I know there is a plug-in that will show a running total of my Twitter activity, but for some reason, I feel like Twitter isn’t going to last long and I’ll lose all this data. I’m keeping it here. Does obsessively collecting my bits and pieces from around the web that I don’t control insane? Should I get a psychiatrist?
I woke up 15 minutes ago to a dream in which I was trying to choose the next panel to attend. I was leaning toward this one:
Never send an ex-lover CSS poetry syntax in a drunken haze.
Thanks, MJ, your Twitter Haiku broke my brain…
Michael and I encountered this grackle outside of Fry’s Electronics in Austin, Texas on Thursday. He kept making a car starting noise and a car alarm noise. Grackles are amazing mocking birds, but this is the first time we’ve heard one mimic a car alarm.
I’d like to be able to moblog while I’m at SXSW, but I’m having trouble with Flickr. It used to work and all the settings look right, but my last photo didn’t post correctly.
Looks like this worked, so I guess I’ll be able to show you a little more of SXSW tomorrow.
It’s just a room full of bags. A huge freakin’ room full of bags.
If you are interested in more up-to-date SXSW happenings, you can follow my Twitter page:
It’s so easy to type a sentence or two in the middle of things than to write an entire entry.
I thought the billboards for plastic surgery were insulting in Salt Lake City, but apparently they can get so insulting that I can barely speak…
I hate to jump on a silly Internet trend, but I can’t believe how addictive Twitter is. I signed up less than a week ago. I’m eagerly adding friends and followers.
It took less than a day before one of my friends used the word “twitterpated.” I was purposely NOT using it because I wanted to see how long it would take. I thought their name was stupid until I remembered twitterpated.
If you want to add me to your friends list, I’m here:
What is Twitter?
You’re supposed to just periodically type in what you’re doing. It gets sent to all your friends. If you’re at the local coffee shop, you can tell your buddies and they can all meet you there.
You can add your updates using the IM on your computer, the SMS on your phone or just enter them on the Twitter website. Because there are so many options for adding and receiving your updates, it makes it really easy. I don’t mind texting on my cellphone, but I’m a cheapskate. Their website is so well maintained that I can access it from my Treo, read my friend’s updates and send my own.
I imagine it would be a great way to keep in touch. Sometimes when I’m working at home alone, it’s nice to feel like someone else is there.
After a heated discussion on whether we should cancel the Reader Meetup, we let the fortune cookie decide our fate. It said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time hasn’t discovered the value of life.”
It’s not like we don’t want to spend an hour with our readers; we really do. Unfortunately, the few people who contacted us in Austin have either not responded to our email announcing the event or cancelled. No one has RSVP’d on the UpComing.org site, so the underwhelming response says: CANCEL.
If you live in Austin and were considering going to the Reader Meetup, contact me. Mike and I are are going to this event, which is open to the public, so you’re free to show up here as well.
Your Video Blog Can Save the World
Friday, March 9th, 2005 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Carver Museum Cultural Center (1161 Angelna Street). Google Map FREE admission, no badge or pre-event signup needed to attend this session.
Note to self, “Read this when you’ve got a moment.”
I’m leaving for SXSW tomorrow. I’m up way too late getting things ready…
I might as well be color blind, the way I like to mix colors. This is helpful, though.
This little animated .gif made me strangely happy today. I’m sure Toad will win in the end…
This is easily my favorite commercial of my teenage years. Hands down, my favorite! I hadn’t seen this commercial for 20 years and I still can sing the song word for word!
Even moms and dads agree
What makes it good is MFP!
I think they were trying to be like Madness, but they ended up creating something completely different!
I love this entry from Meri Williams talking about growing up multilingual.
“Growing up in the Western Cape, there were a number of interesting effects of the majority of people speaking multiple languages. For a start, if someone seemed to be struggling in one language, the polite thing for the other person to do was just to swap into their native tongue, where possible. Equally, you quickly learnt that there were some concepts that were just more powerfully described in one language over another. As a result, you’d just use the best terms from the best language available — resulting in a hybrid mish-mash of the different languages.”
I grew up speaking the same language at home as the rest of the area spoke, English. It wasn’t until 7th grade that I took a Spanish class so I would get a jump on the college entrance requirements. It had nothing to do with being more of a world citizen. It strictly had to do with getting ahead in the world.
Someone told me that college would get me ahead in the world, lying bastard…
Ironically, being able to freely converse in other languages is more of an aid than a college degree. My only use for Spanish lately has been eavesdropping on conversations. Non-English speakers in Utah assume that they live in a private world where their words are unheard by everyone else, which gives me the opportunity to listen in on the mundane and intimate.
Michael and I are going to be in Austin, Texas for SXSW. While we’re there, we wanted to allow our readers to have a chance to meet us, so we set up a reader meetup at the Sunset Valley Barnes and Noble:
Location: Barnes & Noble – Sunset Valley
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300, Austin, TX 78745 Google Map
Phone: 512-892-3493
Date and Time: March 9, 2006 6pm-7pm
Please RSVP using Upcoming.org so that we don’t feel like we’re going to be waiting at the bookstore all alone:
We are going to hang around for an hour, gathering readers and then we are going to let you pick a restaurant where we can eat and hang out for longer if you want. I am really interested in what I can do to make Pick Me! a better place to be. What are you interested in? What bores you? How can we help you? Come with ideas and helpful hints because we’re all ears!
I’ve never had a pair of tennis shoes that had glitter before. I can run really fast in these shoes because they are magically beautiful.
“Your angry typing is very different from your normal typing.”
“It is?” I’m writing an entry about a brain-dead watch company that has made the world’s most stupid watch.
“Yeah, most of the time, you type pretty quietly, but when you’re angry, you type like I do.”
“Well, it’s a REALLY stupid watch.”
“Stop reading that watch blog. It just makes you angry.”
Sometimes a photo turns out so perfectly that I hardly have to pull it into Photoshop at all. This one just needed the levels adjusted. She was sleeping so soundly that her tongue was sticking out, but not so soundly that the activity of the picture-taking didn’t wake her. This was the only shot I got before she was up and rubbing on my legs…
Five minutes.
That’s exactly how long you have to let Cap’n Crunch sit in milk before it’s edible. If you try to eat it before the mandatory five minute wait, then your palate will be torn to shreds unmercilessly.
Six minutes.
That’s exactly how long it takes Cap’n Crunch to turn into a mushy mess in milk. That gives you a one-minute window to eat your cereal.
Good luck.
I wrote this entry back in the hot days of last summer. I was having trouble with my computer because of the heat and it refused to type well. I hurriedly saved this entry and took my poor overheating laptop out of the sun. Try to figure out what is going on in the last three sentences. I assure you, they are real sentences, but my computer had one small little problem…
I’ve been working outside for the last couple of days. The laptop that usually accompanies me on trips and provides a slice of home in the hotel is being used on the patio table under the shade of the dark green umbrella. The heat from the sun makes my little computer smll nw again. Unfortunatly, th ‘s ar missing from vrything I’m typing. Non of th othr lttrs sm to b affctd, but is a prtty important lttr.
Here is a bunch of links to things that I think are cool. None of them are enough to write an entire entry about, but they are too cool to just delete, so here they are:
Here is a YouTube video of cool patterns on a speaker when certain tones are played and links to all the mathematics that deal with predicting the patterns:
Room inside a room. Looks like a good hiding place for me:
Cool collage images in Flicker. They are open for use:
How to make homemade marshmallows. I wanted to do this for Christmas, but there was already so many sweets around that I didn’t even think of hot chocolate:
This looked important to me and I thought I would read it later. Still haven’t read it:
Kottke linked to this and it looked like something I’d want to do, but still haven’t bothered…
Cory Doctorow has a new book out and I want to read it, but still haven’t even bothered to download it:
These photos are beautiful and I thought that I might someday want to look at them again:
Here was a place to download some cool Christmas music, but now the season has passed and I don’t care anymore…
It feels good to see a nearly empty queue. There is one entry in it named, “Lesson #1: You Can’t Delete Something From The Internet.” I haven’t decided whether I should post it, because, you know, you can’t delete something from the Internet. It’s always a good idea to just save your post as a draft when you’re really angry. The problem is, I’m still pretty angry…
Last year for Valentine’s Day, Mike and I made these pancakes for ourselves. We didn’t use a fancy form or cookie cutter to make them, we just poured the pancake batter in two circles close together, then kind of played with them to make them heart shaped. It was a fun way to play with our food and such a good memory in my mind. I’m glad I took a picture.
Did they taste any better than round pancakes? Yes, yes they did…
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I’m surprised I haven’t talked about this online because it has been such a stress in my life. Right after Christmas, Mike and I realized that neither of us had seen Linda, our orange tabby cat all day. We tried the usual method of luring her out by opening the cheese drawer in the refrigerator and pulling out the cheese. Even opening up the package, calling her name and saying the word, “cheese” didn’t bring her out of hiding. We searched her favorite hiding places and found her under the bed sleeping. We pulled her out and she was lethargic and unwilling to eat, so we took her to the vet the next day.
A blood test showed that she is in the early stages of kidney failure.
She’s nearly fourteen years old, so this wasn’t a surprise to us. We almost lost Linda about ten years ago when she contracted Feline Infectious Anemia. She was lucky to survive it and we had both dealt with the idea of losing her back then. Every year we’ve had her since has felt like a gift and a surprise, so hearing that she might not be with us much longer hasn’t really hit us yet. She survived a nearly fatal disease so long ago. I almost believe she’ll be able to kick this kidney thing too.
She is much better now. We have been feeding her K/D food. She hasn’t gotten dehydrated since then, but if she does, the vet taught me how to give her fluids subcutaneously so that she won’t get weak. Sure, we have to change the kitty litter box more often than most people do, but that’s alright. It’s worth it to keep her around for a couple more years.
The only disconcerting thing is that she is obviously looking for a place to die. Every time a cupboard is opened, she is investigating it. Every time we have opened the door to the small shelf basement, she has tried to get down there. She is looking for a hiding place that is better than her “under the bed” option, which obviously didn’t work last time.
She was always a hider in times of stress. When we moved to the condo in Barrington Park, she somehow opened a drawer, crawled out of the drawer and into the back area of the cabinet. She hid there for hours while we frantically searched. We were only able to find her when she realized that she didn’t know how to get out and started meowing.
Funny thing is, I’m a hider too. I prefer small, enclosed areas to work and relax. Small cubicles never bothered me. I used to do my school work in my closet at my parent’s home in West Valley. I put my desk in there with a light and I would close the closet door. It was the privacy I needed to study in a room I shared with my sister.
Now that I’m an adult, you would think that I wouldn’t feel the need for a hiding spot, but sometimes things get out of hand. Since Linda has been sick, she’s not the only one looking for a hiding place…
I just woke up from a dream. I went to a beautiful performance art show. It was amazing! The theater was VERY small and intimate. It sat less than fifty people. The show was QUIET. It was amazingly quiet. Just beautifully quiet. The theater was in the round, so there were no seats any better than others.
The first act started with a pool of water. The performers approached the water and put their feet into it. They made moises with the water that sounded like music. It was absolutely beautiful. It was kind of like STOMP but so silent and quiet that you would miss it if you weren’t paying attention. It was percussive and dance and all the lovely music came from the water.
The second act had a patch of grass in the middle of the theater. They walked on the grass in time to create music. It was so quiet and beautiful. I was amazed that they could get the theater so quiet. It was such a lovely sound of people walking on the grass in the exact time to make music. Even though the music was being created with such different “instruments” you could tell that they were playing the same song on the grass as they had in the water.
The third act involved one woman in the middle of the theater at a huge keyboard, not a musical keyboard, but a computer keyboard. She was typing and we could see what she was writing on the screen. The sound of her typing was a rhythmic tune, so she was creating this inspiring music again, but just with her fingers on a keyboard.
There were intermissions between the acts while they changed the theater. Outside the theater, there were arts and crafts for sale: lots of colored glass hanging from metal curlie-cues. It was the kind of art that makes subtle noises like bamboo windchimes. Somehow, I think all the arts and crafts had to do with the show. Because the theater was so small, they were making their money on the souvenirs instead of the seats.
After I woke up, I realized how difficult it would be to create this performance in real life. Each person allowed into the theater is a noisemaker and we don’t live in a society that rewards the quiet. You would need restrictions for people to even come into the theater: no cell phones, no pagers, no children under the age of 15, no talking, no one with any sort of sickness that would make them sniffle or cough. I think this sort of performance simply couldn’t work in today’s society without strict enforcement and bodyguards to evict people for even the slightest infraction.
The whole idea of this performance is that music is everywhere around us. It is in the drips of water that come off the house and the soft padded steps of the cat across the carpet and in my fingers as I type this entry. Even now, I can feel the music in my fingers as I type this and my clicking is suddenly beautiful instead of a noise that falls into the background. I can hear the hard drive in the computer spinning as a backdrop to my typing and the world is beautiful.
I want this performance art show to exist. There is so much noise in our lives that this almost silent performance was a life-changing experience for me, even if it was only in my mind…
Ever since I started obsessively playing Animal Crossing back in October, I have been watching the weather on the little computer game televisions. I check it regularly so I can find out if it’s going to rain or snow the next evening. All of this obsession with the weather is focused on one thing, catching a coelacanth.
Today, I was sick in bed with a sore throat, achy body and throbbing ears. Since it was snowing, I started fishing after Coelacanth Time (4pm-9am). Finally, after hours and hours of fishing in the snow and rain, I caught one. I could have sold it for 15,000 Bells (that’s a lot of money), but I don’t need money. I would have paid 1,000,000 Bells to catch one or buy one from someone else. I donated it to the museum. Blathers was happy to recieve it.
One of the things that I love about this game is its realism. The coelacanth is an incredibly difficult fish to catch in the game, as in real life. You can find out more about it here:
The coelacanth is so rare that it was considered extinct until it a specimen was found in 1938. Since then, many coelacanths have been caught, but it is a rare fish. I love how the game teaches me about fish I would have never cared about in my daily life in Utah. I’m 37 years old and I had never heard about the coelacanth until I found myself obsessively trying to catch one in a video game.
This letter from “Mom” showed up in my mailbox in Merriton while I was playing Animal Crossing this morning. Sadly, this letter could have been written by my real mother. She worries about how much time I’ve been spending in Merriton and talking to my animal friends.
No, Ma, I don’t have a groundhog in my “commune.”
Mint’s a squirrel…
“We have a couple of reservations coming in. Do you think you’ll be longer than two hours?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, some people like to sit and visit.”
“We’re lucky. We get to visit every day.”
After months without a Geek Dinner in sight, Phil Burns has finally announced a Geek Dinner.
He will have Jeff Barr from Amazon.com come speak and it’s a great opportunity to network with other Utah Geeks. I really enjoy the Geek Dinners because it makes me feel less alone in Salt Lake City.
Here are the details:
Date and Time: Thursday February 8, 2007 6pm
Location: Los Hermanos – 395 N State Street Lindon, Utah 84042 Google Map
Restaurant website:
Los Hermanos is a decent Mexican restaurant with typical food for the area. More importantly, this is the first time in months that we’ll be able to get together with a crowd of other technical people.
I wrote an entry on the CodeAway blog about the January CodeAway at the Pandora Users Meetup. It was an awesome experience for me and my mind is still reeling from it:
Next month’s CodeAway has been announced:
Here are the details:
February 2007 CodeAway
Saturday, February 24, 2007 1-5pm
Sprague Library – 2131 S 1100 E, Salt Lake City, UT
Downstairs Conference Room
Free wi-fi courtesy of X-Mission
Hope to see you all there!
I had been missing half of George’s life because I didn’t know he had another blog. When I finally found out and went through his archives, I was lucky enough to find this entry:
Thanks to George, I have found out the best news all month! Scritti Politti released an album last year. Scritti Politti, my favorite earworms of 1985 AND 1988, have returned?! It can’t be true, can it? I loved Cupid and Psyche ’85 and Provision. I have ordered White Bread Black Beer at the Salt Lake County Library. I guess I’ll find out soon enough…
Thanks, George!
Update 02-20-07: I got the CD a couple of weeks ago and I love it! Double thanks, George!
I am going to be in Austin, Texas from March 8-13th this year and I want to meet up with the readers of Pick Me! I want to hear your ideas about the site, what you like, what you hate and how I can be better.
Here’s the problem: I don’t really know the town. I’m hoping that you folks can tell me the best place and day to meet.
Please email me if you would like to come to the meetup here:
I’m excited to meet my readers face to face and hear just what you want from me!
One of my readers commented on my self portrait this Tuesday and I realized that I hadn’t talked about my black toenails at all on this weblog. I had talked about them on Starling Fitness, but I didn’t say anything about them here. Sorry…
Yeah, I’ve been obsessed with running because of the Nike+. The challenges make me want to run further every day. I have to watch myself because I ended up hurting myself. I didn’t even know I had it in me…
The drive to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago was a nightmare. A drive that usually takes 5-6 hours took over 8 hours. We couldn’t go faster than 40 mph without risking an accident. There were so many cars and eighteen-wheelers on the side of the road who had tried to drive just a little bit faster. We are so lucky we weren’t taken out by one of them.
By the time we hit St. George, things had mellowed out enough that I realized that I should have been filming it. The snow had been blowing over the road so much that it was impossible to see where we were going. At the time, all we could do was focus on the road and hope that we stayed on it. When I pulled out the camera, there was snow on the red rocks and the sun was peeking through the clouds for the first time in days. Mike’s hand had loosened on the steering wheel and we felt safe again…
They look worst when they hurt the least. They looked almost normal when every heart beat was pounding through my toes like a hammer.
I don’t care who you are. You owe this guy a thank you. Without him, we would be living in a very different world than we have today. Martin Luther King Jr. represents the friendship of a dear friend of mine. She respected him more than any other man in history. I talked a little about her here:
This holiday can’t go by without me thinking about Jackie. Somehow the two people have become one in my mind. I miss her and it feels like the entire United States celebrates her favorite hero just so I can remember her.
I made it to Las Vegas and we attended the first pre-show event tonight. Trying to access the Internet from our hotel room is an exercise in frustration. We are staying in Jean, Nevada for lots of reasons: great room price, quiet room away from the noise of CES, and the comfort of a hotel that we stay at often. Most definitely, we are NOT staying in Jean for the connectivity. There is no Internet access here, so Michael and I are using our old Treo 650 phones to get online.
The Internet has slowed to the crawl of dialup.
I remember why I HATE Flash websites. I remember why website design is more important than writing. After trying to decide whether we should attend the Samsung press event to see the new Blackjack phone, I ended up hating Samsung. Their website is so Flash-a-licious that I want to kill them. I don’t care about the Blackjack phone anymore.
The true test is my own websites. Do I hate them at the speed of dialup? No, they load pretty quickly. I even tested my weblogs on the tiny screen of the cellphone. They don’t port very well, but they are still readable. The pictures are even downloadable, but they take a little while.
Robo-Elvis makes up for all of it though…
Tim Westergren of Pandora fame is visiting Salt Lake City and having a meetup at the Salt Lake City Main Library. It’s a beautiful location with wireless access provided courtesy of X-Mission. I met Tim at SxSWi last year and he was very personable. He’s a great speaker and an even better listener. Here are the specifics of the meetup:
Where: Salt Lake City Main Library, Auditorium
Address: 210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City UT 84111 (801) 524-8200 Google Map
When: Thursday, January 18th at 7:30 PM
If you have ever used Pandora and want to give him feedback about your likes and dislikes, now is the time! If you haven’t, then try it! It’s a free Internet radio station that is a great tool for finding new music that you will like. I reviewed it on The Gadgets Page here:
A special thank-you to Braidwood for introducing me to Pandora. I have enjoyed its continuous music and software improvements thanks to her!
I want to hear more news like this:
A man was having a seizure and fell onto the tracks. Wesley Autrey jumped down, moved the man and himself into the foot-deep space between the tracks. The subway couldn’t stop in time and rolled over them. Thanks to Wesley, they were both unharmed. See that smudge on his hat? It was from the train.
Here in Salt Lake City, the subway is a sandwich shop with crappy bread. Utah residents don’t think about falling off the train platforms and whether they would save someone who did. This story sounds so surreal and part of a movie, but it’s real life and a father of two daughters (both of whom were with him that day), jumped off the platform, faced an oncoming train and lived to tell about it.
Sending good karma your way. Good form, Wesley, good form!
Just in case the NYT article is under lock and key…
Powered by WordPress
(c) 2003-2007 Laura Moncur
