March 11, 2005

Why the Y Key Gets Abused

Ryan and I continued our scientific exploration this evening when he noticed that the Y key on his 12” Powerbook looked more “used” than the other keys. The paint wasn’t fading or anything, because it’s a Powerbook and they are indestructible, but it lacked a certain shine that the other keys had. Or maybe it was shiny and the others weren’t. I don’t remember.

Ryan thought that the cause could be that his finger drags more on the Y key than the others. This is because he uses the Powerbook in his bed, laying on his back with the Powerbook on his stomach. So because of the strange angle and the fact that the Y key is farther away than say, the T key, a dragging action takes place as you pull your finger back from pressing the key.

I verified this by finally copying his position after a few minutes of describing how he was laying. But I couldn’t even see the screen because my hands were in the way, at which point I realized he probably just doesn’t know how to use his Powerbook right, and that all of our experiments and usage of the scientific method was for nothing. Thanks a lot asshole. We could have used those 45 minutes to solve some other important scientific issue like how they make springs springy, but other types of metal “not springy”.

Name Order

I was just discussing with my friend Ryan what the reasons are in the way we order two people’s names. For instance, Duke and Gloria. Bob and Stella. Ron and Claudia. These sound natural. But Gloria and Duke sounds wrong. Why?

After much discussion, we have come up with this…

If the two names are of different sexes, the male name always comes first. Yeah that’s right, we have the penises, get over it.

If the two names are of the same sex, the “soft” name comes first, and the “hard” name comes second. For instance Susan has no hard sounds. But Patricia has a hard P and T sound, so it comes second.

If both names have hard sounds, the name with fewer syllables comes first. For instance, Pam and Patricia.

And that’s about as far as we got. We agreed on all of the scenarios we came up with… Was it a fluke, or is there really a set of sub-conscious rules for this type of thing?

December 30, 2004

Lost is Losing

Lost is one of my favorite TV shows in a long time. It's like a movie, only it comes on every week!

At least it did… The show has been in re-runs for several weeks, which has all but killed the momentum of the show for me. Wednesday night used to be “Lost Night” that my wife and I looked forward to, but because the show has been in re-runs so long, we have already gotten out of the habit of watching the show. Why do networks do this? I'm going to forget the first half of the show by the time they start playing new episodes again, and stop caring about the characters and monsters in the jungle. The only thing left for them to do to completely kill the show is to move it to another night and time slot, which seems like something stupid enough for them to do unfortunately.

Bring new episodes back on before we all lose interest and stop watching the show entirely! At least at the end of a season it'll wrap up the show to tide you over until the next season starts, but this taking a month-long break in the middle of the season is just silly.

December 27, 2004

Gotta Get My Stuff Done

Here is a great cartoon about procrastination, which I suffer from. In fact I’m posting this link on this blog instead of working. Dammit.

July 07, 2004

Gmail - Fun while it lasted

I'm switching all my email back to the IMAP accounts on my server, and using Apple Mail to check my email again. For the past 3 days Gmail has been terribly unreliable for me, on multiple computers. Messages weren't being moved, I had to click the send button 5 or 10 times before it would finally send the message, and many times I just couldn't login at all. I get a message telling me that Gmail is unavailable, and to cross my fingers and try again in a few minutes.

I haven't heard reports of this very much elsewhere, so maybe it is just the server that they put my account on or something.

Granted this is of course still a Beta period for the service, and I'm sure it says somewhere in Google's use policy that it is beta and you should expect downtime and so forth, so they'll probably iron-out the issues eventually, but for now I just need to check my email whenever I want, not whenever the servers are up and running.

I still think Gmail is great, feature-wise, and will definitely miss the super fast searching of old messages, but searching your messages slowly is better than not being able to access them at all, don't you think?

I also haven't received anymore Gmail Invites in a couple weeks, maybe they're having load balancing issues so they've stopped inviting people, and are trying to improve the speed and reliability.

June 23, 2004

Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer

If you still haven't gotten a Gmail invite and want one, go to the Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer and refresh the page until you get one.

If you have some invites that you don't need, send them to the Automatic Gmail Invite Giver Awayer.

I've received about 11 invites in the past day or two, so I think Google is getting close to going public with it. They're obviously starting to stress-test the servers and get everything ready.

G-Mailto If you use Windows, make it so Gmail is your default mail client instead of Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever. This way you can click on Mailto: links and they'll open in Gmail.

GCount Displays the number of new Gmail messages in your menu bar for Mac OSX users.

Getmail Forwards your Hotmail emails to Gmail.

Pop goes the Gmail Check your Gmail with Outlook and other email apps.

June 19, 2004

Gmail

I got a coveted Gmail account a week or so ago and have since sent all of my old email to the account, and forwarded all of my old addresses to my Gmail address and have been using it as my primary email account.

As you may have read elsewhere, it really is by far the best web-based email anywhere, in my opinion. The interface is great, with a lot of Javascript so that you can load small pieces of the page rather than reloading the whole site every time you send or delete an email, etc. The only problem with this is that it doesn't work with Safari yet, causing it to crash frequently when you try to use it with Gmail. So I have been using Mozilla Firefox instead, and am pretty happy with that as well. I used the Safari Bookmark Extractor to import all my old Safari bookmarks over. And now with the Firefox Bookmark Synchronizer I can synchronize my bookmarks between multiple computers, and even operating systems, which is one of the reasons I stayed with Safari until now.

The search function in Gmail is one of my favorites, as it lets you very quickly search your mail for just about anything. For instance I needed a phone number for “Jeff” that my dad had emailed to me, so I just entered Jeff in the search field and hit enter, and it immediately pulled up that email. Compare that to searching in Outlook and most other email clients, which take minutes to find something, and even then you're normally only searching in the subject, not the entire message.

The spam filtering has also worked quite well for me so far. In about a week's time it has blocked 50 spams, and only missed 3. There were about 3 false-positives. But after I corrected the errors, it hasn't missed any since.

One thing that could definitely be improved is the address book, as it only lets you have a first and last name, and then an email address. It also adds every person you email to the address book, whether you want to or not. This can be frustrating if you need to look up an address and can't find the one you want because there are so many listed there that you didn't even enter.

There are lots of other features that have been listed elsewhere, but suffice it to say it really is as good as everyone says, and you should definitely try to get an invite, or just sign-up when it goes public. (which I'm guessing will be soon, because I just got 5 more invites today, it seems like they are starting to give them away pretty freely)

May 17, 2004

Clothes folding for Ninjas

Learn to fold your shirts like a ninja!

This video will teach you the Japanese method of folding t-shirts, which is of course 3 times as fast as the way I, being an American, have always done it. But now we know their secret!

Watch the video (links directly to a Windows Media Video file)

Or you can learn how to use a t-shirt to make your very own Ninja Mask.

Or you can learn more about the Ninja's Real Ultimate Power.

May 04, 2004

Not dead, just busy

If anyone still happens to read my site, I'm not dead, I've just been really really busy. I have a day job, as well as freelance web design on the side, which is the part that's keeping me really busy, as well as a wife, dogs, and other interests and responsibilities,. I'll show everyone what I've been working on for the past month in a day or two, after it's finished.

In other news, Google just accepted my site for their AdSense program, out of the blue. I had applied several months ago, but was denied. Now they've reviewed it again and suddenly decided that my site fits the description, so expect to see ads here soon. I've already put in the code, but because my site was blocked before, it says it may take up to 48 hours for the ads to show up.

In more news, I was accepted to beta test Movable Type 3.0. I've installed it, and at first glance it doesn't seem like that much of an improvement. I think others have written about the disappointments though. I guess the main confusion is that this isn't MT Pro which is supposed to have all the new features. I was looking forward to the custom entry fields the most.

Thankfully, ExpressionEngine already provides this functionality, and it rocks. I've used it on the site I've been working on, and I am totally blown away. But I'll write more details on that after I finish the site.

April 15, 2004

Page 23

I don't wanna be left out, so, I first saw this on Keith's site.

1. Grab the nearest book.


2. Open the book to page 23.


3. Find the fifth sentence.


4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

“The answer is threefold.”

A bit anti-climactic, eh? The quote is from Flatland a book written in the late 1800's by a guy named Edwin A. Abbott. I'm almost done with it, and it's definitely been the most interesting book from the 1800's that I've ever read (probably the only book form the 1800's I've ever read, actually). It's a man that lives in a two-dimensional world who is shown the third dimension by someone from “Spaceland”. The citizens of “Flatland” (the two dimensional world) have a strict caste system, and some interesting views on women. Namely that they function purely on emotions and are incapable of any logical reasoning, which renders them mostly useless. Hahahah, hey, it was written in the 1800's, plus it's fiction. :)

Anyway, the caste system works like this: The people with the most sides are part of high-society. Since it's a two-dimensional world, people are made up of shapes (squares, triangles, polygons, hexagons, etc). The isosceles triangles are the lowest form of society and are made up of criminals, bums, and soldiers. Equilateral triangles (all three sides the same length) are slightly above them and are considered workman if I remember correctly. Squares are tradesman, etc. All the way up to “The Circles” which are actually polygons with a very high number of sides, who are considered the Priests of the society. The women are straight lines, no matter their class. The citizens of Flatland equate intelligence with the regularity of angles that make up one's body, as well as the amount of angles and sides that you have. This shows why the women are considered mostly useless, considering they have no real sides or angles at all, being only a straight line.

The book is actually extremely interesting, imaginative, and quite funny. The writing style reminds me vaguely of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). If you are interested but don't want to buy the book, you can read it online thanks to the Gutenburg Project, since the book's copyright has expired.

April 06, 2004

Worst DVD Cover Art Ever

Seriously now. What is up with this cover art? It looks like it was made by a 13 year old as their first project in Photoshop. Did the designers just get tired of making Matrix DVD covers after the second one, so they decided to throw a couple of frames from the movie on there with the logo? At least the first two used some real custom posed shots to make it somewhat interesting… This is just a few screen captures assembled in a square with a logo. They didn't even feather the edges of the boxes.

I dare say, even I could have done better. They could have at least made it look like one of the movie posters. Oh well, I'll end up buying it anyway just so I can own all three DVDs. :)

What do you think is the worst DVD cover art ever?

March 24, 2004

Honda Element: The first 3,500 Miles

We've put about 3,500 miles on our new Honda Element, and I thought I'd post my impressions of it so far.

Exterior

We chose the black one (as pictured above) because we thought it blended in with the gray body panels the best. The silver and orange/red ones look kind of “patchy” like they were pieced together from a junkyard, in my opinion. The black paint has a little bit of “glitter” in it, making it look very shiny.

What they say about black cars is true though, it's very hard to keep clean, and even when you do wash it you have to dry it off immediately or you get water spots all over which looks just as bad as the dirt.

The gray body panels seem very durable and dent resistant, luckily nothing has hit it yet for us to know for sure. It could definitely withstand a stray shopping cart buggy or loose basketball though. It's also nice to have the body panels in the places that your car paint normally gets dinged and damaged by road debris, insuring the appearance of the car will last longer.

Ours has a rear window washer/wiper which works great. The front windshield washers are also fantastic, compared to our old cars that just moved the water around, rather than wiping it off completely.

The headlights are extremely bright, even on low-beams. The high-beams shine like no other high-beam I have seen before. It's like driving in the day time almost. :)

One of the best features of the car is the doors… The rear doors open backwards, which eliminates the center column. This gives you a ton of room to load things into the back from the side, in addition to the rear area. It is slightly inconvenient however to have to open the front door before opening the back door, and closing the back before closing the front. But the benefits far outweigh the bad part in this area.

Interior

The interior of the Element is the best part, and one of the reasons we bought it.

As many people have heard, the floor is a rubber material, which makes it extremely easy to clean up. You wouldn't want to spray a hose in there though, as it isn't water proof around the edges. But cleanup is still easy with a wet paper towel or other scrubbing device. Mud doesn't get caked into the carpet, and hair doesn't get entwined in the fibers. If you spill a drink, just clean it up with a paper towel or other liquid absorbing device (we like paper towels, can you tell?).

The seats are water resistant (not water proof!) but are still made of cloth so they are comfortable. The driver's seat in our model is height adjustable, and both front seats can of course slide forwards and backwards to adjust the legroom. The rear seats are completely removable, or you can hang them up on the interior sides of the vehicle to make use of the entire floor area without having to remove the seats entirely.

The process for removing the seats is as easy as pulling a strap under each seat, taking off a protective plastic guard, and then pushing a lever while you lift the seat out. To hang the seat up on the side you pull the strap, fold the seat-back all the way back until it is flat, and then lift the seat up next to the window and secure it with a strap.

If you leave the seats in, you can fold all four seats down until they are all flat, leaving you with a large padded area that you could sleep on. There is plenty of room for a full sized adult to sleep comfortably on the seats in this car.

We keep our seats removed in the back unless we need them, and we bought a dog bed specially made for the back of an SUV to put in there. We also purchased a nylon netting to put between the back and front seats, which keeps the dogs in the back and off of the front seats entirely. The dogs seem to like it, and we definitely appreciate the dog free environment of the front.

In our old Acura Integra, the dogs were always moving back and forth and trying to come up to the front because they were uncomfortable. Now they lay down on their bed in the back and go to sleep. We forget they are back there most of the time.

The steering wheel is height adjustable in our model, but I rarely use the feature. I just set it how I need it and leave it. One problem is that I can never get a completely clear view of the front console panel, no matter the height of the steering wheel. I'm 6' 2” and the top of the steering wheel covers the top of the console panel from view. My wife (5' 2”) can see it fine though.

The gauges on the console are the standard gauges found in every car… speed, gas, tachometer, oil pressure, etc. Nothing else really interesting or out of norm in this area.

The center console has the CD player/Radio, air conditioning controls, etc. The gear shift is also on this console, which makes me glad we got the automatic. It seems like it would be extremely uncomfortable to have to keep your hand up on that console every time you need to shift. Imagine adjusting the air temperature every time you need to shift gears for an idea of how inconvenient it would be.

The controls on the air conditioning and radio are large and easy to use, even with thick gloves on. Even though the car is large, it heats up or cools down very quickly. The A/C and heater both work great and quickly. There are two vents in the center and one on each side of the car, which are closeable.

There is storage all over the place in this car. A little shelf on the passenger side above the glove box; the glove box; a compartment on the ceiling for glasses, emergency cash, garage door openers; large pockets on each door; some small shelves next to the steering wheel; and two large compartments in the back of the car. There are also cup holders all over the place. Four or five in the floor between the front seats, and one on each rear seat.

The lighting inside is also good, with a dome light in the front and back, and two reading lights in the front as well. When you open the back hatch the rear light comes on automatically, making it easy to load in groceries or what have you. And when you open the front doors the front dome light comes on and stays on long enough for you to get the key in or out and gather your things. If you use the keyless entry to unlock the door, the lights come on so you can see inside before entering, find the keyhole, etc.

Headroom is not a problem in this vehicle either. My wife can practically stand up full height in the back, and even my 6' 10” friend has plenty of room up top, in case he wanted to wear a very tall hat.

Audio

The audio of this car is my favorite part…

Our model has a 6.1 surround sound audio system, and sounds pretty darn good for a “factory setup”. There are speakers in all four doors, and two tweeters on either side of the windshield in the little column things. Then there is a subwoofer in the center console under the gearshift, which provides quite a bit of bass.

There is a CD player built-in, as well as radio of course.

When you first start the car the audio slowly fades up to the level you had it at before you turned the car off, which is really nice if you forget to turn it down before you leave the car. This way you have a few seconds to readjust it, rather than starting the car and being scared to death by the blaring music.

There is also an auxiliary audio port on the little shelf above the glove box, where you can plug in any audio device to the 1/8” audio jack. This would include, an iPod (yay!), portable CD player, other mp3 player, tape recorder, laptop computer, portable tv, whatever. Next to it there is a cigarette lighter power port (but no actual cigarette lighter). There is another power port in the back of the car in case you want to setup an electric grill or something while camping I guess. Playing an iPod through the audio system is as easy as plugging it in and pressing the AUX button the the CD player. All cars should have this feature. Seriously.

Ride/Handling

I haven't owned an SUV before other than a Jeep Cherokee, but in my opinion the Element has a great ride and never feels like it's going to flip over. It seems to have a very low center of gravity and handles very well.

The anti-lock brakes are great as well, I have tried several times to slam on the brakes in the rain, and I never skid at all, let alone lose control of the car.

It only has a 4 cylinder engine in it, but it can be pretty speedy when you need it to be. I estimate I got 0-60 in about 3.8 seconds. Ha, just kidding. But it is pretty fast for a little SUV.

The ride is also very smooth, compared to a sports car anyway. Bumps that we would normally slow way down for in the Integra are easily sped over in the Element. This is to be expected however when switching from a sports car to an SUV I imagine.

Overall

Overall this is a great little car/truck/van that is extremely versatile and handy to have. If you have kids/dogs/sheep, haul a bunch of stuff, mountain bike, snowboard, camp, ski, this little car/truck/van can do it all. It's rugged enough to handle all of those activities, but still has enough nice features to be extremely comfortable even if you just drive to pick up groceries with it. We're looking forward to our 350,000th mile just as much as the 3,500th.

February 29, 2004

Cheap Dog Treat Idea

Dog treat prices can get pretty crazy, depending on where and what you buy. They have the ones that look like bacon, the ones that look like two tubes twisted together, the ones that look like steak chunks, etc. You're likely to pay $2 - $4 per bag, just for the cheap stuff. That can get pretty expensive, especially when you are trying to train your dog, like we do. So instead, we started using something else for treats.

Hot Dogs

• Buy the cheapest hot dogs you can find. We got turkey ones because my wife refuses to feed our dogs any pork product. :) Anyway they were about $1.99 each, for a pack of 8.

• Cut them up into little tiny pieces, about 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick.

• Lay them all out flat on a cookie sheet and bake them. We put it on 300° for about 15 minutes I think. But you can bake them as long as you want, in order to dry them out. Just don't burn them. Dogs don't like burned hot dogs. If you leave them in long enough though, they start jumping around like little jumping beans! Try it!

• Refrigerate until you are ready to give them to your dog. Even though they are cooked they will still spoil pretty quickly.

Our dogs love them, and don't even care about regular treats anymore.

String Cheese

Another cheap idea is to buy packages of String Cheese, and keep them in your pocket, breaking off small pieces as you need them. Or you can cut them up ahead of time for quick access. The dogs love those too.

There may be some dog treats out there cheaper than this, but the dogs definitely won't like them as much, since they are processed or hard and crumbly. Ew.

February 19, 2004

Random iPod Playlist

This has been going around on a few blogs lately (I found it via Blue Plaid Shirt)… You put your iPod on Shuffle (I always do anyway) then make a list of the first 15 songs, no matter how embarrassing! I don't think much of my music is that embarrassing, but we'll see what happens….

1. Cautioners - Jimmy Eat World
2. Holiday - Weezer
3. Lucky - Radiohead
4. Paul - Eminem
5. Magician Manor Mod - Some random techno I downloaded from somewhere
6. Nothing 2 Proove - Roger Sanchez
7. Exchange - Massive Attack
8. Ocean Avenue - Yellowcard
9. Aurora - Foo Fighters
10. Across the Night - Silverchair
11. Here's your letter - Blink 182
12. O Girlfriend - Weezer
13. Don't Leave Me - Blink 182
14. You Wouldn't Believe - 311
15. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World

There we go… That wasn't too bad. I actually have 1,500 songs on the iPod, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the “randomness” of the shuffle mode. It always seems to have a preference for Blink 182 and Weezer for some reason. Strange. It picked a couple great songs for that first 15 though… I really like that Silverchair album, Diorama. Good stuff. Then the new Blink 182, which was probably my favorite album from 2003. I really like their newish style. And of course some oldies but goodies like Weezer and Radiohead. :)

Feel free to post your own 15 in the comments or on your own blog, if you are so inclined.

January 21, 2004

Stock Photography sites

Found a couple of good stock photography sites recently…

MarineStock focuses on marine related photos, and is coming along nicely. It just recently launched, so it doesn't have a huge collection yet, but there are quite a few good ones there like this one that my dad took. Here are other photos he has submitted from his recent trip to the Caribbean, and Daytona Beach.

R3 Stock also has a lot of good photos. It especially has some good macro and texture shots.

And of course the best stock photo site, iStockPhoto, though it isn't new. My dad and I both have some stuff on there…

November 03, 2003

I am le tired.

From the guys that brought you BANG BANG BANG! and Mario Twins, comes a hilarious new cartoon called End of the World. This is the funniest stuff I've ever seen, idioht. I'm going to go hang out with California and Hawaii… Alaska can come too. :)

Enjoy Schfifty Five as well.

September 26, 2003

Evil Advertisements

This is some of the most evil advertising I've seen in a while. I went to Gamespot to check up on all things gaming, and it brought up this ad. I'm a Gamespot Complete member, which means I shouldn't see any ads at all, but sometimes the cookie expires and I have to log back in. But I didn't even realize this was an ad at first, since it looks exactly like the front page of Gamespot, except it's actually just a big image, and the entire thing is an ad. I clicked on the login field so I could login and get rid of the ads, only to be taken to some page on EA.com, because the whole damn screen was an advertisement.

This almost seems more evil than having pop-ups. I mean that is just downright deceiving you to click on an ad. Gaming sites always seem to have the absolute worst ads… IGN.com has ads plastered on absolutely everything as well.

I just got sued by the RIAA…

I just bought a couple of Mac shirts from MacShirt last night. I got the “Mac Geek” one, and the “It's a Mac thing. (You wouldn't understand)” one. There is another hilarious one on there that says “I just got sued by the RIAA, and all I have left is this lousy t-shirt”. Ahahahahaha. That's hilarious. I would have bought it, but that would have been too much money. I might get it later.

*Thanks to Jonathan, whom my wife met in the grocery store because he was wearing a mac shirt, for recommending this site to buy from.

September 01, 2003

Best Buy Checkout = Good

I bought some CD-R's (50 for $2.99 with rebate, what a deal!) from Best Buy today, as well as a copy of Advance Wars 2 for the GBA. I really like Best Buy's little card swiper thing. It says “You may swipe your card at any time”. I like this a lot because I can go ahead and swipe my card while the cashier is scanning all the items and getting a total. This way I don't have to wait for her to finish, then swipe my card and enter my PIN number and all that stuff.

None of the other card swipers I've ever used make it clear that you can swipe your card before you have a total. Even if it is possible, I'm afraid to try it because it might mess up my purchase and the cashier would have to start over. And I certainly can't ask the cashier about it, that would be embarrassing!

So, Best Buy gets 2 thumbs up in the checkout process from me.

August 27, 2003

Note to Wallpaper Designers

I'm referring to downloadable digital wallpapers or desktop backgrounds, not paper wallpaper to put on the wall…

It's really freakin' annoying when you find a cool wallpaper that you want to download, only to have to click on a link, download a Zip file, unzip it, find the file on your hard drive, open it, then set it as your desktop. Or go into display properties and do it after you've unzipped it. Just give us a link to the picture so we can open it in our browser, right click on it, and set it as the wallpaper from there. JPEG files are already compressed, there is no value in compressing them again with a Zip file, unless you are bundling a text file with it or something. But still, put the text on your site, and let people just look at the damn picture!

August 25, 2003

Fat your Fault? Or Big Bad Corporations?

An article at RedNova News entitled Political Debate Looms Over Obesity talks about whether being fat is your own fault or the fault of corporations. Supposedly some people think that it is the corporations fault for advertising their product so much without telling people how bad it is for them. The article also said 95% of the 10,000 advertisements children see each year are for candy, sugary cereals, fast food joints, soft-drinks, etc.

I tend to agree with the people that say it's your own damn fault for being overweight. I'm getting a little belly myself, but I certainly don't blame the fast-food restaurants or soda makers for it. I know that stuff is bad for me, but I go there anyway because it's fast, cheap and easy. I'd rather spend $5 and get some burritos than spend 10 minutes each morning preparing my lunch.

One thing people suggested in the article is not selling so many sweet things at schools, which I would agree with. At school the kids are away from their parents and the parents aren't able to advise them on choosing a healthy meal, so they end up eating corn dogs and burgers and ice cream every day. Which is where most kids probably get hooked on eating unhealthy foods. Especially if they normally get healthy meals at home, they probably load up on crap at school when they have the chance. All of that plus the fact that kids don't seem to play very much anymore. They just sit around playing video games all day inside without moving anything but their thumbs. I mean I love video games, and played them a lot myself when I was younger, but my parents at least put a limit on it, and would only let me play like an hour a day. The rest of the time I was playing outside or even playing inside with toys. A lot of kids I see today just play video games every spare minute. They play the PS2 and GameCube and Xbox when they are at home, then when they get in the car they play the Game Boy Advance. I even see kids playing the GBA at restaurants all the time like little zombies off in their own little world. I'll let me kid have video games, but will use restrictions similar to that of my parents, only letting them play a little each day, and never at the table.

August 21, 2003

Checkout Lines

Why is it that when you are checking out at a grocery store and use a debit/credit card, you have to press the debit/credit button, then tell the cashier if it's debit or credit as well? Why do they have a debit/credit button on the customer's card swiper, if the cashier has to ask anyway? Couldn't they just eliminate one of them? The store where my wife works part time doesn't do both. She just asks if it's credit or debit, you don't have to press anything on the swiper thing. Grocery store checkout lines would be a lot more user friendly if you didn't have to do both.

And the really annoying thing is when it says “press yes or no” so you press the big red button, but that cancels the whole transaction. You were supposed to press the unlabeled button the arrow was pointing at, apparently. Target has good swipers I think. Except that they are at the end of the counter. So you have to walk all the way down to the end of the aisle and turn a little to use it. Very strange.

August 19, 2003

BlogStakes Launches

There is a new fun thing for the blogging community out now… BlogStakes.

It's a two-way sweepstakes, where the person that clicked the link wins, and so does the owner of the referring site. So if you click this link we could both win a 1-year subscription to BrowserCam! BrowserCam takes screen shots of your site on nearly every browser and OS, and lets you view them on the web. This lets you see how your site will look for everyone, without having 10 computers in your office to test on. It's $10 an hour for limited use, or $40 a month for unlimited access. The contest is giving away a 1-year's subscription, so that is a prize value of $480. Not too shabby. There is no real benefit to just take the link and put it on your own blog either, since you win whether you click the link, or link to it. Everybody wins!

Enter the contest

August 17, 2003

Bud Beer Commercials

Here's a site with all of the Bud beer radio commercials in one place. There is a ton of them I haven't heard before, and they are all just about the funniest thing ever. That site also has a lot of other funny clips and articles as well. Thanks to Pank for the link.

August 05, 2003

Spilt.net Launches

Adam Robertson has just started a new blog at Spilt.net. I met him a month or two ago on the teamphotoshop forum, and we have been trading tips and critiqueing each other's work since then. He's a great designer and his blog will be something to keep your eye on.

Good luck, Adam, and welcome to the blogging world!

July 30, 2003

*Yawn*

Scientists have discovered that yawning really is contagious. It's found to be more common in empathetic people, according to the researchers. So I guess it's more of a psychological thing than physical. They also say that you yawn because your brain is trying to stay awake and alert, not because you have a lack of oxygen in your body. Which is why you yawn in the mornings when you are trying to wake up, and at night when you are trying to stay awake.

Who else yawned while reading that article? I know I yawned several times… But it is 12:06am, so maybe that has something to do with it.

July 28, 2003

Mailblocks Update

Mailblocks, the web-based, spam-free email system I signed up for a while ago, posted some major updates today.

Some of the new features are exactly what I asked for when I originally signed up, such as putting the number of unread emails out to the side of each folder like this:

Inbox (25)
Friends (21)
Work (14)

They also added a spellchecker, and customizable “reply-to” fields so that you can keep a branded email address like john@yourdomain.com. Plus once a person is approved by anyone on the Mailblocks system, they are approved for everyone. So if Ted sends and email to John, who is a Mailblocks member, he can also send mail to Sue, if she is a Mailblocks member, without being asked the challenge question. You can write your own challenge page now, which is nice because the default Mailblocks one wasn't that good in my opinion.

However a couple of bad things came along with this update, mainly that the service is now pretty much crap in Opera, which is my favorite browser. The listing of folders on the left side of the screen is completely invisible now. Which makes it impossible to navigate to any folders other than the Inbox. I can still move messages to the folders via a drop down menu, but I can not view them once they have been moved there. Why don't they make all of the folders accessible via a similarly standard and universal drop down menu? I have no idea.

The service is now also extremely slow. It's at least 5 times slower than it was before, even though they mention this version being “much faster” in the press release. I can tell you that it is most certainly not faster. They even sent out a second announcement email later in the day, telling people how to speed up the site by emptying your browser's cache. I am guessing that they sent out that email because of thousands of complaints from people saying the site is too slow. I emptied my browser cache (which is only set to use 2mb anyway) like they said, just to see if it helped, and it didn't.

The site uses a ton of javascript to hide divs, play a sound when you have new mail, etc. Each message is apparently in its own div, which enables you to delete just one message or move a message without reloading the entire page. This seems like it would reduce the time it takes to do something like delete a message, but it apparently doesn't. Not in Opera or Firebird anyway. In fact Opera gets so slow from bogging down in the Javascript that it is virtually unusable for a few seconds after I try to do something like open a message or click the checkbox beside it to delete or move it.

Now of course the catch here is that when you login to the service, it says that the only browser that is supported is IE, and the site might work in other browsers, but they don't support it or care about what it looks like at all. So technically it's my own fault that I'm having problems because I'm using a “non-supported” browser.

However, the main problem I'm having here is that I paid $10.00 to sign up for this service thinking that I would be using it for the next 3 years or so, and at the time, it worked perfectly well in Opera. Now that they have “upgraded it”, I can't use it at all. So my choices are either use another browser that I hate, or cut my losses and look for another email solution. This sucks because if I had bought a stand-alone program like ChoiceMail and it worked on my computer, I could be guaranteed it would always work. Sure I may not have the newest features if they come out with something new that doesn't work with my computer, but at least I would always have the version I paid for. With an online based service, you don't have that control. The service provider can change anything they want at any time and there is nothing you can do about it, even if it means the service is no longer usable to you.

So now I have a couple of options for my email because of this change…

• Keep using Mailblocks but use another browser, IE for “full support” or Firebird because it works slightly better than Opera with the Mailblocks site.

• Use Mailblocks with Opera, which is basically unusable and affects all other computer tasks and web browsing by slowing down the browser to an unusable level.

• Use IMAP to access my mailblocks mail in Opera's M2 mail client, or Outlook or something similar. Except that the IMAP support from Mailblocks sucks. You have to log-in to their site to delete email and stuff anyway, plus you don't have an address book or anything which kind of defeats the purpose of web-based mail.

• Stop using Mailblocks and just setup a pop3 account and turn on SpamAssassin or something and deal with the spam that gets through.

Right now I am leaning towards the last option, because I am doubting that Mailblocks will fix the issues with Opera, and will probably create even more in the future, which would be even more frustrating. I'm not going to use an inferior browser just to check my email, and like I said their IMAP support is crappy at best, so I think it's time to think of a better solution for my email.

July 27, 2003

Redesign

As you can see I have redesigned the site. The archives and comments pages are not done yet however, and will look weird for a while until I can fix them. I