Archive for March 2009
Dogbert on corporate jets
bacon + Mayonnaise = Baconnaise
my brother’s in Cabo, and I’m not
Currently house-sitting for Rob and Yvonne.
Cabo San Lucas – Wikipedia
Next week they fly to Vegas to meet up with my Mom and Dad.
review – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar is the most recent Paul Theroux book.
He retraces his rail journey from Europe through Asia of 30-years earlier.
Theroux has mellowed with age. Now in his mid-60s, he’s less disagreeable than ever before in this, another travel classic.
I’ve read all his travel books. He’s one of my favourite authors. Always entertaining and informative. This one is as good as any of the others. Read it.
Still, critics call Theroux: arrogant, dishonest, a narcissist, a misanthropist.
Certainly he’s envious of greater writers than himself, especially Nobel Prize in Literature winner V. S. Naipaul. Theroux thinks much about the great authors, obviously because he thinks himself just as skilled a wordsmith, unrecognized. Unawarded.
Theroux’s the son of a French-Canadian father and an Italian mother, I learned.
Amazon – Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
This book has rekindled my interest in travel. I’m ruminating future prospects right now.
Aging too, I liked the moments on this long journey where Paul Theroux found himself “content”. Even happy.
how do you barbecue an Armadillo?
do you need a Kindle?
I don’t.
Because I no longer read.
I pick up very few newspapers or magazines. And almost never read books.
My preferred input source is my ears. I listen to audiocasts including:
And listen to books on tape. Currently Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux.
But those who still like to use their eyes to read … are quite charmed by the Kindle.
click image for details on Amazon
A respected review:
The good:
Slimmer and sleeker looking than the original Kindle; large library of tens of thousands of e-books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon’s familiar online store; built-in free wireless “Whispernet” data network–no PC needed; built-in keyboard for notes and navigation; a faster processor speeds up the device; with 2GB of internal memory, it’s capable of storing 1,500 electronic books; font size is adjustable; improved battery life; displays image files and plays MP3 and AAC audio; compatible with Windows and Mac machines; new Text-to-Speech feature allows you to have text read aloud.The bad:
No expansion slot for adding more memory or accessing files; files such as PDFs and Word documents aren’t natively supported, and need to be converted at 10 cents a pop by Amazon; no protective carrying case included; battery is sealed into the device and isn’t removable; hardware and content is still too expensive.The bottom line:
While it’s still short of perfection–and has a price tag that’s too high–the Amazon Kindle 2 offers a range of improvements that makes it the best overall e-book reader we’ve seen to date.Price range: $359.00
is the USA screwed?
Sure looks like it to me.
Projected Budget Deficit (so far)
source – Perot Charts
What a shame that Obama arrived at this precise moment.
He’s committed to the bail-outs. Those will sink the ship, I expect. And not work.
How long before the majority of Americans come to realize the bailouts were a mistake? And Obama’s popularity drops through the floor?
Why should all Americans subsidize those who “who bought a house that cost more than they could afford, hoping for a spike in value so they could sell at a profit or take out a new loan based on an increased value.”
That from a good article in the NY Times – I Bought an Expensive House. My Bad, Not Yours
what is Twitter?
I follow 26 people now. And find it fairly useless.
I would need as many friends as I have on Facebook to make it interesting.
As a search engine, however, it’s interesting. For example, I could have searched for Academy Awards during the broadcast and seen in real time what random people were saying about the event.
new Safari 42x faster than IE 7
As my default browser, I’m just about to switch from Opera to the beta version of Safari 4 on Mac.
It’s fast. (smaller is faster)
The main thing this graph shows is that Internet Explorer is for idiots. It’s horribly slow.
Opera is good. But has some annoying features that cannot be modified.
In future, I will keep Firefox and Safari open at the same time, switching back and forth. Safari now offers full screen zoom like Firefox. That’s the main feature I need, aside from speed.
Google Chrome is not yet available for Mac.
Cnet – Safari 4 benchmarked: 42x faster than IE 7, 3.5x faster than Firefox 3
Arstechnica – Hands on: Safari 4 beta fast, mixes polish, rough UI edges
how YouTube is changing the world
Rockin’s recommendation on Facebook:
… It’s the best thing I’ve seen on how social media in general, and YouTube in particular, are profoundly changing the world. It’s almost an hour long but totally captivating. Anyone interested in Web 2.0 must watch this. …
It is terrific.
Michael Wesch will understand if you start watching it, then quit whenever you wish. Very few YouTube videos are watched from start to finish.
The best part is the first 20min IMHO.
Presentation at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation.
An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
by Michael Wesch
and the Digital Ethnography Working Group
