About

If you want to know more about me:

I graduated with honors from Northern Michigan University a couple of decades ago with a degree in Education (double minor: Mathematics and Environmental Studies, and post-grad work in Computer Science); I’ve continued my education on my own studying such diverse topics as History, Government, Politics, Computers and Technology, Irish/Celtic culture (archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, history, mythology, law, etc.), Literature, Writing, Poetry, and just about anything else that strikes my fancy (by now you’d think I had 3 or 4 PhD’s, but I can’t afford to go back to college to pick up the parchments).

I’m also a Cold War disabled veteran of the U.S. Navy in the field of Communications (Radioman - w/security clearance); I’m married with children; I’ve done public service as a Library Board President, as well as volunteering many hours tutoring library patrons on the use of computers and the Internet. I’ve received the “keys to the city” for my volunteer work in the town I used to live in, but no longer live there. I now spend much of my time doing research, writing political commentary, poetry, and fiction, doing web design, and administering a fair number of domains online. If you need a site hosted, I can probably help you do that (keeping in mind that you get what you pay for).

If you’re not sure where to begin on this blog, I recommend the Essays or the FAQs categories. If you like what I have to say, feel free to comment on any post, send me an email (link is in the sidebar on the front page), or spread the word about this blog either through word-of-mouth or with a link back to the main page. If you don’t like politics, you might like some of the other sites I’ve created (see sidebar under “Mine” on the front page). I’d appreciate a tip in the Tip Jar to help me buy my tea, but you are, of course, under no obligation to do that.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Áine

FAIR USE NOTICE : This site contains images and excerpts, the use of which may or may not have been pre-authorized. This material is made available for the purposes of analysis, satire / parody, education, and critique, as well as to advance the understanding of political, media / journalism, law, government, and cultural issues.

The ‘fair use’ of such material is provided for under U.S. Copyright Law, in accordance with U.S. Code Title 17, Section 107. The author of this site also formally qualifies as a legitimate Educator. The use of any such material on this site is a not-for-profit educational use. Any monies donated to the author are used to pay for computer equipment, software, web hosting fees, and internet access fees necessary to create and maintain this web site (and perhaps the occasional cup of tea). Any overages will be donated to a variety of non-profit progressive and earth-friendly charities and will not be kept by the author of this web site, although up to this point, I’m just about breaking even on costs.

Plugins and Tools I Use :

1. Akismet : Anti-spam filter.
2. Spam Karma 2.3 : Anti-spam filter. I sometimes use Akismet or SK2 or both (you never know).
3. WP-Amazon : Waiting for Upgraded Version, but in the mean time, I am using Amazon’s Enhanced Links script, which will show you a mini preview of Amazon products I might mention in an entry.
4. Ultimate Tag Warrior 3.xxxxxxxx : Tagging for each entry; currently using Technorati tags.
5. Spamgarden : Grows a little tree using the spam captured in my filters (just something fun that actually makes spam useful for something! - see below).
6. WordPress Widgets : Allows you to use various widgets on your wordpress blog, and includes a Google Search Widget.
7. Bookmark Widget : This one is self-aware, so it knows which page you’re looking at and can add the entry (or the whole site) into any of several social bookmarking or social news sites (if you already have a membership on those sites, that is).
8. Drop Down Archive Widget : This helps clean up your sidebar, so you don’t have a really long list of Archives taking up space there.
9. Google Analytics : Enhanced visitor statistics.
10. Twitter : Shows the last thing I twittered in my sidebar.
11. Newsvine Feed : You can get a Javascript-based RSS feed to display on your web site from almost every page over at Newsvine. The one I’m using is the feed from my column at Newsvine.
12. Random Quotes : At the bottom of every page, you’ll see a little white box with a red feather, and there’s a random bit of text in that box which changes on every page load. This is generated by a PHP-based script that displays text randomly. I can edit the list of items from right within Wordpress. Pretty nifty.
13. CoComment : CoComment provides both a Wordpress plugin, as well as a Javascript-based script so that you (and I) can keep track of our comments and have an easy way to refer back to them in an ordered list. You can also find a CoComment widget that displays some of these comments on the Overheard page here.
14. Clipmarks : Clipmarks lets me grab content off of other web sites and sources, and it automatically attributes the source with a link for me when I post that content on my blog. There’s also a user page over at Clipmarks where you can post things even without posting them on your blog, but it’s a nice tool for blogging.
15. del.icio.us : del.icio.us is a social bookmarking and tagging site. There is a del.icio.us extension for Firefox browsers that I use. There’s also something called the Daily Blog Posting feature (which you set up in Settings at your del.icio.us account) which can automatically post entries directly into your blog every day, containing your latest del.icio.us tagged links. It supports Movable Type, Typepad, Wordpress, and other kinds of blog software using the XMLRPC protocol.
16. Popup Politicians by the Sunlight Foundation : This is a Javascript-based script that adds mini-profiles with informational links about Members of Congress to the entries that appear when you mouse-over the little red sunlight link. Names must be tagged manually, but I don’t always remember to tag them. (Someone needs to build a Wordpress plugin for this!)

My SpamGarden : See how my garden grows?

Spamgarden by Netlash.

PS : BBCode is not permitted in comments on this blog. I have Spam filters in place to ensure that. Any comments containing certain elements of BBCode will be automatically relegated to the circular file as blog spam, and it’s possible your IP, email, or domain may be automatically added to my BlackList.