Shouldn't my home page be, well, MINE?

im not slave to clocks. Night is dark, day is light, and if you live in southern cali, there are only two seasons; kinda warm, kinda not as warm.

but i have become a slave to other things in my life, starting with He-Man, the master of my universe at age five.



My most recent addiction? The internet. Especially web 2.0y stuff.
(note: took a break from writing this to watch 30 minutes of 90's cartoon openings, a link form the He-Man video above.first moment I have ever felt like I no longer represent the youth of America. but i digress.)

I used to have an i google account, but like so many other things in the web 2.0 universe, for the life of me, I don't know what the password is anymore.

I do remember that it used to have Garfield comics on it, but I was never a big fan of the orange cat anyways. If there were random Calvin and Hobbes comics offered, I probably would have never left.

Because that is what these websites, igoogle, pageflakes and the like, are all about. Consolidating things in a way that is easy to navigate, but also, perhaps just as importantly, consistently entertaining me.

So the best place to start is probably my "Just Fer Fun" section, tucked off on the far right hand side of the page, but probably the reason I continue to open my pageflake somewhat consistently. Email, weather, pictures of my hometown, all at the same time. Not to mention interesting articles not necessarily directly related to anything about my life.

But that little draw gets me to the more important stuff. Like my RSS feeds.

Because like all the random crap, the RSS feeds are generally interesting as well. They are just not necessarily party conversation. But no matter my mood, there is so much information available and accessible that I can always find something that interests me. Whether I'm in the mood to read about urban culture/fashion at Hypebeast, one of Time magazine's 50 best websites of in 2008, or the dry objective reporting of the RIAA suing 13 year olds on Recording Industry vs. The People, I have at a moments glance the two most important views of the music industry; fan perspective, and industry perspective.

I also get exposed to new music I would never hear on the radio, while simultaneously reading about a new generation of artists from a respected voice in the industry like Bob Lefsetz. The fact that I can navigate through the two so seamlessly allows me to really consider the validity of his argument. Is he the messiah, as so many people seem to believe? Or has his status rendered him out of touch and essentially useless? I can make my own opinion in a flash, open up my blog and start musing.

But the information does not end there. One of the problems I have found with reading blogs in the past is that by nature, authors have a certain scope, which prevents them from adopting new perspectives and ideas, or even considering new things to be valid. Therefore, while I am a dutiful reader of many blogs, I can glean even more information from the internet with my universal news and blog search. The universal news search today provided me with information I have been expecting for awhile, about the decline of traditional tv/movie viewing habits, akin to that of the music industry. Hopefully, for their sake, they are a little bit more prepared for the precipitous decline of their traditional distribution methods.

Finally, all of this rather general information at least flashes through my mind, and I normally pick out a nugget or two that are related and pique my interest. From both the blogs I subscribe to and my universal news feed, I have read many different opinions about Digital Rights Management, and chose to survey the academic realm to find something a bit more tangible than simple theories with little factual evidence. Through either sheer luck or the sheer genius of google book search (I would be a genius/happy employee if i ate this for lunch every day), I came across Stanford professor William Fisher's book "Promises to Keep" an early and inspiring look at the changing texture of digital rights management for the entire entertainment industry. This book (or, what I read of it), really changed my perspective on the best way to encourage creation of the arts that so many people hold dearly.

So I guess Im glad I got back into my pageflake. It definitely brings up a lot of interesting material, and I can truly say it has helped generate some interesting content for me. And it updates me when stuffwhitepeoplelike.com updates. Which is what truly matters.