The world needs more determined artists like young Amy Thomas. Miss Thomas is protesting against the British Phonographic Industry, the British version of our very own RIAA. The reason? The BPI has decided not to include her latest single in their charts because because of her stance on file sharing! Bravo! Success in the digital age will come to people like Amy who explore new ways of doing things, not organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA who are trying their best to slow technological advances and maintain a grip on their outdated model.

As once said by the great Sir Winston Churchill, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” And on that note, summer break comes to a close. Today marks my last day at [Emerson][1], and tomorrow the first day of real semester preparations. Its been an amazing summer (and one I won’t soon forget – stay tuned for my “summer story”), and I’ve had some great times, met some great people, and seen some great places. I wish to thank everyone that’s helped make it so amazing, including my cousin in Columbus (for keeping me), the Flandrys (for letting me play and hang out), Justin (for the good times), Ryan (for the exercise and the good times), Amy-Elizabeth (for letting me come hang out in Atlanta), and everyone else that I crashed with, annoyed, and partied with this summer!

Just ran across [this excellent rebuttal][1] to all the media baloney about these most recent terrorists. A highly recommended article!

Ok, so now we call people terrorists and arrest them for [buying a bunch of cell phones][1]. Oh, and then talk about becoming [more invasive of personal privacy][2] [[via][3]]. Sheesh, what is the world coming too? Seeing as how [terrorism is intended to create terror][4], and we’re becoming more paranoid every day… well – who’s winning this one [[also related][5]]?

If you’ve been following the random stories throughout the site, you might just remember a mention of my summer co-op job at Emerson Network Power (if not, you can refer to [this post][1]). The summer has gone well; I’ve made some cash, learned some new tricks, and added a nice new section to my resume. However, there was one little problem that arose…

It’s another wonderful Friday afternoon, and I feel like making a quick “review” post. Ready?

Since the [initial post][1], I have been keeping an eye the on results of the Google searches and have noticed a few changes. The search of main interest (for the overall site) is for [Matthew Smith][2], as this is the most common way for friends to find the site. After a few re-indexings, digivation.net now ranks as result forty, quite an impressive improvement over the original page seven listing. Now such thoughts as “Can I become the coveted #1 result” are being entertained, but at the moment this is only wishful thinking, as I am but one lonely Matthew in a ocean of Smiths.

While I recently finished up my first [K2 style][1] [modification][2] (and I’m not too disappointed with it), I believe that not only can I do better, but K2 feels a little “bloated” with a bunch of extra “features” that I don’t use. In addition, I’ve slowly been accumulating more and more plugins to provide other “features.” Seeing as how my very first web pages were hacked together in notepad, I appreciate clean, well structured HTML code that is easily readable and debuggable. The code produced by K2 (at least with the various mods that I have installed) is far from pretty.

As some of you may know, I am a proud brother of the [Alpha Tau Omega][1] fraternity and I have been a member of the [Alpha Zeta][2] chapter for a little over a year. After being noticed for my dedication, spontaneity, and go-get-um attitude (though occasionally lacking focus), I was named recruitment chair for the 2006-2007 year. Tasked with this great responsibility, I began mulling over ideas for the promotion of my chapter. After some thought and speculation, I realized that one overlooked aspect of rush is the current focus of recruitment campaigns, which lies solely on new recruits. This is one-dimensional and will lead to sub-par results. What is needed is a three-dimensional approach.

Hot off [BetaNews][1], [Xdrive][2] (owned by AOL) is planning to offer 5 Gb of free online storage starting in September. Sounds like it’s time for Google to get a move on with their “[gDrive][3]” service.

I ran across these nifty directions detailing the construction of an origami debit card holder. Kinda fun and simple way to spend a few minutes. [Check it out!][1] [[via][2]]

Just a quick little post to inform you of an essential (in my opinion) patch for Ubuntu 6.06 font rendering system. If you are used to MS ClearType and have switched to Ubuntu only to be disappointed by font rendering, fear not. Using this simple fix, I think that my fonts look better than Windows these days. [[Visit][1]]

Google is a fun toy for bored afternoons. For example, I’ve been Googling a few key phrases:

I was recently surfing the web, when, for no reason at all, I wondered if I could find a copy of my very first website. Over the years, I have been through numerous sites, designs, platforms, topics, you name it, I’ve probably tried it. In fact, I can’t even remember all the places that I stuffed web pages – trust me, I tried. I do, however, remember the very first site that I produced, way back around 1997, not too long after I got online (which was sometime in 1996). This rudimentary site was hosted with AT&T’s personal web site service – I even remember the [URL][1] (it’s long gone) and lovingly crafted with Notepad.

Over the past few weeks, I have once again turned my thoughts towards that “other” operating system loved by some, loathed by others. No, I’m not talking about the Mac OS, I’m talking about Linux. While I did use it extensively last summer (learning tricks, jumping through hoops, and trying to get my system to like me), I eventually moved back to Windows due to a general inability to find and/or run the programs that I wanted. However, a year later, I began to run across posts like [this one][1] (or [this][2] or [this][3] or [this][4]) and started reading about the newest release of [Ubuntu][5]. In addition to these treasonous thoughts drifting through the back of my mind, I began to use more open source software such as [Blender][6], [the GIMP][7], and [Inkscape][8], due to software restrictions at work.

I apologize if you were unable to reach the site yesterday – it seems that my server was having a bit of trouble, apparently caused by a faulty motherboard. I’m up and running on fresh hardware, so all should be good now!

[][1]Since I am spending the summer amassing large sums of money, I have come up with some stuff I’d like to spend it on. Without further ado, I am proud to present my “Summer Toy List.”

With such a long and auspicious title, this post has a lot to live up to; therefore, let us begin! First things first – why would you actually want to claim your Flickr pages on Technorati? I have no idea (but I’m going to find out), other than putting another link on the “blogs you claim” page of your Technorati account and seeing how many sites link to your photostream. Now that we have this behind us, let’s begin.