Test 1.2.3.4

This is testing if Windows Live Writer Beta (9) can post to my LiveJournal account without blowing a gasket. This is only a test. If this were a real blog posting, cool blinky text would appear, courtesy of hidden javascript. Or perhaps a video of myself being dorky, or my son being cute. Or I would rant about politics (what depths will the republican party go to – Reagan is surely SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE!), or my job (can’t talk much about it, but I’m busy this week. And next.), or local issues (my wife thinks that if you define a person as being at conception she should at least get to count him/her as a 2nd person in the vehicle in HOV lanes). But this is just a test, so I’ll sign off now.

Connected

So, let's see, I have a LiveJournal, a Blogger (which is really just a mirror, and not yet up to date), a Flickr account, a Twitter account, a Momentile account (it's still in private alpha), a Facebook, a MySpace, a LinkedIn, a SlashDot account (id 2267!). I also have 3 AIM accounts, an ICQ account, one or two MSN's, a Yahoo!, a Google Talk, and a Skype account. Also a GrandCentral, a Gizmo project, and probably something else I've forgotten about. I am very very connected. Some of these are linked on this page. Perhaps, just perhaps, I'm too connected?

No more jury duty!

This means no more jury duty for me! Yay!

Spam recently received at work. We all had a good laugh, and decided to post for others enjoyment. Note that it DID come with an attachment, which I ain't touching with a 3.3 meter pole - I'm very sure it's got something nasty inside. From: "ICS Monitoring Team" Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:44:30 To: client Subject: Your internet access is going to get suspended Your internet access is going to get suspended The Internet Service Provider Consorcium was made to protect the rights of software authors, artists. We conduct regular wiretapping on our networks, to monitor criminal acts. We are aware of your illegal activities on the internet wich were originating from You can check the report of your activities in the past 6 month that we have attached. We strongly advise you to stop your activities regarding the illegal downloading of copyrighted material of your internet access will be suspended. Sincerely ICS Monitoring Team

Boring Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usS4tvmoJjI

Boring Life

Ruby/Flex

Ruby is cool. See this example: # Ruby knows what you mean, even if you want to do math on an entire Array cities = %w[ London Oslo Paris Amsterdam Berlin ] visited = %w[Berlin Oslo] puts "I still need to visit the following cities:", cities - visited And it WORKS. No helper functions, no loops scanning for items missing from visited, just nice, clean code. I also think Flex is pretty cool - both are challenging programmers to leave their comfortable .Net/ASP and Java/JSP environments and thinking about using Flash for more than just movies, and thinking of webpages in an MVC model (not that that's always appropriate, but often it can be a cleaner separation than just using code-behind). Ruby has some really cool features, like making blocks of code objects that can be assigned to variables - you can *pass around code like it was a variable/function*. It's really just taking the concept of an anonymous function and making the variable a pointer to the code, but in a really high level language. And flex lets you finally write some good logic into flash, making rich internet apps easier to write (not easy, just easier - I dislike the IDE).

Blindness - the movie

This is an interesting movie: http://www.blindness-themovie.com/ The synopsis is blindness as an epidemic. I've actually wondered what would happen if an epidemic of muteness occured - how would that affect our culture?

LHC webcams

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Recent spim conversation

This was on AIM, btw. Names removed to protect the stupid. (10:41:24 PM) xxxx: Do you possess sad endorphins? [Note: at this point I tell what he said, and I echo what I hear:] (10:41:52 PM) chrisyehudi: No I possess gleeful endorphins (10:41:57 PM) chrisyehudi: But I am not sharing (10:42:12 PM) chrisyehudi: Did you say that too? (10:42:15 PM) chrisyehudi: You're such a dork (10:42:19 PM) chrisyehudi: Tell me if they say anything (10:42:34 PM) chrisyehudi: LOL (10:42:47 PM) chrisyehudi: meow [Note: the last line was from the cat, not my wife.] Edit: they actually responded! (10:44:56 PM) xxxx: i obviously have no idea who this is (10:45:50 PM) chrisyehudi: probably not, but since I got what looked like spam I responded :) [Quoted: xxxx: Do you possess sad endorphins?] (10:46:14 PM) xxxx: wow! am i spamming people! (10:46:30 PM) xxxx: you're the second arbitrary person to say that I've been IMing you :-( (10:46:41 PM) chrisyehudi: yeah, might want to run an anti-spyware check on your comp (10:46:54 PM) xxxx: booo. and i'm anti-anti spyware too (10:46:59 PM) chrisyehudi: usually I ignore them, but this time I decided to have some fun. apparently you're not a computer program :) (10:47:15 PM) xxxx: hurray for humans!

WE WON! WE WON AT POWERBALL!

Okay, so we only won $7. But it's winning, still, isn't it? thinks I'm a dork. News at 11.

Okay, I just watched the Microsoft commercial with Bill Gates and Seinfeld.

Who put this together? Because they should get out of the PR field. Entirely. Maybe go into Janitorial Services. 'Cause that was the quality of that commercial. Was there a coherent idea? I heard Jerry say Microsoft, but they didn't tie in Windows, or Office, or anything actually Microsoft. And Bill Gates is getting a little old, I must admit.

Even after taking a few minutes, I'm amazed that that commercial made it to air. Honestly, that was a huge WASTE of money. It doesn't make me want to buy anything from either Microsoft or Bill Gates, and it doesn't 'engage me in a conversation'.

The Time for Liberty