If you ever want to point a finger at the person to blame for my getting into blogging, it would not be incorrect to point it at Ken Layne.

Layne was one of the first and best journalist-bloggers, starting in something like 1999. (I’ve known Ken since the early 1990s when he was a reporter at another small daily in San Diego County and played in a band with my high school chum and roommate.)

Click that link above and you’ll find a blog. But not his old blog. Either by accident or design, all of his old posts have disappeared from the blogosphere. In other words, you can’t read his brilliant posts about crows and religious politics. Now, Layne posts something ocassionally, and occassionally I read it.

He’s one of the best damn writers I know, and he should blog more.

At least AOL was smart enough to give him a column.

Thanks to Ken, I met Matt Welch, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, now returning to Reason Magazine, and already getting promo from the Washington Post. Matt also has a book out. Rumor has it Matt has some new music coming out, too. If you can’t wait, there’s always Ken Layne and the Corvids.

One of the first things I learned about the Internet was that it was designed so that information could route around trouble spots.

That is more than a technological marvel, it has significant cultural implications.

I believe there are more libertarians today simply because by its very nature, the Internet encourages low barriers, transparency and fewer restrictions. Because of that a mindset of openness naturally follows for long-time netizens (you don’t see that word much any more, do you?)

Here’s an example of information routing around trouble: A TV station that was taken off the air by the Venezuelan government has re-emerged on YouTube. (via e-Media Tidbits).

Governments that attempt censorship in the networked age engage in folly.

At 10,000-plus subscribers, the channel is already the most popular on YT, beating out #2 by more than 6,000 subscribers.

You’ve heard of crowdsourcing. Introducing crowdshopping.

It started in China, where sharing information is tightly controlled, but apparently you can shop without restriction. And there’s lots of people.

Nothing from Billie in days … and now she writes about soap.

My wife has a problem, and the problem is, too many clerks and waiters seem to think serving her is a problem. Billie explains.

Even if you have no interest in Internet gambling, you should take a moment to ponder how Congress’s latest attempt to ban the online activity will play out. We may learn a lot about the government’s power to control online lives.

The new law is going to be tested both online and in the courts. The biggest test of the law will come in the online poker world.

• There is already a legal president in the US that poker is a game of skill, and therefore is not gambling.
• PokerStars, one of the world’s largest poker sites, has already announced that it will continue to accept funds and make payouts for US customers.
• One of the most popular online payment services for poker players, Neteller, will continue to handle transactions for US customers. Neteller is based in Canada.

In my early days on the Net, somebody pointed out to me that the nature of networks is to route traffic around trouble. That innate ability of networks to find the groves where information and activity flows freely is the biggest hindrance governments face in trying to control what people say and do online. The Internet is inherently a libertarian environment. This law presents a opportunity to see if that concept is true.

As a side note: The bill doesn’t ban online, state-run lotteries or placing online horse racing bets.

It’s amazing what one man can do with a color copier and a little imagination.

There are a few books that I think every programmer should own, no matter the favored language. One of them is Mastering Regular Expressions. This Slashdot post, then, was heart-warming to find. Personally, I never mastered RegEx, but I learned enough to be awed by the power of the concept.

The new MacBookPro rocks, according to Leander Kahney, writing for Wired.

I’m pretty happy with my plain vanilla MacBook.

For me, it’s like two computers in one.

And it is pretty darn fast.

On the Windows side, it’s not as stable as I would like. There is some quirkiness with keyboard mapping, but it’s functional.

Yesterday, I bought my wife a new desktop — a Compaq Persario, which I got on sale (after rebates) for $179. What a deal. It’s a 1.8 Ghz AMD processor and more RAM and HD than the desktop I’m replacing for her (which was pretty near top of the line four years ago). All she does is e-mail, Web and MS Word. I also replaced our 10-year-old Dell monitor with a wide aspect (I LOVE wide aspect) Envision monitor for $159 (after rebates).

I saved so much on the computer and monitor, I bought a new HP printer/scanner, too. The printer will take every kind of memory card imaginable to print photos straight from the card to photo paper.

Billie’s pretty happy. The old computer was just becoming too unstable and she was getting pretty frustrated with it. I wanted to wait until we moved, and I was even considering get her a MacBook, but there will be more peace in the house now …

We’ve been selling some stuff on Ebay recently with some success. The best sellers so far has been poker books. CDs did OK. Baseball cards, not so much, though I did get $46 for my Roger Clemens rookie card.

Now we’re into clothing, clothing accessories and collectibles.

Right now, we have 19 items on Ebay, with more TK. If you like vintage clothing, my wife is still some great pieces.

The current surprise of the moment is this belt buckle, which is approaching $32 in bids with a bit more than a day left in the auction.

This old leather jacket my dad gave me when I was a kid has five people watching it, has generated two questions (including somebody offering $45 for immediate purchase), but no bids yet. One day left of this one.

I’m also selling the Padres windbreaker I’ve had since I was about 11 or 12.

I just listed this very cool cowgirl duster from my wife’s collection.

In the music-death category are these items related to John Lennon, Curt Cobain and Country Dick Montana. The CDM items are of particular interest to me simply because its so closely tied to my personal history. I knew Dan McLain (Country Dick) in high school, was friends with co-founder of the Beat Farmers Buddy Blue, and wrote an award-winning obit about Country Dick in 1995.

Don’t ask me why I saved all this crap. I don’t know.

If you’re interested, bookmark my Ebay page … we’ll try to add stuff every day for the next couple of weeks. And if you live in Bakersfield, watch this blog for an announcement of our upcoming garage sale, where we’ll sell off even more stuff we don’t need that TBC paid for us to haul over here from Ventura (and that doesn’t count the three garbage cans of stuff I’ve thrown out in the last week).

Black Dog travels to Knott’s Berry Farm, sees an old flame, is kind to a gang banger, and drives on the freeway — yes, it’s all (and more) in one post.