In the event that we should become multi-millionaires in the future, we want to make sure we know what we’re going to do with the money.  The following is an ongoing list of major things on our list:

Establish a Commune

And by commune, you have to understand my interpretation of the word.  The usual ideas just don’t cut it – my idea of a modern commune is little more than a community of friends living in close proximity, each generally having some arcane talent.  Other than that, everybody maintains their own job.  The added benefit is that you have a community of actual friends in close proximity to help with things.  Think about some of these nicer neighborhoods going up that include parks and community facilities like a club house or picnic area.  That’s where the millions of dollars come in – someone has to pony up the money to put it together.

Establish an Olde World Arts and Crafts Guild

Look into America’s early years after the Declaration of Independence.  As was popular in Europe, guilds popped up all over the place.  Funny thing was, they never seemed to last.  The guilds cranked out some epic-level work, but rarely made the profit needed to keep the their doors open.  The Industrial Revolution was what put them out completely.  Mechanized art, while not for the purists, was the way of the future and a clear winner in the end.  Revival after revival, it was only when the the passion was washed out by insufficient funds that the guilds closed their doors.  An arts and crafts guild would work today, but only if I could poor money into it endlessly.

Create an Elderly Care Facility that Cares

Most elderly care facilities – the ones that the average senior citizen could afford – are clever facades on the same old song and dance.  There are too many horror stories to count as you look across the gamut and research their “customer appreciation.”  A big reason for this is funding.  The hired help is majority volunteer, public service workers, or minimum wage.  When you’re not paying well, it’s hard to attract good help, but that’s just what you need.

My wife is the one with real passion for this one.  She would love to pour many into a retirement home that is treated more like a spa than assisted living.  It would have to be a non-profit venture with backing.  The key is to rally support within the area communities, government, and of course, mad money.

Build the Lake Lanier Boardwalk District

How cool would it be to have a boardwalk district on Lake Lanier?  I envision long wooden decking, boat slips, a beach, and fantastic night life and retail shopping.  There should be bars with karaoke, an outdoor stage, a gallery, and much more.  Normally, this kind of thing wouldn’t need so much money to keep it up, but I think I’d have to pay off the Corps. of Engineers a hefty sum to allow it!

Create a Seafood/Freshwater Fish Restaurant on the Lake

Along with that whole boardwalk idea, you have to have some big foundations.  I purpose a fish restaurant out on the water.  It would be awesome to have its center piece being a large circle of the lake with underwater lights and sub-level glass for viewing.  Above that, have two to three stories encircling the “aquarium” for diners to look down upon.  There is some real opportunity to make a case for the environmental concerns surrounding the lake in a venue like this.

Build an Irish Pub

Another permanent resident of the boardwalk should be a good old-fashioned Irish pub.  If you know of McGuire’s in Pensacola, then your thinking along the same lines.  Good food (or bad, but traditional!) and drinks.  These relics of America’s past have always been places of fun and festivity.

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Upgrading to Web 2.5
The Web 2.0 movement brought, among many other ideals, the concept of a truly “communal” Internet. We saw the entrance of communities such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and of course, the blog, emerge. I maintain a regular blog and dabble in these other Internet communities, but ultimately find that they are not my thing.

What MySpace, for instance, did for me was to create a social community of friends and people with related interests. It’s a great concept, if only simple. I encountered two main problems with these solutions – set aside your particular opinion about the communities. The first, and most immediate, problem I had was that the site distracted me and my potential audience from my own blog. The other problem, something that took a little longer to become apparent, was that I was stuck into a much larger community than I was really interested in becoming “buddies” with.

My solution to these problems involves the maturation of Web 2.0 – perhaps to Web 2.5. I have heard of Web 3.0, but I don’t think the industry can make such a leap without some smaller steps in between. Web 2.5 allows the blog proprietor like myself to become part of these communities without stepping out of their home base.

The Case Study
My imagined solution looks simple at first glance. I maintain a blog. My friends maintain blogs and/or social networking profiles. I have other blogs/services out there to which I would like to drive attention. Now think of each of these things as containers to which I can subscribe, sometimes in a granular fashion. I build a collection of “friends,” “family,” and “interesting people” that I would like to have a reference to on my site. Today, you have blog rolls or even RSS feeds doing this. But what if you could access a container having someone’s profile and avatar, their blog articles, twitter feeds, and MySpace posts. From that container I can choose what I want to see, and how often I want to see it. Perhaps I just want digests. What’s more, the originator of that container can actually validate my request to subscribe to this data. They can also choose what they’ll allow me to see using templates (e.g. friends, family, co-workers), or define a custom rule just for me. The data continues to remain available through conventional means – say the RSS feed, a MySpace account, etc, but the personal container has controls.

I can extend it beyond the profile containers. Say you want to interact with your email or IM system through your blog. Think about having a single entry point to your personal web experience. The personal blog transforms into a personal dashboard with both public and private views. On the public side, you present your audience with your blog, some profile data, contact information, and perhaps a friend’s blog. Privately, you see your email, all your friends’ blogs, address book, and a calendar with your upcoming events.

There are ways to achieve most of this through conventional means, but there is no “solution” to it all. It takes a fundamental shift.

Back to WordPress
At the beginning of this post, I referred to my need for more in WordPress. WordPress utilizes a model of communal sharing already that leads me to believe that it is one of the strongest contenders to make my dream a reality. I’m jaded, of course, because I use WordPress a lot. However, I’ve also read about the WordPress.com Multi-User (MU) extension making its way to the public domain, BuddyPress. BuddyPress will make WordPress.com (and any other WP MU implementation) a community blog with integrated social networking a la MySpace. This is exactly what I’m talking about, if only on a very small scale. WordPress may have the framework to get where I want, but I still have to reach further for the over-arching API that allows WordPress to talk to social communities outside of itself. I believe WordPress has made the first move in my imagined Web 2.5.

The Solution
In brief, I imagine the final solution as being a web service that handles a centralized API for the OpenSocial, or something similar should the industry choose a better standard. Blog systems such as WordPress would have to utilize plugins to communicate with the API, but MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others would fit into the picture by being a part of OpenSocial. The custom web service would handle the “mash-up” of these different systems into a personal container. And of course, the user would manage their own container; permissions and contents.

In the end, I’d have my blog, my friends, and my choice. Web 2.0 moves forward and brings together the biggest social community ever on the Internet. Our personal sites become personal dashboards and launch points to our other interests. I think the way to Web 2.5 is clear, and someone out there is surely already working on it. You heard it here, first!

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I had originally applauded the city’s apparent progressive attitude towards new business ventures in the likes of adult novelties, though now I see this was a mistake.  Silver Stars seemed to be doing well in their inauguration into the Gainesville business community.  I know they had many customers, friends, and partners throughout the city.  Their website reports that they are still able (and encouraging people) to process online orders.  There is some glimmer of hope, I suppose, that they may be able to work out a business license through some loophole.  Should that happen, they’ll be back in business until the Council finds some other way to shut them down.

Incidentally, I’m looking through the City Ordinances trying to find the specific violation, but have been unable to do so.  If anyone can point me to the specific code, I’d appreciate it.

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Today I find the signature of the Guerrilla Tipster upon the windshield of a car in the Barnes and Noble parking lot of Duluth:

LEARN HOW TO PARK DUMB SHIT!!

The words are poignant. I only wish I could have been present when the recipient benefited from this sharing of wisdom. I’ll bet it was truly inspirational.

I’m considering having some custom stock made up with these choice words to continue the work of this Guerrilla Tipster. Perhaps with only slight grammatical adjustment:

Learn how to park, dumb shit!

…I don’t know, does a fully capitalized sentence give a sense of urgency? It certainly emotes well.

And to take the words of Ben Harper to heart, “What good is a cynic with no better plan,” some reeducation is in order. I’ve got some really brilliant ideas around this, but I should brainstorm on this to fully realize the genius. I’ll bring you more as this materializes.

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At once I will congratulate the creators on a job well done, an exceptional use of YouTube and media marketing, and an interesting “first date” story for the kids.

The story was a relatively simple one with a very “indie-feel”development. There was nothing too unexpected, though the touch of reality certainly holds to a current, popular interest. To that, knowing the whole story on how and why this film was created gives the audience a greater appreciation for the work as a whole. Having this uncommon insight in a film makes the story a great deal more interesting. The real story here is something more than what a trailer can summarize.

Four Eyed Monsters is a respectable résumé for its creators, Arin Crumley and Susin Buice. While a surface examination of the plot will demonstrate nothing unimaginably different, the 10,000 foot view shows us who Arin and Susan are. It develops a curious interest – celebrity – in the directors and stars of the film. It establishes a certain fondness and caring within its audience; we want to keep watching them and we want them to be well.

The first thing that struck me about the film was its descriptive use of cinematography. Each theme, though often unspoken, was presented in well-delivered visual allegory. I was reminded of “Hero” and the distinct use of color to deliver separate story lines throughout the film. As a résumé piece, this film generates a rich example of Crumley and Buice’s creative and technical work.

By the end of the film, I was in great appreciation for the presentation as a whole. The “rawness” of what the audience is allowed to see is fantastic. A tight sense of inclusion is with you throughout the story; as though you may know Arin and Susan. Maybe they just live in the area and you see them time-to-time. From introduction to closing comments, the audience is brought into the success or failures of the directors. Venues such as this allow for a progressive conversation from the community on all aspects of comments and the work itself. A Film 2.0, to be sure.

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My first WordPress plugin, Notify on Draft Post is now in its first public release. Here’s the rundown:

This plugin has now been accepted and is available for download via WordPress.org’s plugin site.

*** This tool has reached its usefulness. Version 2.2 of WordPress now includes the functionality natively. ***

**Release v.1.0.1
Cleaned up some of the comments within the code itself. It should be well documented by this point!

Features v.1.0
Check that user *can’t* Publish a post on their own (Contributor, for instance)
Selectable “ready to publish” flag for submission
WP Moderator notification email (admin email)

Installation:
The file notify-draft.php must be put within the wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. Activate the plugin from the administration interface…done!

Roadmap:
I would like to add some options for Notify on Draft Post to allow the selection of an alternate email or multiples. By default, the product utilizes the site’s defined “admin” email address.

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Oh, and some of you might remember my wife – yet another member of the vulgar vixens. She boldly displayed the word “VAGINA” for the world to see outside of her studio. Wickèd I tell you, wickèd.

**UPDATE** Krista received a personal visit by the same (I assume it’s the same, anyway) lady that first complained about her establishment. The woman was fuming and ready to start a personal battle with Bella Lingerie. Unfortunately, she hadn’t counted on Krista to be as strong-willed as she is. Krista listened very well to her complaint…and then unleashed a fury of professional debate like no other. She cited examples of “support for breast cancer victims” and the general need of lingerie in general. Krista is very well prepared for such an attack and she gave her side exceptionally well. So well,in fact, that the woman left in a bit of a huff with nothing more to add or complain about. We hope that she something more to think about rather than the relative “goodness” of women’s lingerie in public sight.

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The present theory is that a celestial body is given the planet status if it orbits a star and has gravity. One of Einstein’s theories explained that any old object in space has gravity. Gravity is proportionately greater as size decreases and density increases. That doesn’t make for any special categorization in my mind. A planet should be something unique and special within the universe. Afterall, it is a planet that sustains life in organisms.

I feel that a proper planet should have a soul. You can keep the bit about orbiting star – I have no conflict with that. One name for the planet’s soul that has stuck over the centuries is “Gaea.” To that, I think that in order for a planet to exhibit life in this way, it has to be living itself. That is, undergoing transformations geographically. Active as it is used in describing volcanoes. I haven’t followed up on the latest research into Pluto, but I seem to recall that Pluto is little more than a frozen methane bubble. With no core at all, I don’t see that Pluto could be counted as an active planet, Pluton or otherwise.

They’re calling Mercury a Dwarf Planet, which I can appreciate. Dwarven as it refers to the status of being a planet. It’s the same as our classification of stars and it works for planets too. A star near its end of being a star is called a White Dwarf. Mercury is said to have a partially molten core, which tells me it’s near its end in planetary life. The crust is solid with little allowance for any type of resurfacing or atmospheric influence from the core. So on one hand the dwarf class denotes an accurate point in the body’s planetary status, a planet’s life cycle is not considered in the definition.

I digress. Here’s the lineup today for our rediscovered solar system:

That’s

1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars
5. Ceres
6. Jupiter
7. Saturn
8. Uranus
9. Neptune
10. Pluto + Charon
11. 2003 UB313 (Xena)

NPR.org has a good piece up this morning with a humorous cartoon about Pluto’s fate.

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Now while this is all highly humorous to me, I understand it to be quite different being the recipient of such an interlocution. I can obviously catch the eerie element to this, but I had hoped that the world was kind afterall and fear had no place where butterflies lived. However, A. has been upset by the event and went as far as an attempted police filing. This got her nowhere – possibly further from nowhere because her faith in the civil service is shaken. I’m not exactly sure what the police could do with such a filing at this point, but it seems they would at least do their part in easing fears by filing the damn report. It’s not a question of the officer’s faith in her truth either. He was present to see the evidence and surmised that a report could not be taken because there was no real threat in the letter. The guardians of justice continue to serve and protect, but matters of humanity escape them. I know their story is quite jaded, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Fear not A., there’s an entire league of superheroes watching over you to rescue you from threatened peril. The Magic Man can pull things out of hats, and Superman can freakin’ turn back time by flying around the world really fast.

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