This guy could probably be me. I’m sure I’m responsible for more than my share of tube-clogging content or traffic jams on the information superhighway. Look, I’m doing it again! Right now! Posting a video to my blog!
Happy Friday,
Andrew
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Funny video about the internet crashing
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Just for kicks this morning I checked to see if my first web site is still up. It is. Complete with cheesy graphics, music on many pages, egregious amounts of advertising, and <blink> tags, this testament to my history on the web still stands. It’s where I first started learning to write <html> and how to post photos online. But it’s also where I started blogging, before the word had been created. I called my blog posts updates, and put together a few of them. I posted on politics, spirituality, and what was going on in my life. I also posted writings in stilted, overly descriptive language. I thought I was such a good writer. :-) I also posted some photos there. They’re photos of a chunk of my life I haven’t thought about for a long time. Most of the photos are poor quality, but now they’re meaningful because that was my life. I guess the old site is like an old snapshot of me. Out there for all to see. I thought about logging in and editing it, but can’t bring myself to do that. Sometimes it’s just best to leave history as it was.
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A really cool video
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I looked under the desk a few minutes ago and Maggie had a computer cable wrapped around her neck. She was just sitting there. Funny dog! I hope she’s not trying to send me a message or anything.
Okay, so we’ve all heard about this on the news on Christmas Eve. But the noradsanta.org web site has some interesting history and fun stuff to get you in the Christmas mood (military-defense style). Ho ho ho!
I thought I had seen some of the wierder intersections of life and internet. Things like dotcomguy back in 2000, and more recently the one red paperclip guy. That was before today, when I found whatwouldjesusdownload.com and Christianubuntu.com. Tired of the borderline-porn ads on Myspace? If you go to whatwouldjesusdownload.com, you can instead be encouraged to check out Christian dating sites and buy Michael W. Smith albums. Try the prayer forum, or buy some Christian Geek apparel.
Okay, that’s it. Now you can’t surprise me with anything! (Actually, the Christian Ubuntu operating system does sound pretty cool. I wonder if it comes in server editions?)
Also, if anyone actually reads this and is looking for ideas for birthday presents, I’d love to have a Christianubuntu.com baseball jersey (cool) or a shroud baseball Jersey (even cooler).
Hey, Shinnfans. I just today took a look at this blog using the Internet Explorer web browser, and I realized that it looks terrible. Is this the blog’s fault? Nope. It’s the browser’s fault. You see, Microsoft’s default browsing program, Internet Explorer, does not support the web standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.
Instead of Internet Explorer, I strongly recommend that you use a standards-compliant (and in every way superior) browser, Firefox. This first thing you’ll notice is that our blog looks a heckuva lot better in Firefox. As an added bonus, you can easily increase the size of the text on almost any web page in Firefox by holding down the ‘ctrl’ button and scrolling up or down with a scrolling mouse. That’s a usability feature that Microsoft just can’t match!
I’ve recently come across a fascinating attention economy knows as Yahoo! Answers. It’s a place where you can log on and ask questions. Or answer questions. Or rate other people’s answers. “What kind of questions can I ask?” you wonder. That’s a great question. You should log in and see what kind of questions other people are asking. I’ve been addicted to this service all week now. For joining, you get 100 points. Every question you ask costs you 5 points. Every questions you answer garners you 2 points, and when your answer is chosen as the best answer to a question, you earn 10 points. When you earn a certain amount of points, you get….. something. I don’t know what the something is yet, but I reached level 2, and Yahoo! assures me that there’s something special headed my way. When I reached level 2 without a significant reward, I kind of gave up on this as an obsession. I thought I’d come back to daily blogging instead. Check out Yahoo Answers anyway; it’ll be worth your time.
I’ve always been somewhat of a reading traditionalist. I like reading books. I like pages. I like the smell of old books. When I open a classic like Plutarch’s Lives inthe 1910 printing from the Harvard Classics series, the scent is unmistakable. It’s like I’m breathing rarefied air.
So this new step is a real departure for me. I’ve started experimenting with book content in two new electronic forms. I bought my first e-book the other day (not counting the Bible that I purchased for my last Palm Pilot) from a company called 37signals. It’s their manifesto on how to create new companies based around simple web application. It’s a bit disappointing as a read.
Today I realized that I’ve been subscribed to audible.com for a few months now. It was one of those trial memberships that I forgot to cancel, and I now have enough credit to download 7 full audiobooks and listen to them on my computer, CDs, or my iPod.
Configuring my computer to download the books was a little bit of a challenge. I actually had to call audible.com’s tech support, but I solved my own problem while I was on hold with them (and explained to them how I’d solved it, in case someone else has that particular problem).
So, the first book I downloaded is called The Search by John Battelle. It’s subtitled How Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and changed out culture. I’ll let you know how it is. Should be 10 hours worth of interesting listening, at the very least.
