I have a problem with my computer where when I try to load Internet Explorer about half the time it will just sit around and do nothing for 10-20 minutes (while the CPU load on my computer is around 0-1%), before loading it.

I have DSL connected, no problems with the connection, and am using Windows XP Service Pack II. Other browsers work fine.

I'm not so much annoyed about losing Internet Explorer as the fact that this problem affects other programs too. For instance, I cannot use add/remove programs from control panel, services.msc, or paradoxically Civilization 4.

I would apprecia

If you want to blog about campus activism or online activism from a progressive point of view AND have people actually read it, you can now start blogging on this site!

1. Get a User Account (if you don't have one)

2. Email Me so that I can upgrade your account to give you permission to write. If I don't know you please include information about yourself and what you might write about.

Note: if you post stories that are off-topic, spam, not progressive, overly offensive, or your stories are poorly written, then your writer permissions will be removed. If you want to go on long personal diatribes you can find another site to host your blog (ex. livejournal).

I upgraded the blog to drupal 4.6.5. Kind of bumpy, but after giving me a bad scare, it looks ok and only took 1 hour or so.

Apparently the red X is the leading choice for the delete button. On a Google small image search for "delete" it is two to three times more popular. X's that aren't red are also popular, as is writing out the word "delete".



So I'll be switching from a trash can to a red x on this site. I'm a sucker for trends.



One difficult issue is whether to have a red x on a white background, or a white x on a red background.

CampusActivism.org is narrowcasting. We're targetting activists and potential activists with a reasonably simple interface. No fluff. Or at least that's the goal. You can judge for yourself whether the upcoming addition of Google Maps is fluff or a serious function.

By contrast, sites like MySpace/Friendster/TagWorld/etc are trying to not just fill your needs, but to create totally new needs that are generally viewed by both observers and participants as a "Big Waste of Time".

These commercial sites overload you with their music, videos, large images, slow load times, chaotic layout, advertizing - and people love it. Addmittedly the people who love it are young (there is a massive drop-off in users that starts around age 21-23) and have less responsibility and more free time on their hands than older people.

Canadian election is today. You cannot get the results on the internet until everyone has finished voting (7pm EST), however people in Newfoundland finish voting 3 hours before.

6160 khz, shortwave, relays Newfoundland news and is covering the election. Unfortunately they have serious interference from 6165khz, so you need a good radio and to listen to it in LSB mode (ECSS - enhanced carrier selective sideband) or perhaps in AM with a really selective bandwidth with tight curves.

So far I've heard the Liberals are ahead in 4 seats, Conservatives in 2, and 1 didn't have results. But that's about all I can make out on my Sangean 909a due to 6165's interference.

CampusActivism.org has content that we want distributed. We have several humble RSS feeds. Our upcoming events and new resources are the most popular, however neither is widely used.

So I was wondering how to publicize our feeds using the power of social networking tools like MySpace/Friendster. My belief is that it might be easier to piggy-back on top of social networks, instead of trying to create our own. Creating a network of 10-100 million users would take a lot of CPU power, outreach, and time. At the most basic level, we could encourage people to link from their campusactivism.org user profile to their friendster/myspace one.

I am the volunteer tech support person for the Student Environmental Action Coalition. I try to run the tech aspect of the organization for as close to zero cost as possible. Thus we have a network cobbled together with people's hotshot personal computers (1.7 Ghz and better, running XP, 265-1028mb RAM) and older donated computers (windows 98 and 64-256mb ram).

As the old windows 98 computers start making too many funny noises, and drag, it eventually becomes worthwhile to replace them.

Thus I did some research on how to buy a cheap computer.

My findings: if you want a legitimate version of XP, I suspect the cheapest legal way to get it and a decent computer is to buy a used computer -- probably EBAY is your best best. Windows XP costs $100 and is often "worth" significantly more than the computers being sold. You can probably get a decent used computer on Ebay for $150 with XP. Speed doesn't seem to be as important as having enough ram (256mb is good, 512mb is great).

A small, but apparently growing, number of students have been trying to create an organization with a historically-charged name: Students for a Democratic Society.

I suspect this happens every five or so years, with starting national student activist organizations becoming an increasingly popular/easy thing to do because of the existence of the internet which both facilitates real connections and the illusion of connection.

I recall being on an email list, perhaps about eight years ago, where another small group was trying to start SDS. They didn't get nearly as far as this effort though.

I think AJAX will be widely adopted by websites and lead to fundamental changes. Basically it allows you to eliminate the need for switching from one page to another, and thus reduces the pauses due to page refreshing/reloading.

Instead of loading a page, your browser requests data from the server and uses it to react to the user requests.

Google Maps, notably its scrolling features, is the best example of this.

I've been wondering what would this look like for CampusActivism.org? When displaying a list of results (from browsing or searching) you could fetch 200 rows - instead of just 20, so if the user clicked on the next page (or any of the next 10 pages) it would display the results without a significant pause. You could let the client sort things in alphabetic and reverse alphabetic order.