Happy birthday viciousladybug!

Anybody have a good suggestion for social feed broadcasting tools? I've got most of my feeds (LJ, Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress blog, etc.) aggregated into Netvibes, which is nice, but having a way to post to them at the same time (with the option to only post to a subset) would be awesome. Bonus points if it's open-source and you don't need to sign up for yet another account.

There's HelloTxt, but I was wondering if there are any other options people like out there.

I'm trying to ramp up my online (and offline) social interactions to pre-thesis levels. We'll see how this goes.

Happy birthday drysil!

I just heard a rumor that Brighter Minds, the indie publisher behind World of Goo, filed for bankruptcy. If you haven't played the game, check it out. It's available for the Wii on WiiWare and also for the PC.

The gameplay and concept is original and addicting, and the art is this great mix of Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton.

No, it isn't

Obama's stimulus plan passed the house, without a single Republican voting yes.

Beautiful.

Chrysler trolls America in the WSJ, America takes the bait.

They did it for the lulz.

I won't bore anyone with a big long post about my year and crap. A quick summary:

thesis FAIL
job WIN

So yeah, no more thesis, but I'm probably heading to Seattle in June.

Now on to the interesting stuff. I've put it below in a cut because there are some screenshots.


( Read more... )

Biden can get a dog too

Obama's first act as President: Puppies for all!

Seriously, feels like Christmas. Is that wrong? I realize I'm subconsciously supporting the whole messiah meme. Still, feels good.

So, my mom is off the respirator and awake from the coma. They had to put her under a respirator because of a nasty case of pneumonia. Apparently, she's yelling at grandma about something from before the incident, so I guess things are back to normal.

A few months ago I discovered HDR photography and today I discovered Tilt-shift. The actual photos are real, they've just been enhanced with filters.

( pics or stfu )

via the slog

Related to this is the Downfall (Der Untergang) remix meme

The National Security Agency. Who here really knew about the NSA before this latest bruhaha over FISA? Let me tell you a bit about the NSA.

Over 30 years ago in 1975, before I was even born, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Frank Church, referring to the NSA's capabilities, said:

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

( no place to hide )

This past weekend I went w/ a bunch of the other interns to Mt. Rainier.

( pics )

So, I picked up a refurbished xbox 360, even though I'd heard it was plagued with hardware issues. The infamous Red Ring of Death.

And of course it dies a week later. Sigh. I call up Microsoft XBox support, where I am greeted by some automated system. Once I eventually reach a human, Annie with the Indian accent introduces herself. We go through all the troubleshooting steps for the hundredth time, and finally she OKs a repair order. But then the kicker. She can't put in the repair order because their support system is down. Can I please call again later? Sigh. So today I finally get them to send out a box for shipment.

I completely understand why Microsoft rushed the hardware. They want to capture the software development market for games. Get people using DirectX/XNA, and lock them into a single platform, namely the Microsoft platform. Developing for multiple systems is a pain, and Microsoft's development software is usually brilliantly easy to use. And the more people who develop games for windows/xbox, the larger the market and the more incentive there is for future developers to release games for it.

But they're taking a major hit on their reputation with the hardware issues. The thing is, I don't know if it matters in the long run.

Ahh, the city. I'd forgotten how much I miss it. Ok, not really, I knew all along how much I missed it. But I HAD forgotten certain aspects that you don't really notice until you're gone.

Take for example the spit on the sidewalks. Living in Ann Arbor, you don't see a lot of people spitting on the sidewalk, but it's almost impossible to avoid in the city. Every street thug or wannabe seems to have this part of their brain that compels them to shoot high-velocity phlegm balls, usually as people walk past. There's some hidden social pecking-order thing going on here, in this distribution of spit. Looking down at the concrete, you see blobs of yellow, brown and green scattered around. It creates a kind of urban mucous maze that must be navigated with skill and precision, lest you step on a gob.

Part of me thinks this would make a great art exhibit. Macro photographs of phlegm, enlarged and mounted in some trendy art gallery in pioneer square. Black suited intelligentsia standing around discussing how, like the city itself, each gob is filled with life, millions of organisms trying to make it. It's all bullshit of course, but if I can get some yuppies to give me money for pictures of spit, so be it.

( more bullshit )

Very cool mashup of flickr and Google Maps:

flickrvision

Usually I feel like punching Web 2.0 in the balls (or whatever genitalia it has) whenever I hear the term mashup. But this is a cool app.