Brandon Moon's Website

Be Your English Online Good?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:58:48 -0600

Since the creation of the Internet, the Earth's rotation has been fueled, primarily, by the collective spinning of English teachers in their graves.
--Kraigen

The Sound of Leaves Crackling

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:19:30 -0600

This last week has started to feel like Autumn finally, and I am loving it! Autumn is my favorite season. I love the crisp cold air with its Autumn scents, the colorful trees, the wind blowing everything around, and (of course) the sound of leaves crackling. I love the food that comes around at this time too. Pumpkin pie, cider, turkey, stuffing... Mmmm! There are so many good things about Fall, why don't we just have this season all year?

Autumn just has a healthy feeling around it. To me, it gives the feeling of starting anew. I don't know how to describe it, there's just something that makes it so exciting. The holidays are coming, (Thanksgiving being one of my favorite), school is starting, jackets start coming out of the closet, and everything just seems more brisk. It's like waking up from the sleepiness of summer and finally getting something done. Maybe it's just the promise of good things to come.

I have a hard time dealing with change, but seasons are one of the changes I really enjoy. I realize that many people live where the seasons are very different, or where there are no seasons. I guess coming from that background, having to deal with Fall and Winter might be kinda stressful. Hopefully, amidst all the moanings and groanings, you can see the beauty in them, even if they are unfamiliar.

Long Overdue

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:02:44 -0600

Sorry for the long silence. Starting this semester has been rather hectic keeping up with everything. This week I had three labs due, so I've been pretty busy. Anyhow, here's just a few random thoughts and info for you all to ponder.

I'm working on adding some new features to the website. While these features are still incomplete, here's a little bit of what you have to look forward to:

I'm adding wordles to past surveys. It doesn't make sense for all of them, but if you browse through, you'll find some of them that have them. Not all of them are that cool, but they're fun to look at.
I plan to add a search feature. Maybe not that important, but it should be rather cool to use. Finding Wilbert will be easier than ever!
Hopefully soon, I'll add threaded comments. Then, you can reply to someone's comment and have it show up that way, instead of just one line of comments.
It's planned far into the future, but I want to add multiple themes to my website. By clicking a button, you can see my website with a totally different design! It'll be pretty cool.

Grad school has been interesting. I really like parts of it, but other parts are a bit difficult. There's a lot of reading papers, which can get to be a bit tedious and boring. I've definitely read more exciting things. The classes are pretty awesome though. It's less "this is how you do something" and more "lets work together to learn and see if we can come up with something better." The classes are flexible, but very thought provoking. I work just as hard in them, but I feel like I've accomplished more. In my research lab, we're working on a project called Internet Television. The idea is that since the Internet is becoming even more prevalent, why not switch our TV to our broadband connections, and make watching TV a little more like browsing the web? Examples are: Imagine watching your favorite sports show and being able to review cool events, watch from different camera angles, etc. Or, imagine watching a cooking show, and being able to click a button and see how they created that amazing side dish they just pulled out of nowhere. Imagine watching news and being able to pick just the stories that interest you. Fascinating idea huh? It's like a DVR/TiVo on steroids!

Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrh! What be a pirate's favorite state? Arrrrrrrkansas! What be a pirate's favorite subject in school? Arrrrrithmetic! (or p'haps Arrrrrt!) What be a pirates' favorite kind o' movie? Rrrrrrr rated! Alright ye scurvey knaves, lets see if ye can come up with better jokes than I can.

Havasupai Adventure

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:39:13 -0600

So I finally put up pictures from my Havasupai trip! You can see them here. I'm sorry they're not the best pictures. My camera started to die at the beginning of the trip, as evidenced by the ugly black spot on the bottom of all the pictures.

These are not all the pictures, more are forthcoming, once I get the pictures my brothers took as well.

OK so I cut this video together quick from what I filmed down in Havasupai. Hope you like it!

An Interesting View of the Internet

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:36:26 -0600

Victory!... and Shame

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:43:25 -0600

The good news:
I just found out that I was accepted to grad school at BYU! Hooray!

The shameful news:
I updated my facebook status with this news before I updated my website... SHAME!!!

Dr. Horrible

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:56:57 -0600

It's only gonna be up for one more day, check it out!

Signing off for a week

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:07:49 -0600

Well, I'm headed on vacation to Havasupai, so I won't be updating my site for a week. Happy Fourth to All!!! Feel free to leave scandalous comments while I'm gone.

DRM is getting out of control

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:26:03 -0600

I've been hearing a lot about DRM lately, and it's getting kind of annoying. Just to get you up to speed in case it's unfamiliar to you, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and it covers pretty much anything that is used to restrict your rights to your media. For example, whenever you download a song from iTunes, you'll notice it's password protected. You can only move it from computer to computer a limited number of times, and other people can't play your music. This is an effort to keep you from illegally sharing music. DVDs use a similar technology with their regional settings. It exists all over.

Unfortunately, DRM just seems to get in the way. What if you want to (or with Windows, have to) re-image your computer a lot? Suddenly you can't use your songs anymore. This is infringing upon your rights, isn't it? You bought the music, right? Oh wait, you have to look closely at that too. You didn't actually buy the music, you bought a license to play that song on a maximum of three computers, provided they are yours. Now what do you do?

In the old days, they didn't have to worry about this much. Music came in analog formats, so any copy you made was inherently lossy (a.k.a. not as good as the original). Random noise always found its way in. When you bought the tape (or record, if you go back that far), you were allowed to make copies. Not so with digital media. Any copy made of an mp3 is perfect--you lose nothing. What's more, it's so easy to make copies as well. So, the music media companies go up in arms about people copying music. Hence, DRM.

Now don't get me wrong, I believe a musician should be recognized and compensated for their music. But if I buy a song, give me the dang song! None of this restrictive technology and crap that makes it so hard to listen to the music that you rightfully bought. There are other ways to deal with the issue. The biggest problem for most artists is obscurity anyways, not piracy. Music sharing actually helps them.

Anyhow, you can imagine my frustration when I come across an article for a particular piece of technology that serves pretty much one purpose: DRM. The technology is a sort of chip that "morphs" in some way (I don't really understand it either) so that you can restrict media to only play on certain machines, be it a computer, mp3 player, etc. Here is an excerpt from the article:

"With 'n-variant' integrated circuits, it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique," said Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and principal investigator on the project. "New methods of digital rights management can be built upon such devices. For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another." - Source: Rice University News & Media

I feel like this is a waste of research. What are we really gaining from this technology? Worse yet, are we only creating it for DRM? It frightens me that the first use for this technology that they suggest is DRM. They're treating the symptoms and not the cause. DRM is easily circumvented. It has never worked, and I doubt it ever will. Why don't they spend their time on something more useful?

What do you guys think?

Why does IE6 still exist?

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:36:28 -0600

If you are still using IE6... SHAME!!! Upgrade your browser! I'm quite partial to Firefox, seeing as how the just released v.3 and it is extremely nice and fast. I would recommend you download and install Firefox, and set it as your default browser. Get rid of all your IE6 shortcuts. Or, if you don't like Firefox, at least upgrade to IE7! Or use Opera, or Safari, or any of the other possibilities. Just don't use IE6. Please?

IE6 is old. It has countless security flaws. Just running it means your computer is vulnerable to attack. The browser is quickly becoming a main essential part of computing. So much is accessed through it. It's our main portal to the web. Running a computer with IE6, no matter how secure the rest of your computer is, makes you vulnerable. I equate it with reinforcing your house with steel plating, Plexiglas, you name it, and then leaving the door wide open. It's just not a good idea.

Not only that, IE6 is horrible at rendering pages! It doesn't obey standards, in fact it's so far off you have to almost program a completely separate page for it. IE7 isn't perfect (nor is Firefox), but it is still much better. The only reason IE6 can have survived for so long is because so many people programmed weird messed up applications for it, relying on the security flaws or other errors, and now they're incompatible with newer browsers. Those of you at BYU, you know that Blackboard (Blackhole, Lackboard) is a prime culprit.

So, IE6 hangs around because of legacy applications like this. THIS IS WRONG! It's not how it should be! The web is super dynamic, it's always growing. We shouldn't be supporting legacy companies that won't upgrade. You don't write applications for Win95 anymore. Everybody knows this. Well, you don't write applications for IE6 either. It's ugly. It's wrong. It's old. I say: Upgrade your browser, and kick all those other companies in the shins for not being more standards and cross-browser compliant.