Eye Heart You

I may not always remember to say it, and sometimes I may not show it as well as I could, but please remember that I ♥ U!

When a simple "Wash me" isn't enough

We used to have a little ceramic "plaque" hanging in our house that said something like "You can touch the dust, but please don't write in it." It was recognition that our house isn't always the cleanest, but it had that "you don't have to rub it in" humor attached to it. That wall hanging has come down for now as my wife is in painting mode, but if it was still hanging you wouldn't be able to see it anyway because of the dust from the paint prep work... :-) It'll all get vacuumed up and look great in the end.

Steve Wade, on the other hand, seems to like a little dust. No, make that a LOT of dust. This guy doesn't just tell you to get a car wash, he creates works of art in the dust! Useloos has an incredible gallery of his dust artistry. You can his full gallery at his Dirty Car Art web site.

That musta been one GIGANTIC spider!

You've come a long way baby. From a geeky scientific research project at DARPA to the Internet as we know it in just 39 years! According to Google, the World Wide Web has just hit a new milestone -- 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once! And despite Google's vast store of data, that's STILL only a portion of the Web itself. No wonder you can find ANYTHING on the Web...

Let go my Legos...

Every little kid loves Legos. They're durable, simple (well, they used to be) and they last literally for generations. My step brothers still have TONS of Legos that they pull out anytime my kids are around. They used to be just basic brick shapes that you put together with your hands and your imagination (or with the easy-to-follow instruction booklet until you lost it). Now they've got so many themed packs, and fancy one-of-a-kind shapes it makes you dizzy. A fun time for everyone!

Tech site Gizmodo takes you inside the Lego factory. Videos and an interesting article as well. There are lots of links in the story for even more in-depth information.

Are you safe?

Not everyone is as nice as you are. Some people are downright dangerous. We all deserve a chance, but it's best to be informed. There are a lot of crime maps available on the Internet to help you see what's going in in your neighborhood, or where you hang out, or where your kids go to school, or where you might be moving. GoogleMapsMania has *several* that integrate with Google's maps interface. Another one is available at CriminalSearches.

There's a certain inner debate when looking at sites like these. There's a little bit of voyeurism -- kinda like slowing down as you pass an accident on the side of the road. There's a little bit of shame -- you don't know all of the circumstances surrounding the crime, maybe they're reformed. A little bit of fear -- could they do it again, or worse. Then there is the technical awe that all of this information is available and so easy to navigate on this fad called the Internet.

I'll let you battle those things by yourself, but it's still a good idea to find out what's going on around you.

Be safe.

Too geeky even for me

I admit it. I'm a little bit geeky. But ASCII art on curtains is just too much for me. Ditto for Space Invaders wallies... I realize that some people might enjoy these kind of, um, decorations, so here ya go: Home Decor for the Absolute Geeks. Or just hire a decorator :-)

Ice, Ice, Baby

Here's another one from Day Tipper. Actually, I heard about this on the Internet, the news, from friends, from radio, and I'm sure the little kids on the corner selling lemonade last summer as well, but Day Tipper offers this reminder about adding ICE (In Case of Emergency) to your phone.

Simple and effective, and something that is apparently not an urban myth from the Internet - mark one for the good guys! And you know what? Even if someone thinks it is a myth, enough people know about it that it might work anyway...

Basically, you put an entry in your cell phone with the name "ICE" (maybe followed by the person's real name) and then put in their phone numbers as well. Now this ICEy person is not just anyone, it's someone that if you're injured or otherwise incapacitated, you'd want Emergency Services to contact. If they can find your cell phone, they'll look for ICE first and contact them to let them know you're injured, etc. It doesn't cost anything and it just might come in handy...

Camera Protection

Digital cameras can be expensive and costly to replace, but if you lose yours, the first thing that you're likely tyo think about is the lost pictures, not the lost camera.

I saw a very useful tip while surfin' around tonight. On the Daytipper site, it was suggested that you create an image that has your name and phone number on it and put it on your camera as img_001.jpg or whatever is appropriate for your camera. The idea is that if an honest person happens across your camera when lost, they'll be able to track you down and return it (with the irreplaceable pictures still intact it's hoped).

I did this one little step better by making this the image that shows on my camera's LCD when you turn the camera on or off as well. I included my name, address and phone number as well as a note about a reward for extra incentive.

Can you hear me now?

The guys over at Improv Everywhere (who brought you the Best Buy, Frozen Grand Central, and many other pranks) are at it again... Under the banner of Urban Prankster, this time they decided to make sure that a Verizon customer really felt the power of The Network...

http://view.break.com/537412 - Watch more free videos

Celebrity Hookups

OK, usually you'd hear about the latest celebrity - celebrity coupling with a title like that, but this time it's about the latest celebrity - YOU hookup! Calm down, it's just virtual. But if you were lucky (?) to be part of a celebrity hookup, what would your babies look like? Make Me Babies lets you find out ahead of time -- before you get stuck in all of the paparazzi pics... You pick the celebrity, upload your own picture, and let the Internet do all its magic. You may never see the flesh of this experiment, but then again...

Save trees. Trees save.

My wife and I encourage our kids to reduce, re-use and recycle. We teach them to care for the environment. We teach them to value life - no matter how small.

My kids have organized recycling campaigns. They've made posters to "Save the Earth." They've helped with returning cans and bottles.

I think that they'd like this un-sourced advertisement. It's very understated and yet very powerful. It simply says, "Save trees. Trees save."

Got any money left?

If you've still got any money left after filling up your car this week, and feel like investing in the market, you might wan to use Google's new Stock Screener to help you find a stock of interest.

Using criteria such as Market Capitalization, 52 Week Price Range, Earnings per Share, Volume, Dividends paid, Current Ratio, Margins and Growth as well as quite a few more, you set the min and max value for each of your criteria and Google Finance will list the stocks that match your levels from it's list of 3692 companies. It also gives you links right to more detailed analysis of the companies in your list.

Another interesting feature is that it will plot out the distribution of all of its known companies for each of the criteria including showing the min and max values.

If only I had spare cash laying around, this might be a bit more useful for me...

Guitar hero it's not...

Came across this game the other day. It has a similar style to the very popular Guitar Hero... but no guitar, no heavy metal, and no high price tag. But it's just like it otherwise. :-)

It's called Music Catch, and it it actually intended to relax you I gather. Moving your mouse, you try to collect points by rolling over "notes" and other special characters, while avoiding the red guys. It's mildly addictive -- enough to keep you going through the sleepy music, but not enough to make you come back every day. Unless you're really stressed out...

iGoogle tabs

As I've mentioned before, I use iGoogle for my news reader because it allows me to stem the information overload a little bit by restricting the items to just 3-5 per feed. I still wanted to be able to sort them a bit though, so I created tabs. I have my home tab that has my GMail preview and a list of visitors to this blog as well as a few other miscellaneous widgets. Then I have my Google tab that has all the unofficial RSS feeds dealing with Google and Google products. I have an official Google Blogs page as well. I have a free stuff tab, a videos tab a finance tab and a couple of miscellaneous tabs -- literally "Misc A-J" and "Misc K-Z." The problem is that the reason I had to split the Misc tabs was because there was too much on the one tab, and I had created other tabs since then... So my Misc K-Z was 3 tabs over from the Misc A-J tab. I know, I know -- big deal. Well, at the time, Google offered no way to move your tabs around. I saw one hack provided on Blogoscoped I think that involved exporting your settings as XML and then editing the XML file and then restoring from that exported backup... Too much for me to worry about, so I just got used to it.

Then...

Out of the blue, I noticed the other day that Google had snuck in a feature that allows you to change the tab order! I love finding these little surprises. Now my alphabet is contiguous! :-)

How fat is your state?

I'm not talking about how many miles across from state-line to state-line. I'm talking about the girth of the average citizen. CalorieLab has an interesting article and graphic that shows us what we all pretty much knew -- we could afford to lose a few pounds. I include myself in that category, and apparently I'm not alone, although Michigan has dropped one rank since last year (because of a tie). What are you doing sitting here reading my blog posting?! Get out there and run a few miles! ...then come back and check my blog again :-) please...

Kindly, do the needful

The English language is a difficult thing to master --reference my ghoti post. It seems for every grammar rule, there's an exception. That makes it really hard for people to learn; even more so for people who are learning it as a second language. As English has become the de facto standard for business communication, that means even more people are attempting to dissect this strange language.

Wired Magazine wrote an article about the way in which the English language is becoming a melting pot of other languages. Subtitled How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand, it talks about how the language is evolving to suit the variety of people that now live in the US (or elsewhere) and speak, or attempt to speak English. It's a funny thing to think about when you realise that there's already a chasm between American English and UK English. At times even those are so different as to need a different web page or translator on the Internet.

I've worked with many people in my career that had varying degrees of mastery of the English language. I've gotten used to most of the accents from Asia and the Middle East, Europe, Mexico and even Canada :-p. It kinda struck me as funny when a new bunch of engineers moved into my building a while ago and started talking with strong British accents -- I had a hard time understanding them at first -- and they were speaking English! The Queen's English, but English nonetheless.

Sometimes when people learn English as a second language in a different country they learn the Queen's English. This leads to a much more "proper" sounding conversation. It also leads to phrases that while grammatically correct (I think), sound really funny to us Americans. One that's stuck with me recently is from my Indian co-workers -- "Kindly, do the needful." I know what they're asking for is help in resolving a problem -- "Can you take care of this please" or something equivalent -- but it just sounds so very foreign. Polite, but foreign.

Here's another insightful post I found related to this titled It's Inglish not English.

Welcome Lily!

My wife's friend & husband had their first baby yesterday. Though they'll get grief later for keeping everyone in the dark for several days with no news (they sent a "We're on the way to the hospital to be induced" message on Sunday, then nothing until late last night -- hey! It's not like they had anything else going' on!), we're all glad that things went well and welcome them to the wonderful world we call parenting.

Holding the sun

Again, if you've got email, you've probably seen at least some of these already, but I think that they're pretty cool. You can see a lot of pictures of people holding the sun here from Google's index.

This UK newspaper article (the source of the left image) has several images as well.

There are several things about these images I like. First is just the imagination of the photography. It's thinking outside the box. Taking something ordinary, someone in a picture with the sun, and making it something completely unexpected -- not boring.

The second is the irony. In this picture...someone so small, fragile and innocent, taking control of something so massive, explosive and that so many other people in the world depend on for life. Literally holding the world's well being in her hands. You can almost see her toying with the idea of smashing her hands together, extinguishing the light.

When my wife and I got our first digital camera several years ago, it really freed us. We didn't need to be concerned with how many pictures we took and had to pay to get developed hoping that at least a couple would turn out good. Now we work the odds. We take a ton of pictures, at no expense (using rechargeable batteries) and get a lot of great pictures. I try to be a little creative with some of the ones I take, trying different perspectives, shooting up from down low, or shooting something really close that you wouldn't usually notice. I'm no professional by any means, but I have fun with it. I think that the people that took these shots do too.

Microwave Life

Gone are the days when we took leisurely walks just to walk. Gone are the days when we waited for a letter to arrive in the mail. Gone are the days when we spent hours preparing the evening meal. Gone even are the days when we waited for a dial-up an Internet connection while listening to the squelch of two computers handshaking.

Now we "fast-walk" for exercise. We send email and call the printed mail "snail mail." We twiddle our thumbs if dinner takes more than 5 minutes in the microwave, and we start to have panic attacks if our "always on" Internet connection takes more than 1/2 a second to load the web page we're trying to get to.

I'm not sure where I heard the term "microwave life," but it certainly fits. We've got so much going on, with family, work, hobbies, etc., every additional second we can gain with technology should be a step toward getting more things done. Unfortunately, just like when having a garage sale, whenever you get rid of something, two things fill its place. You find 1 minute more in your day and suddenly, something comes up that takes 2 minutes (or more) to get done. It's a never ending battle.

The only thing we can do is to either inject more time-saving technology or processes into our lives, or to stop doing somethings. Injecting technology costs money. Changing process takes time I don't have to redesign the process. Stopping doing things I wanna do... Hmmm.. Maybe the kids can help with the kitty litter and dishes after all :-)

Today at a glance

There's long been talk of printed newspapers going the way of the dinosaur. The costs of printing and delivery as well as the impact of the Internet culture have all taken shots at the printing press, even as they do their best to modernize and embrace the digital age. Most newspapers have an on-line presence, even as they continue to press the pulp. Most are still trying to define the distinction between the two mediums -- is it a different audience, or just the different availability. Do they concentrate on the "real-time" stories on-line and do in depth investigations in print? I personally still like what I get from both. There's something about being able to hold the physical paper in my hands...

However you like to get your news, the Newseum site has something for you. Blending some (somewhat) high tech touches for navigation including a map mash up, the site actually excels at delivering an image of the front page of nearly 600 newspapers from around the world. It really gives you a feel for what different countries and regions feel is important.

There's also a section that let's you see how selected newspapers presented some historical events like the September 11th attacks, the Columbia explosion, and Hurricane Katrina.

3D Chalk Artists

If you have email, I'm sure that you've seen the chalk artistry of Julian Beever. Word of his absolutely incredible 3d artistry has spread via a viral campaign for quite a while. The Web Urbanist had a post the other day that listed several artists with a similar style. These chalk artists have to have something in them to be able to create something so amazing...that lasts only a short while until the next rain. Kinda like building a sand castle at low tide.

This video shows how Julian works his magic!

Pennies for your thoughts

I'm all for free stuff -- especially now. I've used the WalMart site and others like StartSampling to get stuff to try, travel sizes to take on trips, and for stuff I use everyday.

My wife and I also have all of the frequent shopper key tags, and have even joined AC Nielsen's HomeScan program.

One of the most rewarding sites so far has been e-rewards, though. My wife joined (for free) last year sometime and I joined earlier this year. This program works through sponsored surveys that take 1 minute to 30 minutes to fill out. They range from interest surveys, to buying habits, to ranking questionnaires. You answer the surveys (infrequent to up to 10 a week) and they reward you with 50 cents to 15 dollars in e-rewards money that you cash in for rewards at places like Borders, Pizza Hut, Wall Street Journal, blockbuster and different airlines. My wife got a Borders card earlier this year and we've each got over 50 bucks sitting in our accounts again! Every little bit helps.

Can you hear me now?

I had a totally different thought in mind when I went to write this post (it was a parenting thought), but I'll come back to that one later.

My new car came with a hands-free option for a bluetooth phone. Only one problem -- my phone doesn't do blue tooth. Not yet anyway. My wife's phone works, but not completely in my car.

Our cell plan is up in a couple of months so we're looking into what our options are. I'm ready to switch carriers too. The BCC car site has a list of phones that they've tested with my car and the features that work/don't work for each phone. Now I just have to find a phone that's inexpensive, and has all of the features that I want...

Does your car have a hands free option? What do you like about it. When do you use it most? Does it use your phone's phone book or do you have to create a new phone book? Did you find that you use it more in your car than you did before the built-in hands free? Does your phone dial by voice or just have a speaker? Does yours allow you to speak the name of the person you want to call, or just the phone number? I've not even read that part of the manual on my car yet 'cuz I don't want to know all of what I'll be missing when I get the phone that's not the top of the line...

Maybe I'll compare some of the phones BCC says work well on a site like PhoneScoop.