Blog by Stephen R. Owens

Just finished watching Paranormal Activity, which has been proclaimed to be, "one of the scariest movies of all time."

I just released a simple PHP script, which is easy to modify and well commented, that sends the results of a MySQL query as a CSV formatted email attachment. The CSV is properly formatted so it can be opened by Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc. It can be found under the code section: "Email MySQL Query Results as a CSV File Attachment". I have released it under the GNU GPL free software license, giving you room to modify it to meet your needs.

The news as of late has made a big deal about the amendments to the FTC's Endorsement Guides, as can be read in this cNet News article, with the news media focusing the one aspect of the changes and how it affects freebies for Bloggers who write reviews. Most of these reporters have missed a bigger point. The Endorsement Guides affects more than just Blogs. The actual scope of the new amendments could also carry over to boards and forums, social networking sites, Twitter, consumer product reviews left on eCommcerce sites, and for that matter any emerging communication technology.

I have been reading ATLAND (http://www.realmofatland.com) for years now, and I highly recommend it. New strips are released every Thursday. Each episode is filled with lowbrow PG-13 humor.

MC SpandX delivers a funny video portraying the conflict between road bikers and hipster fixie crowd. Now that I know some road bikers and some fixie hipsters, I find this video extremely funny.

I opened a new Code section on my site today, which will contain free software licensed under the GNU GPL v3.0.

To kick it off I am releasing the CMSMS Shop Skin Helper. This tool will create cached skin files based upon a CMS Made Simple template. The tutorial included in download provides a walk-through for skinning an osCommerce / Zen Cart installation on the same server as CMS Made Simple. This PHP code is not dependent upon CMS Made Simple, so it could be used to skin all kinds of things.

President Obama said a lot of great things that I really liked in his Health Care Marketing Conference last night (July 22, 2009). I am all for the reforms he talked about. You can watch it here on hulu. The problem is we have no idea what is actually in this health care reform bill.

Senator Tom Coburn has proposed an amendment in the Senate Health Committee that would require members of Congress to switch from their current health insurance plans to any government provided insurance scheme that's created as part of proposed health care legislation. They voted 12-11 for it. This means close to half of the Senators on the committee decided that the health care plan they are cooking up, which is good enough for us the people of our great country, is definately not good enough for them. Help us put the entire Congress on the spot.

That which we call the Real ID. By any other name would still smell like rotting organic material. More than half of the States in our Union have rejected the Real ID act or have introduced legislation to reject the Real ID. This shows that the Real ID is something we did not want. However, the Real ID is back under a different name, and this time it is being driven NOT by Congress, but by un-elected bureaucrats in the DHS and the State Department. This doesn't mean Congress is blameless. Congress is doing nothing to reign in the bureaucrats.

Independently developed games can have some of the most innovative game playing techniques. I always enjoy a high quality shooter, or in depth RPG, but nothing beats playing something with a little freshness to it. Mightier delivers with some good playability. Part platform puzzle game, part pen and paper, and totally free.

How to integrate the site design and menus from CMS Made Simple with the default template found in Zen Cart. This method is much better than having similarly themed sites as this method of template integration will give the appearance of a seamless site.