This guy is running for State elective office here in Kansas (he lives just outside of Kansas City, in Olathe, where he has at least a teensy chance of actually winning). While this has been linked everywhere by now, I couldn't pass up the chance to send him some love (and money?). If only I could vote for him, I would. If you lose, come to Lawrence next time, Sean!

I was looking over all the domain names I have registered over the years, and remembered that I had registered full name domains for each of my children.  Someday, the logic went, they will want their own web sites, and they will be grateful that I had the foresight to grab these while I still could.

A sound idea.  But what about securing their username rights for web pages, web apps, and web services.  Should I grab AIM accounts for all of them?  Should I go ahead and register a Flickr name (i.e., Yahoo!) for each of the boys?  Gmail?

What do you think?

Hello, visitors from the Intarwebs.  You grace my site with search queries about the SXSW Music conference, and I have decided to give you what you want:

• Here is a link to the cover art I made for the SXSW 2008 music.  You may use this cover art (a 600 x 600 pixel jpg file) however you like, though I suggest using it in iTunes.  Other years are also available in that post, as is proper credit to Ben Millett, who made the first example of SXSW cover art I found.

• Here is a link to the best source for BitTorrent files of all the music from SXSW for the last several years, including the 2008 edition.

• And here are six-word reviews of all 763 SXSW 2008 music files in that torrent download.  From Paul Ford, via The Morning News.

So YouTube is busy celebrating April 1st by Rickrolling all the Featured Videos on their front page.  How fun, I thought, I haven't seen Rick Astley since, well, the Eighties.  So, at breakfast, I visited YouTube and clicked on a video about a monkey.  Sure enough, there was Rick, singing in his too-deep tones with random dancers doing random Eighties moves.  I shut the window and started surfing another site when I heard the dulcet tones of my own little songbird.  He (the two-year-old) pointed at the laptop and said, "Again!"  And then, when it was done, "Again!"  And, "Again!"  We watched the video a total of five times this morning, and now I can't get the song out of my head.  I do believe I have been Rickrolled, by my baby.

So, Google, purveyors of "what computers were supposed to do for us," have this Google Maps feature called Street View. Cars with cameras on top cruise around the country, taking pictures of... well, of everything. Then they load them up online, and when you visit Google Maps, you can see actual pictures of the location you're looking for.

They started with five cities, broadened that to fifteen, now they are up to something like thirty (Wikipedia says 35). While Kansas City got Street Viewed a little while ago, I was resigned to never getting it in Lawrence, a town of only about 140,000, for goodness sake.

I was wrong.

Looking for directions to my tax attorney today, I discovered that Lawrence had been Street Viewed. Apparently Lawrence was included in the KC update this past February, though I distinctly remember looking for it when I heard it came to KC, but whatever. Take that, Topeka! And it is awesome. Scary, but awesome. If you know where I live, you can go look at my house! (Please don't be creepy.) The picture is from last summer, judging from the plantings and the rock in the driveway.

The wife, when told of this Intarweb coolness, gave a little bit of a shriek (okay, it was more of a polite murmur) and immediately pointed out what this would do for Real Estate... not that we're looking mind you. And she was right.

Has your street's privacy been invaded yet?