August 2008
2 posts
LOL Day Nom-i-knorms: Goldey Group →
Ken, upon seeing this, said, “omg - a website that was built on the very theory of shark-jumping has somehow managed to jump the shark itself.” Yup.
July 2008
7 posts
The eternal question
I sit right outside my boss Kathy's office. What follows is a notable case of a typical day:
Coworker: Is she around?
Me: [glancing in her empty office] No?
Coworker: Well, I know she's not there.... I just meant, around the office.
Me: [in my dream world] So what was the question?
Me: [in reality] Oh, well, I don't know.
Can everyone just stop asking now?
Tumblr, I'm looking at you
Your days are numbered. I visited a gracious host this evening who said I could have some space in his house for the cost of a cup of coffee per month. He said I could set up shop the way I want to but actually make it look good and even have some available practice space in case I want to play with snakes.
So it’s been fun and while I’m not exactly on the rebound, I’m looking...
“Your password may be any combination of 6 to 10 letters and numbers.
* It...”
– Nelnet Student Loans
“Let’s make your passwords weaker!”
5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G - Free Software...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/5-reasons-to-avoid-iphone-3g
I can agree as far as “DRM sucks” and “free software in the AppStore would be better”, but as I read, one word came to mind (a word I have never used): “freetards”.
(Also, it’s really only 4 reasons.)
A true Renaissance man
Deanna’s dad wrote a nice article about the birchbark canoe he built 20 years ago. It’s currently in The Iowa Paddler.
Click below for a PDF of the issue; his article is on page 8.
“I have as many problems with Word as I do with OpenOffice, but at least...”
– kontrawize
My experience with OpenOffice has been disappointing (I still have to claim that Microsoft Office is better), but yeah, it’s not a matter of OpenOffice having more problems, just different ones.
June 2008
15 posts
Word Cloud for my Delicious tags
See original on Wordle
Forced participation
So I’m attending the University of Phoenix’s online program. Generally, pretty good. To keep everything lively and interpersonal, we usually have some sort of participation requirement. Something like 2 comments, 4 days a week. Given the online context, I’d say that’s reasonable, yes?
However, my current class has an additional requirement that each comment must be 200...
LastTab extension updated for Firefox 3 →
LastTab is probably one of my favorite extensions, in terms of how much I take it for granted. (Delicious comes close.)
I’ve been Ctrl+Tab’ing left and right for weeks since upgrading to Firefox 3. Maybe one of the only features I latched on to from my bygone days using Opera. (Alt+Tab switches applications based on most recent use; why wouldn’t you want the same from your...
Phoenix Mars Mission finds ice →
“Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.” (emphasis mine)
Netflix Community Blog: Profiles feature going... →
I’m not here to complain; there are enough (valid and mostly coherent) rants and raves in the comments on Netflix’s blog.
Here’s what gets me: the more you are using Netflix—rating movies, adding to your queue, the more profiles you have, etc.—the more this will impact you. It’s basically like pissing on your power users.
What's in your Awesomebar?
For those that have upgraded to Firefox 3, the Awesomebar shows both frequent and recent (“frecent”) sites that you have visited. At this moment, what’s in your top 10 if you click the drop-down arrow? Here are mine at work:
An internal website (Bomgar)
co.mments - Track your conversations
Twitter
Tumblr
Demonoid.com - Torrent list
Facebook | Home
Men : Target (I...
“God I hate trying to have a conversation through Twitter. It’s like IRC by...”
– Twıtter Blacklist
“Even the most adventurous Mozart symphony is still at least as structurally...”
– Matthew Guerrieri
“At 10 cents each, [texting costs $734] per MB - or about 4.4 times more...”
– Zach on the related issue of telecoms selling phones: “Can you imagine having to buy your faucet from the water company?”
(via New York Times Blog)
Coding Horror: Code Colorizing and Readability →
“In every color combination surveyed, the darker text on a lighter background was rated more readable than its inverse (e.g. blue text on white background ranked higher then white text on blue background).”
I’m surprised. I had thought that white on black (or gray) is better. In my own experience, I’ve found that a darker overall shade is much more pleasant when sitting at...
May 2008
19 posts
“Default templates are terrific for people who can’t or don’t want to design...”
– John Gruber: Blank Slate
Problem is, if you sidestep the defaults, specifically with software you’re implementing, you also sidestep any (sometimes painstaking and meticulous) work that goes into making said software accessible and useful. It depends on the project, of course, but (to address...
Starting with Steve Reich? – Andrewski’s Journal –... →
I’ve heard Steve Reich’s name mentioned a lot recently on blogs (I’ve been reading more blogs about classical music in general) and it’s getting to the point that I need to listen to him. Anyone have any suggestions on where to start, other than the Last.fm artist page? :) His Music for 18 Musicians seems to change lives—or at least be very memorable the first time people...
Once, Twice, Thrice soundtrack covers
Great movie, but how many covers do we need? Compare: versus OK. Innocent enough, though the background is odd. Then check the Frames’ website for this one: Wait, where’d that hat come from?
“Real products need more functionality in order to somehow deliver value to their...”
– Paul Buchheit: There’s no such thing as a “social network” (via Google Operating System) So what is the purpose of Ubuntero.org? Maybe this is why we’ve had trouble finding our niche?
WatchWow. (via The World at Night)
“I’ve recently taken to describe the web as the world’s largest open source...”
– Christopher Blizzard » Blog Archive » the hidden value of processing.js
NASA - Discovery of Most Recent Supernova in Our... →
“The most recent supernova in our galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of its remains. This result, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, will help improve our understanding of how often supernovae explode in the Milky Way galaxy. The supernova explosion occurred about 140 years ago, making it...
Daring Fireball: BlackBerry vs. iPhone →
Now I’m not a very big Apple fan, at all. I’m generally vocal about hating the iPhone (and Apple) because of their unabashed and irrevocable proprietary lock-in, but using a BlackBerry is no better (and a lot less useful) and at the end of the day, we really haven’t seen a good open-source PDA yet. Now I’ve been increasingly disappointed with my BlackBerry lately, and there...
To no one in particular
Please, don’t laugh at your own jokes; no one likes it. There’s help if you just can’t stop.
“I read that book, Who Moved My Cheese?, which is a great business book, but I...”
– Michael Scott, The Office (US)
Ken Wilson (22.51.29): any idea why i would lose my internet connection if i enable static ip?
Me (22.53.04): well, there is a bug i've seen related to that
Ken Wilson (22.53.09) has signed off.
“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is...”
– Albert Einstein
April 2008
28 posts
It's like they aren't even trying anymore
Email I got today: From: Subject: Subject for default E-Mails goes here. EDIT ME! Dear Sir or Madam, please edit this email text now useless you want to send crap to your customers. With Best Regards This confirms my suspicion that spammers goals are first to annoy you, and only second to try and get something valuable from you.
dria.org » Blog Archive » AwesomeBar is awesome →
If you’re using Firefox 3, be sure to read this description of the AwesomeBar by a Mozilla employee. It certainly is awesome and has more or less replaced manually entering URLs with keywords (e.g. I type “gmail” rather than “mail.google.com”). If you’re not using Firefox 3 yet, I suggest you try it. Release Candidate 1 will be out probably this week and...
“Yeah, you’re all about statistics.”
– Deanna, discussing my insistence on scrobbling to Last.fm
Irony of ironies
FastPapers.com*, terrible that it is, features academic papers-for-sale on all topics, including the ethics of plagiarism. Sheesh. Meanwhile, I’m working hard on a team paper for my class, participating in an academic dialogue about the pitfalls of plagiarism in the age of the internet. *- I refuse to link to them. Don’t bother visiting, unless you’d like to check my sources. ;)