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!

Cas is currently

It’s very, very hard not to love a startup that not only goes to the trouble of linking to one of your things on the first post of their new blog, but then takes the time to track down your blog and personally comments on it, and as if that wasn’t enough, sends you an email telling you about how their new innovations would be good for you. Oh, and the CEO has created a Wish List page for me.

I repeat, how can you not love a company that does all that?

I do hold by what I said in that previous post about Kaboodle. The lack of search is a big issue for me when I bookmark the quantity of stuff I do and have the appalling memory that I have. I’m still not sold on it for the Sunday Roast, though yes, for pretty much the same reasons as I have niggles with del.icio.us (the interrupted nature of when people are pointed at it for one). Basically, I’d love a way to flag past posts without deleting them from the archive – you could see all things I’d ever Sunday Roasted if you were curious/wanted to find something you half remembered from a month before, but you would have an obvious visual clue as to what was new and what wasn’t.

With regard the Must See Movies, I’m leaning toward Kaboodle again. There’s more room for commenting than you get with del.icio.us, you can include the picture which is a great way of quickly identifying a film, and you can vote.

Which brings me to something that bugged me straight away last time I used it – when someone votes, you had no way of finding out about them. I’ve just noticed that they have instituted it so now, when someone votes, their name is now a link back to their own pages. A great way of fostering community.

The Wish List, on the other hand… Now the Wish List might just be moving on over to Kaboodle. (Though I can’t get the images to show that mach did when he created me a wish list ).

Score card? Well, big bonus points have to be given for the sheer stalkerish glee with which they are selling themselves. On top of that, the implementation is sweet, there is no doubt about it. (Though I am running out of room for all my bookmarklets, they’re getting so ubiquitous now). In Kaboodles favour is that you have much more room to comment on something than you get in, for example, del.icio.us. I do like having room to explain why I have this desire to see what is guaranteed to be an appalling film.

On the downside, the lack of search is really really bugging me. It would also be nice to see, maybe, “see who else kaboodling this” for example. And tagging. Yes, I know we’re tagging anything that sits still long enough these days, but it has its uses. As already mentioned, some flagging mechanism would be nice as well. RSS would, of course, be a must at some point down the line. Maybe someway of controlling how many items appear on one page?

(Just re-read the email, and it turns out that both search and RSS are being worked on as we speak – woot!).

I don’t know. I think I want Kaboodle to be something that it isn’t designed to be. I have my issues with del.icio.us, and I want Kaboodle to fill the gap. It isn’t really fair or realistic to compare the two – one is a social bookmarking site, the other is designed to compare things. Yes, there is overlap, but one shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for the other.

In conclusion? I’m greedy and unrealistic, but I want an uber-program that will solve everything for me. I want a social bookmark site, a comparison site, an RSS reader, email, something for images, some easy way to do my Sunday Roasts, search, (that isn’t Google-branded), etc, all in one place. And it will make me a nice cup of tea and give me a neck massage every few hours just to show me the love.

Is Kaboodle such an application? No. Is Kaboodle a great program? Yes. Will I keep using it? I’m not sure. I want it to succeed, I really do, but for me it’s just easier to stick with the fudged del.icio.us & blog & traditional bookmarking combo I use now than add a fourth to the mix. I want to be using fewer programs and solutions, not more. I’m a fundamentally lazy person. Something has to be demonstrably better before I will switch.

Whatever happens, you can be sure I will keep you informed. Why don’t you go and have a play with Kaboodle for yourself? The way something like this gets bigger and better is when a community of people start using it, tweaking it, and just generally having fun. Take a piece of software, make it your own.

Cas is currently

I think I’m going to have to start another another tag-collection entitled ‘gifts’, or “toys Cas really wouldn’t mind getting for Christmas/birthdays/just because she is special”.

What prompted this? Well, this did, a Disney branded USB hub:

(click image to see source site)

The Toy Story aliens really work for me. Far superior to the ugly-black-brick I’ve got hidden under a pile of CD-Rs on the corner of the desk. Who knows what the specs are, how good the build quality is, or even how much it costs? It’s cute and evoking a response out of all proportion to the fact it is an inanimate lump of greenish-plastic.

I know, it really is pathetic how excited I get over peripherals. Still, if anyone has some spare yen hanging around, and a yen (meaning urge, see what I did there?) to gift their blog-overlordess (I need a better title, I really do) a little something to show their appreciation? Well, I wouldn’t be so ungracious as to refuse.

Oh, and that del.icio.us tag? http://del.icio.us/brightmeadow/gifts

Cas is currently

Because I am devoted to you, my readers, and I enjoy trying to find new and exciting ways for you to interact with the blog, I have added a new way to subscribe to the site: email.

I am a fan of RSS, never more so than when I was in dial-up/illegal wi-fi hell during the move when I could get all my daily reading downloaded into Vienna then read offline at my leisure. But I am aware that many out there, for numerous reasons, don’t use RSS.

Well. trying to be helpful as ever, I’ve got me Feedblitz, so now if you want a non-RSS way of getting the blog delivered, just pop your email address into the box in the sidebar, press the button, et voila.

As always, it’s a work in progress. If it doesn’t work let me know. Conversely, if it does work and you love it, let me know as well.

The bit in the sidebar looks like this:

Cas is currently

I’ve held off on the whole SongBMG rootkit DRM debacle for several reasons, mainly because I have nothing new to add to the pot. I’ve held off on linking to lists of what CDs contain the DRM till Sony released a list of its own – one list I found two days ago contained music by artists never signed to SonyBMG in the first place!

But now, we *finally* have a list from Sony. BoinBoing has an excellent summary of the whole shebang found here

I might be going off on one in a few days about how appalling Sony’s response has been, so you have been warned, but right now I have bigger fish to fry in the shape of the last week of the thesis.

– From SonyBMG’s site:
CD’s Containing XCP Content Protection Technology – if you have the cd, check the site to see if it is the right number
1. A Static Lullaby – Faso Latido
2. Acceptance – Phantoms
3. Amerie – Touch
4. Art Blakey – Drum Suit
5. The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity?
6. Bette Midler – Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook
7. Billy Holiday – The Great American Songbook
8. Bob Brookmeyer – Bob Brookmeyer & Friends
9. Buddy Jewell – Times Like These
10. Burt Bacharach – At This Time
11. Celine Dion – On Ne Change Pas
12. Chayanne – Cautivo
13. Chris Botti – To Love Again
14. The Coral – The Invisible Invasion
15. Cyndi Lauper – The Body Acoustic
16. The Dead 60’s – The Dead 60’s
17. Deniece Williams – This Is Niecy
18. Dextor Gordon – Manhattan Symphonie
19. Dion – The Essential Dion
20. Earl Scruggs – I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends
21. Elkland – Golden
22. Emma Roberts – Unfabulous And More: Emma Roberts
23. Flatt & Scruggs – Foggy Mountain Jamboree
24. Frank Sinatra – The Great American Songbook
25. G3 – Live In Tokyo
26. George Jones – My Very Special Guests
27. Gerry Mulligan – Jeru
28. Horace Silver – Silver’s Blue
29. Jane Monheit – The Season
30. Jon Randall – Walking Among The Living
31. Life Of Agony – Broken Valley
32. Louis Armstrong – The Great American Songbook
33. Mary Mary – Mary Mary
34. Montgomery Gentry – Something To Be Proud Of: The Best of 1999-2005
35. Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
36. Neil Diamond – 12 Songs
37. Nivea – Complicated
38. Our Lady Peace – Healthy In Paranoid Times
39. Patty Loveless – Dreamin’ My Dreams
40. Pete Seeger – The Essential Pete Seeger
41. Ray Charles – Friendship
42. Rosanne Cash – Interiors
43. Rosanne Cash – King’s Record Shop
44. Rosanne Cash – Seven Year Ache
45. Shel Silverstein – The Best Of Shel Silverstein
46. Shelly Fairchild – Ride
47. Susie Suh – Susie Suh
48. Switchfoot – Nothing Is Sound
49. Teena Marie – Robbery
50. Trey Anastacio – Shine
51. Van Zant – Get Right With The Man
52. Vivian Green – Vivian

Cas is currently

If you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?

No, this is not a complete non sequiter, at least it isn’t one if you had been living my life lately. As it is safe to assume you haven’t been living my life lately, I think I should fill you in on a few details before we progress further with this post.

The end of my course is drawing very firmly to a close and, with it, the need to find a proper (grown up) job is getting ever more pressing. As well as this, lately I have been on something of a down-spiral. No, this isn’t a call for “oh, poor you, feel better soon” comments (though, you know, those have their uses too ). It’s a neurochemical glitch, I’ve been here before, I know full well what is happening, I am being proactive before things have the chance to get truly serious, and I am surrounded by loving people to take care of me.

Part of the whole proactive thing is getting my arse back into some counseling.

In the last couple of years of (blissfully counseling free) happiness I had forgotten how damn annoying counsellors can be. I’m not sure which bugs me more: the quiet murmuring voices; the bad chunky faux-ethnic jewelry; the chintz cushions; the waiting for who will break the silence first; or their tendency to fixate on one tiny detail.

She is determined that all my troubles stem from being unsure what I want to do with my life and, she is the professional, so perhaps she is right. It is just that she had decided that this was the issue after talking to me for less that five minutes. Seriously – sat down; told her my name; that I was here because I felt myself heading back to depression, which is a place I so don’t want to go again; and in response to a question told her I wasn’t sure what I was doing when I finish the thesis (because I’m not), and the next 40 minutes were all about potential career paths, and what it was that I enjoyed doing…

Which brings me to my favourite part of today’s session –
“If you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?”

Now, I am a bad person, and take a mild glee in making the woman work for a living (I’m not going to make it easy for her to get inside my mind, ohhhhhhh no), but I don’t think it was just perverseness that made me pull up short and go “Huh?” when she asked me that.

Come on – if I had one week left to live I would be out living it large, having fun, eating grossly unhealthy amounts of chocolate, not starting a career. Would you?

Once she realised that I was struggling hard not to laugh in her face, she rephrased the question (I felt mildly sorry for her at this point, but something about the woman just grates on me. She’s too fluffy I think).
“What is one thing you enjoy doing above all others and would want to keep on doing, regardless?”

That’s more like it. I’m starting to see why she got her qualifications now.

My answer?
After a few moments deliberation (I didn’t want to blurt out “taxidermy” or something by mistake just for the shits and giggles), I came up with writing and playing around with computers. Simple and has the added benefit of being the truth. That’s not all I enjoy, but that, and research, are the main things that float my boat. ^*1*

So it is safe to say that potential jobs are not all we talked about, and for all my glibness I will be going back, because I know from experience that, (the fact they make me want to strangle them aside), counselors do as a rule know what they are doing and do help. I was just curious – if you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?

And can anyone think of a career for me where I could play around with computers and writing, and get paid an obscene amount of money for it?

Cas is currently

Why do we do it to ourselves?

Day after day we spend time that we really should spend on other activities, crafting witty and clever posts, hitting ‘publish’, sitting back, and waiting for comments, adoration, and respect that rarely (if ever) comes.

I’ve talked about this before, as have many many other people, and nothing much has changed since I wrote that. The ‘why do you blog’ meme might just be one of the most pervasive on the Web.

So why do I mention it again? I guess I’m just in a place in my head right now where I am overanalyzing everything I do.

I was never picked first for the sports teams at school. I was never in the ‘cool group’, nor was I even worthy of being a hanger-on to the fringes of the ‘cool group’. I was, and still am, quite firmly a geek. Yes, I was a band-geek, a science-geek, a computer-geek. You name an un-cool group, I belonged to it. I like to think I excelled at making myself as unpopular as possible: I was captain of the archery team at both school and university; I was in first oboe in one band, first sax in another, and band-leader in a third; I was on the school debate team; and I did all three sciences at college. Oh, and let’s not forget I am doing a computing post-grad.

I’ve never been one of those people with five hundred ‘great friends’ – I am happier, it must be told, with just four or five people who I know I can trust and who love me despite of my oddness. Once people get to know me, it seems they think I am the best thing since bread came sliced ^*1*, but very few people take the trouble.

So what little kink in my system makes me want tens or hundreds of readers of my blog? Why do I get this little tingle of anticipation every-time I check my visitor stats, or the comments feed, hoping against hope that something happened over night and suddenly I am a ‘success’? I know it’s not going to happen. I’m just not the sort of girl who gets invited to the ball. Even Technorati seems to think my tags and posts aren’t worthy. And why, oh why did I just succumb to vanity and submit Bright Meadow to the network I’ve wanted to join since I discovered it?

*shakes head in despair*

I really only have myself to blame.