Look for it. Sometime.

• Diablo II is getting tough. Any possibility of addiction is not coming true.
• The shoutbox breaks the Cynthia Says compliance, so this page is no longer compliant with those standards and the button has been removed.
• The tapes are all backed up. They rock.

Also, I took out Diablo and Diablo II after about 10 years. I don’t think I ever or barely played Diablo II, but it’s the only option now, being the latest (an expansion pack called “Lord of Destruction” came later, and Diablo III is on the way), and Diablo I has been rendered totally useless by hackers. (Diablo II has spamming issues but nothing too bad.) I was never a “gaming” type, but I forgot how fun these games were.

So once these tapes are transferred I’ll be back to blogging (and doing other things) more often.

On June 30th, 2009, 2:21:01 AM EDT, the first post to the “Azz Pizz Institute” blog was made. This predecessor to the “X-Cop Fly Company”, this blog was named after an inside joke. It was a personal journal coming from an immature humor perspective – a major step “down” from my past political blogs, such as “Life, Liberty, and Property” (a Blogspot blog which lasted a very long time and was once cited by a minor news source). At that time, “Azz Pizz Institute” was hosted on a subdomain of a file archive (which is currently a parked domain redirecting to xcopfly.com).

On July 27th, 2009, 5:02:53 AM EDT, a post entitled “Something Big Is Coming To A School Near You…” was made.

On July 28th, 2009, 5:58:14 AM EDT, a post revealed the purchase of a domain name and work on a new site.

On August 7th, 2009, 2:04:25 AM EDT, xcopfly.com was revealed to the public – “The X-Cop Fly Company”, another inside joke, would both supplant “The Azz Pizz Institute” as well as be a pseudonym to develop software for the TI Calculator (later canceled after lack of interest, the inefficiency of the TI-BASIC programming language, and disgust over legal actions taken by Texas Instruments.)

On August 25th, 2009, 10:52:31 AM EDT, an intention to obsessively and unnecessarily have xcopfly.com comply with all sorts of Web standards was announced, and changes were made for this purpose.

On November 13th, 2009, 10:42:20 PM EST, a post was made announcing an X-Cop Fly Company-owned server for the game UrbanTerror. (It was canceled later due to lack of use.)

On January 28th, 2010, 4:10:56 AM EST, I responded to comments of the “gross” photo of a brown gnat – by painting one myself! Made with pastels and charcoal pencil, the logo exists on the top right corner of xcopfly.com to this day.

On May 18th, 2010, 5:35:54 AM EDT, I took a brave, countercultural, and definitely unusual stance on Internet copyright licensing issues. With my other option being special-interest-controlled legal traps like Creative Commons, I released most of this blog’s text content into the public domain! And I’m not talking about the Creative Commons “CC0″ and “Public Domain Dedication” waiver trickery (see link for important updated information on this)

On May 26th, 2010, 8:11:52 PM EDT, a separate stylesheet was created for xcopfly.com for compatibility with mobile devices, TVs, and older browsers.

Thank you all for reading xcopfly.com!

British film archivists yesterday have released footage which apparently shows the world’s first mobile phone being used – in 1922.

They…attach a wire from the device onto a fire hydrant before erecting an umbrella which has been converted into an aerial.

Read the article and watch the black-and-white silent video.

In other news, last week I set up my site to support, with full graphics, CSSv1-only browsers, handheld devices, and TVs, using an alternate stylesheet. The only difference is that the alternate stylesheet lacks the pretty shading in the menu bar. (I was not about to give that up, so I created an alternate stylesheet.)

The alternate stylesheet is the default for handheld devices and TVs. If you’re on a computer and want to take a peek, or have a very old browser and want the site to work better, from selecting “Mobile/TV/Old Browser” in your page styles menu (Firefox has it under View->Page Style and IE has View->Style)

There are two “Valid CSS!” buttons on the side now – one for each stylesheet, both of which validate to the standards labeled.

Slackware 13.1 doesn’t play nice with Audacious or my wireless card. I’ll be back…

I have been putting off deciding this – I will not use the popular Creative Commons licenses because later versions include a sneak GPL-style provision allowing relicensing under “compatible licenses” approved by Creative Commons (the organization) as “in the spirit” of existing Creative Commons licenses. The hard-to-find page of “compatible licenses” states that no additional licenses have been approved yet. But the GPLv2, created in 1991, featured an automatic upgrade to later versions, unless one was smart enough to take it out of the template. Many thought this was not a problem, as the GPLv2 came out in 1991, and just used the standard template. Version 3 of the GPL came out in 2006, and was very favorable to special interests.

In keeping with my attitudes towards modern copyright law, privacy rights, freedom of speech and censorship, I have decided to (mostly) stop being hypocritical and release portions of xcopfly.com into the public domain, with other portions subject to copyright.

UPDATE: Apparently Creative Commons’ “CC0 1.0 Universal” allows waiving additional rights (and responsibilities) in addition to copyright, which is what I had intended, and there are no special backdoors specific to Creative Commons Inc.’s management decisions (at least if the version number is stated). As of October 16, 2010, the use of “public domain” in the terms below has been changed to reflect this.

Here are the details:

1. All publicly-accessible text content originating from xcopfly.com (with the exceptions listed below) is dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
2. Unless explicitly stated, this excludes software, audio, video, images, graphics, comments, ZIP files and their contents, the shoutbox and its contents, all material found on the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site, and any content copyrighted by others.
3. Certain non-text content originating from xcopfly.com may, but only if explicitly stated, be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
4. Any thumbnail images, which have been created for images which the X-Cop Fly has explicitly stated are dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, are also dedicated to the public domain according to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. This does not apply to copyrighted images.
5. Certain content not originating from xcopfly.com may already be in the public domain or subject to CC0.
6. All additional waivers found in the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication apply to material released into the public domain by the X-Cop Fly Company prior to October 16, 2010. If waiving the copyright to any of this material was not possible in your jurisdiction at the time, the whole of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication applies to such material.
7. The statements given in this list of inclusions and exclusions also apply to xcopfly.com Web feeds and their contents, and no additional restrictions apply to syndication or other use of these feeds.
8. This list of inclusions and exclusions, including the portion below under the heading “HISTORY”, is copyrighted by the X-Cop Fly Company. The X-Cop Fly Company grants you the right to reproduce this list in verbatim form only. According to the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, reproduction of this list is not a requirement for any use of material dedicated to the public domain.

HISTORY:

11/23/2011: Added note regarding Web feeds as #7, shifting pre-existing #7 to #8.

9/19/2011: Added note regarding thumbnail images as #4, shifting pre-existing #4, #5, and #6 down to #5, #6, and #7. For clarity, in #2, “all contents found on the Rogue…” changed to “all material found on the Rogue…”

9/18/2011: Added the Rogue Central @ coredumpcentral.org site to the list of exclusions.

8/9/2011: To avoid confusion, “downloadable content” in #2 was renamed to “ZIP files and their contents”. To make #2 easier to read, this phrase’s position moved in the list from before “software” to before “the shoutbox and its contents”.

7/2/2011: To avoid confusion, removed “now” from #5.

12/12/2010: Replaced “CC0 1.0″ with “CC0 1.0 Universal” for clarity. No other edition of “CC0 1.0″ exists as of this date, and all links on this Web site referring to “CC0 1.0″ instead of “CC0 1.0 Universal” went to the same “CC0 1.0 Universal” page.

11/14/2010: #5 Grammar fix: “any or all of” changed to “any of”. #6 clarified to state that this “HISTORY” section is part of the copyrighted list and asserts the CC0 1.0 status of the work with regard to reproducing the list.

10/16/2010: CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication replaces “in the public domain” in #1. “or subject to CC0″ added to #3 and #4. #5 moved down to #6, and new #5 deals with material which had been previously released into the public domain prior to the X-Cop Fly Company utilizing CC0 1.0.

(the date the shoutbox was added, sometime after 7/19/2010) Added “the shoutbox and its contents” to the list of exclusions.

(unknown date after 5/18/2010) Added “software” to the list of exclusions. All software on the site had been “downloadable content”, but clarity was needed, for example, with Web-based games, if any would be developed and/or hosted in the future.

I didn’t look at any of the links above, or click on any tags or, or explore the page at all – I just asked her to scroll down. Embedded videos were missing, as were all pictures (excluding the Web buttons on the side). The design of the page, including the X-Cop Fly logo, were also missing giving a simple “1996″ blue-on-white page. Written portions, however, were visible, though we didn’t click on any links.

Which OS are You?

Which File Extension are You?

How White and Nerdy Are You?

Which Caffeinated Beverage are You?

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

Which Programming Language are You?

Which Website are You?

Also removed “Pages” from the sidebar, it’s unnecessary when the same thing is at the top.

VSNZYXVQJSRB

Big Five personality test (click the thumbnails below):

(Big 5 is the only “professional” psychological test I’ve found which works for me. Others like the popular Myers-Briggs are always inaccurate.)

Computer Geek Quiz

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There’s no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don’t scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

Blogthings Quiz: What Color Green Are You?

Hacker Key (includes Political Compass) (“decode” text below at HackerKey.com)

v4sw7CJUhw4ln5pr7OSFPck2ma7u5Lw6DWXGm?l7Si852Ne6t2/4MAb9OMen6g5ATOCPa2Xs2r4/5p3/-3 hackerkey.com

In addition to cleaning up the non-compliant XHTML and non-compliant CSS code, I added compliance with US Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 for disabled Web surfers. The thing last night was that I attempted Priority 2, but it would have required major changes to the way I write, so I wound up giving up towards the end. Changes to my writing style were even required for Priority 2 & 3! I will comply whenever feasible – you can check Cynthia Says for more information. (That last sentence actually violated Priority 2.)

I know it’s stupid for somebody’s personal blog but then again this blog, the calculator software, and other parts of the page are strictly a hobby. I do want visitors but took the ads down a long time ago, since they were no longer profitable enough to be worth the drawbacks.

I’m thinking about content ratings. I’d definitely give the site the equivalent of a “PG-13″ or “TV-14 DL” rating. The only problem is that kids who want to download the calculator games, even those who are over age 13, might run into problems with parents not understanding or being overprotective just because something came up on the screen. I already add “nsfw” as a tag to posts with those ratings.

I’ll also be looking for other fun stuff to comply with. Later!