Apparently it’s been a busy week for my flickr photos. I’ve had two that were selected for inclusion in various web things.
First, one of my Ireland honeymoon photos was selected for inclusion in Schmap Dublin Third Edition (check out
Literary Dublin: Trinity College). Oddly enough, it was a photo I took while we were wandering around Trinity College. Here’s a little descriptive blurb from their website:
Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest.
Then, one of my photos from Hong Kong was selected for use in a Wikipedia article: Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23. It’s a picture I took from a trolley of a huge demonstration protest against “Article 23″. For the longest time I’d wondered what the heck Article 23 was about and why it was so unpopular. Jeff and I had asked the guy who was showing us around but he didn’t seem to know. Best guess was it had something to do with encroaching communism since the UK’s rental agreement was about up on HK, and so the PRC was working on stepping in. From the Wikipedia entry, it sounds like an unsurprisingly unpopular bit of legislation that ended up being shelved.
Amanda and I are buying a new house. In a land far far from CU… Huntsville, AL to be exact… or technically Madison, AL to be even more exact (suburb to the west of Huntsville).
No, Derek didn’t graduate. While one could ask “why is he leaving sans-degree”, a better question might be “why is he referring to himself in the third person?” To put it simply, I just got fed up with how things have been going (or not going to be more precise) and decided it was time for a change. And what could be a bigger change for me than to get an actual job-type job and leave academia behind. I ended up taking a job at the Alabama Supercomputer Authority in Huntsville, which sounds like it should be a great place to work.
Your Movie Buff Quotient: 88%
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You are a movie buff of the most obsessive variety. If a movie exists, chances are that you’ve seen it.
You’re an expert on movie facts and trivia. It’s hard to stump you with a question about film.
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Response from anyone who knows me:
well, duh. of course you’re a movie geek.
Published on
July 11, 2007 in
Geek.
There’s been a fair bit of hubbub about the social network/micro-blog services twitter and most recently pownce.
twitter is a bit of an interesting concept as it boils down to very short (less than 140 characters), text-only posts about what you’re up to. You can post updates in a variety of ways (web, email, im, sms message via cell, desktop client) and receive updates from your circle of twittery friends in a similar way (web, email, im, sms, desktop client, or rss feed).
pownce is a new contender to the field (so new it’s still in private beta). As far as I can tell, a fair chunk of the excitement about this platform is the involvement of Kevin Rose (of digg fame, all things revision3, and formerly of TechTV back when it had some actual tech). It also appears to be one of the first apps to be built using Adobe AIR (platform for developing net-based desktop apps). They don’t appear to have as many ways to send/receive updates (just web and desktop client at this point?), but they provide a number of other features that aren’t present in twitter. Notably: ability to send updates to subsets of your friends list (not just “everyone”), and the option of sending more media-rich updates (music, photos, videos, etc).
Since there’s been a fair bit of commotion on the web about these two services, I thought I might give them a spin and see what I think. You can check out my feeds at twitter and pownce. Don’t think I actually know anyone who’s currently using either service, which may make this experiment somewhat pointless, but I thought it might at least be worth a look-see.
Since pownce is currently in private beta, let me know if you need an invite to check it out yourself, as I have a handful to give out at this point. twitter is publicly available, so you can easily register for your own account if you’d like to check it out.
I’m not sure how to describe Joost aside from on-demand, internet tv clips from the crew that put together Skype and Kazaa. A while back I managed to land an invite from Joost for their private beta test, and have enjoyed running it on my Macbook Pro (they support Windows and Intel Macs at this point). Very little lag when you first fire up a program, and haven’t had any issues once a show starts. They seem to be landing more and more content every time I check in with it. They’ve got all sorts of channels:
- news – CNN and Routers
- sports – soccer, indy cars, hockey…
- music – more than I care to shake a stick at
- movies – an assortment of indie stuff, some less than popular stuff from Paramount, “The Really Terrible Film Channel”, and a channel full of Godzilla movies
- tv – a variety of stuff past and present – sci-fi stuff like Babylon 5, crap like Charlie’s Angels and Starsky & Hutch, stuff off Spike/Comedy Central/MTV/VH1/National Geographic
- misc. animation – adult swim, old school transformers/gi joe, rocky & bullwinkle, anime, and assorted stuff from production companies like aardman animations (makers of Wallace & Grommet)
Anyway, it’s turning into a pretty cool source for free tv goodies as long as you’ve got a decent net connection. Some stuff relies on advertising, but it hasn’t been as obnoxious as what you’d find on regular tv so far (e.g. 10 minutes for ads in a 30 minute show on real tv).
Since it’s still in beta, you need an invite to get in. They’ve apparently scaled to the point where they can handle faster growth of their user base as they’ve given everyone “unlimited” invites at this point. So if anyone wants and invite, let me know.
Published on
July 9, 2007 in
meme.
Kait (aka student dr. blaze) pinged me for an internet meme she filled out. Since I’m not sure I know many people with blogs, I suppose I’ll have to tap Richy and see if he’ll fill it out and pass it on.
- WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? No
- WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Saturday
- DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Yes, but I wish I could find a pen I like that’d allow me to write even smaller while maintaining legibility
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? turkey, or peanut butter
- DO YOU HAVE KIDS? no, just 3 crazy cats
- IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? i think so.
- DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? probably less than i used to?
- DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? yup
- WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? jumping off a perfectly good bridge ranks up there with jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. and by that I mean “hell no”
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? cinnamon toast crunch. but you have to sing the name like in the commercials
- DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? i generally avoid untying shoes when i can avoid it. if lazyness wasn’t a good enough reason, the fact that one of my cats tries to kill my shoelaces when their untied (especially when I’m wiggling them about ever so tauntingly while tying them) is added motivation
- DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? not particularly. but when you have to get through something, sometimes you just do.
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby
- WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? hmmm… whether i think they’re idiots?
- RED OR PINK? blue. no yell– auuuuuuuugh!
- WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? hmm. err. ahh. no wait… maybe… my indecisiveness?
- WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? my grandmother
- DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? gotta go with precedent here. post it on your blogs & pass it on
- WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? khaki cargo shorts and barefoot
- WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? a Kashi chewy Trail Mix granola bar
- WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The Pipettes – Dirty Mind
- IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? given the standard crayolas, I’d probably also go with midnight blue. although maybe i’d go with brooding gray if we were talking about emo crayons
- WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SMELLS? baking goodness… yeasty bread, cookies… mmmm
- WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? my folks
- DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? but of course. why else would i fill this out if i didn’t.
- FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? battling robots. battlebots was pretty sweet when it first aired, but promptly got lame as you saw 20 different variants of the same 1 or 2 robot ideas. maybe it was all the limitations placed on weapons (no projectiles, flamethrowers, etc)
- HAIR COLOR? brown with an increasingly liberal sprinkling of gray
- EYE COLOR? some sort of blue hazel type deal
- ARE YOU: OVERWEIGHT, UNDERWEIGHT, JUST RIGHT, OR NEVER RIGHT? still over, but much much better than i had been, and i’ve managed to maintain what i’ve gotten down to without significantly denying myself tasty eats or working out as much as i had been
- DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? nope, just glasses for distance when I’m driving
- FAVORITE FOOD? ouch. have to pick just one? i guess i’d have to say papa del’s pan pizza. BEST EVER!
- SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? i like to mix it up. the american movie-going public seems to need happy endings, so i guess i’d say scary movies. they’re either “re-animator funny” or sometimes, maybe, creep me out a bit which is always entertaining
- LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? heat (1995 – de niro, pacino, val kilmer, jon voight, tom sizemore, ashley judd, natalie portman… kickass)
- WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? green polo with white stripes
- SUMMER OR WINTER? suppose i’d say a winter if i had to choose. always liked the peace of it.
- HUGS OR KISSES? hugs, definitely
- FAVORITE DESSERT? maybe some good soft, chewy, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies
- WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? i’m actually between books at the moment after having re-read the dragon reborn, and the two books rachel gave us (life of pi and the curious incident of the dog in the night-time)
- WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? generally use the trackpad on the macbook pro, a trackball at a desktop, and on rare occasions (e.g. when gaming on the mbp) a portable mouse sans mousepad. just don’t care for mice all that much, and don’t care for the restrictions imposed by a mousepad
- WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T. V. LAST NIGHT? a couple of shows on the national geographic channel… science of speed eating and hooked: monster fish
- FAVORITE SOUND? a well-played acoustic guitar
- ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? beatles
- WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME/HERE? Hong Kong
- DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? i can make goofy voices
- WHERE WERE YOU BORN? baptist hospital in miami
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE VACATION SPOT? rather enjoyed Ireland, and would love to go back some day
- WHAT’S THE ONE THING THAT YOU’VE BEEN DYING TO DO BUT HAVEN’T DONE YET? crap, i don’t know. have a real job?
- WHAT’S THE ONE SIMPLE THING THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? amanda’s laugh
- HAVE YOU EVER TRULY BEEN IN LOVE? yes. or did you miss the part where i’m married
- WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK/AUTHOR? always enjoy Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (although the series was dragging a bit before the most recent book)
- WHERE IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO BE? sitting by a window on a rainy day
- WHAT’S YOUR PERSONAL THEME SONG? currently: the reputation – face it
- ARE YOU REGISTERED AS A REPUBLICAN, A DEMOCRAT, OR AN INDEPENDENT? think i’m registered independent, but most of those bastards are … bastards. barak obama at least seems promising
- WHEN YOU WERE A KID, HOW DID YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME? video games
- WHAT IS THE AIR-SPEED VELOCITY OF AN UNLADEN SWALLOW? i don’t know that — auuuuuuuugh!
Main Entry: meme
Pronunciation: \ˈmēm\
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme
Date: 1976
1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
[Source]
So the Simpsons are headed for movie theaters everywhere toward the end of the month. Supposedly it’s good, but I think I’ll wait for the rental. What prompts me to write this post however is one of the features available on the movie website… create your own Simpsons avatar! Reasonably well done Flash affair where you select body type, hairstyle, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. There’s of course only a limited number of each of these, but you can achieve a fairly reasonable likeness and save it out as a jpeg. I took a stab at making mine and here it is:
To be honest, I think it’s pretty cool and might use the head as my new IM icon and maybe slap it at the top of the right column of the blog where people sometimes put a “photo of the author.”
In case you’re wondering, I didn’t select the blowfish due to its connection to the Simpsons (does it have one? many of the shirt options seemed to, but I don’t know what it is for that one). In fact, I selected it because I the other choices didn’t “speak to me” and cartoon blowfish always make me think of the OpenSSH mascot.
And yes, Virginia, I realize I’m a dork.
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