Knitting is Science

Well ok... more like crochet is mathematics.



Thanks to a former colleague for the heads up!

The department store that ate my life.

I'm still here, and I'm still surviving. It's just been a rough week (few weeks?!?!). I've been working pretty much every day at the new gig since last week. Some days it's just for a few hours, some days it's for full days. Some days it's at the crack of dawn (did you know we open at 7AM?) and some days it's closing (does anyone really shop Sunday nights at 10pm?). I've had my fair share of customer issues, store issues, a few co-worker issues. I've sized and racked and re-sized and re-racked, and re-re-sized and re-re-racked clothes. You get the idea. I also find an unhealthy amount of pleasure in ringing people up at the register. (Don't worry Mom and Dad - it's not gonna be my next career move!)

In the mean time, the world has gone on. I've managed to craft a few things, but they're getting gifted at swaps in the next few days so photos will have to wait. Mostly I've been pretty tired, sometimes too tired to knit. (I know - OMG WTF?!?)


I have however acquired a few new toys. The best so far is an early Christmas present from Wes - a Chumby. I have named my Chumby Bob, or as we like to call him Bluebob. Basically Bluebob is a neat little device that operates on Wi-Fi and can pull my rss feeds, Facebook and Twitter updates. It can also be used to play games - everything from Daily Sudoku to arcade games to puzzle games. Bluebob has a touch screen and is sensitive to changes in direction so sometimes you play a game by moving the Chumby around. Overall it's a superfun toy and has provided both of us with hours of amusement! (PS If you get one I'll be your Chum!)


The second toy I acquired is a new phone. I was all ready for my "New in Two" phone with Verizon. In fact I was ready MONTHS ago. This time I got an LG enV. The big feature that I wanted was a QWERTY keyboard and a flip screen. The enV is not touch sensitive and it doesn't promise me everything plus a bag of chips, but it can access the internet, text, hold some information for me, and make phone calls. And it's RED!

Oversubscribed.

In the beginning (at least what I term the beginning of my consciousness of the internet - circa 1996) there were only a few ways to "chat" online. I remember my friends in high school talking about AOL Chat Rooms, but we didn't have AOL. Although my dad was an early adopter of technology, I really didn't discover the internet until I went to college.

So in the beginning, I discovered Talk. Then I found ICQ and then AOL Instant Messenger which I still use today. Then I discovered the wide world of html and coded my first web page (Hello World!).

Then I have trouble remembering what came next. All of a sudden I was reading blogs...lots of blogs. Then I had a blog. Then I had multiple blogs. Then I was using an aggregator for all my chat services - first Trillian and then Adium (gotta love the green duck). Then GMail arrived. Then came social networking. I joined MySpace. In grad school we all joined LinkedIn. Recently I joined Facebook. Then yesterday I jumped in whole hog and joined both Twitter and Plurk. (Let's not forget that Flickr, YouTube, and Ravelry happened in there....)

And THEN I needed something to manage all of this crazy content. And I took the recommendation of one of my tech gurus and signed up for Netvibes and spent some time configuring it.

And frankly? I feel oversubscribed. Excused me while I go bury myself in updates.

Digital R/evolution

I was pointed to Michael Wesch's Digital R/evolution video through a variety of connections (my mom's friend recognized K-state and passed it along to my mom since her future son-in-law [read:Wes] will be graduating from there in a few weeks). It is an interesting look at information: what we think it is and what its future is. Given how much of the world rests on digital information these days, the obvious question (or not so obvious) is what happens to traditional libraries? Enjoy.

Official Business and Stuff

According to Schmutzie today is the official "Great Mofo Delurk" day. So you know what to do - leave a comment and let me know you're reading. Tell me something interesting - what's your favorite site? color? embarrassing moment? Something... anything! I'll repay the visit!

A Man I Never Knew

For the past week around the office, much talk has been centered around a man who I have never met. He is a professor and a world class expert in the industry of games technology and education. Working at USC for the past 5 years, I have heard his name in passing as an author and expert. I have also heard of people who loved him, and people who didn't like him so much. About a year ago, I heard something else. A colleague of mine, who had worked with Dr. Pausch (at Carnegie Mellon University) told me that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was not expected to live. As tragedy does, it intrigued me. I followed news of his progress with his disease and was disheartened to hear that he wasn't doing well. I knew he was much too young and that he would leave behind many students and colleagues, and a young family.

On Tuesday afternoon Professor Randy Pausch gave his final lecture entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" to a full lecture hall, and reached many more via teleconference and simulcast. The lecture is recorded here on YouTube. More information can also be found in this piece from the Pittsburgh Tribune. The lecture is long (a little over an hour) but it is alternately touching, funny, and a testament to his brilliance, his work as a humanitarian and his refusal to give up the fight. It is a fitting remembrance to a great man and one that will remain for his young children. It's not an easy watch, but it is definitely worth the time.

Popping Pills Leads to Gambling Problems?

I was half paying attention to the television tonight when a commercial came on for Mirapex, a drug for Restless Leg Syndrome. What caught my attention was the potential side effects list at the end of the commercial, which seemed to include compulsive gambling. HUH?

Sure enough I checked the website.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION ABOUT MIRAPEX: MIRAPEX may cause you to fall asleep without any warning, even while doing normal daily activities such as driving. When taking MIRAPEX hallucinations may occur and sometimes you may feel dizzy, sweaty or nauseated upon standing up. The most common side effects in clinical trials for RLS were nausea, headache, and tiredness. You should talk with your doctor if you experience these problems.

Patients and caregivers should be informed that impulse control disorders/compulsive behaviors may occur while taking medicines.

Further the FAQ indicates:

There have been reports of patients taking certain medications to treat Parkinson’s disease or RLS, including MIRAPEX, that have reported problems with gambling, compulsive eating, and increased sex drive.

So apparently medicines used to treat muscle impulses and spasms result in behavioral impulses and spasms. Hey, I bet there are lawsuits out there about this.

BINGO.

And another one bites the dust.

PayPerPost.Com

Since I started blogging 3 years ago I have been interested in potentially making my blog a source of some income. It's not that I want to quit my day job (well I guess I do... doesn't everyone?), but it would be nice to earn a little something from something I find enjoyable. I read many blogs (Dooce as one example) that manage to earn some income, and still not feel like I'm only reading marketing content.

Recently I was checking out opportunities and stumbled upon PayPerPost.Com. This innovative company has developed a forum where advertising companies can go and post opportunities. As a blogger, you select something that interests you, review it and get paid for your opinion.

Now I'm pretty skeptical about these things, so I've been checking the company out a little bit. Aside from the ethical debate on whether or not people should be paid for reviews or posting, I haven't found too many negative things about the company. More so, I am impressed that they choose to have a Code of Ethics that asks readers to express their reviews honestly, and fully disclose their association with the company.

So far I have found the site easy to use, and friendly to newcomers. PayPerPost.com is still relatively new but it seems to be functioning well. I don't know how many opportunities I will avail myself of, but if the right ones come along, I'm interested to participate!


Blog Ads

New Marriage Woes?

From Slashdot:

Til Tech Do Us Part

WSJdpatton writes "Marriage often requires coping with the loss of some individuality, whether it's adopting a spouse's last name or setting up a joint bank account. Now, some couples say it can be equally tricky to navigate intimacy in the digital sides of their lives. They are running into thorny questions regarding how much to share and how much to keep separate in areas ranging from email addresses to online calendars. For some young newlyweds, this means a debate over whether to combine their blogs. Longtime spouses, meanwhile, say perennial arguments about who has more closet space are now joined by bickering over which TV shows get deleted to make room on the TiVo."

Gadgets making us stupid? or lazy?

Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains

skotte writes "According to a Trinity College survey released Friday, the boom in mobiles and portable devices that store reams of personal information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. In effect, the study argues, these devices have replaced our long-term memory capabilities. 'As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes. When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of close family relatives, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.'"

If I hear the word iPhone one more time, someone's going to regret it.

Found here.

Someone with a lot of creativity....

time on his hands, and a death wish. Watch it before he's strung up by his toes and the content vanishes. One man explains copyright law... using Disney films.

Looking out for ya.

12 things every blogger should know.

Dressing for the ball....

I'm not a particularly skeptical online shopper. I am careful with my credit cards, and buy from reputable sources, but in general I'll shop for quite a few things on the internet. Caveats include shoes, expensive clothing, and items and I need to see/try on/touch/compare before hand.

But in the next few weeks I have a wedding to go to and no time to shop, and well, I haven't a thing to wear. I mean this sort of literally. The last time I bought nice dresses for anything (dresses that weren't bridesmaids dresses!), I was in high school and college and 15-30 lbs lighter than I am now.

So I decided to give this the old college try. I found the dress at Nordstrom's and I'm going to attempt to try it on this weekend (if that fails, I'll just order online and keep my fingers crossed):



And on Overstock, I bought a pair of these:



I broke the shoe rule because these are Nine West, which I wear quite a few of, and because Overstock's return policy is pretty good. That and they're on sale and I don't have to try 12 million pairs on first!

So stay tuned for the report!

Weemee'd.

Some friends at work today told me to go Wee myself and, well, I did. My new Weemee is in the righthand column with all the other junk - I really need to clean that side up. And yes I'm wearing my bunny slippers on the beach. That's just how I roll.

Get your own Weemee here!

New Gadget Alert

Well it may be old news, but it's new to me! I was anxiously awaiting yesterday's date, because my Verizon "new in two" plan rolled over yesterday which means I was eligible for a new free phone. I picked the ultrasleek Motorola RAZR in silver. Shiny!

But beyond my excitement for a new toy, I thought I'd alert you to a good cause. For those of you who end up with a new phone and a gazillion old phones and accessories, did you know that you can donate your phone to good causes? This site is a treasure trove of knowledge, from where you can drop off your old phones locally, to instructions on how to wipe all the information in your phone before you donate, to your choice of programs to support (from domestic abuse to after school programs).

So go out and get yourself a shiny new gadget and donate your old one! It's for a good cause...honest!

ETA: I ordered it yesterday and it arrived today! Woohoo!

Ancient Technological Mysteries

Great Pyramid was built inside out, Frenchman says

PARIS (Reuters) - A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.

Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu's tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.

But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.

"This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works," Houdin told Reuters after unveiling his hypothesis in a lavish ceremony using 3D computer simulation.

To prove his case, Houdin teamed up with a French company that builds 3D models for auto and airplane design, Dassault Systemes, which put 14 engineers for 2 years on the project.

Now, an international team is being assembled to probe the pyramid using radars and heat detecting cameras supplied by a French defense firm, as long as Egyptian authorities agree.

"This goes against both main existing theories. I've been teaching them myself for 20 years but deep down I know they're wrong," Egyptologist Bob Brier told Reuters at the unveiling.

"Houdin's vision is credible, but right now this is just a theory. Everybody thinks it has got to be taken seriously," said Brier, a senior research fellow at Long Island University.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities was not immediately available for comment. Dassault said Brier and other Egyptologists attending the ceremony were supporters of Houdin's theory but had no financial links to him or the firm.

For more...

Hi-tech office gear.

Swingline to Embed RFID Tags into Next-Gen Staplers

Your low-tech stapler is about to get a huge makeover if Swingline has its way. They're looking to embed RFID tags onto staples so that when an important (stapled) document goes missing, it'll be able to radio its location (most likely from underneath your desk) to a nearby tracking device.

Courtesy of Gizmodo.

When businesses do stupid things.

Like every American, sometimes I get disgruntled when I see big business do things that just don't seem right. "It's Un-American!" Well here's one for the recordbooks, graciously reported by Slashdot.

"The folks over at Techdirt just put up a great story today, with the RIAA claiming the cost of a CD has gone down significantly relative to the consumer price index. The RIAA 'Key Facts' page claims that based on the 1983 price of CDs, the 1996 price should have been $33.86. So naturally, you should feel like you're getting a bargain. Sounds an awful lot like the cable companies saying cable prices are really going down even though they're going up."

Now, I'm not a religious kind of person, but all I can say to the following Techdirt commentary is AMEN.

Now The RIAA Wants You To Believe That You Should Be Paying Much, Much More For CDs (from the nice-try dept)

By now, it's no secret that the folks running the RIAA have no clue about basic economics, but that's no excuse for some of their more ridiculous claims. The latest, as pointed out on Digg, is that the RIAA has an information page where they try to convince you that the cost of a CD should be much, much higher than it is, and therefore you're getting a great deal. Commentator Ben Woods gives a quick run down of why the RIAA is out of their minds. Basically, they're claiming that based on basic consumer price index information (i.e., inflation) the price of the CD should have risen over the past few decades, rather than stayed more or less the same. This is really weak economics, and highlights why the recording industry continues to shoot itself in the foot. It shows that they either don't understand (or would prefer to ignore) the differences between decreasing marginal returns (of rivalrous goods) and increasing marginal returns (of non-rivalrous goods). Anyone in the tech industry knows that overtime products get cheaper, not more expensive -- but the recording industry wants to pretend that music is non-rivalrous and therefore should increase in cost over time, rather than decrease -- even as the actual costs of production, distribution, discovery and promotion have all gotten cheaper over time? Sorry, but economics doesn't work that way -- and it's safe to say that the RIAA isn't fooling very many people. Even worse, the RIAA is saying all this while failing to recognize the competitive market they're facing -- where people have a lot more choices for their entertainment dollar, which should drive down the price of CDs, rather than the other way around. If the industry can't even understand these basic facts, is it any wonder they continue to destroy the core of their business?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Only in America would a business be so arrogant as to think it can rape, pillage and sue its customers and still end up ahead. Is it any wonder that ITunes, Wal-Mart music and the like have found millions of customers or that artists are now releasing their albums by themselves on the Internet?

Cool Tech Toys: The Anti Ipod

I happen to love my Ipod, but I also understand people's frustrations with ITunes and it's inherent DRM limitations. There are a million other mp3 players out there, but this one caught my eye. Inspired by the mental genius Rubik's Cube puzzle, this mp3 player won't take you ages to figure out. Found it here.