Face the change...I'm only posting one Halloween link today, mainly because I'm sure everyone know what Halloween is about. Hint: It's about the candy.

Wired Digital buys own of my personal favorite new junkie sites, reddit.com, according to this Halloween headline. Congrats to the Reddit crew, who have proven once again that a fast, easy to use site is the best design.

And proving the recent claim of St. Louis' new bad-ass reputation, STL cops kill a young man, using a stun gun. The article mentions the young man was carrying a bible, and shouting "I want Jesus". He either got his wish or didn't, though I'm sure zealots will be all over this story. $1,000,000 idea: new bumper stickers saying "Don't Fuck with St. Lou!".

Bill Maher likes to push certain types of peoples buttons, and in his "News Rules" segment from HBO's "Realtime with Bill Maher" (from October 27, 2006, for the time being), Bill says "America must stop bragging that it's the greatest country on earth and start acting like it."

On the other side of the world, check out the attractive bridge night lights of Istanbul.

And while looking at images, an index of some photos from World War II.

The Star Wars "Last Supper".

I meant to post this yesterday, but got busy at work. This site is great example of how AJAX can be used. IT also makes a great tutorial for learning HTML, aptly title "HTML Playground".

This line from one of my favorite satirical movies, "Not Another Teenage Movie", just cracks me up every time, and on the serious side, it's a great euphemism for the "flock" mentality that is so pervasive in the US political system these days. In other words, a lie only work if someone believes it.

Surprisingly, according to the FBI, my home town of St. Louis was recently named "the most dangerous city in the country", edging out other hopefuls and past winners, like Detroit, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. All this negative publicity after just winning the World Series of Major League Baseball.

A new variation of an old mouse movement game, this version has a more timely appeal, as it has been branded "IE7 vs FireFox". So far, I've been averaging 20+ seconds, but life sometimes doesn't mimic real life.

One of Showtime's new late night drama's that is grabbing my attention is "Dexter". I find it fascinating as the title character lives double life as a forensics investigator for the Miami Police Department (specializing, eerily enough in blood splatter patterns) and as a serial killer. The twist for this premise: He only kills other "bad people". Get hooked by catching the first two episodes of "Dexter" online.

MSNBC.com has a cool pictorial featuring rock music's "Top 10" guitarists. I'm not going to give away the spoiler, you can probably guess most of the list, as the guys (sorry, not any girls on this list) are all household names. Obviously, I have massive respect for all these players, as they have inspired generations of younger players, and that inspiration has also helped lift the guitar manufacturing industry to new levels, as all the players on this list have signature model guitars and other accessories. So do yourself a favor and break out some of thos old, round plates made of vinyl, and fonderly remember youthful days of loud guitar rock.

With all the distractions surrounding us and invading our consciousness, I think this may be the only new "self-help" anybody over the age of 18 would ever need. At a minimum, it's very concise advice, and while it may (or may not) sound like a "fuddy duddy" rant, just take a quick look in the mirror and stop being a big baby.

Some web page titles grab a readers attention, and I wish there were more like this: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God.

A classic set of illustrations about the modern and not so modern power pyramid that runs most of the worlds countries, entitled the "Road to Serfdom".

Whenever I say this term, the people I'm relaying it to laugh, which I can understand. With all the debate of "intelligent design", I think we need more people with the title "Atheist Evangelist".

"The idealists who conceived and pioneered the Web described a kind of enlightened utopia built on mutual understanding, a world in which knowledge is limited only by one's curiosity."; but alas, according to Steve Maich: The Internet sucks. He makes some very valid points, and it would in your best interest to read them. For Example this quote hits the mark - "To suggest the arts are ultimately better off thanks to Internet file sharing is to suggest that entertainers would've been better off to hand out CDs for free and live on donations from fans.". Cass Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, described the "echo chamber" effect: "People gravitate toward sites that reflect their established point of view, and once comfortably ensconced in their political echo chamber, the participants take turns preaching to the assembled choir, reinforcing each other's ideas and biases, and denouncing anyone who might disagree.". Steve ends his article with this gem: "The Internet cost us trillions of dollars,...It is now so deeply entrenched in our culture...the only thing to do is to try to make it better...what else might we have done with all that time and money if we hadn't blown it on the Internet?"

Oh, how I love good questions!

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is fired up, shouldn't you be also?

"The Beginning of the end of America"

"And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?"

"Did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?"

Well, I've started what I hope to be a sort of "time capsule" type web site. A friend and I are hard at work trying to inventory whereabouts of all the "Fender Custom Shop Master Built Limited Edition 50th Anniversary 1954 Stratocaster" re-issue guitars, that were obviously made to celebrate the said "50th anniversary" of the world famous Stratocaster guitar.Ideally, owners of these fantastic tribute models, would be able to update ownership information, as well as, upload pictures of their personal instruments. Since FMIC doesn't disclose their production or inventory numbers, we thought it would be an interesting idea to provide a sort of "club house" for owners and attempt to identify every particular instrument made.

So far, we've learned of and and have found just over 100 owners. We have also noticed that the serial number range seems to start at 4000, but does not exceed 6000 (at least not at this time). This leads us to wonder if possibly only "1954" guitars were actually made. While that may not seem like much of a "limited edition", it does seems feasible in that the serial numbers were not used in sequential order. We have also noticed that each Fender Custom Shop Master builder did produce small runs, which are sequential, hence the possibility that there were actually less 1954 of these guitars produced.

So this post, I guess, would be an open call to any and all owners of these "famous" stratocasters to contact us and help us update our information about these limited edition masterpieces. These guitars were sold worldwide, and we understand that not every owner may be willing or able to participate, though providing the base line information ( serial number, Masterbuilder name, neck and body date, and guitar weight ) would be extremely helpful, allowing all of us to eventually have a definitive list of these guitars.

If you, the dear reader, know of a "50th" owner that may not have access to the Internet, please help them get their information us, as there will also be alternative methods to participating.

If your are a guitar dealer, and would like to help with any updates, any corrections or other information, please do.

You can take a look at our photo gallery progress by clicking here, and as always, this is a work in progress.

A great video of legendary Texas "blues man", Stevie Ray Vaughan playing "rock god" Jimi Hendrixs' "Little Wing".

Do you suffer from "Paraskavedekatriaphobia" or "Triskaidekaphobia"? Try saying that one 3 times, really fast. I dare you! I like to think that I don't suffer from it, but my suspicious nature won't let me. It's most likely due to watching the movies when I was a teenager. I find it funny that the number 13 has both good and bad implications. Actually, the term "Lucky 13" takes me back to my bartending days at Seattle's infamous "Fabulous Rainbow", where I liked to serve this drink recipe, and call it a "Lucky 13" -

1. One shot Jagermeister.
2. One shot Jack Daniels.
3. One splash Root Beer (I prefer the A&W brand).
4. Ice as requested.
5. Mix in a "rocks glass" and serve.

It's probably called by several other names, but I'm calling dibs one this particular recipe. It's a great sipping beverage while you contemplate the pros and cons of said number 13. Can you tell I'm thinking "T.G.I.F."?

The headline for this links should read - "How to heat up your software teams triage meetings" or "transparency is not always a good thing".

As if parenting isn't enough of a challenge, here are 10 ways to screw up your kids for life. I'm not seriously advocating doing these (which goes without saying after you read the article), I was just amazed that these "10 ways" are based on actual incidents. I think you, the reader, will be also.

Apparently, Dr. Carl Sagan used to smoke a lot of marijuana. I bet some of you could tell just by looking at him.

2660 < 2973 != 9.11

I've been noticing web comics (like Penny Arcade, etc.) becoming more and more popular, which I think is great, as HTML pages always seemed to me to be a perfect medium for this as an art form. This leads me to thinking about adding a section on the links page, just for these. Today's find is "Questionable Content" by J. Jacques, which mirrors life of very liberal 20 somethings.

My cat, Blue, is a now a profession model, many thanks to my good freind, John Kieltyka.

It's true, after 33 years as the mecca IMO of everything "punk", New York City's legendary underground rock club "CBGB" is closing it's doors on Halloween Night of this year. Owner Hilly Kristal does have plans to move the club to Las Vegas, but even with the colorful "decor" taken from the original location, will it really be the same? I think not.

Every guitar player needs a tuner, they really do. This one came up on reddit.com today, and of course, the Fender Website has one as well.

Sometimes, ok, well most of the time, when someone (that doesn't work in the industry) asks me what I do for a living, and I tell them that I'm a "software developer, specializing in web technologies", the response I get is that "deer in the headlines" type of blankness, followed by "Oh, you mean like the Internet?". To which I politely answer, "yes, like the Internet". But actually, this diagram displays just how complex that statement really is. I sometimes wish my work as even more complex and required all the knowledge of the Graphics Programming Big Black Book by Michael Abrash, maybe someday.

Today (actually tonight, after leaving my day-job), I'm going to spend some serious time on a new deign for zillinois.com. While I like the design layout, much of the feedback I've received pointed out some interesting design concepts that I hadn't considered. while the site looks consistent in both Internet Explorer 6 & 7, and FireFox 1.5. One such feedback pointed out accessibility discrepancies, especially in "high contrast" mode, as well as some tab indexing issues. Of course, never one to miss an opportunity to improve something, I'll be taking a look at some additional tools.

ThinkCascade, A Truly Different Approach to CSS.

Not much in the way of links to share today, because the whole world seems to be obsessed with the Foley drama. I have been playing with the CSS and XHTML a bit so you may notice some small changes, especially as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 gets closer to RTM. Some aspects of the blog software are still spitting out invalid XHTML, so I'm working on those bugs, as well. I've been playing with some AJAX/JavaScript ideas as well, so expect to see some new features related to those technologies fairly soon. Those validation compliance buttons WILL be on this site, no matter what temporary design I choose.

Rebuilding Microsoft, from Wired.com

Google Code Search is a new search UI for searching Open Source Software (OSS). And of course, OSS coders are just as foul mouthed, as Microsoft Coders, or other coders.

New VW Equipped with Six-String Guitar.

Dear God from children.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beginning.

A very cool "looping" illustration, in the style of M.C. Esher

All you need to know about "shooting yourself in the foot" with programming languages.

A very interesting piece from the New York Metro "The End of the World As They Know It", by author Kurt Andersen, about fanatics and believers of a pending "Apocalypse", and worse how some people (who I shall not name) are simply using this pending sense of fear to peddle their own wares.

"What do Christian millenarians, jihadists, Ivy League professors, and baby-boomers have in common?

They’re all hot for the apocalypse."

I just found this cartoon website, Diesel Sweeties, and I sure love the format, pixelated, cynical, and sarcastic. Appearently, it's been around for a long while, so I guess I haven't seen everything on the Internet.

And if you are looking for something with a little zing, Salon's Tom Tomorrow has today's zinger.