Ohhhhh… I have literary crushes on weird old men.
Flexion is good for you
Apple vs. Microsoft. Again. Apple is a more expensive proposition, so only the most image-conscious will switch, surely? I applaud Apple’s attempts to win new adherents (since it’s their rabid fans who upgrade each and every time, no matter how brief a time between versions) and I think they’ve got a job on their hands since Windows is so ubiquitous.
I’m going for Linux next time. I’m not sure which flavour, though.
Mathematics, schmathematics
Dilemma. Do I pre-order And Another Thing, or do I wait for it to be published in mass market paperback, buy all six, and read them in sequence? Is it overly nitpicky to be somewhat unsure about this sequel written by someone other than Douglas Adams?
My hero…
*squee*
He had complimentary things to say about my extremely old and spotty copy of Cryptonomicon, although I suspect he really thought it was manky as hell.
OMG I like have a lifestream?
The main page of this site now displays my Friendfeed — the comments link on that page will re-direct you to Friendfeed. I’ve been using it for a wee while, and I quite like it. It’s an easy way to aggregate everything online.
Blogging in the traditional sense of the word has become somewhat cheapened over the last five years or so, with loads of people (and companies) hopping on the bandwagon and trying to make money off it. Spammers are getting in on the action, with splogs that scrape content off legitimate sites. To me, it continues to be an entirely personal project, a way to expose my silliness to the world instead of keeping it all confined to email. And as time goes by, I find I have fewer words to say, but my interest in news, politics, science, gadgets, crime… hasn’t gone away, and so I have these multiple presences online, documenting everything in different places. And it was kind of messy.
I’d been thinking of ‘lifestreaming’ (in my own private way) for a long time — witness the shitty job I did on the previous design incarnation this year — although I didn’t know that at the time. But then I read this piece about the ‘future’ of blogging, and it all became clear. Add an RSS parser to the mix, and a CSS-styled, non-widgety lifestream now lives on this site.
Note: I would probably have used the FriendFeed comments plugin, too, but I have too many posts with the same title. Since I haven’t had any comments from FriendFeed yet (too few people I know actually use it), this has not been a problem, but I suppose this is something that needs to be worked out. I really need to learn PHP.
Note: FriendFeed is arguably not a lifestream, but that’s all you need to know about my life if you only know me online. I don’t do a whole lot else, anyway.
Credit card fraud. Internet and hard drives.
Traffic was phenomenally bad this morning, it took me an HOUR instead of the usual 30 minutes. I wonder if Singaporeans will ever debase themselves and learn to carpool.
Credit card skimming… they take your card (in a restaurant, wherever), use a ’skimmer’ to capture the information on your debit or credit card, and make a counterfeit card. And people think Internet shopping is dangerous…
MSNBC reports that the Internet industry to start to show signs of recovery this year. Phew?
IBM found a way to make hard drives hold more, very cool. In that geeky sort of way only dorks like me will understand.