I’m done.
Figured I’d use this special date to call it a career.
Thanks for reading.
Archive for February, 2008
A quick perusal of my Contact page will show you the addition of this chat widget, for people who need to contact me, and don’t want to (or can’t) install something like, say, Google Talk. This is a good idea for people who are on ‘locked–down’ computers, such as in computer labs or in businesses with actual working security policies. My current state of online–ness is reflected here:
You can find out more from the Google announcement, or play with it after you log in to your Google Talk account or Gmail and start playing with it.
Limited usefulness
For those of use who can’t use the official Google Talk agent, when somebody clicks the widget, you’ll be alerted with this giganimus linked message:
That sends you to the same interface the the person who clicked the widget has, instead of moving you inside Gmail or letting you use your Jabber client. Thus, it’s really not that great of a help for people who want to use their own applications. But if you absolutely, positively have to chat with somebody — right now — this is as good a solution as any.
There are nights I wonder what it would be like, if I drank.
Just got done watching Monk.
Thinking about streams of consciousness.
Reevaluating Twitter.
Working on proper punctuation.
Realizing that most of my best stuff will sit, unread, in the archives, never seen by a human other than me. That really saddens me. I guess that’s why I don’t think about it much.
It could drive me to drink, if I was into that sort of thing.
MySpace will be deleted, soon.
Last.fm is kind of pointless.
Flickr sounded like a good idea at the time.
Six years of stuff, and I’m no closer to being an internet superstar than Adrian Monk is to solving the murder of his wife.
Note to the indiscriminate PayPal spammer
Today, my filtering technique has let me down. Not that my idea is unsound, or has be breeched, it’s just that it stopped working. Thus, I had to deal with these obvious problems:
1. One would surmise that when PayPal sends a notice that it has shut the account of the user down, it would be helpful to know which account was shut down
2. The correct trademarked spelling of your company is ‘PayPal’ not ‘PayPall’
3. Nothing says ‘legitimate email’ like “Paypal Update Team, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender”
Depressingly, I’ve seen an increase of email from spammers showing up in my inbox. It isn’t because I’ve changed anything in my setup, it’s just that the filtering isn’t working. That’s to say, the filter, were it working correctly, would keep me from ever seeing this stuff.
How to filter like a champion?
- Forward your email to a Gmail account
- Have the Gmail automagically forward that back
- Only get the mail from your safe account
- Profit
The key to this is that you are feeding all your email through Gmail’s filters. The reason you want to send all is because you want as many ‘eyes’ on it as possible. Whatever makes it past your hosting’s filters gets weeded out. Then, on the round trip, it gets another looksee from your hosting.
Security
The idea that Google is getting its paws all over your email is a genuine concern. You get the same effect using Google Apps for your domain. That’s why I have a third, changing address that I use for unique email that I want to keep more secure.
Also, I’m forwarding the email using the *.*+*@*.tld convention, so each of the forwarded addresses go to name+whatever@me.com for each of the email aliases. That way I can track what went where.
9. My review of MacHeist 2
8. My review of MacHeist 1
7. P.T. Barnum and “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute”
6. The broken oven post
5. The one about the WordPress Generation
4. My questions for Google
3. My Wikipedia notability post
2. The late–night rant on the 1984 commercial
1. The iPhone post
Note: all of these are sitting in my drafts folder in MarsEdit, in various states of completion. Most of the drafts are one–year–old or more.
A while ago, Jason Kottke started a del.icio.us meta feeding frenzy by posting the folks who bookmarked del.icio.us. While most of those came from the browser bookmark import, some of them actually went through the trouble of linking the site. Somebody noticed that there were quite a few recursive links, and had to get all smartalecy (however you spell that).
Today, the recursion is about 35 levels deep. This came as an outburst of people who noticed how deep the linking went, and kept trying to ‘win’ at internet. For those of you wanting to get in on the action, there’s a handy del.icio.us history bookmarklet that’ll show you who linked any page.
But, as smartaleky (still can’t spell it) people go, they noticed Kottke’s meta post got bookmarked on del.icio.us as well, and did what anybody in their smartalekäe (I’m not even trying any more) mind would do. They smartaleckeded.
As of today, that only goes three levels deep.
Smart Alec
Interesting story behind that thing I couldn’t figure out how to spell. It’s not the one word, it’s two. If my sources are correct, there was actually a person who came by that moniker in the late 19th century.
If the urban legend is correct, the guy’s name was Alec Hoag. Seems he got the title because, though he was a smart cookie, Hoag blew his graft scheme when he decided to filch the protection racket he had with some of the coppers on the take. I’m not sure what that means.
On the bright side, I know how to spell that thing. Yay! editing, huh?
I just turned off Twitterrific. I didn’t turn the Twitter tool off because it wasn’t working, or because it was causing problems with my computer. The reason I turned it off was because it was working as it was designed. It connected me to Twitter, something I find less and less interesting.
Mind you, while I love me some short–form outbursts of insight, and I love a good sarcastic subtitle, the chatter tends to get old, fast. It gets that way the quickest when people use it more as a public internet messaging session than status messages. When they added the @username convention, things got really bad.
It moved from being something followed to an incestuous popularity contest. I could see the reasoning for the @username, a way to cite other tweets — but it became a way to yammer on like that lady yelling to the person on the other side of the cellphone. If I wanted to listen to half of a conversation, I’d use Verizon. The best feature related to @username replies is in your settings: the ability to hide them.
A few days ago, Twitter moved off Joyent servers, and nothing really changed. It’s still not all that fast. In fact, until they switched hosts, I never cared one way or the other. But now its apparent that it wasn’t where they were that was the problem, it was what they were.
I’ve added quite a few people who either said interesting things, or were ‘internet fabulous.’ The people on the A–list, the ones with all the followers. I mean — come on, if they weren’t interesting, why’d they have so many followers? I’m still trying to figure that out. It was those A–lister types that got the masses to sign up, and that’s when whatever Twitter is proved to be incapable of handling the success.
Too popular, too large, and still too slow. And, paradoxically, it was never an issue with me until the big switch. Now it’s too convenient an excuse not to use.
What this is really about is that I’m not excited to wake up to a hot cup of other people’s status messages. While it was all…er…terrific tweeting, when the novelty wears off, it’s just a bulletin board of people I don’t really know. Maybe if I was a famous A–lister type I’d feel more compelled to continue the chatter — for the good of the people.
But I’m not. So I turned if off. Here’s to being quiet.
I’ve got election fever. And by that, I mean, “I get this sick feeling every time somebody comes near me with something political.” The United States has had to endure a presidential political cycle like no other, spanning almost from the day George Bush was re–elected. And I’m sick of it.
Know what I really hate? Personal blogs with some candidate’s logo on it. I’m not one to try and stifle anybody’s freedom of expression, but if I want to know who I should vote for, I’ll figure it out myself.
This is a personal gripe, actually. Some people feel comforted that they’re going to a website that sides with them on whatever particular issue. I’m not one of those people.
The whole point of dropping out of politics back in 2006 was because of the utter nonsense. I came to the realization that most bloggers were so naive that they thought candidates responded to them in a real, genuine way. It’s foolish to think this, because of the influence of those same bloggers.
So really, people, save it.
The New England Patriots were on the second–largest stage in the history of American television in an effort to become the first team in NFL history to go 19–0, an undefeated regular and post–season. Only one team in NFL history went undefeated throughout the season, but that was in 1972, and they didn’t play against the kinds of teams the Patriots did this year.
Super Bowl XLII featured the first ever 18–0 team playing the underdog New York Giants. In the final game of the season, the Patriots defeated this team, so it was wasn’t a stretch to think they could do it again. If the odds–makers were correct, the game wouldn’t be close. But if my picture on this post is any indicator, things didn’t work out for them.
No, in historic fashion, the Patriots became only the third undefeated team to lose its first game in the championship, and the first in the Super Bowl era. While not the largest upset in Super Bowl history, it was certainly the sweetest. Sweetest for those of us who love to hate.
Schadenfreude is a German word that I’m starting to like more and more. The built–in text–to–speech in Mac OS X I use to preview posts pronounces it correctly. In fact, I’m pretty sure the blogosphere is going to get that included in most people’s lexicon. Entire social networks are built on the very back of feeling joy at the plight of others.
This is my relationship with Tom Brady. I posted my love of Tom Brady last year, and I thought it would be a good idea to remove such revelry at a person’s expense. But I didn’t.
The joy of the suffering of one person — or any people, really — is a bad thing. Yet, somehow, those pictures remain on Flickr. It became obvious to me because of these events that knowing something is wrong and doing something about it are two different things.
It isn’t that I didn’t know this before. In my over 30–years on this earth, life’s taught me a thing or two:
‘Don’t put your hand on the stove when it’s hot’
‘Politicians lie to get your vote’
‘Don’t set your sister on fire’
‘If you can’t say anything nice about somebody, hush it’
‘Use a rock to break a window, not your fist’ (this one really hurt)
‘Don’t print a book on a team going undefeated until they actually go undefeated’
Mixed messages there, to be sure. That’s why it bothers me that I’ve still got an altar set up to worship the defeat of something so meaningless. Sport is a peculiar thing, something so unifying, so captivating, and yet so trite. Sports deserve such little attention, yet garner so much.
I’m glad they lost — and this is not a good thing. Hatred of any man — no matter how he’s blessed beyond his right, and in something as inconsequential as a game like this — continues this hate cycle. I see now how the mortal man always needs some idea (at the very least) of a higher power, one that isn’t human like the frail creature that begs its favor.
This is the same philosophizing that leads us to elevate sports figures to their place in society. How many times do we describe what they do as super–human? It’s because we need them to fill the void in our own lives, the need for something better.
Some fill that void with love, some fill it with booze. My personal cocktail involves Jesus and copious amounts of carbohydrates, but many fill this hole in their being with envy. This simple Germanic word is made for people like that — some people live for schadenfreude.
That was some terrible Photoshop work on those ‘Brady Face’ pictures, wasn’t it? I think I spent about four or five minutes cutting and pasting the screencaps into place and uploading. To this day, I still have no idea what I was thinking, putting them on there.
Jealousy, I guess. Envy. Possibly greed? I have to fight against my baser instincts when trying to refer to his lady–friends as ‘a bag of antlers’ (supermodels — think about it). While I’m snickering like a frat–boy, I’m making fun of a human being’s appearance — like I’m one to judge?
Discernment yes, discrimination, no — this is the essence of judgment. What I can see from holding onto the grudge is that it isn’t a healthy thing. Yet, it is familiar. And I know I’m not letting go…
