Lost and found

First, three tech-related discoveries:

Sometimes I feel like loading up on Firefox extensions. Why? Because I can. And also because they can be useful. I've installed some privacy-related extensions lately. They are...

• BetterPrivacy: Lets you manage "Local Shared Objects," little-known cookie-like files that are set and used by Flash. I found out that there were lots of LSOs hidden away on my computer, some for as long as I've had it (two years!). Now I've set BetterPrivacy to delete all LSOs when Firefox exits.
• Ghostery: Shows you which common tracking scripts are being used on a given page and lets you block them. Sometimes they're used by curious amateur webmasters, but others belong to advertising networks. I figure if I'm already using Adblock Plus to zap ads, why should advertisers have a shot at tracking me at all?
• Perspectives: Can determine if a site using a suspicious SSL certificate is legitimate.
• Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO): Sets persistent cookies to opt-out from behavioral (tracking-based) advertising by major ad networks. This together with Ghostery might be overkill, but it can't hurt.

During my trip to Europe this summer, one of the bits of news I did find out was that The Pirate Bay had gotten bought out. When I came back, I half-noticed openbittorrent.com as an alternate tracker for my Pirate Bay torrents. The domain is apparently registered to Fredrik Neij, one of the guys from the Pirate Bay. The web site describes OpenBitTorrent as a tracker that anyone can use. There's no index or anything. This could be a good solution for distributing large files. Noted!

Unlike all of my friends, I've never stopped watching Homestar Runner cartoons. In the age of RSS, you would think that the site would provide a feed, but there is none. People seem to be happy with this one, which scrapes the site for new stuff, but I hate it. It includes the fanstuff and the quote of the week, but it doesn't include new cartoons. I know; I've been trying it for years, probably. Fortunately, the legions of fans who maintain the creepily comprehensive Homestar Runner Wiki have a section on the main page for updates to the official site. And, it turns out, this section has its own RSS feed. So if you can stand the four-second wait between the release of a new cartoon and its addition to the wiki, you should check it out.

Next, three tech-related discoveries-to-be:

I'm in the market for a good comment spam plugin for WordPress. The measures I have in place prevent all automated comment spam but none of the manual spam that crops up from time to time. Akismet would be nice, but the censorship allegations concern me. I guess an all-around better solution would be Bayesian filtering at the local level, similar to what Thunderbird does for filtering spam e-mails. In other words, I'm looking for something like WPBayes but simpler to install and compatible with WordPress 2.8.

I like reading blogs, but in all my years in the blogosphere, I haven't found many good ones. Finding local blogs would be interesting, particularly if they were by fellow students at my university. Remember, years ago, when you used to submit your site to geographical blog directories that would plot local blogs on a map? Whatever happened to those sites? And how, in this day and age, would I go about finding freshly updated blogs in a certain area? GeoURL is kind of lame and isn't limited to blogs. So, failing that, how would I find good blogs at all?

I also like listening to Internet radio stations in Rhythmbox. Well, sort of. I think I just like knowing that I have them available. But of course, that's not always the case. Internet radio streams use weird protocols that make Rhythmbox freak out. Some stations seem to change up their stream URLs every few months, leaving me with dead radio stations. Is there some sort of Rhythmbox extension that can import tons of high-quality, working radio stations en masse and update their stream URLs periodically? Probably not, but there should be. Any takers? No? I didn't think so.

Finally, for the people who just kind of looked at their screens funny as they read all that, the payoff.

Kickstarter is a new site that allows people with ideas to collect the money they need. (Via waxy.org)

An art student has painted a car to make it look invisible. Article and more photos and video. (Via J-Walk Blog)

If the fire alarm goes off while you're band's practicing, don't panic: play along! (Via waxy.org)