Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Blogosphere

The Birds of Baghdad

Michael Yon has a new article entitled “The Birds of Baghdad” at Michael Yon : Online Magazine. The article starts out:

I love birds. Everywhere, I notice the birds; often I hear their voices before seeing them. To my ears, the most beautiful singers are the mockingbirds. I can listen to their songs for hours and hours, especially in the springtime, when the bachelors are courting and they sing all night during the full moons. In cities, lovesick bachelors often mistake a streetlight for the full moon, and perch in a nearby tree, singing their hearts out.

Some people cannot sleep to the mockingbird, but to me there is no sweeter song. When I hear a mockingbird in the spring, I’m reminded of Louis Armstrong’s famous song, “What a Wonderful World.” On those full moon nights, I think to myself that the mockingbird is singing, I love you. Eventually, a female hears the song, and one by one, pairs form, nests are built from twigs and bits, and the circle of sweet songs continues.

Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” is a favorite of Damsel’s and mine.

06 Dec 2005 by Blogosphere Islamic Terrorism Media Military Photography

Over One Million Served

As of now, there have been over a million hits on the Never Forget animated graphic, since I started counting!

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the internet and via emails after 9/11. I gathered some of the graphics and produced the prototype of the graphic to display on my personal website. After refinements and improvements suggested by Damsel and others, it appears as it does today.

Last August, I made an offer to display the Never Forget Animated Graphic to anyone wishing to display it. This is the graphic seen in the right sidebar depicting the attacks on America by terrorists. The offer was only taken by a few sites at first, but since then, many more have begun displaying the animation. In fact, there are currently about 200 sites showing the graphic, and that number has been growing by about three a day. Sites in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and Italy (maybe more) have it on their pages.

After appearing on a couple dozen websites, I looked at the bandwidth that it was consuming, and decided to close the offer for new websites since I am limited in bandwidth by my ISP. When I published my intent to close the offer, Wonder Woman from North American Patriot made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: her webmaster would host the graphic on a non-bandwidth-limited server! Of course, I accepted and am still very grateful for their generosity.

Damsel and I believe that the War on Terror is the most important issue before the American People and our Allies. The presence of this graphic on our site indicates our unwillingness to forget what happened and what still needs to be done. It makes us very proud to see our graphic on so many sites (getting 20,000 hits a day) and gives us comfort knowing there are so many like-minded people in the blogosphere willing to display the graphic.

Thanks to all who display it and thanks again to North American Patriot.

You can get the script to display the graphic on your website at the Never Forget page.

15 Nov 2005 by Blogosphere Islamic Terrorism Patriotism

Blogs Influential in Miers’ Withdrawal

I saw a poll that indicated that 70 percent of conservative blogs opposed the Miers nomination. Here’s a list of some of our favorite bloggers expressing relief. Some are doing virtual backflips and whooping it up and others are just glad that she withdrew.

Ace of Spades
Blogs for Bush
Captain’s Quarters
GOP Bloggers
Junk Yard Blog
Michelle Malkin
PoliPundit
Red State
Right Thinking from the Left Coast
Right Wing News
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Wizbang

There can be little doubt that these and other bloggers who opposed Miers had a pronounced effect on this development. Now, they all hope to be united in their endorsment of the President’s new conservative nominee. We also intend to support such a nominee.

27 Oct 2005 by Blogosphere Current Events Judiciary

Halloween Theme

Damsel and I love the holidays, both secular and religious. Halloween, although largely celebrated as a secular event, is actually based in Christianity. Legend dictates that on All Hallows Evening, or, the night before All Saints Day, demons, ghosts and and other spirits are restless and come out of their graves and roam the Earth. And indeed they do!

In the fun spirit of Halloween, we have changed our theme for the rest of October.

13 Oct 2005 by Blogosphere Culture

Never Forget Flash Animation

A while ago, one of the bloggers who wanted to use the Never Forget graphic dropped me a note and said that the 150 pixel wide graphic didn’t fit in his narrow column template. So, in the interest of getting it seen on more websites, I wrote another script to render a 118 pixel wide version of the graphic. If there is a need for other custom sizes, it is easy enough to accommodate. Just let me know.

See both scripts and both sizes at the Never Forget Flash Animation page. This is the smaller graphic:

Compare it to the normal size in the right column.

Update: For users of the graphic that wish to modify the script for the smaller graphic

The original script went like this:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://capnbob.us/graphics/never.php"></script>

The new one is identical except for the script filename:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://capnbob.us/graphics/never118.php"></script>

If someone who already has the script installed wants the smaller version, they need only to append the “118” to the filename (before the .php extension) in order to get the smaller graphic.

13 Oct 2005 by Blogosphere Islamic Terrorism

Are We Headed for a Brave New Cyberspace?

One of my on-line habits is to read the news about computers and the internet. While browsing around, I found an article at EWEEK.COM entitled “Sun, Google Snuggle Up.” I read it and noted that the two companies appear to be posturing themselves for the marketplace. Pretty much business as usual for modern media and computer companies.

Later, I found another article at PCWORLD.COM entitled Will Google Kill News Media? In this second article, the author drew the picture of merging and posturing among the electronic media to eventually eliminate the New York Times and other print media. I also found a link to a flash video entitled “Epic 2015.” It was a graphics-driven projection of events yet to come in the electronic information market. Very interesting – almost scary. Everything is affected – including blogs, Ipods, and anything wireless. From the second article:

Matt Thompson, deputy editor for online content for startribune.com, the Web site for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Robin Sloan, who works for Current, a San Francisco-based cable and satellite TV network, have created “EPIC 2015.” In the short movie, the two peg the growing Google as the death knell for the slumbering Fourth Estate, which loses its gatekeeping and publishing role to the Internet.

The eight-minute piece–produced by the Museum for Media History, a fictitious construct of Thompson and Sloan–swerves between the plausible and the dramatic, tendering a prophecy that is both alarmist and maybe inevitable.

Whether you read the linked articles or not, I highly recommend that you watch the Epic 2015 flash video. Spooky!

One word of caution as you view the video: the authors of the video both seem to have liberal media connections.

10 Oct 2005 by Blogosphere Media

Upgrading to WordPress Soon

UPDATE: (moved to top) The Switch over to WP was less painful than I originally thought. That’s on the plus side. On the minus side, however:

  • trackbacks were lost
  • comments were lost
  • older posts were lost
  • links from older posts will not be found

In an ongoing effort to extract some of the older, but worthwhile (to us at least) to re-post, we will be accessing the old database and get the good stuff out. Thanks for your patience.

I have been running a beta test site for a few days in anticipation of a switch over to the WordPress® blogging tools and weblog platform. I hope the transition will be smooth, but nothing is for certain. Most older posts will be lost at first, but I expect to revive some of them in the long run.

So, please forgive the hiccupings over the next few days as I switch things around, and give me time to get back to full capacity.

The benefits will be many for me and hopefully for readers as well.

Thanks!

27 Sep 2005 by Blogosphere

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