Benign Thoughts

Well, I just saw the first presidential debate, and I think it was rather evenly matched. I’m probably not going to go into as much detail as someplace like Power Line, but I’ll simply state my opinions on things.

First of all, you should know that even though I’m not a registered voter (hell, I’m only 14), I agree with the republicans usually. So if you’re a democrat and you read this, you may think I look like a total idiot. I’m sorry, but I can’t help my opinions. If you wanna talk about this, you can do it either on the comments of this entry, or you could do it on the Free Speech page.

So lets get started, shall I? I want to first point out how many times John Kerry switched positions. He agrees with the war in iraq and the war on terror, yet he said that George W. Bush made the wrong choice and he shouldn’t have invaded Iraq. Number 1, it’s CONGRESS who declares war, and since Kerry is in the senate, he votes whether or not to go to Iraq in the first place, and you know what? He voted for going. Also, he said that he wanted to get saddam and that saddam was a big threat tons of times, but now he’s saying that we should have gone for Osama first, and that we should have given Saddam more chances. Another thing Kerry said was that he wants more people fighting. Hmm… lets think a bit. He also wants to pull people out and fund more things. Where’s he going to get the money to pay for more supplies and how’s he going to get more people to join the army? Well, the supply thing is easy: he’s going to raise taxes. Now, what about all the people he needs to get to join the army. My guess is one word: draft. Yes, I don’t think Bush puts us in danger of starting the draft again, I think it’s Kerry who wants a draft. Then again, he seems to change his position alot, so we can’t even tell. Oh, and by the way: notice that Bush looks at you and the audience, while Kerry looks at the moderator. If Bush is so dumb, then how is he such a great debater?

Ok, that’s it. I’m getting really tired, and although I wanted to talk about how younger kids are nastier than older kids, I’m gonna stop now. I guess I’ll just have to cover that tomorrow. Bye!

Tonight’s blog is going to be short but sweet. You know, when I say that, I sound like the introduction of early Detective Conan episodes… “Today’s episode is going to be about ransom.” Well, I’m entering this entry knowing that I’m definately going to be blogging about my bicycle ride yesterday, but I have no clue what else so this is going to be kinda messy and random.

Well then, yesterday I went on a bike ride. I didn’t really write about it, but it was with my dad, who’s really crazy. He went up every street, and we ended up on the other side of main street, which means we went pretty far. Then, we went to my friend Matt’s house to say hi, and we ended up there until it started to get dark so we went home. I’m gonna have to go bike riding more often, since I just got a new bike (a Trek 4500) and it’s really fun. We went down this one really big hill, and we were going faster than the cars going down it, which means we were going at least 30 mph, maybe 50.

I’ve been spending a ton of time in #wordpress. I mean a LOT of time. In fact, I spent about the last 3 hours there (while doing my homework, of course). It’s amazing the people you meet there. The world of blogging is actually pretty small. For instance, you know Scottishot.com? Well, somebody I met in #wordpress also knew Scott at one point and now, like me, is pissed off at him. You know what? I think I’ll delete my link to him right now…

My project’s going smoothly… All that’s really left is to buy the domain, find hosting, take care of the user control panel, and add a few more features. Other than that, we just need to do some beta testing and we’ll be ready to rumble. The people who read this blog and members of unrealpages.com will be first to know about the latest project. Then we’ll open up to bots so we’ll get indexed into search engines. After that, we should be at full blast within a few weeks. If you still don’t know what it is, it’s an AIM profile site. Don’t worry though, because I’ll still be moderating buddy4u, and the two sites are going to stay as seperate as possible. I don’t want to take down Buddy4u, I want to take down SubProfile (they are only compatible with IE).

Speaking of B4U, people there are really starting to piss me off. I was so close to leaving B4U a few days ago, but I decided to stay and see if things get better. Fights seem to be popping up everywhere, and as a moderator, I have to try my best to stop them. Luckily, I’m taking the week off from moderating, so it’s all good :-).

Ok, that’s it. I’m too lazy to include a pic today because I don’t feel like making one. Maybe tomorrow. See Ya!

Sorry everyone. I know I haven’t been blogging much lately, but there’s so much schoolwork. I’ve got tons to do for Creative Writing (I’m calling it CW from now on because I’m a lazy bastard). Fo far I have three assignments, which would come out to six pieces of writing: three pages of DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION (I have two done so far), four two page pieces written from prompts, and a review on “The Bargain”. It’s not that bad, but it takes up time…

I’m sure you were wondering when I would get around to talk about gbrowser. Google people: If you are reading this right now, DON’T DO IT!!!! Team up with Mozilla and work on Firefox. At the very least, make it open source and have extensions like Firefox has. I’m all for killing Microsoft and getting rid of Internet Explorer, but come on! Mozilla’s the good-guys, don’t go against them. Instead, team up with them to make the best damn browser on the planet! Regular people: I predict that Google will become the next Microsoft, except without evil power-hungry bastard part. They will be the ones to finally bring MS down to their knees.

I’ve got a new project that I’m working on, but it’s kind of confidential right now. It has a little bit to do with UnrealPages, and almost nothing to do with WPX though. I’ll be throwing 110% of myself into this project, but yeah, I’ll still blog, so you don’t have to worry.

My “Free Speech Page” isn’t as popular as I thought it would be… My guess is that most people don’t notice it in the sidebar, so in a little I’ll add a link to the top bar thing.

That’s all! Goodnight, Everyone!

Well, I actually fixed this that saturday when I posted that message. However, when I was going to post on Sunday, my dad took away my computer (I threw a pillow at my little sister). Anyhow, I’m going to have a nice, long blog tonight (If I have time), so here goes!

Hi there, My name is Louis! The reason why I’m introducing myself is because I found that I’ve been having a lot more visitors lately, and I figured that it would be polite, so if you haven’t been here before: Hi there! If you are using Internet Exploder as your browser, please read the entry after the one below this one (”Why you should not use IE”). I apologize for the messed up sidebar. I can’t figure out how to fix it and still make this layout work in every single other browser… You’ll just have to deal with it for now, unless you switch to firefox.

Speaking of the sidebar, do you notice anything different? Try checking out the “other” section. Yes, I added a new special page. I really didn’t feel like making a space for it in the top menu, so I’ll do that when I feel like it. Anyway, if you can’t find it, it’s “The Free Speech Page“. Basically, it’s a page that anybody can post to. It actually uses a rather modified version of Scott’s PHPQuoter. In case you don’t know what that is, a while ago my own quotes page was fully generated by the quoter. Now I modified it a ton and use the new version to power that page. Anyway, the story about how the page came to be is at the top of the page. The page is designed to look like an actual piece of paper, as it would look in Openoffice or another word processor that I would rather not say the name of (I’ll give you a hint: most of you probably use it). Check out that new page, and post whatever you want: as long as it’s nice and mature. I don’t want any bullshit or flaming, otherwise I’ll simply delete the whole page.

UP is back up! If you don’t know my abbriviations by now, UP is UnrealPages.com, a free hosting company I’m working on with a few friends. It’s been down for about a month now, but now it’s back up. We’re currently looking for a new host, and we also are thinking of selling. Don’t worry, we’ll still probably take care of support and stuff, all the profits would just probably go to the owner.

That’s all! So goodnight!

Just so you know, I’m having some problems with WordPress’s xmlrpc interface. That means that I probably won’t have a full post until I can fix it (the web interface really bugs me). Sorry

I just spent an hour this morning trying to get my website to look right in Internet Explorer. That’s not why I’m pissed though. I’m pissed because it worked in every single other browser BUT Internet Explorer. Do you have any idea why?

I’ll give you a hint: Internet Explorer does not handle certain things, such as some css right. This means, that even though my website SHOULD look right in IE, it won’t. In fact, it DOES look right, and then it messes itself up. I have it fixed now, so that doesn’t matter.

However, that’s not the only reason why not to use Internet Explorer. Remember in the days where everyone used Netscape (the good Netscape, not the crappy AOL owned one today, basically Mosaic)? Well, back them Microsoft was just starting to set up their monopoly. They would send you IE disks in the mail, but nobody would use them because they knew that IE was crap.

IE really didn’t start being used until Microsoft added it to the Windows Operating System (which they ripped off from everyone else too, but that isn’t the point). It wasn’t actually bundled until Windows 98, and almost nobody used it before that. Windows 95 did not have IE, you had to (buy and) install Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. It was built into the Internet Jumpstart Kit. I have no problem with that.

In fact, I only had a problem with IE since it started being bundled with Windows. This keeps users from picking out a browser. Users who are too lazy to install a good browser, simply use IE.

Now, the right thing for MS to do would be to include IE in Windows, but also include, say, Netscape, or now Firefox (or Opera, or Mozilla, or basically anything). But they don’t.

Other Browsers have a billion more features than IE, and most of them, especially Firefox, are a billion times better, but people STILL use IE because it’s included with their Operating System, and because they’re afraid installing something else will screw things up. Well, you know what? I can guarantee Firefox won’t mess anything up as long as you download it from the official site. There is no spyware or adware in Firefox. Opera has an adbar at the top of the browser, which you have to pay to get rid of. Netscape 6 and 7 are total crap because they’re owned by AOL. Mozilla is very slow and very heavyweight.

There are only two things that IE should be used for: Downloading a better browser, and accessing Windows Update. Visiting any other site is a security threat to you. Crackers/Hackers/Phreakers find new security exploits in IE every day. This means that there’s MORE stuff that they can do to screw up your computer. You know what those people use? Well, I can tell you this: they don’t use Internet Explorer. Spyware frequently screws up your Internet Explorer too, changing your homepage, getting rid of your favorites or adding favorites, and adding special “toolbars” that record what you do and send it out to their server.

You know the term “bookmarks”? Well, whenever somebody asks you to bookmark something, they are referring to the old Mosaic/Netscape term (the same term used in every browser but IE today). In IE they should say “favorites”. This is simply proof that everybody at one point used Netscape/Mosaic, and then MS came along and corrupted everyone with IE.

Now, Firefox is still under heavy development, but the thing that made me write this article right now is because Firefox PR is now out, meaning it’s basically at it’s last stage before it goes stable. If that’s too confusing for you, Firefox is going to be released soon. Yes, every version of Firefox you downloaded before I.0 comes out is a beta, meaning it won’t be perfect and will still have bugs. Right now, I’d recommend downloading it because you will have less problems. If you’re still afraid, wait for 1.0 to come out. I’ll let you know when. In the meantime, check out http://www.browsehappy.com which is an anti-IE website.

Visit getfirefox.com to read about Firefox and all it’s features.

Visit Opera.com to read about Opera and all it’s features (I don’t recommend Opera because it has some CSS issues).

And visit Mozilla.org to read about Mozilla, which I don’t recommend because it’s really heavyweight, and soon Firefox will replace it.

Firefox shouldn’t mess up any of your settings, so if IE stops working, it’s because of the way IE is coded, not Firefox. Firefox also has NO SPYWARE or viruses or anything, so your privacy is perfectly safe.

Once again: Be smart and stop using IE.

PS: IE’s not even original, it’s based on Mosaic (check your “about” dialog), which is basically Netscape (Read http://www.w3.org/Style/History/www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1994q4/0187.html). So in short, IE is based on Netscape, which later branched into Mozilla and Netscape (now owned by AOL), and Mozilla came out with Firefox.

If anything’s wrong here, let me know.

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, my new domain is up and running. I’m just having some email troubles, but other than that, everything’s great! In a while you should start being redirected to http://www.benignthoughts.com when you go to benignthoughts.uni.cc.

New Affiliate! I added a new affiliate today. He’s called Hack the Mind, and although I don’t promote what people call ‘hacking’ (it’s really cracking), I’m still linking to him because… uh… I feel like it.

I was thinking… Now, some of you might find this confusing, but to the rest it should be very enjoyable. You also may have read or heard ideas like this from other places. In fact, I thought of it, and then about a few months later, I was at a friend’s house and they had someone else over, who mentioned the same exact thing, so it’s a very popular idea. Hell, I might have already talked about this, but whatever. Well, enough with the little intro. I’ll just start:

Ever wonder if what you see is the same thing as the person next to you does? Yes, I’m being serious. Your blue could be my red, but you or I would never know because we can only see what we see. Everybody could like the same color. For instance, I like blue and my dad likes purple, but what if my blue is the same as his purple? What if my black was somebody else’s pink? There’s no way to tell! Do you get what I’m saying? If I said something was ‘dark’, who’s to say what I see as dark somebody else sees as light. The same thing applies to foods and smells. Armpits smell bad, and we all know that, but what if, to someone else, armpits smell like what I smell as strawberries? He/she would still consider the smell bad. Get the picture? If you do, good. If you don’t, sorry.

That’s it and goodbye!