holovaty & co officially present post remix. the goal, in adrian's words:

* To spotlight the work of outside Web developers who've made cool and interesting projects ("mashups") using Post content.
* To provide information about washingtonpost.com's various data offerings (APIs and RSS feeds).

could be neat! *especially* if they figure out a way to improve washingtonpost.com's RSS feeds. i do love getting my post RSS feeds two days after an article has been published.

...but this blog has helped me in stranger ways before, so i thought i'd try it out.

my lovely, talented and handsome younger brother peter (check out his drill team photos here, or graduation photos here) is moving to saratoga springs, ny, this winter, after the first part of his crazy navy nuclear sub training is over in charleston. he's having a hell of a time finding an apartment - SS, i guess, is a pretty small/resorty town, so it's not like they've got a craigslist. does anyone have any way of finding a realtor or some listings that could help him out? if so, shoot me an email. much thanks.

i'll be at the black cat backstage tonight at the lucky bastards show, reporting for DCist's excellent Three Stars feature. come on out if you'd like!

You've doubtless heard about Sony's recent DRM fiasco. Today, word that a piece of tape placed on the CD can defeat the copy protection. So can the holding down the shift key, or turning off autorun, for that matter.

This is all very funny, but I'd encourage people not to conclude what the following Slashdot commenter did:

Really, there's nothing they can do. If someone can create software to copy-protect a CD, some enterprising soul can create software to defeat it.

This is true, but only because it includes the term "CD". At the moment we're lucky to have a popular digital audio standard (Redbook CD) that has no DRM built into its format, and a digital video standard (DVD) with poorly designed security that is now easy to break.

But let's not lull ourselves into a false sense of security. The next generation of digital media will have very strong protections — geeks have won this round because the DRM people were sloppy and at times relied on security through obscurity. That won't happen again. The cracking of the current generation's formats also took place under a lax legislative atmosphere that, post-DMCA, does not exist. And it's only thanks to a relatively small handful of brilliant experts — people like DVD Jon and Bunnie Huang — that we enjoy the digital freedom we currently do. A little disincentive can go a long way. There simply aren't that many sufficiently brilliant people that have to be dissuaded.

It is theoretically possible to make a digital format that is all but uncrackable, and I wouldn't be surprised to see someone succeed at such an implementation. The electronics industry is trying to build DRM into our home entertainment centers and PCs. If they succeed in that effort the situation will be even more bleak. We'll truly be at their mercy.

Yes, the analog hole will always exist. But taking advantage of it requires expertise and some relatively expensive equipment. And the end product will never live up to the source — particularly since the source formats' fidelity gets better with every new release.

Sony looks like a bunch of boobs, but that's largely because the CD format ties their hands. CDs won't be around for ever; neither will Sony's chagrin. This is a battle that is going to have to be fought over and over. Maybe the geeks will save us every time. Congress would only have to do it once.

much props to kyle for being my first official visitor who is not a boyfriend and for braving the magic futon. also much props to him for getting me in to see the super furry animals, who put on a fun, adorable show, complete with motorcylce helmet wearing and celery crunching (by the way, the rest of you fools, kyle set a pretty high standard for visitors; from now on every guest is required to get me on a guest list for an awesome concert, or at least the equivalent. mmk?). then props for meeting matt, who is just as nice as he comes off on his site, and props to rj3, who was a master of parallel parking and unparking (he drove to the show, parallel parked, and when we came out, he had been literally bumpered in by a fancy gray bmw. how he got out of there, i'll never truly understand). so yeah. props all around! and especially major props to chicago for being such a pretty city to fly out of at night. whatta skyline.

sigh. i knew it had to happen soon. after nearly two and a half years of constant wearage, the only jeans that ever looked good on me are dying. they're developing tiny holes that, if they become much larger, will soon be quite indecent.

every girl knows the journey that is finding the perfect pair of jeans, and i thought my life-long search had ended that day in nordstrom when i picked up this pair for only $50 (which seems incredibly and laughably low considering what most jeans cost these days). i should have known better. i should have bought six pairs. because i was a fool and thought that particular brand would always be carried by nordstorm. or somebody. anybody.

but they're not. in my crazed internet searches the past few weeks, as my jeans were falling apart before my eyes, i have found nothing. apparently this brand is italian (of course) and generally makes more mens jeans than womens. sigh. so if anybody knows where i can get a pair of boot cut low rise size 5 energie jeans, let me know. otherwise, please pity me with suggestions of jeans that look good on you and don't cost $300. cause i need a new pair.

Bah! Just when I'm wallowing in the crapitude of my job, daydreaming about leaving, my boss goes around and gives everyone a ridiculously generous annual raise. It's a nice surprise, but it doesn't change much except the level of guilt I'm experiencing — the nature of this project is such that for quite a while now I haven't been able to do my job as well as I would like. If I had to fill out a quarterly accomplishments form right now, "not jumping in front of the Metro" would be right at the top of the list. It doesn't really feel like I should be rewarded for that.

In other news, Catherine got home safe & sound, so everything is pretty great.