Leaving Haloscan? Use this handy scraper

I recently decided to use entirely to blogger comments for my blog, but I wanted to retain my old comments for posterity (and/or to occasionally enrage me). So, I went a-googling , and eventually came across a Haloscan comment scraper which performed the task very admirably. You just need to have python installed and be ready to enter your Haloscan username and password.

Note that it may not work forever, but it works as of today.

My next task is figuring out how to automatically put all the comments into blogger. Hoo boy.

Shared Feeds in the Sidebar

I've added a neat feature to the sidebar: my shared feeds from Google Reader. You can see the articles' titles on the sidebar, or you can go to the page (click 'read more...') where you can see the full article (or part of the article, depending on how the original site has it set up) and even subscribe to a feed of my shared items for the convenient ability to read it in your own feed reader!

(Consequently, article mentions will become rarer in the blog itself...)

Dangerous Intersection on "How the mainstream media has failed us"

Ebonmuse (also of Daylight Atheism) over at Dangerous Intersection has an interesting - and important - article called How the mainstream media has failed us discussing John Hockenberry's article "You Don't Understand Our Audience" - What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC. Interesting reads, both.

Exposing the Game

Just wanted to point you all to Steve's new game review blog, Exposing the Game -- One Card at a Time. He already has two reviews up: Carcasonne and Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game.

First blog post for AppVenture

Some of you may know that I've been working for AppVenture, Inc. these past few months, and one of our projects is blogging about programming. So, I'm proud to announce my very first post at AppVenture, Synchronizing Contacts in Outlook 2003 using an Add-in. Enjoy!

New blogs

Just a couple more links today:

Greta Christina's Blog. I came by this atheist blog through the post Atheists and Anger.

Ebon Musings has the Ten New Commandments. By the same author is Daylight Atheism.

Lawrence Lessig Changes Direction

In a recent blog post, Lawrence Lessig announced that he will be shifting his focus away from "IP" ('Intellectual Property', better called 'Intellectual Monopoly' or 'Intellectual Privilege') towards fighting the corruption endemic in the system of government. Best of luck to him.

You should also read Lessig's blog (added to the blogroll) because he's really that awesome. :-)

Blog Rating

Yay!

Mingle² - Online Dating

Wanna know why?

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
queer (8x) gay (2x) abortion (1x)

Radgeek's Over My Shoulder #34

Radgeek has an interesting passage this week from Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World on parenting a free and autonomous child. Interesting reading; seems to make sense to me. Now I want a copy of How I Found Freedom, but the amazon listings are > $80. :-/ Maybe a library around here has it.

Terry Hancock on Why Free Software is Important

In a recent blog post at Free Software Magazine, Terry Hancock explains (some reasons) why free software is important, and why we should spend our time promoting it and working on it, even though there are "bigger problems to worry about" in the world.

I would still point out that there are many other things that one could do, including protests (among others), although some are not terribly effective. Nevertheless, long-term planning and creating stable, ethical and expandable communities and methods for the future to build on is certainly worthwhile.