Radical Georgia Moderate

Be sure to catch the matinee, as the evening performance has been cancelled

Rusty — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:11:54 +0000

One thing we did when we redesigned the podcast site was to change hosting from Dreamhost to Westhost. Prior to that, this blog and the podcast site were hosted on the same account.

My hosting for this blog expires in October, and I’m not planning to renew it. I think it’s had a good run, and it’s time to move on. Some days I really enjoy writing it, and some days I feel like I do it compulsively. And that’s just weird.

It often feels constraining lately. I’ve built up an expectation that I am going to write about politics (see: the title, for one thing). When I started it in 2004, that’s what I was most interested in, so that made sense. Now, not so much.

So, if there’s anything you want to save from here for yourself, you should go ahead and do that. I plan to save everything, but I don’t know if or when I’ll make it publicly accessible once it goes down. I’m also not sure when exactly I’ll take it down.

I have several “what next” ideas I’m kicking around, but I haven’t committed to anything yet. If you have an idea for a project, pitch it here or email it to me. In the meantime, I’m planning to make more podcasts.

And I’ll still be on Twitter. And Facebook. And Myspace. And Flickr. And leaving comments on other blogs. And drinking at Manuel’s. And… and…

Random Tuesday

Rusty — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:34:32 +0000

In lieu of Random Monday, we have three items for Random Tuesday.

Folks in Macon (and Burma and Oklahoma) got hit hard by a tornado. One creative way you can help is to give money to a qualifying charity in the Swindle Industries Charity Bowl. It gives you an opportunity to shame a rival college football team for a good cause. Just click the link if you’re wondering how that’s possible.
Bill O’Reilly is an angry man:

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor
Sturgess Fillmore Presents… ATLANTA!

via Thomas Wheatley and Joeventures

I’m not linking to the fucking MARTA video. Find it yourself.

Update 3:48 p.m. OMG

Georgia Podcast Network redesign is live!

Rusty — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:55:44 +0000

The redesign of the Georgia Podcast Network is live! Most of you ought to be able to see it now, but if you can’t check back a little later. We switched the domain settings last night, and it may take a little while for them to take effect in some places.

The short version of what’s new is:

Create podcasts, add episodes to them, or add your affiliate podcast to the directory without having to go through an administrator. Podcasts now work sort of like diaries on Tondee’s Tavern and other group blogs. Everybody can have one, but not everything makes the front page.
Let other members post episodes to your podcast. You can name co-hosts individually, or set the “group podcast” option to let any registered member post an episode. For examples of group podcasts, see (un)ConCast and Politics is Vocal.
Album art, channel, and other meta information can be attached to podcasts
Post M4V video in addition to MP3 audio
Nifty Flash uploader
Embeddable players and widgets
iTunes meta information in podcast RSS feeds
Can redirect podcast RSS feeds to Feedburner
Webplay and download statistics
Rebuilt podcast directory
Pretty new theme
Better performance. Up to 8 times faster under normal server load

That’s not everything, but that’s the important stuff. There are still some minor CSS issues to work out in Internet Explorer 6, but it should be relatively bug-free other than that. Have a look and let us know what you think!

Cross-posted to the Georgia Podcast Network

Three years!

Rusty — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:21:47 +0000

This is one of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken of Amber for a few reasons:

It was taken while we were on a road trip. We have so much fun on our road trips together through all of Georgia’s strange little places. They’re our favorite thing we do together other than fuck.
It’s meta, and we love us some meta.
It’s the best job I’ve done of capturing one of my favorite little things about her, which is the way her ears peak out from behind her hair.

Plus, I think objectively it’s just a pretty good photo. Good composition, contrast, detail, interesting angle, all that.

Today is our three-year anniversary! Amber put together a well-sourced nerd love retrospective here. We’ll be having a nice dinner together tonight (thanks to everyone who left suggestions a couple of posts ago), and hopefully many more road trips in the future.

Note: yes I ripped off Amber’s title

Isakson not running for governor

Rusty — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:41:10 +0000

Ah, the plot thickens.

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson held a meeting with [his] staff this morning and told them heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s decided to seek another term in the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor in 2010.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle likely would have sat out the 2010 governor’s race if Isakson had run. With Isakson out, that leaves insurance commissioner John Oxendine as the only declared candidate (that I know of, at least). While formidable, he’s not the near-lock for the nomination that Isakson would have been.

That should make for good theater in next year’s session. We might get to see Glenn Richardson’s mean streak!

Any ideas?

Rusty — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:11:11 +0000

Amber and I will have been together three years this Friday. We have nothing planned presently, and neither of us really have any ideas on how we should go about celebrating. Our weekend is already booked, so we’re thinking in terms of something we could do Friday night. Any suggestions?

Random Monday

Rusty — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:24:57 +0000

I could spend years at the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center and still not read everything I wanted to read. The Atlanta Journals and Atlanta Constitutions I read from the 1930s on microfilm were amazing, as were the collections of high school yearbooks from the 1920s and 1930s. You should check it out sometime. More on my research project later.
I agree with Shelby and Thomas Friedman. The McCain-Clinton gas tax holiday is the basest sort of pandering. Some of you may not like Friedman, but that particular column he wrote was spot-on:

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summerÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
Provocative commentary from former governor Roy Barnes:

“Out of a nation of 304 million, is this the best we have?”

That was how Roy Barnes, former governor and lifelong Democrat, replied when asked about the presidential contest featuring Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

“I’m not excited about any of them,” Barnes added.

Sounds like sour grapes that his boy Edwards never caught on. I hope we can all at least agree that the candidates on both sides are better this time out than they were four or eight years ago.
File under “sweet baby Jesus we’re still having this discussion?” Enjoy this segment from Bob Costas’ show. Do a shot every time you hear the phrase “Wild West” or “anything goes” correlated to “the blogospehere.”
Prop yourself up on something, call ahead for a cab home, and try to suppress your giggles when Bob Costas opines about the “tone of gratuitous potshots and mean-spirited abuse in the blogosphere,” which is immediately followed by a torrent of gratuitous potshots and mean-spirited abuse from Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights.

I wish people would quit pretending like asshattery is somehow limited to a particular medium.

Third challenger in District 81 [UPDATED: Just kidding]

Rusty — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:32:08 +0000

I don’t mean to focus excessively on one district that I don’t live in, ~~but I just noticed a third Democratic challenger for Jill Chamber’s state House seat in District 81 on the Secretary of State’s web site: Clyburn Halley.~~

It’s entirely possible this is old news and I missed it before, but I figured I should throw all the names out there.

This is in addition to Chris Huttman, who I blogged about the other day, and Cecillia Hailey, who Andre mentioned might have a few money issues.

Halley lists his profession as Law Enforcement/Educator, and appears to work in the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office. He ran for Clerk of Superior court in 2004, coming in dead last among a field of six candidates with two percent of the vote.

Anybody know anything else about these two candidates?

Update 1:19 p.m. It appears this was probably a mistake on the SoS web site. Halley is now (correctly?) listed as challenging Earnest “Coach” Williams for his seat in District 89. No Republicans had filed as of this writing.

Thanks to Bob for pointing out that the Lithonia address looked a little fishy in the comments.

Does anybody else think this is a terrible idea?

Rusty — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:03:33 +0000

From an Atlanta Business Chronicle article about AJC circulation department layoffs:

As part of the restructuring, the AJC will launch an E-edition — an online replica of the print newspaper. The paper said this will allow students to read, browse and search the AJC. As a result, it will develop its News For Kids program into an online platform beginning May 23. Eventually, the E-edition will be available to the larger market.

I can’t wait for them to put hyperlinks in the print edition. Then maybe I’ll buy a copy again.

Quote of the day

Rusty — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:57:25 +0000

This should be obvious if you’ve read any newspapers or blogs today. From U.S. Senate candidate and DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones. Emphasis mine:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“Obviously, the Democratic party loves to recruit losers,Ã¢â‚¬Â Jones said. Ã¢â‚¬Å“In the past we lost both United States senate seats, weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve lost the governorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s race, the lieutenant governorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s race, the secretary of stateÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s race, the last Democratic public service commission race. The Democratic party has constantly put up liberal candidates and theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve lost election after election after election. And Vernon Jones and the people of Georgia want a winner.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Another “You’re not wrong Walter. You’re just an asshole” moment. I don’t really understand what he’s trying to accomplish with that quote. No matter, I think the real outrage here comes later in the article:

Jones declined to take a position on Iraq until he studied the issue.

Are you fucking kidding me? This war has been going on for, what, five years now and you have no idea what you think? Say you support it, say you don’t, or hedge your bet and throw out the tired “I want to bring the troops home but we have to be responsible about it” line, but don’t tell me you need more time to study. Five years is plenty of goddamn time.