a blab by idle

I just added a FOAF profile to daily babble as a static template that outputs to foaf.rdf and added a meta link to the index page (<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf" />). Is anyone else playing with FOAF? XFN? With anything of this nature, it takes a critical mass of people to make it work… in a way, I'd like to tie it into metablog 2.0 somehow.

Oh, that's right, I was supposed to write meta 2.0 a year ago. Oops….

It has been pretty awe-inspiring watching the webcast of Deep Impact in near-real time. Many thanks to Aster for the tip-off about this event and NASA TV feed.

In a day and a half, the G8 is meeting in Edinburgh.

There's a massive movement focused on that event; it's called One — the campaign to make poverty history. I encourage you to follow the link through and, if you feel so moved, sign the declaration.

They're not looking for money, for donations, even for your time. They just want your voice. They just want to have as many names as they can, as many voices as they can rising up as one to say "this cannot go on!"

When I was a kid, I was a social activist. Now, I leave that to younger, more alert and aware folks like Zach. But there come times when you cannot leave something to "the activists" — something so big and so important that we must all join together to call for it to come to be.

Submitted respectfully for your consideration.

[updated 10:44pm]

This is awesome. I was noticing on the One Blog that a group of SoCal teens put together a response to the the Live8 challenge and the One video.

Check it out. Then check out the comments about it, especially the one from the Vietnam vet, and realize just how powerful this is.

I'd forgotten how much I absolutely love the soundtrack from Chess.

The lyrics are pretty dense with cold war politics, which is little more than a quaint historical perspective at this point, but also the intricacies of betrayal in relationships and wicked webs that we weave… themes altogether too appropriate in my life.

Thanks to the help of Niall Kennedy and the IETF standard, I have cobbled together a validating Atom 1.0 feed for daily babble.

Let me know if you use it, and if so, if you have any comments!

Random surfing got me to this succinct post from a British gent citing a very simple but good idea printed in the London Times about keeping emergency contact info in a standardized place on your cellphone. I think it's a great idea and I'll probably adopt it. You might want to consider it, too.

Oh, hey, check out his double rainbow picture while you're at it, if you want something cheery to enjoy as well.

For three months, I've been trying to blog about one thing, and I still can't find my way to do it. Every time I start, I shut down in fear.

In five hours, it'll be a fait accompli. Still, I have sat here for an hour trying to post. And still I cannot.

*sigh*

When something freezes, it becomes brittle.

Hit it hard enough at that point, right along a fault line, and it shatters.

One cry today… that's all it took.

One scream proved that it's all shifted.

That everything's changed.

That nothing is as it was.

That the brittle, hardened, crystalline, bitter, dead layer has exploded….

All that's left underneath is the fragile, moist, pupal skin; raw, glistening, emerging for the first time.

It's the moment of abject fear and hesitant euphoria.

Of holding your breath to the count of twelve, and not knowing if you're on the cusp of victory… or the brink of annihilation.

Or, perhaps, both simultaneously, and that may be the paradoxical truth of paramount importance.

Nothing is as it was.

Everything is as it should be.