I’ll be 36 by the time this ships.  That’s far too old to have a Millennium Falcon kiddie pool.  Of course, I will have two children by then.

No no, I can’t.  I won’t.  Damn it.

FUN FACT: When searching Yahoo for “flickr peeing outdoors”, I am the 6th result returned.

News out of New York state shows that Governor David A Paterson has signed into law a bit of legislation regarding video games.  Specifically, the law compels the state government to conduct a study of video game violence and its effects on children, requires consoles to have parental lockout controls by 2010, and requires games to show ESRB ratings.

Sounds pretty reasonable, except for three major things.

1. A couple thousand (might be exaggerating here) studies have already been done about video game violence.  Why can’t NY reference those?

2. All modern consoles already have parental controls built into them.  The industry has already addressed that concern, so legislating it makes no sense.  They had that one taken care of four years before the 2010 deadline.

3. All games sold at retail already carry an ESRB rating.  Most retailers require it.  Again, legislating a practice currently in practice.

So what did this legislation achieve?  Absolutely nothing aside from letting politicians look productive and fooling the public into thinking something will be done about this video game menace.

Well New Yorkers, you just paid for fluff legislation.  If you’re hoping it will reduce youth violence, you’re in for a surprise.  You see, poverty is a much larger contributor to youth violence than video games could ever hope to be, but nobody is trying to outlaw poverty.  No, let’s go after the inconsequential targets and hope the public doesn’t notice the dodge.

The good news is that this law doesn’t actually change anything.  The bad news is that making a law just to make it is asinine.

There’s nothing quite as shocking for a nobody like myself than to visit a site looking for information and unexpectedly find one of my photos used as a product shot.

I’ve been trying to find a AAA battery clip for my Magellan eXplorist 500. Why? Because I was reading about portable solar power and thought, “If I could take portable panels with me to charge my GPS, I’d be able to track a multi-day tour.” Not that I have the time to do a multi-day tour. Trust me when I say that such details are often lost on me.

My search took me to a page hosted by HighSpeedSat which has the 500 listed among its product reviews. Scroll, scroll, scroll… looking to see if they sell the battery clip… and then WHAM!

Holy hell, my pale legs are on a GPS website! Kinda cool, as long as they link back to my Flickr site, since that’s where they got it. But no, clicking on the image brings up a photo of the eXplorist box contents. And there’s no photo attribute, meaning I don’t even get credit for the shot.

My first instinct was the grab a shot of the page, record the date/time, and jot down the URL so I could write them to have my image removed.

And then I remembered I have this blog. This blog that has, as early as yesterday, relied upon using the images of others to supplement the writing. It’s hard to get my moral superiority in order when I am guilty of the same actions. “Fair use”, you might cry. “You’re not making any money from the images.” This is true, I’m not making a dime, but it still feels weird to feel as though my copyright has been violated when I do the same thing to others so easily.

It’s easy for me to ignore this infringement of my “work” since this isn’t really my source of income. I don’t make money from my photos. I never plan to do so. The long term impact to my livelihood is null. So why should I care?

I’ll tell you why… Because while I’m no photographer, I am egotistical. I’m actually okay with somebody using my stuff as long as I’m credited. However, I do maintain full rights so that there’s no misinterpreting who can use what and to what level.

Having said that, I’m probably not going to do anything about HighSpeedSat. If showing off my legs helps them sell a GPS, so be it.

While searching Amazon for 802.11g wireless routers, I happened to notice the Norton products list as items of related interest. The first was for Norton Internet Security and feature a typical upper-middle class woman who was evidently concerned about securing her internet. It made me think about Symantec’s transition away from using the glaring Peter Norton photos on all the Norton product boxes.

Then my eyes wandered to the immediate right where I saw something that made me hang my head in shame. Norton AntiVirus not only lacks Peter Norton, it also lacks a normal human. Instead, the Incredible fucking Hulk appears on the box art with the promise that there’s a free Hulk comic inside. Since when has the Incredible Hulk been concerned about having a robust antivirus solution? Was it a virus that was responsible for his transformative dose of gamma radiation? If so, who thought it was a good idea to hook that computer up to the internet?

What next? Perhaps Spider-Man should go on that Internet Security box. You know, so he can protect me from the Web. Oh wait, how about Casper on the box for Norton Ghost?

Thank goodness I work in marketing so I can make a living coming up with awesome ideas like these.

Having just erected a new shed on my property, I am a bit cheesed that I didn’t think to build a shed in the shape of a TARDIS. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like it would hold three bikes nearly 7′ long, but then I remembered that a TARDIS shed is like a bag of holding.

Speaking of… I often use terrible pick-up lines to amuse my wife. About two months ago, I came up with this gem: “Did you notice I’m wearing my TARDIS pants? Yeah, that’s because it’s bigger on the inside.” Feel free to use that.

I of course had to read Mark Trail again today to see where this lesbian thing was going.  It went nowhere.  Apparently, she was just getting ready to spook a horse and make it throw its rider.  That’s not hot.  That’s not hot at all.

So I guess I’ll have to turn to Nancy whose Aunt Fritzi would make Silly Putty melt.

And here’s a little bonus for those of you into ropes:

I’m not a regular reader of Mark Trail, but the images of 1950’s women caught my attention today. Glad they did, because this is perhaps the most awesome Mark Trail ever!

Granted, I read this comic without the benefit of a contextual story arch, but all the better my friend. All the better.

I laugh every time I get to the lone question mark speech bubble. It really couldn’t end any other way.

Last September, I submitted three photos to the Bike Philly photo contest.  They’ve never announced the winners (first prize was a Fuji bike).

But that doesn’t mean they haven’t used the photos.

One of my submissions first showed up in an official Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia document.  Then it showed up on their blog.  And now?  Now it’s the header graphic of their registration page for Bike Philly 2008.

So did I win the contest?  No clue.  They’ve also never said when they would be announcing the winners.  There was some mention that they would reveal the winners at a volunteer meeting, but I didn’t have time to drive to Philly to attend just that meeting.

A couple weeks ago, I took a good chunk of my library into Webster’s for cash.  Before boxing them all up, I decided to rifle through and make sure there weren’t any old bits of paper and such between the pages.

Wouldn’t you know it, stuck in a copy of Conduct Unbecoming was a prize voucher from QuakeCon ‘97.

I guess there’s very little chance of claiming my prize now.