Cas is currently…

I have been trying to think of something to blog about today, and I have zip, nada, nothing. My folder of shame is actually empty. I had a back up plan of writing something based on the ‘word of the day’ i get each day. But todays word was ‘maelstrom’ :

Maelstrom: a large, powerful whirlpool; also, a violent, disordered, or turbulent state of affairs.

Not exactly inspiring me – to be truthful the only thing that springs to mind is talking about depression and the like, and I don’t think any of us want that.

So, I shall stop talking and just leave you with a picture of a fluffy penguin, because (whilst they are evil) they always make me smile.

Cas is currently…

WARNING: What follows is a passive-aggressive grump. I have no excuse, other than I am, well, in a grumpy mood today.

We all have one in our address books – that one person who doggedly believes every piece of spam they get in their inbox. That one person who continually passes on the “WARNING! Email this to ten people or you will die a horrible and painful death!” emails. I have one such person. She used to be one of my closest friends in college, but I don’t talk to her much any more. This is for a variety of reasons, but no small part is that she doesn’t have a current email address for me.

What?! I hear you cry? This girl is your friend, but you haven’t given her your new email address? (To be honest, not so new any more). Why does she still languish under the impression that your hotmail addy is the address you check constantly?

She is incapable of sending email that ISN’T spam, that’s why. She is the forwarding queen. She is the one person who spammers and phishers go to bed at night praying for.

I had thought that as she approached her mid-twenties, she would start to develop some common sense, or at least a mild level of skepticism. Alas, that is not to be.

The pick of this weeks spam email from her is something pretending to be from hotmail, the text of which goes as follows (all spelling EXACTLY as appeared in the message. Can you spot their six mistakes?):

Dear Hotmail User,
We understand that you have previously recieved many messages that have stated the closing of accounts not being used within our servers. This message, however, is your final warning. Within this message is encoded a small program that will located and debug your account when sent to fifteen other Hotmail users. If you do not send this message to fifteen Hotmail users within 24 hours of recieving the message, your account will be PERMANETLY SHUT-DOWN. When and if you send this, we hereby grant that you will no longer recieve such messages as this one.
We realize that this process is becoming an annoyance, however, and this is the final message you will recieve from the Hotmail Announcement staff. Thank you for your time and cooperation.
Sincerely,
Calvin W. Kreantz
MSN Accounts Coordinator

Now, not only does the text of this scream “SPAM, PHISHING, SPAM!”, but it was delivered as gif.

Yup. Poor Brunhilda.

I’d email her back, except my actual valid communication would just get drowned out by all the “FW:FW:FW:FW:TRUE FRIENDS” and “URGETN! IMPORTANT INFORMATION WITHIN!” in her inbox. Perhaps if I put “VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM HOTMAIL STAFF” in the subject header she will read it?

Cas is currently…

I was wondering what to talk about in this mornings blog post, then this post from Improbulus popped up via RSS, and I thought why not? So I plugged Bright Meadow’s URL into the Marketleap Link Popularity Check tool et voila, 458 links found.

Ok, so that only classes me as a “limited presence” but phooey to that.

Going into the results in more depth (oh, come on, you’d do the same!) I found two links I wasn’t expecting – one from a blog post back in 2002 thanking my site for emailing him some links (needless to say, not me, but proof that blogspot recycles domains), and the other from CNET.

I had been wondering why a lot of people had been coming to view my little grump about Google Print, and this would probably explain it. In CNETs piece “Reaction mixed on Google Print beta, mine is the third “blog community response”.

Now, of course, this is a huge ego boost. A fair few people out there commented on Google Print, yet what I had to say was one of the few responses chosen. I wasn’t misquoted or even quoted out of context. The journalist took a few moments at least to scan the article and pull out (one of) the more pertinent paragraphs. Still, I am a little on edge because it has illustrated a point I made a while ago – referencing something someone said without contacting them. I had no idea I’d been linked to by CNET, and would probably still be in the dark if I hadn’t done a quick vanity search this morning. It’s a common enough reporting practice in blog-land, one I am all too guilty of myself, but when you’re on the receiving end it does make you stop for a moment and think.

Still, on the whole I am just a teeny bit smug. You write the words, then let them go off on their own into the big wide Internet, and it’s a pleasure to get proof that a few are doing rather well for themselves.

Now, if you will excuse me, my ego is now nicely stroked, and I really should be trying to hammer out an introduction and conclusion for the TFH (thesis from hell). I am not sure how well this is going to go, because I had a mammoth 15 minute session with the counsellor this morning (ten minutes of which were spent in silence), which has left me in tears of anger and frustration, shaking from head to foot with the desire to strangle the woman, and having changed counsellors. Still these things are sent to try us, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and all that.

When to tell the godhead that this thesis has actually broken me?

Cas is currently…

I know I’ve already blogged today, but I am having a ten minute tea break to give the buzzing in my right arm time to settle down (not quite got the desk here at Meadow Towers at optimal anti-RSI configuration), and I found the following article:
Is Sex Necessary? on Forbes.com

I will leave you pondering the delivery mechanism of the mineral that strengthens teeth – never heard it compared to squeezing a tube of toothpaste before…
And challenge all you men out there not to wince just a teeny bit when you reach the end of the article.

Cas is currently…

Spooky is a blog minion par excellence. Not only does he animate some very cute penguins, he also finds some of the funniest-slash-most surreal sites imaginable.

Just in case you missed his comment on this past week’s sunday roast, here is the site:

Lejo. You can choose to see the site in a variety of languages (warning, english is not the default), and there are some supreme videos to be seen. So beautifully stripped back and elegantly simple, yet so very very effective. Here’s a taster – DJ.

Cas is currently…

Last Saturday (the 19th), the Cute Canadian and myself took ourselves off up to London for the day. The trip was originally planned to celebrate my freedom from that hell known as “thesis”, and three months managing not to kill each other. Due to my total inadequacy and inability to finish what I bloody well started over six months ago now (ARG!), we came to a mutual agreement that, ok it wasn’t time to celebrate yet, but I still needed a day off before my head exploded.

We took in the British Library, the British Museum, the London Eye, and Polar Express in 3D at the IMAX. All in 9 hours. Oh, and we found time for some lovely food too at Azzurro, though by the time we ate I was so tired I think a Big Mac would have tasted good to me.

We had a wonderful time and, whilst it probably served the opposite purpose of de-stressing me because now I am even more behind and panicked, I wouldn’t have not gone. We even rode the tube an extra stop so I could get off at Mornington Crescent and get my picture take by a sign. I have no excuse other than that I grew up listening to Radio 4 and “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue“. (If you are still baffled, and you will be, read this article, then give up and just listen to a show. Trust me, you will laugh if you have one iota of humour in your body).

I have uploaded some of the better pictures to Flickr, and the set can be found here. You can also find them under the tag londontrip2005.

My favourite of all of them, though I can’t put into words why, is this one:

(Click to see full set and to comment etc).

If you are ever in London, I really would recommend a trip on the Eye. I’ve been twice now and loved it both times. Do book online before hand, because it will cut a good 30 minutes off your queueing time, and you can specify (roughly) what flight you would like. One word of warning though, even if you book in advance you will be standing in a queue to board for about 30 minutes. The line moves quickly, and there’s plenty to see if you like people watching, but you will be standing. If you have any elderly/young/infirm in your party, I would suggest paying that little extra and getting a fast-track ticket, or investing in a shooting stick. The views are worth it though, and if you can time it for dusk, do so – beautiful.

Cas is currently

Things have, if anything, go even more insanely hectic this week. An actual hand-in date is 90% confirmed for Monday/Tuesday (ie tomorrow or the day after). As a result, forgive me if I go gibber quietly in the corner whilst you have fun digesting the Sunday Roast (and don’t forget the leftovers).

How to back up your blog. I’m in the midst of transfering servers and blogging platform, and it suddenly dawned on me today the sheer amount of data I stand to loose if it all goes wrong. Whilst the majority of my posts can go hang for all I care, I can think of at least five I really wouldn’t want to loose. Then along comes this timely post…

Frog Design Mind: Accessibility. Once again a blog that does in one post what I spend an entire thesis-chapter on. Ah well. I keep having to explain to people why accessibility isn’t just for disabled people. Now, I can just point them in the direction of this post and be done with them. Hurrah!

Sony BRAVIA bouncing balls advert. I finally saw this in the cinema last weekend and was, I admit it, impressed. Both the CC and Moose are determined that it is CGI. It isn’t. Really, really it isn’t. UPDATE: when seen on an IMAX screen, even more impressive.

10 Key Ingredients of a Great Blog. I’m not sure I want to know how people think I compare to these ingredients… Still, they are as good a way as any other to try and evaluate if a new blog is any good.

FlipSkipper.com I’m in two minds about this one. Part of me thinks that it could work really well, but a large chunk of me is worried about not having control over the posts that get automatically added to my blog. I mean, just because *I* tag something “design” doesn’t mean everyone else uses that tag in the same way (which is one of the big downsides to tagging anyway). As I said, I’m on the fence. I’ve flagged this one up for a personal “go play when not tearing hear out over polishing chapters”, so expect feedback soonish.

Plushie Magical Trevor. Oh. My. God. I sooo want one! All together now “everyone loves magical trevor…”

Boing Boing: Gang drugs victims with a kiss. Even if this is a hoax, it’s so very funny, if only because it happened in Firefly! (the ‘Our Mrs Reynolds’ ep if you are curious)

Literary classics become txt msgs. NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! This is (to me) even worse than the bible-in-sms-form I mentioned a few weeks back. *breaks down into tears of inconsolable misery and frustration* I love Pride and Prejudice and have read it through more times than I care to admit, and I wouldn’t have got the plot from their sms-summary. *wails*

My brain on extisp.icio.us. This is a very groovy program that takes your del.icio.us tags and creates a visualization – items with more links are larger. I’m not entirely sure how the positioning works, but I suspect that tags that often appear together on an item are located closer together. Pretty amazing. Such a simple idea, so elegantly implemented, and a rather accurate mapping of my cognitive space. Not surprisingly, sundayroast is HUGE in the image. (Click on the link to see the real-time version, which allows you to click on any of the tags in the image and go directly to my list of links in that category).

safari bookmark exporter. One thing that has kept me from making firefox my default browser is the sheer weight of bookmarks I would have to wrest from Safari’s grip. I found this wonderful program today, and voila! 30 seconds, and I had all my bookmarks in FF, with the same folder structure, the same bookmarklets, everything. Sweet.

More HD-DVD/Blu-ray madness. It’s been so long now, I honestly can’t remember what the differences between these two are. I do have a vague feeling that I was coming down on the side of Blu-ray, but that might just be because the name is groovy. Oh, and they’re the square ones, right? Either way, I wish they would get their arses in gear and sort it out. I’m getting real old waiting over here. *grump*

blogher: True or false: Do “women warm the podcast bench”? I’m not a podcaster and I doubt I ever will be, but this did get me all riled up. There’s this one quote in the linked article “cool mediums tend to attract guys at first”… Grrr. Anyway, read it all for yourself, make up your own minds, then be nice to any female tech people you might run into, because we are starting to get a bit miffed at being overlooked, and we don’t let you stare at our breasts when we are mad. You have been warned

Feel the Bra*climbs up off the floor where she was laughing so much* *wipes a tear from her eye* I think every woman out there is just sniggering at this point, and most men should be taking notes. Oh, and no, I won’t be sharing any of my own bra stories today. Last time didn’t end too good. Way to spoil everyone’s fun, anonymous

Laser-etched designs on your powerbook. Oh my good god, this looks divine. Can you imagine what a penguin would look like? *sobs with jealousy*

drawgirl. Oh, I wish, I wish I had this sort of talent.

Microsoft Technology Preview – flickr set. Do take the time and view this set of 52 pictures, and read the comments. The degree of vitrolic hatred voiced in some of the comments shouldn’t have surprised me (this is Microsoft after all, we’ve all done it), but it did. There’s a couple of slides in there that should be labeled “how not to do a powerpoint presentation”. Confusion much!