bringing you another view of the world you didn’t ask for
Just had to share this one. I am in LOVE with the Amazon MP3 music downloads. Pricing is awesome. Tons of great special deals. 256k MP3 no DRM Audio. It’s pretty much perfect in every way. Short of being completely free of course. I’m sure I’ll find another post to rave about the service again. But for today just know this. Coldplay X&Y for $1.99.
Update: Today you can get A Rush of Blood to the Head for $1.99! Word from Amazon is that they will have one Coldplay album a day at this price.
I love magazines. I loathe subscription cards. It’s just that simple. Every magazine is crammed with these things trying to tempt me into buying a subscription to their magazine. I can appreciate the concept as a business model, but it doesn’t make me any less annoyed.
Today, as I flip through WIRED, I do very much like the idea that their cards are nicely slipped in. This means I don’t have to tear them out leaving that annoying stub in the binding that makes it impossible to hold a page while reading. The counterpoint to this lovely feature is that they go flying out all over the place. In a busy airport this means that as I sprint from one gate to another to catch my inevitably late connection that I have two choices. Choice A is to be a jerk and leave a trail of garbage throughout the terminal. Choice B is to be a friendly little twit and run around like a spaztic 4 year old calmoring for my trash. I’ll take A in a feeble attempt to actually make my connection.
Everyone is trying to do their part to be more green these days. It is the hot new thing everywhere you look. Save on gas, save on water, save on waste, save on everything. Certainly all of this is great for the planet and it’s inhabitants. There are limits to how far some people will go. I imagine one of these limits for most people in the great steamy state of North Carolina is the use of home air conditioning. In case anyone missed out, its been hot.
There is something that you can do to beat the heat and stay green! A local Raleigh resident has started collecting the condensation runoff from their air conditioning in standard 55 gallon rain barrels. Certainly not fit for human consumption but plants and lawns should love it. I contacted the resident of the home while snapping a few photos and he indicated that during the heat wave over the past week or so he is collecting fifteen gallons of condensation a day. Not going to water the lawn, but more than enough to take care of flower beds and small plants.
I’ve been a Bell South\Cingular\AT&T customer all my cell phone life. I just love the GSM phone opitons. I currently have an iPhone 1.0 and love it. I find that the $60 a month plan is reasonable for the minutes and data plan. However, I was sad to say goodbye to the AT&T discount offered to me via my employer. It was a solid discount that I was willing to forgo for the “privilege” of being an iPhone user.
With the announcement of the new iPhone 3G comes news that the plans will be swizzled as well. Gone are the days of the prepackaged iPhone plans. Now you choose your own voice plan at the standard AT&T rates it seems. Afterwords you can add standard unlimited data plans. The 3G plan will be $30 in addition to the base $40 voice plan. I’m quietly praying that standard AT&T plans might mean that I could hook my employer discount back up. The net result would actually be an iPhone 3G with unlimited data for slightly less than I’m paying for the same minutes and an EDGE unlimited data plan now.
It’s probably pie in the sky, but they’re telling me there is a chance! I’m willing to hold out and pray that this perfect storm might just come together. All that said, still no telling if I’ll bite the bullet and go new phone or not. I’m certainly tempted. More storage, 3G, longer battery, GPS, and the promise of potentially better phone audio has me sweating it out til July 11th.
UPDATE:
Just saw a post on Engadget with an AT&T Interview which stated:
Will FAN (corporate) discounts apply?
Another “We haven’t discussed this yet” for this one. Since the iPhone will continue to have its own set of plans, it’s entirely possible AT&T could make them ineligible for discounting. The counterargument, though, is that the iPhone is now being offered like any other phone — deeply subsidized by the carrier, that is — and details of the device’s service should fall in line with that as well. We’ll see.
Nothing very exciting. Just a photo I took that I kinda liked. I’m by no means even a mildly skilled photographer but I do enjoy taking pics in hopes that some day something magical will happen and I’ll become decent at it. All part of my master plan to become a wildly creative genius.
I’ve done a little bit of light reading on the subject in an effort to try and understand the basics. For me composition is what I am really working on. In this instance I actually went back and cropped the original a bit to get something I found a bit more pleasing.
Without question the best thing I have learned is the Rule of Thirds. It certainly makes things easier to compose even for someone who doesn’t really know what they are doing. A good tip is to check if you camera will put the 3rds overlay on your LCD display. Makes it even easier! Or cheat and crop after the fact.
Caught wind of a little news via Joystiq via GameDaily that we will soon have another video game developer joining the ranks in the Raleigh area. Insomniac Games is planning to open a new 30 person studio in the area for development of new PS3 titles. Insomiac are well known for their fun and graphically impressive PS3 titles of Resistance as well as Rachet and Clank. Other developers in the area include the well known Epic Games who bring us the Unreal Engine and games like Gears of War. Also Red Storm Entertainment who focus on military based first-person shooters under the Tom Clancy name.
I wouldn’t say that I am a dedicated video gamer anymore, but I still fire up the 360 from time to time to play a little GTA4 or Forza2. I once was addicted to World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike before that. Also being a software developer I can’t say I haven’t thought about making the jump from enterprise software development at my current position over to game development. I’m not sure that I have the chops for the development side of things when it comes to gaming. My native development skills are not the sharpest these days and my math could use a serious sharpening I would guess. Maybe project management? Did I just say that? Yikes.
Hopefully most of us are mature and responsible enough to know that any more than a couple of drinks and it is time to call a cab to get a ride home from the bars. One of the complications of this is the retrieval of your vehicle the morning after. Not the end of the world, but it is definitely a pain to deal with on a hangover. Just no fun for anyone.
A friend of mine in the Charlotte area had turned me on to a business that has really taken off in the area. It’s a service called Two Guys and a Ride that will send a car with two drivers to wherever you, and your car, are at. Then one of their drivers will drive you and your car wherever you want while the other driver follows in the “chase car”. The cost varies a bit, and the memories are fuzzy, but I think the cost is about what a cab alone would cost plus around 15 dollars depending on distance traveled. It’s a brilliant service that is convenient and safe for everyone involved. Bravo!
I am currently challenged with how to get to the Jimmy Buffett concert at Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek and get everyone home safely. Two Guys and a Ride sadly does not exist in Raleigh. However, through the magic of the internet, and a suggestion from Cecil over at the Urban Planet forums, I found Safe Ride Home. My prayers are answered! I plan to call later today and set up an appointment to get all of my friends, myself, our car, and all our tailgating goodness safely home after teh concert.
I really cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be responsible when out partying and galavantic around. Please designate a driver, take a cab, walk, bike, crawl, cab-it, or find a Safe Ride Home.
Update: I just spoke with Safe Ride Home and we are all set for a ride home after the concert back to downtown for some after party! The cost is 10 dollar vehicle delivery fee and 3 dollar per mile up to 10 miles. What a great deal for safe delivery of people and vehicle!
I don’t know how many times I heard this on TV or from my Mom or some teacher in grade school. I really wish that I had listened to these people. My posture is atrocious. I feel like I am slumped over all the damn time. I don’t know if I look like a fool or not, I don’t care, I feel miserable about it. Apparently I am not alone. There are a vast number of resources on the internet about posture.
I found some nice short posts from DumbLittleMan, WikiHow, and AskMen. These, along with others, center around a few key points. The three key areas of posture are sitting, standing, and sleeping. When standing up you should be able to draw a straight line through your ears, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles when viewed from the side. When sitting you should keep your hips moved as far back in the chair as posible, feet flat on ground, shoulders back and down, head back and chin in. Most seem to believe the sleeping on ones side is the ideal position. Using a pillow between the knees to help keep back aligned. I’d definitely recommend reading some of the above resources for more details.
There is also some mentions of stretches and exercises as well. @jessmartin suggests squats and deadlifts to strengthen the back.
All of this is great advice and good knowledge to have. I can only hope that I can get some of this jammed into my brain enough to actually get it to stick.
Diagram courtesy of bluelephant
Today I was contemplating the fact that I may soon be attending a laundromat near me in order to deal with some laundry. Nothing wrong with this. Been there before, be there again. A bonus is that I tend to get my laundry done much more quickly at a laundromat. You can gobble up a number of machines and get everything banged out in one go. Also, when in the laundromat I tend not to let things just sit there idle. It’s all go, go go. When laundering at home I tend to wander, watch TV, not pay attention. The laundry isn’t going anywhere, why bother.
What I have realized is that the miracle that is Suds’N'Duds is no longer accessible. This mecca of laundy was where I often took care of my clothes cleaning needs while attending college. Who could possibly argue with the genius concept of drinking beer, playing pinball, and getting laundry done? I found the phone number for the Carrboro, NC location. I let my fingers to the walking, but alas, the number was disconnected. I am half tempted to just drive over there one day after work to verify the demise.
A generous reward is avilable to anyone that has information that may lead to the ressurection of this location or the idendity of an alternative
For those of you not involved with twitter this post will likely be as meaningless of most of the posts that I have made lately. Twitter is topical for me at the moment and thus brings thoughts and words to mind.
Today I passed 100 followers and am therefore following nearly 100 people as well. I took a look at my twitterholic and in the past 40 days or so I’ve gone from 15 tweeple and about 200 updates to 100 tweeple and 750 updates. In the grand scheme of things this is pretty minimal in the twitter world. That said, for me it’s been a continuous stream of change in how I react to twitter. @dtraleigh said it best today with:
Net result, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of what is going on with everyone on twitter. I’ve been reduced to just taking a glance occasionally and checking replies to me. There really isn’t any other way to keep track of the whole thing. I dread the day that I might have one thousand people to follow or vice-versa. Total overload.
The other big “news” at twitter this week was that it’s been dying a slow death on an almost daily basis. I got a total kick out of this video blog post from Loren Feldman of 1938 media. The quickie summary is that basically most people on twitter are bored proffesionals starved for attention and blog hits. This is why we tolerate this mess.
The most interesting thing to happen in the twitterverse, at least locally, is triangletweetup. This will be my first tweetup of any significant numbers. Definitely looking forward to the presentations and activities. Since twitter is more social than network for me, the best part will just be to put names and faces with twitternames. Should be good times to be had by all.
