Category Archives: Generalities

Orkut Geomap

I while back I wrote about a new website called Orkut created by some Google employees that aims to be a social service allowing you to list your contacts and create a web of people you know and their contacts.

Anyway, I’ve got about 20 friends signed up with the service right now. Yesterday I came across a website that would create a visual map of your contacts by locations and their friends.

Orkut Map
If you want to see your locality added to the map (ie, sign up for the website and add me as a friend) please send me an email and I’ll send you an invitation. (Just a note, the site is invitation only so the only way you can get yourself added is by having a current member invite you).

Squirrel Fishing

Leave it to Nick Stein to do crazy things like go Squirrel Fishing. As I understand, the concept is to bait the squirrel with a peanut tied to the end of a string, and then reel the squirrel in as if you were fishing. It’s quite bizarre and probably only works on the ultra-tame squirrels we have here at the U of M.

Squirrel Fishing

Honestly, it reminds me of those times at camp that we baited squirrels with peanut butter and captured them under plastic wash bins. It was quite amusing. Apparently some of the others transfered the squirrels into plastic garbage bags and hauled them out to the lake and dumped them in the water.

Instructional Shirt-Folding

Well, I ran into this video today that presents a neat way to fold shirts. I’ve got no idea if a lot of people fold shirts this way—as I’ve never had to fold more than a half-dozen shirts at a time in my life.

Shirt folding video

Needless to say, it’s pretty slick and easy to learn—although the directions are in Japanese.

Update: If needed, a local mirror is here.

Kinja


Kinja is a weblog portal, collecting news and commentary from some of the best sites on the web. Visitors can browse items on topics, everything from food to sex. Or they can create a convenient personal digest, to track their favorite writers.
??Via: Kinja??

Of course, I signed and included all of the blogs I read of people I don’t know. So therefore don’t expect your listings to show up if I know you. My Kinja page does, however, give you a glimpse into other people’s blogs/news sites I find interesting.

War President

I came across this picture while reading some of the blogs I’m subscribed to. It’s pretty touching if you ask me, a nice tribute to a president who has managed to do so much wrong in so little time.

“Below is a … mosaic composed of the photos of the American service men and women who have died in Iraq. No photograph is used more than three times.”
War President
??Via: American Leftist??

My Desk

I think you can tell a lot about a person based upon how they keep up their life. So in case you were wondering about me, here’s a picture of my current desk:

My Messy Desk

Note that it’s not the cleanest, but at least there aren’t piles everywhere. Notable items include:

  • Stooge paddle
  • Plant—obtained for $5 from Target… mostly dead now
  • Goldy Marching Band Bobblehead
  • Middlebrook Hall Study Buck—they caught me studying!
  • iPod—30gb
  • Cell Phone—that’s why I never have it if you were to call
  • Post-it Notes—how could I live without?

UThink

UThink: Blogs at the University Libraries is a new project by the University of Minnesota to offer unlimited free blogs to all staff/students/faculty. The system is easy to configure and get started—just login with your x500 and give them a title/tagline for your blog. For example, I got one setup in under 5 minutes or so.

It’s easy to add new posts (just the standard MovableType interface), but perhaps not so obvious if you have never used it before. They do an okay job trying to offer some links to tutorials/help sites, but there’s no direct hand-holding along the way.

I find it relieving (and quite interesting) that they left all the power-user features of MT (like being able to customize all of your pages with templates) in place. However, the beginning user is likely to get confused and will have a tough time fixing any mistakes if they go messing around.

I found the lack of installed plugins depressing, especially since the individual user will have no power to install “personal” plugins for themselves. At a bare minimum, I’d recommend installing MT Textile which significantly speeds up the time it takes to write, and allows beginning users to easily add links and such.

I think it will be interesting to see how adoption goes, especially since it looks like they will be providing each user ample space (they assumed 180mb per user or something like that per 3 years). It also has the benefit of no ads and quick loading times. The only detractor is their obligatory legal statement on the bottom of every page:

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.

However, that is easily circumvented with a little bit of css, namely by adding the following to the styles-site.css template.

h5{ display:none; }

Another feature that many people (namely those coming from blogging “communities” like Xanga and LiveJournal) will miss is the ability to “subscribe” to other people’s posts and quickly view new entries. Albeit, this problem is easily survived with RSS readers (like the excellent Net News Wire), I don’t think enough of the users will understand such a concept.