Brad Barrish

If you don’t get excited about MX records, DNS propagation or technical explanations you might want to sit this one out. About four years ago I signed up for Fastmail.fm and moved all of my email. My domain is parked with GoDaddy and they don’t offer IMAP email access, so I had to find something else. Many people raved about Fastmail.fm and I’ve had very few complaints about them over the past few years. Until yesterday morning. I wasn’t receiving emails and when I went onto the status page, this is what I read:

Server3 died about 1/2 hour ago. I am looking at it now.

Bron.

UPDATE: it was a filesystem bug, most frustrating. I needed to reboot the server, which takes about 8 minutes - so probably another 20 minutes down all together while I check and start everything

UPDATE 2: seems that the filesystem will need a full check, which will take a couple of hours.

Raed Jarrar was asked to remove a t-shirt that contained the phrase “we will not be silent” in Arabic and English. He was in an airport, traveling from NY to LA and was harrased by airport security and JetBlue. After reading his account of what went down, I wrote an email to JetBlue.

I recently read about a passanger that was asked to remove his shirt because of the fact that it had arabic letters on it. I just wanted you to know that I will not be flying your airline in the future and I will recommend to all of my friends and business collegues that they also not fly JetBlue. Your decision to not recognize the passenger's right to wear his shirt, which was clearly expressing a sentiment that touches on current events in the world, is inexcusable. We live in America, which is a democracy with consitutional rights. These rights allow us to wear such shirts. I am very disappointed in JetBlue and look forward to your public apology for treating this citizen in such a demeaning way based on his shirt and, I'm quite sure, the color of his skin.

Update: I received the follwing response from JetBlue

Dear Mr. Barrish,

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to address the situation reported on DemocracyNow.org and other sites. We are working with the TSA to fully understand the situation, and we have not concluded our fact-finding yet.

Our fundamental responsibility as an airline is to provide safe and secure travel for all of our customers. This requires us to be sensitive to the concerns of all of our customers, while also upholding the rights of the individual. We value diversity, among our customers as well as our crewmembers. We take our responsibility seriously, and should there be an opportunity to improve our effectiveness, we will take the appropriate action.

We appreciate your interest in this matter as well as your understanding of all our customers’ needs. We remain available should you have any further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Jason Ward Director Customer Commitment JetBlue Airways

There are a few reasons that I dwell on the topic of terrorism, but the top reason is that I have struggled my entire life with some sort of fear. The kind of fear the debilitates. And in much the same way anxiety problems used to cause me to make decisions based on fear, Americans (that means citizens, journalists, politicians, etc.) need to give less attention to the fear, and focus our collective energy on standing up to fear. Let’s face it head on and stop the fear-breeding, sensationalism.

Bruce Schneier made a really nice post on his blog about fighting terror with anti-terror, and I think he’s on the right track.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

Ze said it best, but isn’t everything more impactful and impressive when you get a bunch of celebrities and Hollywood personalities together? There’s a full-page advert in the LA Times.

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.

“If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.

“We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

I like the message, except for one thing. That part about if we don’t succeed in stopping terrorism, chaos will rule. Guess what? We’re not going to stop terrorism. That’s the bad news. We’ve made our bed. Now we need to learn how to live with the terrorist threat. It’s going to be there and we just need to deal with it. The same way we consider (or not) that we could get struck by lightning, we need to consider that there may be a terrorist act in the United States. It’s not a matter of if, but when. And let’s stop the fear mongering, shall we? It’s not helping anyone or anything. Let’s live our lives with this new information being conscious of the state of the world. It’s a challenging time and we need to stand together with no fear.

If you live in LA (or OC), head down to Huntington Beach tonight to Quicksilver HQ - 15202 Graham Street
Huntington Beach, CA 92649 - for the premiere of Rising Son: The Legend of Skateboarder Christian Hosoi. Christian was one of my heroes when I was a skater. He was a total rock star skater. No one could skate vert like he did. When I worked at the skate shop, I would always watch his videos. I never really liked his decks, but always looked up to him as one of the best skaters in the world. I can't wait to see this film. It's got a lot of great interviews.

Graham Coxon's new album is more of the same, and that's fine by me. His solo work just rocks. He has that power pop rock thing down to a science. The opening track of this mix is also the opening track on his new album. I never thought I would be putting a Forward Russia! track on a mix. I saw them at SXSW this year and thought they put on a real shit show. I wasn't going to even bother listening to the album because of the aftertaste, but here they are and I love it. I can't wait for the new one from The Long Winters. I wanted the new Guster album to be a little more sing-along than it is. I may just need to spend some more time with it. Grant-Lee Phillips' cover of R.E.M.'s So.Central Rain is gorgeous. Nothing else to say about that. Do you watch Entourage? You should. It's one of the best shows on the tele. I always check out the music from the show. The last episode featured "Hip-Hop" by Dead Prez, which has become somewhat of a theme song at the office. Another story. Another time. They have a new one dropping, so there's that. The new Hope of The States is awesome. I've been listening a lot. Is it just me or does the lead singer sound a little Greg Dulli? You'll be hearing The Automatic a lot this summer. I'm betting on it. Pavement covers rule, and thus Cassettes Won't Listen (a.k.a. Jason Drake) do too. If you don't own the new French Kicks album, you must must must. One of my favorites of the year.

» Read more on Vox

I've been trying out a couple of interesting new blogging sites in the past few weeks and now it's time to give Vox a go. I've been a TypePad customer since the beginning and was a beta tester for Movable Type back in the day. As time has gone on, I've wanted the ability to post quicker and quicker and cared less about messing around with the design and layout. I'm not a designer, but I know what I like, so I leave it up to the people who do it for a living (or at least hobbyists). I haven't really changed the layout of my TypePad site since I started and it's beginning to show a little age.

It will come as no surprise that "An Inconvenient Truth" gets five stars for accuracy from Scientists.

Network LIVE captured Vagrant Records/Startime International recording artists The Futureheads with French Kicks. The show was captured at the Henry Fonda Theatre here in LA and it was awesome. There was some concern about the room looking packed for French Kicks, but everyone moved toward the stage when the band started playing the first notes of “So Far We Are,” the first song on their forthcoming album “Two Thousand.” The cameras were rolling, the job was swinging and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

One of the things that always gets people is seeing how Network LIVE operates at a show. When I bring a label person, manager or artist to our often times makeshift production rooms, they just get it. It’s undeniably impressive. All I usually have to say is “this is how we do it.” Of course I explain what we’re doing, but it’s always kinda cool to let them soak it in and ask the questions. It’s a proud moment for all of Network LIVE and a really exciting part of what we do. No matter how many times I see the same thing (the big flat panel display with all the cameras up and the director calling the shots), it’s still exciting.

Shortly after French Kicks left the stage, we were dealing with the fact that The Futureheads’ LD wanted the stage lights lower, wanted the lights off the crowd and wanted our gobos off. We deal with this on almost every show. The nature of capturing (particularly in HD) for broadcast, is that there has to be a lot of lights. The bands generally don’t like this as they think it ruins the ambiance and are concerned about the fans not having a good time. I saw the crowd during French Kicks and they were having a great time! We smoothed things over, worked a little magic and the show went on (with gobos up). The Futureheads’ tour manager quit 20 minutes before the band went on, but that’s another story.

The Futureheads played an awesome set beginning with “Yes/No” from their new album “News and Tributes.” They played nearly all of their new album. Highlights included “Fallout” “A to B” and their latest single “Skip To The End,” which had the crowd clapping along. The greatest moment in the production was seeing the lead singer guiding the crowd in hand claps. The director was calling out each camera showing all of the fans smashed up against the barricade, a wide shot of the vast sea of fans with their arms in the air then back to the singer. It was a really cool moment.

I wandered down to the band area underneath the stage after the show. Everyone was celebrating an awesome show. I got a chance to talk to the bands, both of whom were extremely grateful that we captured them. Label and managers were also there thanking us. Another proud moment for Network LIVE. Thanks to everyone for making this another great SRO capture.

Partnership For A Drug-Free America thinks being straight edge is cool and will encourage teens not to get involved with drugs. Yeah right...