In case you’ve been living under a rock, you should know by now that Charlton Heston is dead.  One of my favorite feeds is from The Ferrett.  Besides having a cool name, being personal friends with one of my professional idols Eric Meyer, writing for Magic the Gathering, and being editor-in-chief of StarCityGames.com - where I spend way too much money on every pre-order release - he’s also pretty good at being eloquent, talking about how he feels, letting people into his personal life via his blog and being outspoken.  All in a good way and more so than I could ever be.

The point? He summed up Charlton Heston better than I ever could and I just wanted to give him some credit.  Maybe I can turn a few more people onto his work.  You may not like his personal blog but if you play Magic and ever do multiplayer his works on MagictheGathering.com are a must read.

Random Tidbit:  In case you don’t read Smashing Magazine they did an excellent article awhile back that asked some of the top designers 6 questions about their experience in the web design industry.

I was reading that Microsoft is valuing Facebook at around $10 billion.  The kicker?  Facebook is holding out for a $15 billion valuation.

I’m not an expert on web 2.0 values, however I do remember the web 1.0 bust (just in time for my college graduation with a shiny degree in Computer Science… but bitterness aside…).  I think Facebook is awesome, that it’s much better than MySpace, and possibly one of if not the gem of the current web 2.0 crowd (bigger than del.icio.us and/or Digg).  However, that just seems way too much.

The good news though is that if they’re worth that much, then my stock options with Helium will probably we worth a decent amount.  We’re no Facebook but the totals are only going up.  Barring another bust - which is always a possibility - I think I chose the right horse (my only other option at the time being Eons, which is laying off people).

Random Tidbit: Google has several new ideas percolating including a possible competitor to Second Life.

I was kind of saddened today to learn that Jericho had been cancelled.  It was one of the better shows on TV - sort of a better version of Lost.  The basic premise is that the citizens of Jericho, Kansas wake up one day and view a mushroom cloud in Denver.  Then basic services shut off and they gradually find out that Denver wasn’t the only city hit.

Little details were revealed throughout the first season about what might really be going on but much of it deals with the people of Jericho and trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

It really was a great show and makes you wonder why they would cancel it when so many other crap shows stay on the air forever.  Likely no one watched it - which is a disappointment.  It’s followers were rather loyal and I recommended it to several of my friends.  The season finale was awesome and I was disappointed I was going to have to wait till next season to see the conclusion.  Now I may never.

Random Tidbit: Check out the Jericho wiki for more information and spoilers.  If you have on demand, you might still be able to catch some episodes.

I wanna preface this by saying that I am not an expert in foreign affairs nor do I have a better or more acceptable solution. I just don’t like the one offered.

Most, if not all, of the people of the world have heard of the execution of Saddam. He was a bad man and probably deserved to die. I just can’t seem to get comfortable with the idea that we should be the ones to decide that.

I’m not here to argue religion, politics or semantics. I just know that in hearing about how it was carried out and in seeing some of the video I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. In the long run what does it gain us? He was a beaten, broken, and powerless man - did we really need to kill him?

I realize the Iraqi people made the final decision on the matter and carried out the consequences. But it still doesn’t sit right. I guess my point is if we want to come to a final, peaceful resolution with the people that hate us and try to destroy us (terrorists, rogue nations, etc.) - do we really think we’re going to get that by trotting an old man out, hanging him and showing the video on CNN?

If anything, I think it will make it worse. If we really want to earn the title of “The Greatest Country in the World” I think we have to come up with some better solutions. I wish I was smart enough to help.

No random tidbit today…

So scientists, at least I’m assuming he’s a scientist - which could be dangerous, are not reporting that someday we may be able to use nanotechnology to gain immortality. Basically we could use tiny nanobots to do what our body naturally does, except better. It would enable us to avoid “transcription errors” in our DNA - which brings to mind the glitches you get on your computer when you leave mozilla running too long - thereby keeping us young forever as well as fighting most common diseases. It’s a pretty neat idea and I’m in as long as Microsoft and Sony aren’t. Last thing I need is some legacy code or DRM messing with my motor skills and I start spastically slapping myself.

As for Opera, I found a recent article that talks about how designers can edit their pages in real time and see the results using Opera 9.0. I haven’t had a lot of time to use Opera, but from what I have I’m fairly impressed. It has all the good features of Mozilla - including some additional ones built in that are extensions in Mozilla - as well as neat features like zooming and the ability to render the page you’re viewing as a text browser would - great for improving the accessibility of the site you’re designing and/or improving the SEO. The best part is of the 3 major browsers, it’s the fastest I’ve seen. Unfortunately there’s 2 problems. One is probably user error - some of the pages I’ve designed come out a little funky. I believe this to be because Opera renders the box model correctly but also reads some of the IE hacks I use - or vice versa. I did upgrade to 9 and most of this went away, so that’s a good sign. Two is the bigger problem. Only about 2% of the web users out there use it. That’s on average, and if your site or blog is about the web, especially cutting edge web technology, it’s likely much higher. But it’s still disappointing. With IE7 not looking like it’s going to fix many of the major bugs - and no real explanation why not - I almost wish they would just use all that money they’re raking in, buy Opera and plug it into Vista. But that will never happen.

Another interesting stat on that is that 5% of users still use IE5. Which leads me to believe they either can’t afford to upgrade their computer or they live in a cave. I’m hoping for a day that all users will have a CSS2 (or 3) compliant browser and designing will be a lot easier. But, not too easy, sometimes I feel I’m one good copy of Dreamweaver from being obsolete.

Random Tidbit: An interesting story about the PS3 being make or break for Sony. I had a blog recently about my thoughts on this matter. The more I hear about PS3 the more I think I’m not going to buy one. I think I’ve become an Xbox man. Which is very, very depressing when you think about it. I think I’ll just lie and say I own only the Wii…