Continue reading »]]> Gun Dealer Accused As Part Of ‘Fast And The Furious’ To Change Plea | Fox News

It could be that .gov is offering up some sweet deals in exchange for a guilty plea.  They (.gov) sure as hell don’t want LEOs to take the stand and testify under oath how this whole thing was supposed to work.

Continue reading »]]> Radley Balko @ The Agitator posted about a photo the Library of Congress had digitized and posted on Flikr.

There’s an old country store just down the highway from us that looks a lot like the one Radley posted.

This one below, titled “Thisbe” (more info here) is one of my favorites.  I’d seen it a few years ago, lost track of it, couldn’t remember its (her? the photographer’s?) name, and was lucky to find it again.

That’s one sexy pic.  Mrs. Gator thinks she’s a prostitute.  I told her to hush before I lose all my ^*sponsors.

Spend some time at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room.  You won’t be disappointed.

^*Note to whatever 3-letter agency is tasked with watching me today: I don’t have any sponsors. This is a non-profit blog. Go away. Fuck off.

Continue reading »]]> What a tangled web they wove (and subsequently became entangled therein).

Righthaven criticized for missing hearing and briefing deadline – VEGAS INC

Righthaven on Monday, without explanation or warning, skipped a Las Vegas court hearing during which it lost control of its 278 copyrights and its trademark.

IANAL, but it seems like Las Vegas Review-Journal would have some culpability here, too.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps they simply sold the issue to a collection agency (in this case, to Righthaven).

All I know is I don’t read… and I sure as hell don’t knowing quote anything from… the LVRJ.

h/t to The Legal Satyricon

Continue reading »]]> video link at Weasel Zippers.

Hell, I’ve heard people on the left say that the whole world should be able to vote in the U.S. presidential elections.

Well, probably don’t mean the whole world.  Just the left-leaners like themselves.  If the Mexican migrants tended to vote conservative when they got here, the liberals would be digging a f*cking moat and stocking it with alligators from Brownsville to San Diego.

Continue reading »]]> I just finished reading the e-book GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett ($12.99 at Amazon for the Kindle edition).

It was interesting.  There certainly were a few familiar names in there.  Some of these professional anti-gunners have been at it for a long time.

And the hypocrisy of some of these people.  It’d be funny if not for the fact that a basic consitituional right is at stake.

The author seems to have bought into the “ballistic fingerprinting” and “gunshow loophole” nonsense (although he somewhat accurately refers to these transactions as “private sales”.  I say “somewhat accurately” because money need not change hands in order for a firearm transfer to occur).

Continue reading »]]> I “upgraded” to the latest version of Firefox.  Now the “Blog This” Windows Live Writer plug-in doesn’t work.  ScribeFire didn’t work so well on the old GoDaddy QuickBlogcastWhateverGizmo blog, but it seems to be working just fine on the self-hosted WordPress blog.  One cool thing about WLW is the auto-link generator: you can predefine words, names, etc. to automatically become hyperlinks in a post.  Oh well.

I’ve been using an app called RssDemon on the Droid phone for a while.  (Ever since I got the Droid, actually.)  It’s also the first thing I installed when I got the Kindle Fire.  I don’t even read the blogs on the PC anymore since the Kindle is large enough to read (with some optical assistance) but small enough to sit on the couch with.  Or outside, with a cigar and a whiskey.

Speaking of… The Kindle cover paid for itself the other night when I reached down for the whiskey glass and dropped the Kindle on the concrete porch.

I read blogs on the Kindle (mostly) and on the phone (occasionally), but I still mostly create posts from the PC.  The little keypads on the phone and the Kindle are a PITA (for me, anyway) when trying to compose a blog post (or anything else) if more than a few characters need to be typed, and especially if I need to select/copy/paste text to make a hyperlink or something.

For the interesting articles or tweets I wanted to read, blog, or tweet about later, I had been sharing their links by e-mailing them to myself, where I’d pick them up on the PC (and promptly ignore them, since I now have 200+ messages in my blogfodder folder).

Now, I use Instapaper.  With a couple of clicks on the Kindle (or the phone), I share them through Instapaper’s send-only Android client app.  Then, from the PC and my Instapaper.com web page, I can open the original links as a web page, send them to a blog post through ScribeFire, read them as a mobilized text version, or even export them to a Kindle or e-pub document.  Also, the RSS/feedburner-type links from some of the blogs in my reader seem to get converted to regular ready-to-use URLs.  That didn’t happen when sending the RSS feed links by e-mail; I had to check or convert them myself (by going to the target site) so I could copy a decent URL to link to.

Now, I can procrastinate using fewer clicks.  Life is good.

If the Instapaper client app is not available, you can send e-mail to your personalized Instapaper SMTP address.

Before I started using Instapaper, I had found an app called Evernote, which I use to send and sync notes between the phone, the PC, and now the Kindle too.  (I couldn’t find a pen the other day and wanted to make an electronic grocery list that I could type on the PC and read on the phone.  No shit… I spent 45 minutes finding and installing an app to save 5 minutes on a written grocery list.)

Like with Instapaper, you can send e-mail notes to your personal Evernote account.  Unlike Instapaper’s send-only (and thus easy to use) Android client, Evernote’s Android app is a full-function client… you can read, write, post, delete, sync, share, etc.

The web interface to Evernote might work just as good as Instapaper for blogfodder.  Don’t know.  Shoulda tried that first.

The WordPress app for the Android had some issues and seemed to hang up now and then.  Maybe the upgrade(s) fixed it.  I don’t know… I hardly ever use it.  It’d be cool to share content to the WP app and post directly to the blog.  But again, regardless of which app I’m using, the little keypad on the phone (and even the Fire) is a PITA.

I’m playing with various Twitter apps such as TweetCaster and HootSuite.  I liked TweetDeck, but I can’t get it to install on the Kindle.  TweetCaster expands the short URLs when you click them, so you have a better idea of where you’re about to go.  HootSuite handles lists better, and you can re-order things according to preference.

It’s surprisingly easy to share data among all these Android apps.

I have about 1500 mp3′s on the Droid phone.  That’s like 100 8-track tapes or something.

George Jetson would be amazed at what we can do these days.

Continue reading »]]> What the hell… in for a penny, in for a pound.

From Borepatch: They see me trollin’

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Coast Guard (USCG) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol Secret Service (USSS) National Operations Center (NOC) Homeland Defense Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Task Force Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Fusion Center Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Air Marshal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Guard Red Cross United Nations (UN) Assassination Attack Domestic security Drill Exercise Cops Law enforcement Authorities Disaster assistance Disaster management DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) National preparedness Mitigation Prevention Response Recovery Dirty Bomb Domestic nuclear detection Emergency management Emergency response First responder Homeland security Maritime domain awareness (MDA) National preparedness initiative Militia Shooting Shots fired Evacuation Deaths Hostage Explosion (explosive) Police Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) Organized crime Gangs National security State of emergency Security Breach Threat Standoff SWAT Screening Lockdown Bomb (squad or threat) Crash Looting Riot Emergency Landing Pipe bomb Incident Facility Hazmat Nuclear Chemical Spill Suspicious package/device Toxic National laboratory Nuclear facility Nuclear threat Cloud Plume Radiation Radioactive Leak Biological infection (or event) Chemical Chemical burn Biological Epidemic Hazardous Hazardous material incident Industrial spill Infection Powder (white) Gas Spillover Anthrax Blister agent Exposure Burn Nerve agent Ricin Sarin North Korea Outbreak Contamination Exposure Virus Evacuation Bacteria Recall Ebola Food Poisoning Foot and Mouth (FMD) H5N1 Avian Flu Salmonella Small Pox Plague Human to human Human to ANIMAL Influenza Center for Disease Control (CDC) Drug Administration (FDA) Public Health Toxic Agro Terror Tuberculosis Agriculture Listeria Symptoms Mutation Resistant Antiviral Wave Pandemic Infection Water/air borne Sick Swine Pork Strain Quarantine H1N1 Vaccine Tamiflu Norvo Virus Epidemic World Health Organization Viral Hemorrhagic Fever E. Coli Infrastructure security Airport CIKR AMTRAK Collapse Computer infrastructure Communications infrastructure Telecommunications Critical infrastructure National infrastructure Metro WMATA Airplane Chemical fire Subway BART MARTA Port Authority NBIC Transportation security Grid Power Smart Body scanner Electric Failure or outage Black out Brown out Port Dock Bridge Canceled Delays Service disruption Power lines Drug cartel Violence Gang Drug Narcotics Cocaine Marijuana Heroin Border Mexico Cartel Southwest Juarez Sinaloa Tijuana Torreon Yuma Tucson Decapitated U.S. Consulate Consular El Paso Fort Hancock San Diego Ciudad Juarez Nogales Sonora Colombia Mara salvatrucha MS13 or MS-13 Drug war Mexican army Methamphetamine Cartel de Golfo Gulf Cartel La Familia Reynose Nuevo Leon Narcos Narco banners Los Zetas Shootout Execution Gunfight Trafficking Kidnap Calderon Reyosa Bust Tamaulipas Meth Lab Drug trade Illegal immigrants Smuggling (smugglers) Matamoros Michoacana Guzman Arellano-Felix Beltran-Leyva Barrio Azteca Artistics Assassins Mexicles Terrorism Al Queda (all spellings) Terror Attack Iraq Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Agro Environmental terrorist Eco terrorism Conventional weapon Target Weapons grade Dirty bomb Enriched Nuclear Chemical weapon Biological weapon Ammonium nitrate Improvised explosive device IED (Improvised Explosive Device) Abu Sayyaf Hamas FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) IRA (Irish Republican Army) ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) Basque Separatists Hezbollah Tamil Tiger PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) PLO (Palestine Libration Organization) Car bomb Jihad Taliban Weapons cache Suicide bomber Suicide attack Suspicious substance AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) Yemen Pirates Extremism Somalia Nigeria Radicals Al-Shabaab Home grown Plot Nationalist Recruitment Fundamentalism Islamist Emergency Hurricane Tornado Twister Tsunami Earthquake Tremor Flood Storm Crest Temblor Extreme weather Forest fire Brush fire Ice Stranded/Stuck Help Hail Wildfire Tsunami Warning Center Magnitude Avalanche Typhoon Shelter-in-place Disaster Snow Blizzard Sleet Mud slide or Mudslide Erosion Power outage Brown out Warning Watch Lightening Aid Relief Closure Interstate Burst Emergency Broadcast System Cyber security Botnet DDOS Denial of service Malware Virus Trojan Keylogger Cyber Command 2600 Spammer Phishing Rootkit Phreaking Cain and abel Brute forcing Mysql injection Cyber attack Cyber terror Hacker China Conficker Worm Scammers Social media

Also, “venom” and “deadly”, since I’m fairly certain a recent post about a newly-descovered snake species earned me a visit for the boys.

Continue reading »]]> So says an aritcle at Pixiq.

For $149, I just might have to get a copy of that.

I have Photoshop (and a few other apps) CS4, which remain functional but are out of date now.

I had a beta copy of Lightroom 2 a while back, which I wanted for its photo catalog and metadata-searchable database features more than for its photo editing features (since I had Photoshop for that).  As I recall, Lr (in Adobe shorthand) was quite sufficient for basic editing and cropping, exposure, level, and white balance adjustments, etc.  I don’t remember trying it for scratch and spot removal and such.  A professional photographer I talked to used it almost exclusively for his workflow.

But I wanted it for its ability to catalog and track photos, especially offline storage… that is, photos that are backed up to CDs, external or spare disk drives, offsite storage, etc.

The catalog/database itself must be local and readable (and backed up! to offsite storage!), but you can use the app to move photos to external storage and it’ll “remember” what device you moved them to, all the while retaining a local, searchable copy of the photo’s characteristics and metadata.

I haven’t shot many photos lately (or guns either, for that matter), and I haven’t used Photoshop in well over a year.  If I’m gonna have to re-learn photo editing, I might as well re-learn it with an app I can use for editing as well as cataloging.

Continue reading »]]> According to the U.S. Energy Information Administraton, the U.S. consumes approximately 378 million gallons of gasoline per day (2010 numbers).  That works out to roughly 137,970,000,000 gallons per year.

The 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax therefore raises approximately $25,386,480,000 per year in revenue for the Federal Highway Trust Fund.  $25.4 billion dollars.

I don’t know how the money gets allocated (per lane-mile or what), but if it were allocated according to the states’ respective representation in the House of Representatives, each state would receive approximately $58,359,724 per congressional district per year for highway maintenance.

That seems like enough money.

Personally, I think any push to raise the federal gasoline tax is not to discourage consumption but to compensate for it.

On a tip from Pistolero’s post “Wanting to have their cake and eat it too”, whereby he opines on a Washington Post editoral piece which suggests that the highway tax should be increased in order to a) raise more revenue for the “infrastructure”, and b) discourage gasoline consumption.

Continue reading »]]>

Mr. Daniel Knauf works in Hollywood as a screenwriter.  Last Saturday night (3/3/2012), he was having a drink and contemplating the untimely death of Andrew Breitbart, someone he admired and respected, albeit in secret.

And so he went out on a limb and tweeted

@Daniel_Knauf: I wrote Spartacus, and #IAmAndrewBreitbart

Almost immediately, he began receiving tweets of encouragement.  But as you might expect, he also received some – shall we say, critical – tweets as well. One of the first responses was

@CalmHead: @Daniel_Knauf He lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and he lied and & then he died.

Game on.  Mr. Knauf went all in with

@Daniel_Knauf: @taylormillard I’m so done flying under the radar. Fuck all you fake limo liberals. Fuck all of you. #IAmAndrewBreitbart

Follow @Daniel_Knauf and/or the #IAmAndrewBreitbart hashtag on Twitter and look back at how the events unfolded.

His blog post Into the BlackBxx: Chasing Andrew explains how he got to this point.  It was years in the making.

Go read. And maybe drop him a comment or a tweet or a re-tweet of encouragement.

Something tells me the hypocrites on both sides of the political spectrum will soon live to regret the death of Andrew Breitbart.

Continue reading »]]> Most of these have been in the RSS reader list for a while.  I’m just now getting around to adding them to the blogroll list.

Pissed, at The Feral Irishman

Miguel, at the Gun Free Zone

Wirecutter, at Knuckledraggin my life away

Firehand, at Irons in the Fire

MSgt B, at My Muse shanked me

Wraith, at Weird And Pissed Off

SpeakerTweaker, at Where Sometimes Things Go Bang