Geekiness

There are 88 posts filed in Geekiness (this is page 3 of 9).

Piling It On

When I started working from home in March, Kris and I developed a system to encourage me to get some household chores done during the day. We’ve placed a dry-erase board at the top of the landing, and every day Kris writes down her top priorities for me. Most of the time, I this works well. (I don’t always get the chore(s) done, but I do try.)

I had to laugh at this weekend’s chores, however:

  • Pile on bench
  • Kitchen table pile
  • Guest room piles

And this doesn’t even include one of the tasks I have for myself: “office piles”.

Yes, I’m a piler. Anything I don’t get processed gets stacked. Unfortunately, right now I have more things in piles than I ever have in my life. I count eight distinct piles of Stuff I have to process.

If I were efficient at processing piles, this might not be a problem. And if I weren’t so busy right now, that’d also make things easier. But as it is, I feel like I have piles of things to do.

The Cat Who Was Raised by a Crow

Last fall at Animal Intelligence, I shared a two-minute video of a cat who was raised by a crow. A reader recently pointed me to a longer video with a more complete story on this unlikely friendship:

There is nothing I like more than stories of interspecies friendship. I love the idea that different kinds of animals can communicate and empathize with one another. Now if only our cats would be nice to the blue jays…

Watchmen Trailer

I’ve been sorely disappointed by a lot of comic book movies. That’s a tough thing for a life-long comics geek like me. There’s a bare handful of comic films I like: Spiderman 2, Iron Man, Batman Begins. (And I hear The Dark Knight, the new Batman film, is pretty good.)

When I first heard that Watchmen was being adapted into a film, I was nonplused. How could anyone possibly do it justice. This is one of the best comic book series of all time (from one of the greatest comic book writers). Early production stills didn’t do anything to bolster my enthusiasm.

But this? This is the trailer. And by god, they might actually pull it off:

At the very least, this trailer has ruined my plans for the afternoon. Forget writing. I’m sitting down to read the graphic novel.

Note: I’ve replaced the pulled version with a new one. It works!

Yoga Race

Kris is sad.

Our Nintendo Wii died recently, so we’ve had to ship it back for repair ($82.50). She’d become addicted to Wii Fit, particularly the yoga, but for the past week or so, she’s had to improvise.

Meanwhile, my doctor pronounced me “as flexible as a two-by-four”. “You might want to try some yoga,” he told me. Yes, I might. But not on the Wii.

Wii Fit is okay, but its yoga isn’t really yoga. I took a yoga class in college and loved it. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I spread out my brightly colored beach towel to salute the sun and lie like a corpse. You can’t really do that with the Wii.

I considered taking a class at a local gym, but they’re all rather expensive. Instead, I looked online and discovered the perfect DVD: Yoga for Inflexible People ($7.99). For Kris, I ordered Yoga for Beginners ($9.99). Since our DVD player is connected to the television upstairs and not to the Wii TV in the den, I ordered a cheap-ass DVD player ($34.99).

My hope is that Kris and I can each benefit from these yoga videos, continuing to improve our fitness. $52 seems like an acceptable price to pay for this.

But all of the above is just set-up. What this post is really about is how much fun I’m having while tracking the packages. I shipped the Wii back last Wednesday. It’s now in Vernon, California, on its way to who-knows-where? (I didn’t keep the shipping info — only the tracking number.) Once it reaches Nintendo, I’ll apparently be able to track it through the repair process.

Meanwhile, I’m also tracking the shipments from Amazon. The DVDs will arrive on Wednesday, but the DVD player itself is being shipped by a third party in Tempe, Arizona. It’s not scheduled to arrive until Thursday.

Now it’s like yoga contest. Which will reach our doorstep first: the Nintendo Wii or the DVD player? Once or twice a day, I reload the shipping pages just to see if there’s progress.

My money’s on the DVD player. The Wii isn’t even to the repair center yet! Then it’s got to be fixed and re-shipped. The DVD player just has to make its way safely up I-5.

If everything goes as planned, Kris will be able to follow a yoga program on Friday.

A Quick Browser Hack: Taking Control of All Those Open Tabs

I just had a moment of revelation. I know this is probably no big deal to many of you, and that you’ve probably been doing this all along, but it’s new to me.

I generally have about fifty open browser tabs. It’s a mess. These tabs are spread over six or seven browser windows. There’s no rhyme or reason to how things are organized. It’s all very stream-of-consciousness.

Just now, however, as I was prepping a piece for Get Rich Slowly about Valentine’s Day, it occurred to me that it would make sense to have all of my tabs related to this subject in the same window so that I didn’t have to go hunting for this article or that whenever I needed it.

Like I said: DUH!

So I spent ten minutes dragging my tabs around, making things orderly. As a result, I have more open windows than before, but each one is devoted to a specific topic or activity. It makes so much more sense. Now if only I could label a window. I could call one “Valentine’s research” and another “Animal Intelligence links”, etc.

Maybe nobody has thought of this before. Maybe I’m a genius!

Nah…

A Bedtime Story

“You need to put up something different at foldedspace,” Kris told me tonight when I went upstairs to tuck her in. “It’s been a week since your car trouble. You sound all suicidal and stuff.”

“Hm,” I said. “You’re right. I just haven’t had time. And I’m not suicidal.”

“I know,” she said. “But it sounds like it.”

“I’ll go do that now,” I said, getting up to leave.

“No,” she said. “Tell me a story.”

I lay down and began: “Once upon a time, on a planet far far away, there lived a race of people devoted to pure intelligence. These people were believed to think the most sublime thoughts in the galaxy. But there was one problem: they were so devoted to intellect that they neglected their physical nature. They evolved into ugliness. In fact, they were so ugly, that it was said any human who set eyes upon a Medusan — they were called Medusans — would go insane.”

“Is this Star Trek?” asked Kris.

“One day, a spaceship called upon the Medusan planet to pick up its ambassador and his companion, a human woman who had not gone insane from looking at these ugly people. Why hadn’t she gone insane? She was blind.”

“This is Star Trek, isn’t it?” said Kris.

“On board the spaceship, there was only one man who could be trusted to deal with the Medusan ambassador. The first officer, you see, was only half human, and with the proper visor over his eyes, he would not be driven insane.”

“I knew it. It is Star Trek,” Kris said, laughing.

I paused. “Yes, I guess it is,” I said, as if I hadn’t just watched this particular episode fifteen minutes before. “And it’s a long story, I realize now. In fact, it’d probably take fifty minutes to tell it to you.” An episode of Star Trek lasts fifty minutes.

Kris laughed. “Why don’t you just give me the summary.” And so I did.

“I don’t know why you watch that show,” she said when I had finished. “It’s not very good.”

“Well, you’re mostly right. Most of the episodes are average. But some of them are great. I really liked this episode. It was very science fiction-y. My favorite episodes are those with stories that don’t have to exist in the Star Trek universe. This was one of those.”

“And what was the one with the gangsters?” Kris asked. I made her watch “A Piece of the Action” with me a couple weeks ago.

“The one with the gangsters was just bad,” I said.

“They’re all bad,” muttered Kris as I kissed her good night.

And I went downstairs to watch another episode…

1979 Jerry Pournelle Interview on the Future of Computers

David H. must have had a lot of free time lately. He’s dug up a lot of good stuff. Though some of this is destined for GRS or GFS, here’s one video that doesn’t have a good home besides foldedspace.

In this clip from 1979, talk show host Tom Snyder speaks with scientist Durk Pearson and science fiction author Jerry Pournelle about the future of publishing, computers, and technology. Look at them predict the internet!

I love the part where Pournelle whips out his pocket calculator and says something like, “In 1952, ENIAC took up a field house. Governments paid millions of dollars to use this machine. This pocket calculator cost $249 and anyone can use it.”

I also like Pournelle’s pipe. When was the last time you saw an intelligent, well-to-do man smoking on television? It’s now an activity reserved for the poor or the evil.

Subscriber Counts for All My Sites (Dec 2007)

In February, I posted subscriber counts for all the sites I run. At that time, my most-read site had 6784 regular readers. Today that numbers is over 40,000. While I’m pleased with this, it also gives me a severe case of stage-fright. It’s one thing to be writing for a few hundred people, but to be writing for a small city? It makes me nervous.

This list is based on the FeedBurner survey of my RSS feeds. This isn’t a count of actual direct traffic to the sites, but of the number of people who have subscribed. In parentheses, I’ll list the number of subscribers in February and the number of subscribers now. I’ll also write a little about my plans for each site.

I’ve ordered the list based on how important the sites are to me. I consider the first four to be “active”, and it’s my goal to maintain each of them as best I can.

Get Rich Slowly (6784 readers in Feb, 40808 today) — Yes, GRS really is read by over 40,000 daily subscribers right now. (And 4,000 people subscribe via e-mail.) I try not to think about it. I love writing this site and I love interacting with the GRS community. I’m earning enough from writing about personal finance to transition to a full-time writer.

foldedspace.org (330 readers in Feb, 302 today) — Foldedspace has suffered over the past two years. My attentions have turned elsewhere. We used to have a small but vibrant community here, but I fear I’ve lost many of the old readers. Still, I’ve been working to post here more often lately, and I’ve managed to move my old MT template to WordPress. All that’s left is to move over the archives.

Get Fit Slowly (new blog — 373 readers today) — Get Rich Slowly helped me turn my finances around. I’m hoping Get Fit Slowly can do the same with my health. Mac and I are writing this blog together, and so far I’ve been quite pleased with the experience. We’re both relaxed but serious about this. We’re not letting it become a chore, yet we’re dedicated to make this site a success. Our posts here are sporadic, but should become more regular (and higher quality) with time.

Animal Intelligence (23 readers in Feb, 98 readers now) — This number actually rises to about 120 or so on the days I post an entry. Unfortunately, I don’t post entries as often as I’d like. This is one blog that will benefit from my move to full-time. I’ll be able to spend a couple hours writing posts each week. This blog will never go away. I love the subject.

Money Hacks (93 readers in Feb, 847 today) — This GRS companion site was basically stillborn. I kept at it for a few weeks, and in that time grew the subscriber base to 1,000 people, but I couldn’t maintain the site. I didn’t have time. I still hope to revive it someday, but for now it’s dormant. (And, in reality, the Money Hacks feed is an abridged GRS feed at the moment.)

Vintage Pop (3 readers in Feb, 1 reader now, and that’s me) — Ah, Vintage Pop. How I love the idea. I’m not going to say this site is dead forever, but I have no plans to work on it in the next year or so. I do think it could be huge if I were to devote time and effort to it, and I think it could be a lot of fun. We’ll see…

Four Color Comics (31 readers in Feb, 39 readers today) — Ah, my comic book site. This site is dead, dead, dead. Though I’d love to have time to write about this aspect of my life, I don’t. I’ll maintain the domain, but I have no plans to return to this blog in the foreseeable future.

Bibliophilic (11 readers in Feb, 19 readers now) — My book site, which is dead dead dead. Again, this is a nice idea, but I just don’t have the time. I once thought I’d repost all my book reviews here, but rumor has it Google frowns on “duplicate content”, so I’m not willing to jeopardize all my other sites just to keep this one alive.

These are not the only domains I own, but they’re the only ones where I’ve actually created active sites. (They’re not all active now, of course…) Other domains that may see future activity include:

  • Cougar Tracks — A site meant for alumni of Canby Union High School.
  • Oak Grove Crossing — For information about my local community. This is a slow-to-get-started project with John C. I’m also hoping Lane will chip in. (And maybe Amy Jo, since she’s in the area now.)
  • Spiral Bound — My notebook blog. Believe it or not, this site has some underground support. I’ve never posted a thing here, but I think it could have a cult following if I did. I’m dead serious.
  • Success Daily — This one is set up and ready to go. I just don’t have the time. David Hatch will be disappointed to hear that I’m now thinking a January 2009 start date at the earliest.
  • Taking the Scenic Route — Actually, though I own the domain, this is a placeholder for a future Amy Jo project.
  • Too Much Cat and Too Much Dog — Ah, yes. I actually have entrepreneurship plans for these sites. I may make them a case study for GRS at some point.

There are other ideas kicking around inside my head, but I have to stop somewhere. The truth is, nothing else really matters to me right now but Get Rich Slowly. That is my top priority. If anyone out there wants to help with any of these, let me know. I’m open to possible collaborations.

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

When we were boys, which cartoon did we like better than any other? The one with race cars, of course. As lousy as I thought the last two Matrix movies were, the first one was brilliant. And based on that alone, I’ll go see this:

Coming in May!