BLADAM - October 2005

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog. The blatherings here aren't (necessarily) the views of the current company I work for, companies I've previously blessed with my presence, my loving parents, the Illuminati, or anyone other than me, me, me!

WTF entry of the day: Government endorses cannibalistic plants!

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has various "kids" lyrics pages... one of which has the lyrics and midi file for Little Shop of Horror's "Suddenly Seymour" song [note: midi file plays when page is loaded].

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE this musical and quite like that specific song as well. But if someone can explain how this relates to environment or health or whatever, I'd love to hear it! :D

- Blathered by Adam on Saturday, October 29, 2005 at 14:18 Permalink
- Filed under Grab bag • Wackiness
- Commented on by one person so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

In Brief: Things that every blog should have (but too many don’t)

I'll note up front: my blog UI currently sucks (as I've said many times before) and I WILL fix it eventually. But like a brilliant marriage therapist that can't maintain a healthy relationship, I'm going to lecture y'all on some blog-musts

- Include a CONTACT ME link or info. Oh yeah, and an ABOUT ME blurb or link.
- Enable "Subscribe to future comments." (why this isn't standard in blog software is beyond me!)
- Let me subscribe to your entries by e-mail. Not everyone uses or likes RSS.
- Categories! I know Blogger is working on this (really) but the rest of you not using Blogger have no excuses!

RELATED ENTRIES:
- Jakob Nielsen offers (mostly) spot-on blog guidelines
- Blogger DON'Ts (how to gain admirers, get money, stay employed, etc.)

- Blathered by Adam on Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 16:25 Permalink
- Filed under Geekery • Blogging
- Commented on by one person so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

Voicemail inefficiencies… anyone got a better way?

In order to access my voicemail with AT&T CallVantage on my phone, I have to do the following:
1) Hit "***" then my 5 digit password.
2) Press 1 to go to voicemail.
3) Press 1 to LISTEN to my voicemail.

Also, leaving voicemail for friends isn't much more convenient. Why isn't there something like texting, but in voice? In other words, it's 2am, I just had a great idea I wanted to share with a friend but I don't want to wake her up. Why isn't there any easy way for me to shoot her a quick voicemail without ringing her phone? (or is there?)

I know, I know, I'm being a total whiner lately, but it just seems to me that there are some great opportunities here for companies like Skype and even traditional telcos and cell phone companies.

P.S. -- Others have also understandably ranted about how broken actually leaving voicemail in general is. Used to be, when we'd call a friend, we'd hear "Hey, I'm not home. Leave a message" [beep!] and we'd leave a message. Now we have to deal with "If you'd like to leave a page, please press 1. If you'd like to leave a voice message, please press 2 or wait for the tone..." Yeah, yeah, I know I can press * (or is it #?) or something like that to skip through that, but I think it varies by carrier, and I figure with my luck I'd accidentally hang up. Blegh.

- Blathered by Adam on Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 16:19 Permalink
- Filed under Geekery
- Commented on by one person so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

My review of Song Airlines (Delta’s low cost subsidiary)

My former colleague, Mark Jen, recently wrote about his rather positive experience flying Song Air, the discount wing of Delta Airlines... and this reminded me that I hadn't gotten around to the review I had planned to write last month.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Friday, October 21, 2005 at 15:51 Permalink
- Filed under Travel
- Commented on by 4 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

Pricey hotels… sometimes you DON’T get what you pay for

A few weeks ago, I decided to splurge and book a night at a "four star" hotel via Priceline so I could get a good night's rest before taking a long bus ride to Swing Out New Hampshire.

If this Hilton Hotel in Manhattan is four stars, I'd hate to see what a one star place is like.

Okay, so I got at least the 'bare minimums':
- A clean room
- A decent shower
- A relatively comfortable bed

But beyond that... I fail to see why anyone would pay an arm and a leg to enjoy the "four star'ness" of this hotel.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at 0:16 Permalink
- Filed under Business and consumers • Travel
- Commented on by 4 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

Installing software is often a miserable experience (even with Apple!)

This entry about a fella's (nasty) experience installing Quicktime made me both chuckle and nod in understanding.

Apple has a reputation of being so easy to use, so consumer friendly, so I gotta ask: what the $&@#! were those folks smoking when they went ahead with this install process? This is about as consumer-hostile as you get. It's annoying and downright rude.

In fairness, Apple's not the only company that should be forced to sit in a corner and repent. Other misbehaving miscreants include AOL and Real; I installed the most recent beta version of AIM only so I could play with the new Plaxo integration (which is actually slick and damn cool [see disclaimer]), but I sure as hell didn't want a stupid Web browser ("AOL Explorer") piggybacked on top, nor did I ask to have AIM sit in my system tray and be present upon every Windows startup. And regarding the Real Player, well... despite being very tempted to install it so I can watch some in-Real-format-only clips on the Web, I've put off sullying my new computer, 'cause I remember what a splatting mess the install was last time.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Monday, October 17, 2005 at 23:45 Permalink
- Filed under Business and consumers • Geekery
- Commented on by 4 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

Jakob Nielsen offers (mostly) spot-on blog guidelines

Jakob Nielsen is one of the granddaddies of Web Usability; he's offered for years lots of strong and (IMHO) often very smart opinions about what practices and designs on the Web make for good user experiences. I don't always agree with his assertions, but I am very impressed by his recent blogging guidelines.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Monday, October 17, 2005 at 17:28 Permalink
- Filed under Geekery • Blogging
- Commented on by no one yet. Bummer. Check out the full entry page to leave a comment or trackback!

Why do people willingly go see REALLY bad films?

So I just read that the remake'd movie The Fog is #1 at the box office this weekend.

WTF?$#@*#&!!

Look at the reviews.

For those of you too lazy to click, let me quote from a few:
- "The Fog is a bore, laden with unspectacular special effects and dreadful acting..."
- "Wainwright's Fog proves successful only at blowing."
- "...this flick absolutely stinks of half-hearted effort and assembly-line cynicism."

From Rotten Tomatoes, it has an average review score of 2.5 out of 10. This isn't ambiguous. The film doesn't just blow... it sucks!

Why do I care?

Well, because when crap like this (or Gigli, or Catwoman, etc.) brings in money, then the studios are incented to create MORE crap like this. Worse yet, then movie theatres feel compelled to dedicate screens to such drivel instead of showcasing worthwhile (and, dare I say it, oft independent or foreign) films.

I'm not saying that all films should be serious works of art. Hell, I just watched Bubba Ho-tep last night :D.

And it's not that I think less of people going to see a film where there's not really a huge critical consensus (e.g., 40% of critics loved it). But I'd like to slap silly the folks that go see films that have scores like 3% on the Tomatometer. At risk of being a bit overdramatic, in a way they're ruining the theatre for the rest of us.

- Blathered by Adam on Sunday, October 16, 2005 at 15:42 Permalink
- Filed under Arts and entertainment
- Commented on by no one yet. Bummer. Check out the full entry page to leave a comment or trackback!

$1 will cure the Blogspot splog problem (and related problems)

THE PROBLEM
As Chris Pirillo and others have noted, doing a search on practically anything nowadays returns a deluge of spam blogs, or "splogs," that are comprised of a bunch of randomly scraped-together sentences automatically stolen from around the Web. Typically, the sploggers create these blogspot blogs just so they can slap AdSense ads on them and earn cash from unwitting surfers who land there, see that all the content is crap, and then get away by clicking on one of the ads on the page.

Sounds stupid? It is. But sadly it's actually lucrative for the sploggers. And Google's caught in the middle because -- while, yes, they're earning money as well out of the deal -- their search index is becoming less and less useful... and that can undoubtedly hurt the company's long-term viability. Say what you will about Google, but they are nothing if not forward thinking... so this is a problem that they are certainly seriously tackling in the background.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Sunday, October 16, 2005 at 13:45 Permalink
- Filed under Geekery • Blogging • Search engines • Google
- Commented on by 8 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

Despite some challenges and regrets, dancing at Jammix is still a blast

Every month or so during the school year, the Stanford University Dance Department puts on an event called Jammix. It includes a huge variety of music and dance styles... from schmaltzy tangos to goofy covers of American pop tunes to "Play that Funky Music, White Boy!" to Metallica waltzes (!) and beyond. And all for $2, too!

The talent is equally varied. Given that this was the first Jammix of the season, there were even more newbies than usual, but also quite a few impressively experienced folks (including dance teachers!) in attendance.

Read the full entry...

- Blathered by Adam on Saturday, October 15, 2005 at 2:35 Permalink
- Filed under Dancing • Personal
- Commented on by one person so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

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The magic number for the moment is 28. Neato.

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