Now, the run-up to any charity marathon always includes the obligatory training regimen, and this one will be no different. Therefore, in the weeks to come I will be posting about the various workouts, drills, and practice sessions I will be undergoing, ranging from simple thumb flexes to more advanced cross-training with boardgames.

If you have any suggestions or helpful tips, feel free to leave comments, and I thank you for your support!

In the mean time, please to enjoy a great British tea ad that is sure to put a smile on your face:

(Here’s the original comedy sketch on which the ad was based.)

- My brother David and I went went to New York for about 24 hours in the beginning of June where we met the Totally Rad Show (TRS) guys, walked around Times Square, went to the Top of the Rock, and visited the American Museum of Natural History.

- We also went to California for almost two weeks to visit family, attend Comic-Con (with a live TRS show and meetup), and generally be tourists. Oh, and there was an earthquake while we were at Disneyland.

- Did I mention the live TRS show? I did? Well did I tell you that a re-created version of a montage that I had made was shown to “warm up” the audience? That’s right, my work has been screened at Comic-Con. It’s no big thing

- Um, I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival for the first time in years and shot a little bit of video there.

As you can see, not a whole lot happened. I mostly use Twitter and Facebook to relay the more mundane happenings of my life (and, frankly, it’s all mundane) and to post funny or interesting things I find. However, I will repeat my promise that I will try to do a better job of posting here. Call it New Year’s Resolution #1.

2009, here I come!

I have been using Twitter regularly now for more than two months, and I love it. Despite its frequent outages as it grows in popularity (remember that even Digg had “scaling issues” early on), Twitter is an amazingly unnecessary and yet completely addictive form of communication that when I’m not at my computer I think about all those “tweets” (Twitter messages) that I’m not seeing. But let’s take a step back and explain what Twitter is to those of you who might not know. Twitter bills itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Essentially it is a mini- (or micro- or nano-) blogging tool which allows you to post a short message (under 140 characters) via web or text message and allows your “followers” to choose how they receive your messages, again via web or text message. Twitter also has a powerful API which has spawned a whole host of third-party applications.

OK, now back to me: I use Twitter to participate in that “great conversation” that it allows by following various people (mostly internet celebs and other denizens of forums I frequent) and using @replies to designate a reply to someone. For this reason, my usage of Twitter tends to be more ‘real time’ so my issue was less how to keep everything updated (à la Keaven) and more how to manage the tweets that are coming in. My solution so far is twhirl, a desktop application (for Windows and Mac OSX) which provides frequent tweet notification (clearly distinguishing regular tweets from direct messages and @replies), cross-posts to Pownce and Jaiku, and performs various other Twitter-friendly things like shortening URLs and searching Tweet Scan. It’s the best Twitter client that I’ve found that does what I need.

So far this lengthy (and getting lengthier) post mostly has been about Twitter since that’s the network I use most frequently, but I did want to touch on a few others:

• I use Facebook quite a bit to post interesting links or videos I find and to interact with a smaller circle of people I know via the varied applications Facebook allows. (While I have a MySpace page that is fairly up to date, I almost never visit the site.)
• I mentioned Pownce earlier, but mostly I just receive other people’s posts (links, pictures, events) and usually only post there through twhirl unless it’s a reply. Among the advantages that Pownce has over Twitter, though, are that there is no character limit, you can post pictures and files, and they have threaded replies.
• I suppose del.icio.us can be considered a social network in that you can save links and share them with others, including the ability to mark a link as “for:” someone. I use del.icio.us mostly via their excellent Firefox extension which takes the place of Firefox’s Bookmarks and allows me to access my bookmarks wherever I am. (I also use it to submit story suggestions to Buzz Out Loud, my favorite audio podcast.)
• Similarly, StumbleUpon could be considered a link-based social network, although in a more aggregated sense in that when you “Stumble” you are shown pages thumbed-up by others with similar likes as you. I usually just use the toolbar to send Keaven links, though.
• I am also on LinkedIn, a network used to connect people professionally. For me, it’s just basically an online résumé.
• Getting back to Keaven’s post, he mentions seeing me as a fan of Brightkite on Facebook. Brightkite is a location-based social network where you can check-in to wherever you are and get notified when other users are in the area or see who has visited in the past. I was fortunate enough to get in the private beta early enough that my user name is actually “roy”. Awesome. Anyway, I haven’t used it too much, but it is an interesting concept that I hope catches on once it gets out of beta. (I have invites so let me know if you want one).

I think I have covered all the networks that I use, but if you think I’m missing one or you know of one that I just have to join, let me know!

In a lengthy and incredibly well-written blog post on their website, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback details exactly what this DoS was, how it happened, and why it brought down their server. But he also goes on to describe how the evidence the attackers left behind led them to a subsidiary of Artistdirect called MediaDefender. MediaDefender is a company that, as ars technica points out, intentionally poisons peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic in a purported effort to fight piracy, and their clients have included Sony, Universal Music, the RIAA, and the MPAA. Now, Revision3 uses the Bittorrent P2P protocol to distribute its large volume of high-definition content (namely its shows) manageably and efficiently to its consumers. MediaOffender, ahem, MediaDefender had been injecting torrents into Revision3’s tracking server for months until the back door was found and Revision3 deauthorized non-Revision3 torrents. This caused MediaDouchefender, dammit, MediaDefender’s servers to attack Revision3’s servers by pinging them 8000 times every second, effectively bringing Revision3 to a crashing halt. It is interesting to note here how Louderback phrases this: “Revision3 suffered measurable harm to its business….” This certainly sounds like someone is laying groundwork for a lawsuit. Additionally, the FBI is investigating the incident so hopefully there will be repercussions for such an incredibly reprehensible and entirely indefensible attack on a business by an organization, funded by competing media interests, whose tactic to “fight piracy” is to undermine undeniably legal technology. I…am…so…angry…

Edit:
Here’s more of my feelings in the form of a comment (currently awaiting moderation) I left on Molly Wood’s Culture of Ownership blog:

I think there’s a little piece of the story that many people may be missing so let me quote from MediaDouchefenders’ website: “This last year, we have been leveraging our anti-piracy technology to market and promote on various Peer-to-Peer Networks.” My guess is that they not only put decoy torrents on Rev3’s network, but they have also likely been injecting torrents to “market and promote” their old media clients by hijacking/attacking their direct competition in new media. I also do not think it is coincidence that Revision3 was attacked given the founders’ connection to Digg, and we all know how much the AACS LA consortium (including MediaOffender client Sony) loved Digg after that encryption key was released. I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking too hard, but that’s just how I see things.