Advanced organization and social interaction

Reason #3,045 that I want a Mac: Delicious Monster, which is software for people with supersonic OCD. I love using LibraryThing to keep track of all of my books, but damn that Delicious Monster makes me drool. Of course I don't have a Mac. Yet.

Someday.

In the meantime, my other new favorite (and free!) application for organization is Todoist.com. I am a habitual list maker and procrastinator, and so far this magical website has both satisfied my base need for list organization and for friendly (yet hard to ignore) reminders of the stuff for which I'm procrastinating. You can upgrade for $3/month to get extra task management perks like text reminders, if you like.

I also went back to del.icio.us to help me keep track of my bookmarks. When I initially signed up a while back, I didn't quite understand why I would need to bookmark sites on a web page when all the sites I needed were in my Firefox bookmarks. After a little more time in the Web 2.0 world, and probably largely because of the fun I had with tagging my books on LibraryThing, I finally get the need and wondrous delight that comes with tagging and organizing sites on a web page. I can access my bookmarks from work (even though that's not an issue at the moment), from my old and occasionally used laptop, from a friend's computer or from anywhere.

But as ooey-gooey as I am over these organization applications and their social interaction integration, I still have a hard time embracing MySpace or Facebook. They contradict everything I ever learned about privacy on the internet, no matter how private they say that can set your profile. And while I accept them as a part of 21st century media, I do not love them.

I have, however, fallen in love with Twitter. When I'm not blogging here, chances are good that you can find me twittering here, especially now that I have a small text message plan and a QWERTY keypad on my new phone (the LG enV2). I guess I'm not too old to be enticed by all this new stuff the kids are talking about these days.

"When Fangirls Attack" blog for geek girls

The feminist geek letter to Toyfare magazine that I posted on my blog the other day showed up in a compendium of links on the fabulous "When Fangirls Attack," which collects links of topical interest to geek girls of all kinds. Officially, the blog is "A Compilation of Articles on Gender in Comics and Comics Fandom."

I salute the efforts of the three women who run the blog, as well as all of the fangirls who create the linked content, for their dedication to the ever-broadening field of Feminist Geekiness.

Posted by Yvette at 06:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Feminism | Geeky | Teh Interweb

A Qualifying Micro Geek Test

Sam Murray from the UK shared this link with me: http://www.getitornot.co.uk

It's an IT recruiting company that has a 5-question geek test on their homepage as a barrier to entry. Nice work, CW Jobs! I approve that message!

Posted by Yvette at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Geek Test & innergeek.us | Geeky | Teh Interweb

Introduction of Handmade Vegetable Instruments

I think I just found another point for the Geek Test: "I have made playable musical instruments out of edible and perishable materials, like broccoli."

Seriously, I'm in awe of this guy's enthusiasm and vegetamusicability in a mad, mad way.

Starting to Twitter

If you want to read my random thoughts throughout the day, and I haven't posted on my blog, maybe you'll find something interesting in my new twitter feed:

http://twitter.com//innergeek

I think that this may come in handy if/when I go to San Diego Comic Con in July, since I can post a thought to twitter from my mobile phone. How exciting! Seriously, I can't stop thinking about Comic Con and how much I really want to go.

Mornings are better with toys and caffeinated web surfing

Here's how I get myself into trouble when browsing teh interwebz first thing in the morning while waking up with coffee. I attribute today's "shiny!" attention span to the splash of French Vanilla International Delight non-dairy coffee creamer in my normally black--and-strong coffee.

So I remember that my subscription to Toyfare magazine needs to be renewed, but there's no "renew online" on the stub that I got in the mail (btw, Wizard: that's stupid). So, refusing to renew by mail because OMG who does that anymore, I go to wizarduniverse.com and find that of course you can renew online. And, for only a few dollars more, you can get an exclusive Futurama Series 1 Variant Dr. Zoidberg action figure by Toynami.

Then, still budget conscious despite the caffeine high, I price check to find out how much the toy would cost without the subscription: $15 plus shipping. HELLO, I can get it way cheaper than that if I just add it on to the subscription that I was going to buy anyway!

But there are other Futurama Series 1 action figures in the regular line that I don't have.

Doo d'doo... off I go to toynami.com/futurama.html and click "Where 2 Buy" and yes, I just ignore the fact that I had to click on a button in which a company has chosen to use the number 2 instead of the word "to." Whatevs, just show me where to buy mah toyz!

I recognize WickedCoolStuff.com and go there, but find that they don't have what I'm looking for. What do I instead see that I think is awesome and would be the perfect addition to the garden of my looks-normal-on-the-outside house? A Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch of the West frickin' LEGS PLANTER. Nothing says domesticated oddball quite like one of these!

I don't know if Wizard of Oz stuff can really be considered geeky, considering how ingrained in pop culture it is. But do you think that having this planter on my front porch or front garden would be geeky? Or just freakin' awesome?

I wonder how quickly something like that would be stolen in my nice suburban Mormon neighborhood. Hey, it's vandalaized once in a while just like any other suburb where meth and cocaine use are on the rise... I mean, Ben found toothpaste on his car one day, and neighbors informed us that they got toothpaste in their mailboxes. Dang kids and their petty vandalism. *shakes mouse like old man shakes a cane*

Anyway, I need to go renew my Toyfare subscription and get my exclusive Dr. Zoidberg. I'll hold off on the other action figures because I don't really need them right now. But that reminds me... I think that the new Futurama DVD is out and I should order that, too...

Aw crap. I don't even have a PS3 or a Blu-Ray player yet, but Amazon.com has a Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer right now for Blu-Ray discs. Luckiily, the new straight-to-DVD Futurama movie (The Beast with a Billion Backs) isn't coming out until June 24th.

Cuba enters cell phone revolution in 2008 (?!)

It never occurred to me that a non-third world country would view cell phones as anything but ordinary at this point in the timeline of the technology-addicted world. But I never paused to think about the possibility that the Cuban government would have prevented people from getting them.

Oh yeah, communism still exists in some places of the world.

That changed today, according to a report from the Associated Press. Good for the people of Cuba. But too bad that the cost to get a phone and maintain a calling plan is so prohibitively expensive for the average person. Baby steps, right? I hope this is a sign of better things to come for them.

Live-action Mario interpretation

I have an early morning meeting at work today, and therefore not enough time to drink coffee and fully awaken before I leave home. So instead of writing anything interesting, profound, or lame, I will share a YouTube video that I came across last night!

The creators named it "Mario: Game Over." If I were in charge of naming this live-action interpretation of Mario and Friends in the Real World, I might call it "Mario and His #@$!&*! Mushrooms."

Uh, don't turn the sound up if you're at work...

Posted by Yvette at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Fun! | Gaming | Teh Interweb

Rejoice in Coffee as Miracle Drug!

COFFEE. You can sleep when you're dead. How could I not delight with the title of this article on BBC.com?

Daily caffeine 'protects brain'
Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.
The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.
A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement.

Can I get a big HELL YEAH? This is stuff I definitely want to believe. Also, the quote a little later on: "This is the best evidence yet that caffeine equivalent to one cup of coffee a day can help protect the brain against cholesterol" means that I am taking the right step to avoid ever having to go on statins or whatever other miracle drug of the future they've created to lower the is-it-genetics-or-just-freedom-fries surge of cholesterol in Americans today.

Splenda logo Now can just come up with an alternative to Splenda for prevention of high sugar intake that contributes to Diabetes? I'm not a huge afficionado of straight sugary things (like hard candy or even candy bars) and I drink black coffee 99% of the time, but I know that I probably eat more sugar than I should in brownies, ice cream, soy milk, etc. I don't mind Nutrasweet/aspartame for the most part, but Splenda is Teh Enemy in my book. Too sweet and such a bad aftertaste.

Also, if Coca Cola ever starts making Diet Coke exclusively with Splenda instead of aspartame, they will have to answer to my wrathful rage, bitches. It's bad enough that I just have to watch for that evil, happy-yellow/white/blue logo on my precious gray and red 12-packs of caffeinated sody-pop. It actually burns my skin if I touch the box, I swear.

Okay, maybe I shouldn't swear until after this little first thing in the morning caffeine buzz calms down a little. But boy, I feel good right now!

Except that I really have to publish this post and go to the bathroom stat...

Two video clips today

The video that actually started yesterday's political post was sent to me from my darling husband (please don't make me write DH b/c I do not approve LOL ROTFL BBQ). It helped me start out my morning on the right foot.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

My favorite quotes from this clip:

"...this country is based on the fantasy that the government is the voice of the people."

"From now on, We at Diebold will see to it that we properly safeguard the illusion of democracy for all Americans."
"Well, let's hope so"

The second video for today, in my first-time ever crossover of politics and cat themes on this blog, is from the same guy, Simon Tofield, who animated the other short and delightful cat film I posted on this blog where truth in comedy is explored in intimate detail for anyone who's ever had a cat. All three of my cats are indoor-only for various reasons, and somehow they still manage to do things like this.

Do you speak Fake Chinese?

Have you ever poked around on Craigslist? You can buy, sell, or solicit anything. So it's not surprising that my college friend Steev found a want ad for a Chinese Baseball Announcer. Or that he responded.

What surprised me is how long it took the interviewer to hang up on Steev during their (videotaped*) phone interview.

This is the same guy who used to torture telemarketers when they called by speaking gibberish (or saying "poopie") to them for as long as he has free time. The nature of their job made it h difficult for them to hang up on him, and he got the biggest kick out of that. Maybe he's stopped by now?

Nowadays, if you're in the Chicago area, you should go to see his live Saturday night game show called "Don't Spit the Water" or one of his other Blewt! productions. Puppets by Noah Ginex, whom I revere as an even greater fan of The Muppets.

*Is is still okay to say videotaped if the thing was recorded on a DVD or hard drive camcorder? What else can I call it?

Spanish Love Song

This has been around for a few months, but was just introduced to The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song.

I especially enjoy the farmer tan and the shirt, plus these great lyrics:

Me gusta la biblioteca
Mi gato es muy "blank-o"
No remembro how to say eleven
...y cinnamon twists
Au revoir

Posted by Yvette at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Box of Chocolates | Music | Teh Interweb

Scrolling Problem

I have been scrolling pages on Teh interwebz too much lately and it's catching up to me.

For as much time as I spend with my hand on my mouse (that's not innuendo, thanks very much) and on the computer, I'm fortunate not to not (yet) suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. Today, however, I realized that the underside of my middle finger is tender.

At work, I use a semi-ergonomic wireless Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel. My middle finger logs many hours on the slightly raised bumps, pulling repetitively as my brain demands more, better, faster visual input on the screen in front of me. My right hand middle finger is much more of a workhorse than I give it credit for.

(My left hand middle finger also works diligently in tandem with my left hand thumb, resting on the Tab and Alt keys respectively as I frequently switch views on my taskbar.)

Logitech trackball mouse At home, my preferred mouse for the last couple of years is a Logitech with an optical Trackman Wheel. It stays in one place and I move my on-screen cursor around with a red track ball... and I absolutely love it. It took a couple days for my thumb to adjust to the new movement, and now I can go effortlessly between different mice without even noticing (like hopefully someday I will do with Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards).

But it also has a scrolling wheel upon which I rely heavily for my internet needs. And isn't it always embarrassing to talk about a seemingly benign injury that is related to a cushy desk job? Well, whatever. At least the underside of my middle finger gets a break when I'm playing the Wii.

On a side note, it absolutely drives me crazy to watch people surf the internet, wholly dependent upon their mouse to scroll down a page, etc. in a painfully slow manner. If I just described you, dear reader, please do not take offense. Just learn the faster way or let me do the fingerwork while we're looking at something together next time, okay?

In the meantime, I better go check into what kinds of rehab I might expect to endure if I continue to abuse for my poor, tender middle finger. But I'm thinking that there also has to be a fancy gadget out there that will allow me to scroll down pages through eye movement!

I'm not at WonderCon, but...

There are 12 costumed people featured in Wired's Geek Chic Gallery: Costumes of WonderCon 2008. Number 12 looks like he just wrapped a blue sheet around himself and is carrying a length of chain. WTF is that all about?

My expectations for "cosplay" (as the kids are calling it these days) are more along the lines of showing the only way that one can get away with wearing a wife beater to a geekfest like WonderCon... *SNIKT*.

Posted by Yvette at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Geeky | Teh Interweb

California Dreamin' and Coraline News

If you're in the San Francisco area, I hope that you're going to WonderCon for me. I'm really hoping to make it to the San Diego Comic Con this year for the first time. I've never lived closer to California, and yet after 2.5 years in Utah I still haven't visited.

I may be going to San Francisco for a couple of days to see the big sights (Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Pacific Ocean, etc.) while my Norwegian visitors are here in March. The only other time I've been in California was in San Francisco, but I don't have any memories because I was only a year old. Bummer.

How's this for weirdness: as I was typing that last "San Francisco," Shirley Simms was singing the name through my computer speakers--I'm listening to the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs: Part 1 and I didn't realize that track number seven "Come Back From San Francisco" had started playing.

Now here's something that we all have to wait for, no matter where in the world we live: the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I like the novella (though it's not my favorite Neil Gaiman book), but the movie looks like it will be absolutely delicious... it's an animated stop-motion film done by the same people who brought you that little cult classic called Nightmare Before Christmas. The Soundtrack will be by They Might Be Giants. Squeeeee!

Neil Gaiman just announced this little (official) teaser trailer:

January 2009 is very far away. I'd put it on my calendar, but I don't have a 2009 calendar yet!

Death of HD-DVD follow-up: Converting to Blu-Ray

There's now an easy-peasy way to convert your now-antiquated HD-DVDs into now-high-fashion Blu-Ray DVDs, according to a Wired How-To Wiki article.

(In the course of writing the subject line and that first sentence, I just used a record-breaking 10 hyphens... wow! Plus one for that sentence!)

Here's the quick-and-dirty (I can't stop using the hyphen! Augh!) process for each one:

Rip the HD-DVD
Burn to Blu-Ray

See how simple it is? All you geeks should be done by lunchtime.

Alternately, if your player and discs are still in pristine condition, you should pack them carefully back into their original packaging and put them on a closet shelf to allow for proper fermentation of nostalgic value. Unless you already have one there, you MOC collector.

If you still have some repressed anger about HD-DVD losing out in the end, you can put on your Wikipedian hat and add helpful and/or false information to the Wikipedia entries for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

Authorly Motivation and a Literary Geek-out

Working until 8pm on Friday evening sucked. Working again for another couple hours on Saturday sucked even more, even though I was working remotely from home. The hour that I worked on Sunday sucked the worst. Overall, suckage in conjuction with recent working hours. I will be taking a break to get my damn hair cut (and colorized? who knows?) sometime this week.

In the meantime, Neil Gaiman has this to say about what I should do about writing my damn Sundance stories on this blog, as well as how to proceed with my writing career:

So I guess I better get on that or risk being eaten by flowers (that kind of make me want to sneeze just looking at them... that would be a double whammy to be eaten by flowers while silmutaneously having an allergic reaction to them. Sounds like stuff from a B-movie horror flick to me.

In case you were wondering, American Gods: A Novel is my favorite book by Neil Gaiman. It's a beautifully told story (because Neil Gaiman is teh awesome) with darkness a humor, great prose, mystery, a travel adventure, and an anachronistic mash-up of deities and heroes from all sorts of world myths in modern rural America. It's probably my favorite book period, but as I am a great lover of books (Valentine's Day is hell for me--trying to convince all those books that they're each the only one) I think it's safer to say that American Gods will always be in my Top 5.

If I ever went back to school for a Master's degree in something literary, it would most likely be folklore and fairy tales. I think I'm most fascinated with their ability to survive and thrive across so many centuries and how one idea can transcend so many different cultures and yet still be the same basic story. And all that without the Internet! OMG how fab!

Okay, the literary geek-out is over (for now), and I should be leaving for work.

Frozen Grand Central

My friend Carole sent my a neat video of an even neater social experiement... 207 people simultaneously freezing in place at Grand Central Station in NYC.

Posted by Yvette at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Box of Chocolates | Teh Interweb

Happy Groundhog Day!

I almost forgot it was Groundhog Day. Then I remembered, and checked out the official site wherin I learned that groundhog megastar Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and therefore we can expect six more weeks of winter.

I wonder how far this prediction spreads? Phil is in Pennsylvania, and I'm in Utah. Are his predictions regional or strictly domestic? Do they apply in Canada or in Europe? There has to be a cutoff at some point, because that prediction cannot have much credence in Australia, where it is currently summer.

After learning that there is an official 2008 Punxsatawney Phil groundhog Ty Beanie Baby (wow, they still make those?), I learned some interesting facts about Groundhog Day, especially in answer to this pressing question:

How many "Phils" have there been over the years?

There has only been one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years! Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking the "elixir of life," a secret recipe. Phil takes one sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic and it magically gives him seven more years of life.

Wow, that doesn't sound like stuff of legend at all! I wonder if a pilgrimage to Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania on February 2 allows said pilgrim to obtain the secret recipe to the elixir of life? That would explain why so many freaking people show up between the hours of 3:00am and 7:00am for the cold, cold festivities. I don't mind the cold, but those are definitely sleepin' hours for me during the winter months.

The groundhog.org website is improved over last year's version, which I originally discovered via a magical Google search. I do have a vague recollection of an exclusive 2007 Groundhog Beanie Baby. But I still have one pressing question about the spelling of "Punxsatawney," referencing both the city and the groundhog: why is that letter S in the word when clearly the letter X serves the double purpose of representing the sounds of both K and S?

According to this friendly little educational calendar snippet, the name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location "ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." Still doesn't answer my question, especially because in that pronunciation, a K is used instead of an X. Maybe I'll learn more on February 2, 2009.

Unless I can get an invite to the elusive, exclusive Groundhog Picnic? That sounds like fun.

Safe to import into Facebook?

I was about to set up my blog to import into Facebook, until I read the fine print next to the "Start Importing" box:

By entering a URL, you represent that you have the right to permit us to reproduce this content on the Facebook site and that the content is not obscene or illegal.

So what does "reproduce this content on the Facebook site" really mean? Am I being paranoid by worrying that it's somewhat like YouTube (and Flickr?) and Facebook will slyly retain some level of rights to whatever I import and/or upload? Or is it really just an honest import of my RSS feed?

I am nervous about the honesty of social networking sites.

Posted by Yvette at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Teh Interweb

Facebook: Fine, whatever.

Last night I had a headache and fell asleep at 8:30. I slept soundly until about 5am, and then on and off again for a few hours. I woke up feeling like I had been in bed too long--because I had--but obviously my body was trying to tell me to get some damned sleep. Naturally, I had to give up an evening of playing Super Mario Galaxy to get that damned sleep. I've forgiven myself.

Today has been a get-stuff-done day. I cleaned up my office, filed or trashed more papers from the Stacks of the Unknown, and hung a few things on the walls. I also succumbed to Facebook, which I have been trying to avoid for several months despite friend requests from my friends and younger cousins. My sister pointed out, with an unbearably good point, that maintaining this blog is just as bad/good as Facebook would be for me as far as privacy and staying in touch with friends could be. It's just that I don't want to spend all my time on Facebook writing on walls or giving them innuendo-filled pokes. At work last week, I read an article that claims people between the ages of 18-25 would prefer to spend 15 minutes social networking (i.e. using Facebook or MySpace) over reading, watching television, listening to the radio or talking on the phone (note that nothing was said about texting).

Maybe part of my issue results from being old (28 is ancient if you ask the Millenials, I guess). I mean, cell phones were not something that people really had when I was in college. My first year in college, I had email... that I had to access through dial-up on my 75mHz pizza box PC. I actually placed my first order on Amazon.com for textbooks using that horrendously slow connection and computer. Crazy, I say!

So I will add you as my friend on Facebook if you want (if I know you, that is), but don't expect me to start throwing snowballs or fish-slapping anytime soon. I have Super Mario Galaxy to play tonight!

Sunday reading from teh LOLcat Bible

Pleez halp, I think I'm dying from internal laughter combustion!

The good words of the Holy Bible have come to my monitor, translated into LOLcat on LOLcatbible.com. I recommend starting with Genesis 1:

Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

If you do die laughing, perhaps you will ascend to an afterlife in which maddeningly addictive cats and their mind-numbingly adorable interweb-speek are with you for eternity. Yea, I can has eturnity?

On the topic of cats, but not really related to religion, here's another photo of Phoebe, who somehow absorbed Loki's body and all that's left is Loki's head poking out of Phoebe's neck.

Posted by Yvette at 01:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: My 3 Cats | Politics & Religion | Teh Interweb

A new old-school text-based online game in the works

The article in the Roanoke Times seems innocuous enough: Tech trio seeks market for new game. But hey, open it up and read and you'll find two things:

These guys from Virginia Tech have created a NEW text-based online game (remember Zork?) in the middle of a graphics-whoring gaming society.
Michael Ringenbach is a friend of mine from college who won the title "Geek of the Year" at the 2001 Geek Party.

Are these guys crazy? Perhaps. But I think it's pretty gutsy (and geeky cool) to move forward (and yet somehow backwards) with a text game. Then again, maybe not... the popularity of texting among teens (God, I sound old) is soaring and most phones could handles this kind of gaming on a mobile level... and it would make sense that if people became addicted to the story, it wouldn't matter if there were no mind-siezuring graphics like World of Warcraft.

I just got another email from Mike saying that the game is definitely not yet ready to be released, so you can't play it for a while. The website isn't quite ready, either. So hopefully he'll let me know when those are ready so that I can pass them along to the readers of this blog (and maybe the website, if I ever update it....). Speaking of WoW and his in trueness to gaming and geekhood, Mike also wrote this:

On the more geeky side of things, I'm working on my third 70 for World of Warcraft, with 2 other retired 60+ on a different server.

Best of luck to you and your geeky buds, Mike.

Here Comes Another Bubble

"...Won't you blog about this song?"

Yes. Yes, I will, because it is awesome and riffs off my man Billy Joel. And so, courtesy of YouTube (irony... check!), I bring you "Here Comes Another Bubble."

Posted by Yvette at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Politics & Religion | Teh Interweb

I live in Dilbert's world [and an NPR sidetopic]

Happy Friday! I think I'm coming down with a cold.

I have a daily Dilbert tear-off calendar at work, and I pass them around the office almost every day. Every day it occurs to me that Scott Adams is a genius of the corporate world. I don't even work in an extremely corprate environment - I mean, I can wear jeans and my black t-shirt with a big yellow Star Wars logo on it if I want. I love many of my co-workers, but there are a couple who drive me batty on occasion or all the time.

I recently learned about Scott's problem speaking (Spasmodic Dysphonia) and the ironic fact that Dilbert is never drawn with a mouth. Then I did a quick search and came up with a post on his blog last October that, if you haven't read, I would recommend: here. For those of you who listen to NPR, it's the same condition that Diane Rehm has. In fact, when I first tuned in to the Diane Rehm Show when I discovered streaming radio, I thought she must have been as old as Mama Jazz from the local NPR station in Oxford, Ohio... who, incidentally, I presumed to be a large black woman (given her extensive Jazz knowledge and gravely, drawled speech). I was totally wrong. Mama Jazz is a little old white woman who's been on the show for over 20 years and just turned 75.

Just goes to show that perceptions of Radio voices can be totally wrong. Speaking of NPR, if you didn't already know, the weekly This American Life broadcast was recently made available as a free podcast. W00t, for sure!

Helsinki Complaints Choir

"Helsinki Complaints Choir." What a great name for a song, video, book, almost anything. This is a lovely music video to watch as winter sets in that you may watch more than once. I know that I have! Link snitched from Neil Gaiman's blog. Enjoy!

Posted by Yvette at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Fun! | Music | Teh Interweb

Barenaked Ladies music video

http://www.bnlmusic.com/splash.asp

This mish-mash of music videos submitted by BNL fans turns into an amateurly delicious collage to the tune of "Wind it Up."

Featuring naked ladies (censored, mostly), lots of air guitar and my friend Noah Ginex's puppets!

The novel isn't coming along so much right now. I went to bed early last night and feel somewhat refreshed, aside from the fact that I somehow pulled a muscle in lower back and it still hurts. Also, I broke my alarm clock this morning.

Ben was already gone this morning when I hit the snooze button for the third time and the whole button caved in without making the noise stop. I had to flip the button to off and actually drag my ass out of bed so I wouldn't fall asleep again. Did I just say that I was feeling refreshed today? Well, I mean that in comparison to yesterday, which was also better than how I felt on Tuesday.

Anyway, Ben wasn't upset about my alarm clock being broken because, in his words, I can finally replace my "1984 standard." Yeah, it's like the ones you get at Wal-Mart for five bucks and has the most annoying sound in the world.

Maybe I'll hunt eBay for a flip-time clock like my parents had when I was growing up. You know the type? Before the digital age, they looked somewhat digital. About as digital as fast food joints' signs that they change infrequently outside of their stores, even though they say "ish san ich is her !"

Right, so that novel I'm working on. I'm taking it on a flash drive to work just in case, though I doubt I'll get the chance to write much there. Tonight, however... I'm going to make the mad typing fiend come out again.

More nerdy book stuff... yes, I said nerdy!

For once, I'm going to go ahead and admit to having a nerdy day. Don't worry, I maintained my geeky side while exploring my nerdiness. I need to get on that whole defining the difference between nerds and geeks (dweebs are much easier to classify).

Geeky activitiy of the day: playing Magic the Gathering with husband

Nerdy activity of the day: spending hard-earned weekend hours cataloguing my book collection on LibraryThing.com. Even the graphic novels and bathroom readers. Oh yeah, I'm hooked!

I entered the first 200 books yesterday, but that was the max allowed for a free account. My husband disagreed with the purchase of an upgrade (I'm sure the argument would have been very funny and appropriate in an geeky independent movie), so I received an emergency early birthday present from my sister of a lifetime membership to LibraryThing.com (a whopping $25).

Hooray! Thank you, Tim Spalding, for creating and maintaining a website that will surely be a large, pleasurable part of my life in the years to come. I can't wait to analyze my Web 2.0 data to assist in arranging my books in real life!

Oh, sweet Stumbleupon!

After a frustrating afternoon on the phone with ineffective customer service, I was sitting at my computer and bored with my bookmarks. I hit the Stumbleupon button in my toolbar and was taken to an amusing political flash presentation...

Become Republican!

If you like to think before you act, this flash presentation is for you. If you watch it and start cursing the "Liberal Media," then I suggest you switch to your bookmarked link to Fox News or go shine up your gun. If you're like my father, then you'll probably be amused by it and then want to engage in a "political discussion" in which you start to defend the very things that were just satirized. Just don't do it. Spend the time thinking instead of talking! And turn off the damned right-wing pundits!

I really don't know where that came from. I'm not usually so political. I suppose I blame the Republicans for the crappy customer service today. Gah!

Posted by Yvette at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Politics & Religion | Teh Interweb

World's Worst Website!

So innergeek.us has been named the number 88 of the "World's 100 Worst Websites" by Micromart magazine http://www.micromart.co.uk in the UK. This is how the article starts:

The World's Worst 100 Websites

After his recent trip around the world in 80 websites, Ashley Frieze was quickly talked out of his vow never to do it again. Here are the first 50 of his list of the World's Worst 100 Websites...

The World

What makes a website bad? To get some clues, I went onto the Internet in search of Tim Berners-Lee's original vision (available somewhere inside www.w3c.org). His aim was for:

* Easy to find information with rich, cross system, links
* Ease of use and accessibility
* Usefulness

So, any website which is the opposite of these is clearly bad. I devised a scoring system (described at worldsworst100.blogspot.com, which also contains all the links to the sites in this article and the next). I then started Googling for anything and everything.

The list of sites which follows is the result of a large, but not exhaustive search. Some of these sites are so bad they're good. Some are archetypes of the sort of site that litters the net and wastes server space and bandwidth every hour of every day. Sites were scored in:

* Uselessness
* Bad design
* Wasted effort
* Timewaster potential
* Smugness

Given the diversity of the Internet, and how easy it is for any idiot to set up a website, the results of this narrow-minded scoring system are bound to be very subjective. Entertainment does not count as useful, for instance and some people's strongly-held beliefs can come across as smug. So, this list will tell us something about the web, but who knows what it is!?

***************

On their website, they list numbers 100-91 so that you will purchase the magazine to read the rest. I am very interested in seeing what they have to say about innergeek.us, especially since their site isn't exactly a pillar of awesome design and usefulness. I just don't want to give them any money for a magazine that disses my website, whether or not it's justified. If anybody has a copy of the article that they could scan and send to me, I would greatly appreciate it.

I really wonder what hangup that writer (who, talk about useless, made blog specifically for this article: http://worldsworst100.blogspot.com) has about geeks and wasting time.

Who is Ashley Frieze to decide what is a time-waster, anyway? And why do guys named Ashley not go by something cool, like "Ash," instead? What kind of guy disses geeks who has a personal website named http://www.incredible.org.uk/ that even has a link to a page called "incredible geek?" Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe Ashley should have taken his personal website out of search engine indexes before resorting to public, published defamation of other people's more useful websites.

It's not my fault that he wasn't geek enouch to score well on the Geek Test.

(Thanks to David McCann for the tip about the Micromart article.)

Posted by Yvette at 07:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Geek Test & innergeek.us | Teh Interweb

The Book Bar and The Beer Belly

Words cannot describe the desire I have to make a book bar of my own.

Freakin' awesome book bar

the amazing full story (and this photo) linked from http://www.vestaldesign.com/projects/bookbar/

On a sort of related note, you can now have a beer belly and drink it, too. Or something of the sort... best of all, remove the beer belly at the end of your NASCAR event for easier access to the Porcelain God! Biting sarcasm aside, it still made me smile. I don't drink a lot of beer, but I'd rather wear that than one of those benign pregnancy bellies.

link: http://www.thebeerbelly.com/

Public Radio or Public Television?

I put my name, my husband's name and my dad's name into the lottery to get tickets to the Antiques Roadshow when they come to Salt Lake City on June 24. The date passed for hearing if I got them, so I moved on.

A couple weeks ago, I found out from my co-worker that Garrison Keillor was coming to SLC to record a "Prairie Home Companion" radio episode, which struck me as an opportunity I didn't want to miss. Hubby agreed, and we shelled out the cash for not cheap, but not too expensive tickets to go.

Two days later, my dad called me to tell me that he got two Antiques Roadshow tickets with an entry time of 3:30.

Garrison Keillor's show starts at 3:45.

I could go to both if the entry time to the Roadshow were earlier, and I've been trying to trade them with a posting on Craigslist and telling everyone I know out here. No takers. I could try selling them on eBay and purchasing tickets for an earlier time, which is what I should probably do if I really want to go. Of course the tickets "are not for resale," so everybody on eBay has, for example, "a fancy white envelope, with bonus two Roadshow tickets" for sale. Nice trick.

Anyway, I look at my situation and wonder how many people under age 30 have this kind of problem with two conflicting events when the events are Public Television vs. Public Radio. I don't care about being on television with my antiques (in fact I sort of hope that I'm not... unless the tv will shave off 20 pounds, I'm definitely not fit enough for a video documentation of any sort).

I really hope that I can experience both. It may be a long day, and my friends and future children may think I'm batty, but by golly I'm psyched.

P.S. I would have said "by golly" before I ever moved to Utah. I am swearing less here, though.

funny geek ad on google

Every once in a while, I do searches on search engines to see how my site is ranking. I find it very interesting that typing "test" into Google, which apparently a ton of people do to test their internet connectivity, brings up a link to the Geek Test. It is usually somewhere on the first page. I think that's so cool... or just indicative of the type of people who search for "test" and then proceed to click on the link to my site.

I did a Google search for "geek" today, and the link to the geek test still shows up #4, where it has been for a couple years. Behind geek.com, thinkgeek.com, and geekcode.com. I doubt that I'll ever get above geek.com because it's a major source for news and reviews (an alternative to /. maybe?) or thinkgeek because they sell stuff. I might have a chance at coming up above the Geek Code site, but I don't think it really matters if I do. I mean, the Geek Code was the original classifier before my Geek Test. I would not wish to take props away from that important part of internet history. But... the site hasn't been updated in a long time, and I have lots more content on mine. Oh well.

I'm the first listing today on page 12 of a Google search for "geeks." So I guess I can concentrate my SEO on that. Most people do a search for "geek" rather than the plural form, though.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to share a small amusement with you. Keep in mind, I am very easily amused. On the advertising side of Google for a search for "geek," here was one of the ads:

eBay ad for "geek"

Maybe it's not funny to you, but I laughed out loud when I saw it. These ads use "smart" technology that simply insert the keyword you just searched for into their ads. It makes sense if you're searching for "sony tv" or "ipod accessories" or "bird feeders." But "Looking for Geek?" just sounds like the company could be offering anything from drug distribution to a bad Chinese-based dating service. Maybe it's more common than I thought. Maybe I'll go to the library tomorrow and start browsing the technology section, and a librarian will come up to me and ask "Are you Looking for Geek?"

Posted by Yvette at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Geek Test & innergeek.us | Teh Interweb

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