Housekeeping
by Mark on Dec.19, 2009, under life story, technology
After upgrading the blog to WP 2.9, I decided to do a little virtual housekeeping. For cleaning up post formatting (and some terrible writing), I am done with posts through May 2003. That leaves me with just under 8,990 posts to finish cleaning up.
I have also cleaned up my tags and categories a bit. I have rethought how I will use categories. At one point, I had completely dropped them (with the exception of the general category) in favor of using tags. I think I am not going back to having a few top-level categories, and then I will use tags to add some more info to the metadata for each post. In cleaning up the tags, I have ensured that any tags consisting of multiple words will include spaces between those words; I am no longer going to use camelCase.
For now, I’ve got to put the housekeeping aside because I was supposed to go shopping for presents while Chris was out of the house. With that, I am leaving for Target.
If you’ve got a WordPress blog, you should upgrade to 2.9. And if you’re like me, and you’ve had a blog running for a while, you may want to consider doing a little housekeeping.
Aside: I was sidetracked for about an hour after editing my early post on West Wing. I started reading about the line of succession.
5,998 tweets and counting
by Mark on Dec.14, 2009, under general
I’m approaching 6,000 tweets on my main Twitter account. I will probably blow it, like I did for my 5,000th tweet, and post some trite nonsense. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the next 24 hours.
Update: And so it has happened at 11:15 CST on December 15, 2009:
"If you received an F, this means that … your final case writeup was abysmal." – my Strategic Marketing Professor. #6000tweets
Sand painting
by Mark on Dec.10, 2009, under general
I’m supposed to be working on my take home final for my Strategic Marketing class right now. Of course, I have allowed myself to be distracted from that task, but I think this one is worth my attention.
My mother-in-law forwarded an e-mail to me about a Ukrainian sand painter named Kseniya Simonova. Simonova won the 2009 Ukraine’s Got Talent with her unique interpretation of the Great Patriotic War (as the Russian portion of WWII is known there). She painted scenes with sand on a light table, accompanied by various pieces of music (including Apocalyptica’s Nothing Else Matters).
Have a look at this video, followed by the body of the e-mail I received (after the jump):
(continue reading…)Multiple DVD editions
by Mark on Dec.07, 2009, under general
What the hell is with all of the multiple DVD editions of movies these days? Once upon a time, a single edition of a DVD was available that contained the movie (both widescreen/letterbox and pan and scan versions) and the special features, like commentaries, deleted scenes and bloopers. Then along came things like special editions with fancy packaging (which may or may not have contained the exact same discs as the "not so special" edition) and collector editions with even more fancy packaging (again, it might have been the same discs, but maybe something extra).
OK, fine, so there was something more that people who really loved the movie could spend a few extra bucks to get. I understand that – the perceived extra value is the feeling of belonging to some sort of exclusive club.
Then came the director’s cut and the slew of unrated editions. While the director’s cut was made to show off the director’s intended vision, without editors and censors tainting their "masterpiece," the unrated editions were created, I’m sure, just to lure men into thinking they’d see boobs (or more – think Eyes Wide Shut). OK, so these would include some footage that was not available in the theatrical release (assuming there was a theatrical release) or on the standard/special/collector edition DVDs. OK, I sort of get that, too.
I just saw an ad for Amazon with not one, not two, but three different editions of Star Trek
And somewhere along the way, the widescreen and pan and scan versions of the DVDs got separated from one another. Let me tell you, there is nothing more annoying than picking up the wrong version (e.g. pan and scan) of a movie and playing it for the first time. This is especially true for those pan and scan movies that still use widescreen for the opening scenes, because you don’t know how badly you’ve screwed up until you’re up to ten or so minutes into the movie. Then you have two options: take the disc out and hope you can make the exchange for the proper version, or sit there for the remainder of the movie terribly annoyed every time you see the scene scan across to fit everything in the 4:3 frame.
Anyway, I am just annoyed. Not that I buy a lot of DVDs any more (thank you, Netflix), but when I do, it’s annoying that I can’t just drop into a store and quickly pickup a DVD. I feel like I have to waste time comparison shopping when all I want to know is which edition has all of the things I want, minus Blu-Ray (upscaling seems to do just fine, thank you – or at least that’s how I’m supposed to feel right now). And let me just mention gifts – there are a few occasions where I have received the wrong version or edition of a DVD on my wish list. I know, #firstworldproblem.
OK, my rant is over.
A mashup idea
by Mark on Nov.16, 2009, under general
OK, I admit it. I was distracting myself tonight from reading my Gillette Fusion case for Marketing by browsing through some Facebook photos. I was just clicking through a photo album when BAM! an ugmo popped up (no, it wasn’t mine, smart ass). After the initial sting went away, an idea hit me.
One of the latest features in Picasa is the ability to tag people in your photo library by using facial recognition. With just a few training photos, I have been told that Picasa can quickly identify someone in a whole library of images. Kyle tells me that Picasa was even able to tag Abraham Lincoln in a few photos from DC.
"So what?", you ask. Sure, facial recognition isn’t really anything new, but what if it could be used to tag ugmos in a web photo album? You tag a few faces that were hit with the ugly stick, and then let the facial recognition software take care of finding the rest. Instead of putting a frame around the ugmos’ faces, a blue dot is placed over the face to obscure it from view. Instead of appearing when you hover over the name or face of the tagged person, the blue dot will always be present, unless you hover over the dot for an extended period of time, say 5 seconds. At that point, the face will be revealed, and you will only have yourself to blame for seeing it.
I know, this is crude and shallow of me to even think of this, but you know you’ve accidentally viewed a photo on Flickr, Facebook or MySpace that you wish you hadn’t opened because of one super ugmo. If someone creates this mashup, once you come across an ugmo for the first time, just tag it. You may have to tag it once or twice more, but then the facial recognition should take over and save your retinas from that awful exposure in the future.
New theme
by Mark on Oct.22, 2009, under general
ZOMG! New theme!
Yes, I haven’t posted much of anything in a long time. Don’t think that this is going to change that. I decided to change my theme for no reason in particular. It’s called pixel, and I found it at Wordpress.org’s theme page.
I promise to try blogging again in the near future, but grad school is still time consuming. That’ll be done in June, and then I’ll be back to blogging again (I hope).
Summer happenings
by Mark on Aug.16, 2009, under general
Or what I did on my summer vacation. So, it’s been a while since I last posted anything of meaning here. The summer has been pretty good so far. I have enjoyed having my Saturdays to myself, free from the troubles obligations of grad school. I’ve also enjoyed many Sundays watching NASCAR and IndyCar races regularly for the first time ever.
Speaking of TV, let me start by saying that I have now picked up a few series over the past two months. The biggest series I’ve been watching all summer is NCIS. With USA airing 3 reruns back-to-back-to-back every weekday, I started watching the show with Chris when I would get home from work. We’ve completed the first season thanks to Netflix. I’ve even gone so far as to create episode lists in Evernote to check off episodes as I’ve watched them. I have also gotten hooked on Burn Notice, Big Love and True Blood. I don’t know that I will get very far into these shows before I kiss my free time goodbye, but they certainly are entertaining me until then.
At the end of June, Chris and I flew out to DC for NECC 2009, an educational technology conference. While I had my trip paid for by work, we had to pay for Chris to attend the conference out of our pocket. The conference was pretty good, and we got to see a little more of DC once again. If you’re in DC, I would recommend Matchbox – not for their mediocre pizza, but for their delicious mini burgers. While we were out there, we also saw the Independence Day fireworks on the National Mall. I was disappointed, especially when compared to the Taste of Chicago fireworks. Hell, I think even the Septemberfest fireworks were better, even with the historic surroundings of DC. You can check out my Flickr photo set to see what I mean.
Shortly after returning from DC, we spent a weekend downtown at the Omni Hotel for our anniversary. Over the past few years I have stayed at all sorts of hotels, and I was very impressed with the Omni Chicago. For starters, @OmniHotels was quick to welcome us after I tweeted that we were heading to the hotel for the weekend. When we were at dinner the first night, Jennifer Avellana, the Loyalty Ambassador, surprised us with a bottle of champagne and a slice of chocolate cake for our anniversary.
The day of our anniversary, we had a couples massage at Asha Salon Spa at the James Hotel. It was very relaxing, getting us ready for our anniversary dinner. That night, we went to dinner at Smith & Wollensky, with a great view of the Chicago River. Since it was our anniversary, we went all out, of course. We split a bottle of wine recommended by the somelier. The wine was a perfect pairing with Chris’s rib eye and with my fillet mignon and lobster. We passed on dessert because we had stuffed ourselves. Later that night, while watching a movie, we ordered ice cream from room service. The lavishness of the day brought us back five years to our honeymoon cruise.
As summer is starting to wind down, I am playing catch up with several things I want to accomplish before the fall. For example, I am still slowly cleaning my office, a painstaking task that is three years old. I am also prepping my computers for OS upgrades. Outside of my office, I am trying to be social, helping out with Normal Moments publicity (want to buy a raffle ticket for The Little Things in Life walk?), and just enjoying what’s left of my free time. The other day I spent most of the day downtown with Herschell and Liana, seeing the sights, taking some photographs (which I promise will be posted soon). I’m hoping I will have some more days like that before classes start up, because I’m sure that I will once again have zero free time.
Anyway, my rambles have gone on long enough. After I finish assisting Chris with an Access project for RtI, I’m heading to bed.
Interesting items- Sheriff's police bust prostitution ring in northwest suburbs
- Xbox Live 12-Month Gold Subscription Card $30
- Run Your Own Free Proxy Through the Google App Engine [Proxy]
- Woman Crashes Car While Shaving Vag
- Crash closes major Schaumburg intersection
- A Bizarre Story: Newegg, Fake Core i7 Processors and a Cease & Desist Order [Intel]
- will the last one at SF Gate / San Francisco Chronicle please turn out the lights? | violet blue ® :: open source sex
Recent Comments