http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html
I was browsing around and found this time-waster. No lie, I’ve spent 20 minutes fixated on making the guy run. I’m sure there’s some sort of pattern to get this guy moving, but more often than not I make the guy fall flat on his face. Every splat I hear still makes me laugh. I’ve only made him go a very shameful 4.6m or so. I’m sure y’all can do better, but hey, remember: “everyone is a winner.”
I’m not sure what’s come over me over the past week, but for whatever reason I was pushed closer and closer to do something that I said I would never do: I was close to joining Facebook. I know, I know, some of y’all are thinking “what’s the big deal?” That’s a good question, isn’t it? On principle, I don’t think I have anything wrong with the concept. I think it’s a great way to share pictures and reconnect with people that you haven’t been in touch with for a long time. In fact, it’s the sharing of pictures aspect that almost lured me in.
I know people have pictures of me on there–whether they be from recent races that I’ve participated in, or just candid shots from recent outings with friends. Of course, since I don’t have an account, I haven’t seen most of them. Only once in a while do I get some mercy and people would send me the photos, but I don’t want to impose myself and get people to spend so much more effort e-mailing me pics; I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. Now, as much as this picture thing kind of irks me, it hasn’t been enough to push me past the tipping point to getting an account. Yes, I’m curious, but really I’ve been fine without an account for this long, so will any of this really make a difference? I don’t think so.
As for the other aspect of reconnecting with people, that’s something that kind of makes me hesitate. There are certainly people out there from my past that I’m curious about, but is reconnection such a good thing? About a year ago, someone I knew was sort of complaining about all these friend requests from people that she barely talked to in high school or elementary. On the one hand, why would I want to connect with such people? On the other hand, it would sort of kill me to have to reject anyone. Yeah, I know that I can probably set privacy settings of sorts, but I fail to see the point of keep a low profile on a social networking site. I was also not so keen on pushing content about my life out to everyone on my friends list so easily. Oh, I’m sure there’s a setting to control that as well, but again, what’s the point?
So, wait a minute, how’s that different from blogging? I mean, sure, I’m presenting my life publicly on the ‘net for everyone to see. Well, see, the difference here is that people who want to know what’s going on with me can go here at their own leisure. So, I’m still maintaining that small bit of mystery that I claim as being part of my personality. With Facebook, you’re pushing your content out. Am I making sense here?
In my case, I think Twitter is sort of more up my alley. I mean, there have been a lot of times when I’ve wanted to post some quick thought or brain fart but didn’t want to create a new full blog entry to air out the thought. Twitter allows me to record and broadcast these thoughts. You’ll notice that I’ve added a Twitter widget to the sidebar. My recent tweets will appear in that list. I’m still sort of getting used to it, but so far it’s an interesting tool. If it’s something I’m likely to stick to, I might have to get an unlimited texting plan for my cell.
Aside: For a while, was wondering why the icon for Twitter was a Japanese “ヒ” in katakana. Obviously, it’s not a “hi” but a “t”. Duh.
God, this whole Web 2.0 thing is crazy. There are so many new-fangled things out there; it’s all quite interesting.
I should be working. I’m at my desk and we have our daily scrum in a few minutes. Think that’s lighting a fire under my ass to get my notes in order? No. I’d rather blog for this first little while.
I still kind of want to talk about the banner thing if only because there’s still stuff worth talking about with regards to it. I still think it needs some cleaning up and it could use a few more bits of realism in it, but I guess I’m done knocking my own work. I’ve been saying that it could be better, but even so it’s been chosen as a finalist. So…suck it, conscience.
The design is simple: a spray painted stencilled message on a brick wall. Even though it’s simple, it evokes an imagery that seems appropriate to the 20 Something Bloggers group. To me it’s sort of guerrilla marketing like in its nature. When I asked my friend to anonymously critique all the finalists without knowing which one was mine, he picked #4 as his favourite. I pressed him on why and this is what he said:
yeah.. i think i know why i like it now…. it reminds me of someone just going around the streets with their handheld camera and just asking random ppl for their input their opinions
Yes! Bloggers in their twenties want to be heard! This is a generation with a burden to be transformational in nature. There is a push to be different from the old guard. In the age of the Internet, it’s becoming easier to have opinions be made public just by plastering it someplace public. As a parallel, people spray painting a stencilled message on a brick wall sort is sort of in the same veins.
That’s what I was going for.
I think I’m going to do well–hopefully in the top few. I’m sort of happy that the image sort of speaks for itself: it tells a story.
Interesting! The 20SB header contest is actually moving along and somehow my banner has made it as one of the finalists.
That was unexpected. So anyway, can y’all do me a favour and send some love my way by voting for my banner? You can vote here:
http://20sb.blogspot.com/2008/10/header-contest-poll.html
Thank you, all you beautiful people!
About a week ago, my mother was getting really pissed off at her computer. She wasn’t getting any Internet connectivity and that was preventing her from getting to her e-mail and paying off a few bills. Jay to the rescue, right? Well, I gave it a go. I tried the usual suspects but after a good hour or two I couldn’t get IE to connect. I was able to connect to the router itself, so I knew that that wasn’t the issue. I unplugged the network connection from the box and plugged it into the back of my laptop. It seemed that the connection was perfectly fine. What the hell? That made absolutely no sense.
By the end of that session I was right pissed and didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I told her that the computer was probably completely messed. Since my desktop has just been lying around my room for a few months I thought that I could just lend it out to my parents so that they can get their business done. I was reluctant to do so because I’d have to spend a heck of a lot of time getting it ready. I mean, first there’s the physical aspect of actually relocating the system. Secondly, I wanted to scrub the system of anything incriminating before lending it out to them. Despite all of this though, I thought that it’d be best.
The next day, my frustration levels had eased a bit and I had some time to think the situation through. I realized that I didn’t even try pinging any sites. So, I switched the box on, opened up a command prompt and pinged a few sites. I was able to ping sites without any problem. There was hope! I thought that the issue might be something spyware or virus related. So I installed Ad-Aware and brought Norton up-to-date with the latest definitions. I spent several hours running scans with both but came up empty.
Well, I was on my last ideas at that point. I thought that perhaps the firewall was just blocking everything. My parents computer has an older version of ZoneAlarm installed. I thought I’d try fiddling around with the settings. I opened up ZA and turned the protection down to medium level. To my shock, that worked! Internet traffic started flowing through once more. Now, I didn’t want to leave their firewall at medium, so I thought that I’d give upgrading the version of ZA a try. When I went to their site, I found out that this whole connectivity thing is a known issue:
Microsoft Update KB951748 – Workaround to Sudden Loss of Internet Access Problem
So, as it turns out, one of those MS updates that it pushes out to Windows users caused the firewall to break. When I installed the upgrade for ZA, everything was back to normal. I didn’t even need to go through those steps of uninstalling the MS update and then reapplying it.
God, all of that was frustrating. I mean, I spent hours trying to fix something that I had no reason to suspect. I thought all of my computer skills had left me. I guess I’m glad that I’m still not completely inept. I’m also glad that I don’t have to give up my desktop. Even though I don’t use the sucker anymore (my laptop has become my primary) I still don’t feel like parting with it.
All is well.
The peeps over at 20SB are having a banner contest of sorts. They’re looking for a new graphic to place on top of their site and they’ve asked the members to come up with something. Sounded like a good way to waste a bit of time, so I gave it a shot and came up with this:
I mean, in my head I had this graffiti/pop art feel that I wanted to put in the pic. I think the spray paint/stencil effect is pretty nifty. To be frank, I had no idea that I was capable of creating that effect until this morning.
Though…
Now that I see it up close…
*grumble*
*SIGH*
(The more I look at it, the more I’m not happy with it. Boo!)
Woman charged after baby stolen from uterus
Are you fucking kidding me? That’s insane!
From an Associated Press article:
Thousands gathered at Coney Island on the Fourth of July to watch the glutinous gladiators compete in the annual event.
Oh, for crap’s sake. Kobayashi and Chestnut are unlikely to be considered glue-like; however, I’m sure they can be considered quite gluttonous.
Recent Comments