Start here. How far did you get? So far, I've made page 13, but Userfriendly reports that there are 30 pages to do. I'll make it by hook or by crook. :)
In other news, the Google News Reader interface has improved dramatically. If only some day they would let me order news oldest first, I'd be a happy camper.
Alas, this is an under appreciated photo. I suspect that the problem is that the thumbnail doesn't really catch the eye. And catching the eye is the main thing to get feedback or to get added to favs.
So the bird is well defined. There is a baby and few people ever see these. And yet this photo will end up neglected within the Flickr environment.
A Gamers' Manifesto is an excellent article about what gamers really want from games. Things like AIs that can actually act intelligently. Many good points are raised in this article about things that are annoying or destroy your immersion in the game.
A coworker reported that his first grandchild was named Zephyr. The scary memory is to suddenly remember a key line "Zephyr winds that blow on high, lift me now that I can fly" That's scary because it's something that I saw broadcast in the '70's and haven't seen since. Isis. There was a brief spat of live action kids shows during that time frame, I think they mostly failed because the special effects were so noticably horrible. Why did this line stick?
A not quite as useless thing stuck in my memory is that the highest point of the state of Florida is 345 ft above sea level. I got to surprise someone once who was reading a book and asked if we knew it. I said, yep, I know and quoted it. Stunned him fairly nicely.
I have started a new personal campaign against phishing scams. When offered to update my account I go and use a false account number 5*5 and tell them that the password to the account is "iamafraud". Usually after I send them this information, I get forwarded to the real site.
Today, I got forwarded to this page (please note, this is a phishing scam site. Enter at your own risk!) Not satisfied with my online account (faked) details, now they want my answers to security questions, pin numbers, birthdate, mother's maiden name, driver license number and more.
If I filled in this form, they would have enough basic information for some serious identity theft, not merely one bank account. Yet more evidence that it's a dangerous world online. Be very very careful where and when you divulge things like driver license, pin numbers or your complete birthdate. Don't help them steal your soul.
The cafepress experiment as yet another method of marketing as been a failure. Being an Amazon Associate has worked out reasonably well. People regularly buy things from amazon via my site. Adding google ads has worked well. People click those ads regularly and while many of the ads attached to the game reviews earn .01 each, some of the ads on other parts of the site bring in much more money. But the cafepress site earns nothing.
Part of that was that for a long time, you simply could not find my cafepress store from the main cafepress site. You could find it by searching for "Doodle monsters" in google quite easily. But it never came up when searching or browsing the cafepress site.
At some point, this changed. So from here on out, it's simply that no one needs doodle monsters in their life. I'll just have to cope. :)
Your choice of a very wide variety of warning images, and you write your own text.
This is a massive 6 CD collection of classic music that has been used during films. If you've been pondering the idea of purchasing some classic music and have no idea where to start, this is a good sampler. A number of the classic composers are represented in the collection (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) Plus newer composers who write classic style music are included. John Williams has a number of pieces on the CDs.
The pieces vary in length from about 2 minutes to 7 minutes. Each cd contains 15 to 18 different tracks. There's one CD that I don't imagine I'll listen that often to, it's Opera and I'm not much of a fan of that.
My copy was under $20 from JB HiFi in Brisbane. Definitely an excellent deal for this much music.
BTW - welcome Friendless, the third regular reader of this blog that I know of.
On the anniversary of Sept 11, Wired News analysed accidental deaths amongst Americans to show how great terrorist threat really is.
So primary causes of accidental death are roads and work. Sounds good, no more driving into work for me!
Apparently some people are hacking tails off stingrays in retribution for Irwin's death. Given he spent much time trying to protect wildlife, he would never approve of this. The news article says his is the third recorded death from stingray in Australia in 100 years.
Treat wildlife with respect, that's what the Crocodile Hunter would say. It was tragic but definitely a freak accident that the ray happened to get the poison to the heart.
Frodocam is a webcam in Brisbane of nesting Peregrine Falcons. They are raising two chicks in the centre of the city.
For a series of screenshots from feeding time, go to my new Flickr account and see the series of pics I saved.
I realised this morning while driving into work that if I wrote a post a week about each music CD we own, I'll have posts for the next 4 years (give or take a bit but we own a lot of music.) Without further ado, let's get this puppy started.
The Eagles music is fairly old style classic rock. This particular album is their final album, and demonstrates their well-established style. I love the tracks "I can't tell you why", "Heartache tonight" and "The Long Run". All of the tracks are enjoyable to listen to for me. Your mileage may vary, if you don't enjoy old style rock, you probably won't enjoy this album.
As a side note, if you really want to get me to sing, The Eagles and Billy Joel songs are good for that. I'll sing along without quite realising that I'm doing it.
I'm fond of music, and in our house, there are a lot of cds. But you still get the occasions when you want to try someone new. Or add more albums of an artist that you like but you don't know where to start.
So it's nice to see top album lists like the Rolling Stones magazine top 500 of all time. We own some of these albums on cd. There are a few we have that are on that old-fashioned large black format... ;) But there are many that we don't own. Some of the list are useful because if you want to try an artist, start with one of their best albums. Others are useful because I want to expand a collection (David Bowie for one) where there are many albums and you want to add more of the best.
It's obvious that the compilers of this list are big Beatles fans. The top 100 has a number of Beatles albums.
Tilt - how good is your sense of balance? I got to level 12 once so far.
And just to make your day brighter, Sandy the Dog has a web site. Just piccies of a cute dog and their human.
| adopt your own virtual pet! |
The Boy From Oz really was a great show. Hugh Jackman can sing and dance with the best of them. The start of the show is Hugh being lowered to the stage lounging on a piano in a mirrored suit (sort of extra large sequins). When you see this you realise that you are in for something different. The cast all gave excellent performances. Peter Allen's most important songs were covered during the performance.
I think that the Virgin Flight from Townsville Friday afternoon was mostly made up of people who, at least in part, were going to see the show.
It was actually a small group of people who used to work together who went. That the four of us made it, three flying down from Townsville, was slightly amazing in itself. We may even decide to go to another show at some point.
It is nice to get out of town and to a big city. We did some shopping in stores with far more variety then you find locally. Bought books, cds and ate lots of food.
The Boy from Oz is one day closer. Saturday, the 2 pm performance is the one we have tickets for. To say I'm pysched for this is a bit of an understatement.
Only a few more days until we travel to Brissie for Hugh Jackman in The Boy from Oz show. I've been looking forward to doing this for ages now.
Gets a bit expensive; plane travel, hotel costs, show costs. The hotels are expensive that weekend because it's also Riverfestival time. Going to be crowded.
My dog must love the vet. He was back again Monday. This time, we could tell that there was a little blood coming out of his eye. Tiny amount, but eyes are not something you wait to see how it goes. So rang vet, was told "Yes, you should bring him in. If you can get him here in the morning, if he needs surgery, he can get it today." Took him in. He needed surgery (small tumor on inner eyelid). We find out in a week if the tumor was benign or not. The vet was pretty reassuring though.
The First Basic Law of Human Stupidity asserts without ambiguity that
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The Second Basic Law states:
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
If the above sounds right to you, then The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity is a must read. Originally published in the Whole Earth Review in 1987 by Carlo M. Cipolla, Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley.
Clever enough, posting spam comments to the 3 month and older posts on my blog. And many of them as well. I think I got them all. With any luck, your account will be gone and when you create the next one, you will have moved to different blogs to leave your trash in. Go away and don't come back.
To other bloggers, check for comments in your older posts. These are very obnoxious and I had to delete over a dozen of them.
Spell check everything you put online. Or you will end up looking as silly as these people.
An archive of old movies and cartoons I'm finally going to see one of the original vampire movies Nosferatu. Hurray. Cool stuff.
I went to google to find a convertor for weights from pounds (which I grew up with) to kilograms. What I found is that google has a little calculator which you can use by simply typing in your conversion values in the normal google search box and hit search. The top search result is google calculator.
Animated Charlie Chaplin falls into a Speilberg universe. Includes Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and ET references.
My car has just been serviced. The service started on Friday but they realised some major work needed to get done and it wasn't until Monday that I could get the car back. Steering column, front struts, worn tires all fixed up.
The mistake wasn't getting the work done, the car is driving better than it has in ages. It cost a packet getting it all done, but now the car should be good for another couple of years.
The mistake was that at some point in the process, the passenger side window (completely electronic) was fixed. But wait, you say, how can a window getting fixed be a mistake? The window has been permanently shut for a couple of years now. I once inquired about getting it fixed, but they told me that to fix it would require replacing the door panel and would cost $400-500. It didn't seem nearly important enough for that kind of money. Now some mechanic fixed the problem without replacing the door panel and I didn't get whacked the price of a door panel.
Finally went to see Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest last night. The movie is lots of fun with some pretty amazing special effects. But watching that brings up the question, why has men's clothing gotten so dull?
Historically, it wasn't that long ago that men wore ruffs, lace, and colourful clothing. I find guys with shoulder length hair and knee high (or taller) boots to be quite appealing. And yet the standard business suit is just so boring. The tie is the only allowable splash of colour.
This means that I'm very fond of movies with pirates, musketeers or other period pieces of similar style. It's the only time you can see guys wearing great clothes without fear of being thought a poof or an artist.
The few times I've been involved with an FAQ, I find it's not really Frequently Asked Questions. It's actually one of two things.
If you are going to implement a breadcrumb trail, don't follow this example of using it. It should stop at 2006 which is the year of interest in this case. Instead it keeps on going until it hits the year 1996. Bad, very bad.
