Michael had some moves…
Say what you will, but as this video attests Michael Jackson had some serious dance moves
Warning: Fake twitter invites
Twitter has become popular enough now that the bad guys are starting to use it to get past your defenses. Beware of any invitations you may receive in your email…
New age health: Neti pot and Salt crystal lamps
I’m not really a gullible person. I tend to prefer claims backed up by multiple reputable research sources. That said, I am willing to try things that are a bit “out there” if the potential negatives are balanced out sufficiently. I mean, even if something doesn’t really work, if it does little or no harm it may help purely via the placebo effect.
This brings me to a couple of things I’ve invested in recently. The first actually has a fair amount of supporting medical research to support it. The second is pretty much debunked. Yet I’ve adopted both into my life, well aware of the limitations of each. I’m referring to the use of neti pots (or nasal lavage) to improve sinus health, and the second is the use of Himalayan salt lamps.
Facebook landrush: 3 million names registered in first day
I’m not really a Facebook user. I set up an account sometime in 2007, and then promptly forgot my login ID and password. Nothing about Facebook really appealed to me: I’m not sure why, perhaps at least partly because a lot of what it does I had already more or less been doing for a decade with my own website/blog.
However, I heard a few weeks ago that the Facebook folks were going to start allowing people to set up personal or “vanity” urls. So instead of “http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=39395883”, you could have something like “http://www.facebook.com/cooldude”. I thought I should probably lay claim to some kind of recognizable URL, and so I dug through my old notes and tried to dredge up my old Facebook account information.
I have Gravatars?
I installed a new Wordpress theme several weeks ago. I noticed a couple of days ago that posts had funny looking "blank portrait" images beside them. I right clicked on…
Balance
My “new” antique clock stopped running today. This doesn’t surprise me a lot- it has travelled half way around the world, and it is pretty old, so it being a bit out of sorts is somewhat expected. But I had some learning to do in order to figure out what was going on, and to see if it could be “fixed” without major challenges. I’ve collected some of what I found here for future reference.
My antique clock arrives
The first thing I bought on eBay is the last to arrive: an antique mantle clock, circa 1870 France, shipped from Germany. It took a long time to get here, and apparently spent a while in Canada Customs. Both the main outer box and one of the internal boxes was opened by our friendly border monitors who were, no doubt, worried that I was receiving… actually, I have no idea what they would have thought I was receiving from Germany. But the clock is here, so now it is time to dig into the details.
Why are so many computer users skinflints?
A couple of days ago I responded to a review of a Twitter application I use with the following observations:
The review I was referring to was one in PC Magazine about a BlackBerry Twitter application I use and love called Tweet Genius. Twitter’s 140 character constraints make it a bit tough for me to be completely clear, but my point is this: why is the $10 cost of a highly useful application considered sufficiently noteworthy to be mentioned several times during an otherwise positive review? And why is it that this “it is great, but a major drawback is that it costs something…” kind of notice is so common in software reviews these days?
Life with a BlackBerry Bold
I have had my BlackBerry now for a couple of weeks, so it is probably time for me to give my initial impressions. At this point, I can say I am quite impressed with the BlackBerry Bold. I am happy I chose it over the BlackBerry Storm or the iPhone. There is definitely room in the market for a choice of devices, and the iPhone is not always “the best”. Now on to my explanations and observations.
Shifting my Twits around
I’ve moved my Twitter feed from the right side to the left side navigation area on this page. The “balance” was starting to bug me (i.e.: too much vertical “stuff” on the right versus the left), and for some reason it just seems to make more sense under “recent comments” then above my photo gallery block.
I have not yet really slowed down my rate of “tweeting” yet: by the way, I prefer calling individual Twitter posts “twits”, but apparently that is bad form- sorry. I started on May 14th, and I’m posting somewhere around six to eight updates per day. if you look at my follow cost I seem to have stabilized at just below 400 milliscobles. I’m not feeling any compulsion to tweet: I just do so when something catches my eye and I think other folks might want to hear about it. Probably my main “vanity” when tweeting is that I respond to a few people like badastronomer (Phil Plait) and wilh (Wil Wheaton) on occasion. In part I do this because I’m hoping they might say something back- but generally I actually *do* have a question, I just probably would never have the courage to ask them to their face.