, you hear him singing the song, hence, a Rick Roll.

Quickly leaking out to the offline world, Rick Rolling first appeared about a year ago, and, for reasons beyond my comprehension, has become popular at rallies against the Church of Scientology, with people playing it over boom boxes in front of church sites. What made me realize it has reached insane proportions was when YouTube set a trap for users so that whenever they clicked on a “Featured Video” on the site’s front page, they were, you guessed, it Rick Rolled. This is what made me questions the whole thing because YouTube has millions and millions of users from all over the world, different age demographics, different languages… how many people didn’t get the joke and just thought the site was screwed up?

Rick Rolling works best when people understand the joke, when they don’t, it just seems odd. This is a lot of the reason I posted the Muppets video because I knew some of you would be scratching your heads, thinking I had lost my mind. My hope is maybe the Internet will re-think things for next April 1st and pick a more universal joke than one only those of us who live our lives on the Net will get.

I just found this rare Muppet clip, and I can not stop laughing.

Today marks a new direction for my site… it’s all going to be about knitting. No more tech (unless it has to do with knitting), nothing about pop culture, no rants… all knitting, all the time. What better way to start than a list of 10 sites for knitting fanatics?

DesignsToLove.com – Dedicated to all sorts of crafts, this social network will allow you to show off your work and get inspired to do new things.

Etsy.com – Etsy is a marketplace for you to sell things you make, so if you have a talent for knitting toaster cozies, this may be the site for you to sell them on.

KnitGeekLife.com – He’s a geek, he’s a knitter… surprised aren’t you? Check out how much he’s completed of each project.

KnittingHelp.com – Well, this is unfortunate, I do a screen shot for you all, and they are jokingly changing to DentalHelp.com. How juvenile to make your blog something else for April Fool’s Day! That aside, lots of lessons here on how to knit.

KnittingNinja.com – Many examples of this woman’s knitting skills… not so many of her supposed ninja skills. I call fraud!

KnittingPatternCentral.com – Thousands of free knitting patterns divided into over 50 categories.

Knitty.com – An online only magazine about all things knitting.

MenWhoKnit.com – They’re men… they knit… they’re proud.

Ravelry.com – Proving that there is a social network for everything, Ravelry is a social network for knitting and crocheting enthusiasts. Share your work, swap patterns, get your knit on.

StraightMaleKnitter.blogspot.com – The name of this blog says it all. See his thoughts on knitting and what projects he has completed.

My folks are currently in Washington state on business, and since they drove there, they had me checking weather for them. They were especially worried about going through Snoqualmie Pass as it is still getting snow.

Well, the state of Washington has web cameras up so you can see what is going on live, but it seems camera #2 has seen better days as evidenced by this message to the left when you click on it.

I have no clue why, but I giggled for a solid 10 minutes after reading this.  I hope it put up a valiant fight.

Time is an odd thing. It’s a man-made concept that keeps everything from happening at once, and is made only so that we had a more convenient way of saying where the Sun was. Would you rather say, “the Sun is at a 45 degeree angle from the horizon”, or “it’s 3 PM”? Kind of an obvious choice.

When you start messing with times zones, it gets tricky. You have to do math, which isn’t all that difficult, but you have to make sure you know which time zone the location your thinking about resides in. I do a lot of business with Tokyo, and I am always aware of what time it is there, and can do the math simply in my head. For some people this isn’t always easy, but there are numerous tools that exist now for you to not even have to think about it.

Then I stumbled across this blog post that was shared in Google Reader by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, one of my co-workers at Mashable. Mike Elgan suggest in his article that it is time for business to finally follow pilots in adopting Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the universal time zone of the planet. This would mean that if it would be 3 PM everywhere in the world at the same time, regardless if you had sunlight or not.

I think Mr. Elgan’s heart is in the right place, it would save some headaches, and it would be wonderful for business scheduling, but I think that’s where it stops. How would you have an inkling of when people are asleep? I know, for instance, that as I am typing this, it is 11:12 AM CST, which means it is 1:12 AM in Tokyo; this instantly tells me that I should assume everyone I do business with is asleep. Now, say we go to GMT, it is 5:12 PM GMT, which means it is 5:12 PM for me in Missouri, and 5:12 PM for the folks in Tokyo… how can I be assuredof them being in their office? What time do they come in to work now, 12:00 AM? Will they know I’m at work? Will they think I’m asleep? Will I have to keep a little chart that tells me Hiroshi is at work from 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM?

Mr. Elgan’s plan would be a wonderful thing for in person meetings, easing scheduling to no end, but I feel it would make life a lot more difficult for those of us who tend to work on our computers full-time. I used to have a screen saver on my computer that showed me a world clock along with a graph of where the Sun is at all times.  I could always reinstall it so I could have a quick look to double check myself, but would everyone now have to do this?

What I could firmly get behind is an end to Daylight Saving Time (DST).  Why we keep this absurd concept is beyond me.  It was started in 1907 to help farmers and to conserve the use of that new fangled technology, “light bulbs”.  Well, now we’re past those concerns for the most part, let’s dump this stupid system of “springing forward” and “falling back”, and just keep one time all year long.  This I would totally get behind and would bring us into line with the majority of the world.

As for Mr. Elgan, I suspect he speaks out of frustration with something in his personal life.  There is nothing confusing about time zones, and just because it works for pilots doesn’t mean it would work for everyday life.  Nice try, but I don’t see this ever going any further than one man’s wishes.

In what has to be the oddest turn of events, I have become a huge fan of the Garfield comic strip.

Well… more to the point, I have become a fan of Garfield Minus Garfield. It started showing up in the shared items my friends sent me on Google Reader, and at first I thought, “what the hell?” Sure, it seems a bit odd at first, but then you suddenly find it growing on you, and taking on whole new meanings. Below is the blurb from the site explaining it.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

I would add it becomes almost zen like and existential! Jon has become the ultimate icon of the modern society that has become so disconnected from everyone. He has no one, he goes through his daily life playing straight man to himself, or like some great philosopher. All of this from the removal of an orange cat, it almost boggles the mind.

Sure, it’s silly on some levels, and you wonder how long this can last before Jim Davis, the creator of the comic strip, tries to shut it down. One hopes he will just leave it alone as it has probably brought his strip more attention than it has gotten in years For now, check it out, somehow I think you will find yourself oddly getting sucked into it.

The last post, Sometimes Bad Taste Doesn’t Even Cover It, is no longer password protected. I accidentally typed in the “post slug” in to the “post password” box. It has been removed now.

Adam Ostrow over at Mashable.com was the one to bring the “beta” coffee offer from Joffrey’s Coffee to my attention.

The idea is simple in that up to 10,000 bloggers can go to their site, fill out the form, and not only will you get some free coffee, but you’ll also get a link back to your blog from them. The links are a little momentous to pick through, but Google should pick it up and count it as a little bit of link love for you.

The free coffee you’ll receive is a new flavor named “Jamican Me Crazy” which is a blend of caramel, vanilla and coffee liqueur. I’m not one to thrill to flavored coffee, but it’s free, and I’m a sucker for free. Hopefully it will be good, but if it’s not, I’m out 30-seconds of my time filling out their form.

Last time I looked, they were still under 1,000 slots filled, so there is still plenty of time for my readers to run over and snap up one of those 10,000 spots.

I have mocked the idea of “beta” tests before, and this one is such an obvious gimmick to get bloggers to talk about it, and… wait… aw man! I fell for their obvious marketing gimmick! -sips coffee- Curses.