And we’re off, it’s the newest feature that I just decided upon, the Friday Link-O-Rama. So sit down, grab a beer, and check out the things I liked this week.

Microsoft Embarrassed about computerized Santa - MS created a neat little Santa-bot that youngsters could send text messages to with what they want. A young girl (I assume mentally challenged) kept asking the virtual Kringle about eating pizza, to which it finally responded “It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to talk about something else”¹

10 Geeky Websites Where the Real Geeks Gather - Ok, not entirely sure how true this is. Some of these I go to regularly (Hack-A-Day) while others I’ve never heard of, so this is definitely not a “You’re not a geek unless you go to all of these”

The Treadmill of Poverty - Welfare, as it currently works, actually punishes people attempting to improve their situation. But we don’t want to give people a free ride - how can we balance this?

LOL Creashun - Ur Doing It Wrong

Buy your own flux capacitor - Great Scott! Delorean and 80s power ballad sound track not included.

Octopart - Greatest place ever to find electronics. If you’re looking for it, they’ll tell you where to find it.

IDK, My BFF Jill? - 15 years ago today the very first SMS message was sent. Those bastards.

It’s the 66th anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor.

Tom Jones will be here in March! Zomg!

I have a ton of personal projects I want to work on, but Team Fortress 2 keeps pulling me back in!²

Side Note: Some Microsoft software is damn near impossible to install without a prayer³

Robert Fisher gives me way to many kudos in his most recent blog entry, but I will attempt to be humble and accept it.

Healthy Nutritious food is 15 times more expensive then ‘junk’ food.  - I’m not fat, I’m thrifty?

1. That sounds like the final response to a turing bot - the name of which escapes me right now - any help? [↩]
2. Oh, I’ll be in the top 10 soon. Very soon [↩]
3. I’m talking to you, Operations Manager 2007 [↩]

Greetings,

I’ve done a setting change and a new feature.

First, the setting change. I’ve disabled comment moderation, as it seems as though my antispam software is doing a bang up job of blocking anything that isn’t human written - kudos to you, software.

Secondly, the new feature. I’ve integrated Gravatar into the comment system. Gravatar is a Global AVATAR. You sign up on their website with just an email address, and associate an avatar to that address. Then, any website that supports gravatar will then insert your icon whenever you leave a comment (based on your email address). It seems to work great, so give it a shot.

An officer with the Dearborn Michigan police force admits to confiscating pot from people, then baking it into brownies for him and his wife. He’s not charged with anything, nor is he fired. He’s allowed to resign. The only good thing that comes out of it, is a news piece from FOX station Q13 about the event, and the recorded 911 call the officer made when he thought he was overdosing on pot. Enjoy - I’ve watched it 10 times now, and it keeps getting better. Especially the news staff laughing their ass off.

One of the most fascinating sites I’ve found lately is Political Compass. Political Compass is one of many sites out there that tries to help you find which way you lean, but it does so with a twist.
The traditional left wing/right wing line is essentially based around economics. Political Compass adds another line to show the social dimension.
The test takes about 5 minutes, and is comprised of 6 pages of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree questions. And they aren’t always black or white in nature.
A lot of the statements are things I’ve never read before, or really thought about. Such as “People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.” and “In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.“. While still other questions are almost tricky in nature, like “It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.” and “In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.“. And still others which I see as being black and white easy answers, such as “Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.”¹ and “What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.”².

I took the test, and if you read on, you’ll get to see my results and where I fit in. Let’s just say I wasn’t all that surprised.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Strongly Disagree [↩]
2. Strongly Agree [↩]

I must admit, when I first saw the headline I had assumed it was in the US. Here’s the article. I’m all for stopping terrorism, but this is an absolute outrage.

A 23-year-old former Heathrow shop assistant who called herself the “lyrical terrorist” and scrawled her extremist thoughts on till receipts has been handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence.

Samina Malik became the first woman convicted under new terrorism legislation after writing poems entitled How To Behead and The Living Martyrs.

See Danny Glover in the ad that FOX tv refused to air  and Rescue the Constituition

As has been reported time and time again today, you can now edit photos inside of Flickr. The online photo editing suite Picnik has been integrated within Flickr. To access it, just hit the new ‘Edit Photo’ button. Picnik will ask for permission to access your photos, click ‘Ok’ and you’re in!

Once inside you have a fairly impressive suite of tools available to help edit your photos - the initial ‘Edit’ screen lets you fix things and features options such as “Auto-Fix”, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, etc and a Fun tab called Create that allows you to play with your photos by converting them into black and white, sepia, night vision, creating a heat map and other fun options. It definitely won’t replace a heavier editing suite such as Light Room¹ or Photoshop, but if you’re looking for a simple fix to remove red-eye or to make it look like your photo is a sketch, this is a perfect choice!

1. Light Room is my new Go To tool for photo editing - it has a few quirks you need to get used to, but it rocks! [↩]

My commute yesterday was 2 hours. Two hours! I live less then 20 miles away from work. I normally take December, January and February off because of all this stuff - I wish I would have done it now, but there’s to much going on.

I managed to listen to an entire podcast of Savage Love and not be off of 394. I’m on it for 3 miles. 3 miles. The podcast was 36 minutes long. Ugh.

I was really really pissy for the first hour or so. Then I decided to just roll with it and keep myself entertained. Here’s a 3 minute video of my commute I shot with my phone. It’s sideways, which is weird because I was holding my phone upright, but apparently it captures it in a different orientation then is the most intuitive one.

Oh, and now I have a big crack in my windshield, too.  Thanks, Winter!

Also, I have delayed sleep phase syndrome. That means I need to take some pretty powerful sleep aids to sleep a normal night. I’ve been out for 2 days - the pharmacy filled it, but can’t find it. So I haven’t slept very well and am exhausted. Sigh.

I still love winter though.

The first real snow a few days ago - and there’s more on the way.

In the loft looking out:

A shot out the window:

So it truly did snow. Right smack downtown we received about 5 glorious inches of it - and there’s more scheduled for tomorrow.
I did take some pictures looking out of the loft, which I forgot to upload and will do so when I get home. I was going to walk around taking photos, but it was cold and windy and the snow was falling pretty heavily so I said pffft, screw it - back to Team Fortress 2!

But yes, terribly sorry about not uploading a picture. Sometimes it can seem like such a pain - download to my PC, upload to my Flickr account, blah blah blah - I just wish something would do it automagically. Oh wait, there is - Eye-Fi is a recent innovation and one people have been singing the praises of. It combines a 2GB Secure-Digital flash storage card and a WiFi connection all in one wonderfully orange package. You can upload the photos to your PC or you can send them to 1 of 15 photo sharing sites - such as Flickr. The card holds onto new photos until it senses that the WiFi connection you’ve setup is available, and then sends just the newest untransferred photos on over. Don’t want the world seeing all your photos? Configure them to upload as ‘private’ and there you go. Convenience on go! I could really use it and *gasp* don’t ya know, it sells on Amazon and is conveniently on my Wish List! Oh, and with it I’ll need an SD to Compact Flash adapter too. Now get going - Christmas is only a few weeks away!

The St. Paul Winter Carnival is selling shares of stock this year. No, not stock like you’d see on NASDAQ, but a stock in the festival. It’s called the Stock in a Block program and for just $122 “the public can help keep the Carnival “cool” by buying stock in a block of ice. Five dollars from each stock sale will go to the Dorothy Day Center in Saint Paul to help provide warm meals for fellow community members in need.”¹

1. See http://www.winter-carnival.com/stock_in_a_block/ [↩]