What a week, huh? The House fails to pass the bailout bill, the markets crash, and there was a period on tuesday where I wish I had $10,000 for about 15 minutes (Google's stock crashed right at close, then rebounded almost immediately in after-hours trading).

And most people are putting the blame for the bill failing the House squarely on John "Maverick" McCain. They had a provisional agreement until he touched down, then the shit hit the fan. Then again, they're also trying to blame Next Gingrich, so what does anybody know? I know that I'm really glad I never started a 401k, that's for sure.

Speaking of Google, I have started to covet the T-Mobile G1 (not in that ugly white, though). I thought, a few times, about switching to AT&T for the iPhone, but it looks like I've been rewarded for my patience. And my upgrade should make it more than affordable. Good thing, too…my RAZR is showing its age. Either way, it should make Matt's Treo look like it has some sort of childhood developmental disorder.

so, i've had this problem for a while now… i say problem but really… i've had this annoyance for a while now. y'know how people ask if you have a website, or you sign up for thousands of profiles on thousands of different sites online and they all have a place for you to put your web address, right? well, me, being the guy i am, i pretty much always fill that bit in… and i pretty much always use bipolar. that's fine, but it's always kind of bothered me. i mean obviously i like brian and all, but it's always just seemed a little weird that my go-to site, my site that is kind of the champion of my online identity, is one that i share with another guy.

i think originally the idea was sparked in my head by the inimitable merlin mann with a 43folders.com post about personal status pages. then a couple months ago, my daily web travels brought me to something that got me thinking about it again, in a slightly different light. here're some links in roughly chronological order:

• my social map is totally decentralized…
• FriendFeed, The Centralized Me, and Data Portability
• (De-)centralised me
• I want my blog to be the aggregator

obviously, these guys are talking about something much bigger than a personal status page, tossing around words like ownership and portability. still, this fueled the fire, and got me working.

i think it was about two weeks later (which is like superman speed for me), i'd thrown together a design and finished the page—matthewrasnake.com.

this is a one-page site, which is basically just an overview of my entire web-world. a centralized me. all the data still lives on my various decentralized profiles, so this doesn't address—or even consider, really—data portability, but instead relies on RSS feeds and APIs from and through which i can gather together my various bits.

so, if you're looking for me online, or wondering what i've been up to, now there's a quick easy place to go. also, probably more importantly, now i have something to enter in all those form fields without feeling weird about it.

here's a couple other links that are related, but didn't really fit in with those above…

• The Aggregated Me
• Social Graph Central

not that bipolar was ever really a "link-blog," but I compiled this little list for my best gal earlier today, and thought it wouldn't be totally imprudent to post it here for you guys. i have a couple post ideas brewing, but really i just need to get off my ass and post my usual off-the-cuff b.s. like i used to.

anyway, here's the list o' links:

• If you continue to have to do presentations, perhaps this site can help spice things up for you and make the experience more meaningful:
  http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/08/from_design_to_.html
• The hybrid mini with motors in the wheels…
  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/the_hybrid_mini.php
• The thing I was telling you about where these inventors think they've discovered a "free-energy" device:
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
• And as much as you hate it when I mention mortality, here's the coffin I'd like to be buried in:
  http://uono.com/english/home.html (click on the tab labeled "Cocoon")
• Finally, this bi-monthly magazine just released their first issue, and it looks to be really nice:
  http://www.goodmagazine.com/
  and the bonus is that 100% of Charter subscribers subscription fees go to the charity of their choice, one of which is the really cool:
  http://www.goodmagazine.com/choosegood/teachforamerica
  http://www.teachforamerica.org/

BAM!

bipolar has been quiet for a while, but we have not been dormant. off in an anteroom, major changes have been brewing, and now, dear reader, the re-tooled bipolar is once again unleashed upon the world.

after the transition of MovableType from a free to a fee-based licensing scheme, i realized it would be untenable to follow through with the upgrade, since we are (or were at the time) running several different blogs by a few different authors from a single installation of MT. unfortunately, I also wasn't convinced about WordPress or any of the other alternatives, and didn't look forward to having several different installations of a CMS/blog package on a single server.

well, WordPress has come a long way, i've gotten over my no-multiple-installs stubbornness, and our installation of MT has finally grown so long in the tooth that it is slowly breaking down.

so, bipolar is now running entirely on WordPress, with all the old bells & whistles, plus a few new ones of considerable value.

major old features still in effect:
1) themes: all of bipolar's old themes are available, up-to-date, and much improved. go to the theme chooser from (very near the bottom of) the dropdown or links list on any bipolar page.
2) category cloud: see all our categories and how much we post in them visually by viewing them as a "cloud" rather than some boring old list.
3) bipolar cam: web cams are still in effect, and are back to their fully-themed glory.

major new features:
1) new pages/subpages: you're no longer tied down to the side-by-side view of bipolar. now category, archive, and sub-page views have their own page layout, hopefully making things easier to read.
2) popular, related, and recent lists: in various places you can now find lists of popular posts, potentially related posts (beyond simple category relations), and simple recent posts lists.
3) 404 page with way too much info: those lists, the categories and the archives are available if you get a 404, and the site will even attempt to show you a list of posts related to the thing you were looking for.
4) RSS feeds: WordPress allows us a much broader RSS feed smorgasbord—eeds for individual posts, post comments, categories.
5) search: MT had a search function, but i never implemented it 'cause i was lazy. WordPress has it built in as well, so i finally took the time to put it in place.
6) brand-new theme: i've created a swanky new theme, and made it the default. if you don't like, it no problem, just choose your favorite from the theme chooser

hopefully there won't be many broken things lying about, but i'm sure there will be some. if you find something, please let me know so i can get it fixed.

in the meantime, enjoy the new theme and all the other changes around this old place.

i've been poking around the internet, trying out some of these new fangled "killer apps." well, i'm gonna talk about two of the newer ones that i've had no luck with.

first off, the democracy player. from their page:

Download and watch all the best internet TV shows and videos in one powerful application. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide. Stop squinting at tedious web videos– sit back and watch big, high resolution videos.

well…i've tried loading a few channels and downloading a couple of videos and i haven't gotten it to actually do squat. i still have yet to get it to play one of the stinkin' videos it's downloaded. color me unimpressed.

next up, we have songbird. from their homepage we have this nice summary:

Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

the selling point is that it's supposed to be able to play just about anything…MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA, etc. sounds pretty sweet. except for when i tried to import my library of music (part of it, anyway). it seems songbird is choking on an initial import of around 10,000 songs. itunes this ain't, folks.

to be fair, songbird is really just a "proof of concept" release. it looks like a really swanky black itunes. as with democracy player, though, i actually have yet to get it to play a file of any sort.

oh well.

they both warrant some watching, for sure, but i'll hold off on playing with either of them any further until they actually have them working.