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Ever take a look up into the sky and see clouds a bunch of clouds. Stare a little more, and you’ll start to see a rabbit or a turtle, sitting there in the puffy ceiling. But over the past few years, eBay has provided us the luxury of witnessing signs of prominent religious figures in the modern world.

The only reason that I took the time to write this article today is because of a friend’s experience. Today, my buddy Will was eating a hotdog, one that he got at the cookout festival. We were sitting on the couch watching “E.T” on the television, and all of a sudden, we hear, “Oh my god, look at that!”

To our surprise, we looked to see remnants of a hotdog in its bun. But not only that, it looked like a thumb, complete with fingernail. Instantly, we thought about the inplications of the whole situation, and decided that getting cameras and taking some photos of it was the best and probably most satirical way handle the situation.

If this didn’t happen earlier today, I probably wouldn’t have thought about or decided to write about visions and money. If you take a close look, you might be able to see what I am talking about with the hotdog. This is the same case with many of the religious figures that we are seeing on eBay.

First off, lets start with the grilled cheese sendwich with the picture of the Virgin Mary. A sandwich made over 10 years ago sold on eBay in November of 2004 for $28,000 to the Golden Palace Casino, who had planned to take the sandwich on tour before selling the grilled cheese sandwich and giving the proceeds to charity.

Diane Duyser, the woman who made the grilled chesse at her house, claimed that

I went to take a bite out of it, and then I saw this lady looking back at me. I hollered for my husband. It scared me at first.

Mrs. Duyser claims that the sandwich has brough her luck; She has won over $70,000 at a casino near her Florida home. But just how much of this is truth? Since this major sale, we’ve seen many knock-offs come out on eBay.

Another example: Jesus toast. This is another one of the knock-offs that have come out since the sale of the Virgin Mary grilled cheese. After doing some research on Google and Yahoo, I’ve come across how to make your own Jesus Toast. This is definitely an interesting article about how to make your Jesus toast. An excerpt follows:

Carefully cut little slices of butter and arrange them to make the face of The Messiah, making sure to focus on the crucial beard/mullet areas. Inadvertenty note that “Jesus has a butterface” and immediately feel such tremendous guilt that you break down and pray. Very good, my son.

If you’re too lazy to make your own, or you want a piece of supposed “history”, there is currently a Jesus Toast Auction on eBay. And if you’re really interested, I’ve even caught a glimpse of a rare breed of George W. Bush Toast as well. This case, its not only on eBay, but more like manyfactured in a kitchen with a toastburning kit.
That brings me to my main point. Are people sacraficing religious figures to make a profit. I’d say in 99 percent of the cases, yes. I only say 99 percent because I am leaving some wiggle room for those who may have legitimately found their toast that way.

Ponder this: If Jesus (or some other sacren religious figure) appears in your food, shouldn’t that be special to you? Aren’t you either going to keep it, sealed air-tight, or eat it, so the figure “can live inside of you”?
This also fits well with my previous writeup about responsible profitability, relating greed and how the exploitation of common good is regularly taken for granted.

The results of the thumb-like hotdog?

Ate Chinese the other day, for the first time in a while. My fortune cookie told me the meaning of life.

It matters not what road we take but rather what we become on the journey.

Take a guess at what the Chinese on the back of the fourtune says: 四月

Wondering how much time you actually spend online? I’ve come across a cool tool, released early in April 2006 that will keep track of how much time you’ve spent in Firefox, browsing and reading websites.

Chances are, if you’re like me, you’re spending more time than you think in front of a computer screen.

Features include pausing and unpausing, options to show/hide live second changer, list sites in options that do not count against online time, and session memory time management.

Take a look at the screenshots here, and also make your way over to the official Mozilla TimeTracker Plugin Site at Mozilla.org Addons.

Click here to install the plugin direct from Mozilla Addons.

Screenshots:

I was out with my sister, having lunch at the Olive Garden, not too long ago. It had been at least a few hours (heaven forbid) since either of us had been in front of a television or a computer. It seemed like the food was taking forever to get to our table. We were in the middle of conversation when she suddenly asked, “The Red Sox game is on now, do you know what the score is?”. Being the guy I am, I took out my cell phone and loaded up the Red Sox homepage (redsox.com). What I found was a mess.

Taking an aim to create an internet-wide standard to fix this mobile computing problem is the top-level domain name, .mobi. .mobi has gained approval from ICANN since it originally submitted its sTLD application on March 19, 2004. This new mobile TLD is sponsored by Nokia, Vodafone, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Ericcson, who came together to form the organization “mTLD”.

The .mobi top level domain will have three distinguished registration periods. Starting May 22, 2006, a “Limited Industry Sunrise” will commence, enabling those in the mobile and mobile computing industries to register their trademark domain names under .mobi. This mobile industry has been pre-defined by mTLD.

Then starting June 12, 2006, comes a Trademark Sunrise period where trademark holders can register their trademark name under the .mobi extension. This trademark registration period run for 70 days until August 21, 2006 to protect the names and assets of trademark holders.

After a brief trademark review period, general registrations will begin on August 28, 2006. General registrations will be open to everyone. Whichever registration group you fall within, you’re probably asking yourself:

Why should I care about .mobi?

First off, I have a question for you? Do you have an internet-capable mobile device? Chances are, if you do, you already understand how websites load inside your mobile browser. Depending on your mobile device and browsing software, rendering and height/width problems occur, among others. The goal that I seeing coming out of .mobi is to set standards within a light-weight but scaleable mobile internet network.

But many people say that .mobi does not warrant its top level extension, due to the fact that the extension is based on a device-centric concept, rather than that of an industry. Almost two years ago in May of 2004, the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, spoke to an audience of over five hundred people from more than forty countries about domain name extensions.

At that time, the application for .mobi had just been submitted. Berners-Lee spoke of furthering the internet with new possibilities with new extensions, but spoke negatively about .mobi.

It would be great if new domains were opened, but ones with social or technology context that make a commitment to the social system and to the integrity of that piece of the Web.

Less than a month later, he wrote a paper to further his point he addressed to the crowd. In his paper, he emphasized a two major problems with the new .mobi extension.

Device Independence
Berners-Lee claims (citing his own book), Weaving the Web, that the internet was specifically designed to operate independently of the hardware, software and networks used to access it. He claims that .mobi would break these rules, applying a top level extension aimed only at mobile devices.

Loss of Web Functionality
Berners-Lee also states that by introducing a new domain name extension based on mobile technology would imply that other domain extension were inadequate for mobile technology.

Although Berners-Lee created the internet and its basic rules and guidelines nearly fifteen years ago, nearly even minute since then, the internet and the devices used to access it have been in constant evolution.

And with evolution comes change. The concept behind the .mobi extension provides a wide array of possibilities for mobile websites and mobile web applications.

Some sites in the .mobi extension have already been launched to showcase the ability of the .mobi extension. A sampling is below (please take note that these sites are made for mobile devices):

• http://www.afilias.mobi/
• http://www.syniverse.mobi/mobi/
• http://www.weather.mobi
• http://www.vodafone.mobi
• http://www.tim.mobi
• http://www.t-mobile.mobi/

However successful .mobi is, the concept behind .mobi is a change for the better.

This past weekend, I participated in my first Relay for Life, sponsored by the American Cancer Society at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH. Spending time with people I usually would not hang out with turned out to be a new and fun adventure. It was true, I hadn’t used a computer the entire time I was there, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about the usual things I would do when I am working. Being a web developer and also being in the domain business, I have seen certain trends come and go.

But after this weekend, I feel that one in particular (although it has settled down) has been taken for granted.

Mesothelioma

Many people were going crazy about how much money it paid per click, and with economic just cause - it seemed like people were getting in excess of $70 USD per click, by getting traffic to their information site with a topic they saw as a business opportunity, and nothing else. I didn’t have my own mesothelioma site to cash in, but I also didn’t give it much thought. It wasn’t until this past weekend I looked from a different and enlightening perspective.
Mesothelioma is a cancer (although rare) that is caused by exposure to asbestos, which damages the mesothelium, which are the membranes that surrond a very good portion of your internal organs. So what does this have to do with a trend I am talking about that caused mass commotion within the domain name and PPC industry?

Where to draw the line on responsible profitability.

My grandfather died in July of 1991 (When I was five years old) of lung cancer. I didn’t get to know him as well as I should have, especially when those five years I spent developing and not truly understanding situations to their full degree.

My grandfather died of lung cancer due to smoking, but he was also exposed to dangerous amounts of asbestos. So my question is this:

Where do we draw the limits on responsible profitability? Of course it is going to be different for everyone, but shouldn’t we try to take into consideration the pain and suffering of families who are slowly losing their loved ones, the lawyers advertising to get a just amount of compensation (if that could ever equal a human life) for a family member and even those support groups who spend their non-profit money helping those in need for the common good?

I have thought more and more about this every day since the Relay for Life ended. Today on NamePros, I was reading a thread that showed the top dropped domain auctions and their prices, and another issue flagged itself on the grounds of (lacking) responsible profitability.

The domain name UNICEF.com was being auctioned off at well-to-do drop catcher SnapNames at $679.00 with just about eight hours left in the auction.

UNICEF.

UNICEF stands for United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and is a non-profit organization. I understand that people are out there to make a profit, as is the goal to survive, but at what extent and to whose expense will you continue to do so?

Domain Names at SnapNames have seemingly been going crazy lately. So a price of only $679 seems to make me a little happier and make me think people are seeing one of two things:

1. They also share some of the same morals I have talked about here on responsible profitability.
2. They are concerned that UNICEF will come after them, and take the domain name via legal actions.

Unfortunately, I believe for most number two is true more so than number one. I made a post in the thread at NamePros expressing how I felt, which is what led to this posting.

UNICEF.com was eventually taken off the auction block, but due to a dispute rather than a responsible profitability issue.

I personally own three domain names that are typos of popular sites (that I had purchased long before my realization). I don’t make a killing on them, but even though those names are incorrect spellings of for-profit companies, I see the harm.

Next time you think about registering a typo or developing a site based on ad revenue profit, think about your limit on responsible profitability and where the norm should be.

I’ve decided to go with the WordPress Theme “Unsleepable” by Ben Gray, temporarily until I get my currently template perfected. You’ll see that this site and Ben’s site look very familiar, because they are essentially using the same template. At this point, between school, social life, and the Developer Central podcast, I’ve been busy.

I went up to Plymouth State yesterday to see two of my friends that I haven’t seen in a while, which was definitely a treat. At the expense end of the deal was my template being coded into WordPress.

But oh well, I am fine with that for the time being. It was definitely worth the trip.

So, you’ll see the new design when its up. I’d like to get it there within the next week or so, but I definitely cannot guarantee anything. As it stands, I’m unsleepable.

I know I am writing this a bit late, but it deserves due credit.

Relay for Life turned out to be a great success. The walk at the University of New Hampshire raised $82,417 to benefit cancer research and awareness. I just wanted to say thanks to those who either supported me my fundraising directly and those who support the American Cancer Society as a whole.

Thank You!

After going back and forth between WordPress and TextPattern, I decided to use WordPress (mainly because of the additional features available). After working for a few good hours on the new design I’m just about ready to unleash the it into WordPress theme, and get this show on the road.

This site will be primarily accessible by stevecastle.org, but will also have other domain companions including stevecastle.info, stevecastle.net and even possibly stscac.com.

There’s not too many things better than watching an evolution. Especially when you’re the one behind it.

Welcome to SteveCastle.org - I hope you enjoy it.