[xkcd.com - click the image to visit]
May 19, 2010
Mar 3, 2010
You know you want to touch CODEX's staff...
If you visited this blog at all during my little five month hiatus of editing my layout and graduating (pretty much the entire Fall semester) then you saw my "geek crush" post about the Date My Avatar music video from The Guild.
My boyfriend has been following Greg Aronowitz, a special effects/design guy who has not only worked on a bunch of big name movies and tv series, but he also made the weapons for the characters in The Guild. Aronowitz actually has a blog, right here on Blogger (barnyardfx) where he recently posted videos of him and Felicia making a replica of the staff that he made for her character in the music video.
The even cooler part is that you can own this autographed staff! This is kind of late reporting on my part considering the auction does end on Sunday, but they are currently selling the staff on eBay and the proceeds are going to support the American Red Cross. The price right now is up to $1,375.00! So I'm sure the late reporting on my part doesn't seem like as much of a misstep considering that a ticket price like that isn't just mere pocket change.
But if you have $1,400 (the next bid increase price) laying around, and want to simultaneously be able to say that you held Codex's staff and donated to the Red Cross, then this is your moment to shine!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300402060729
Feb 23, 2010
Happy Birthday Michael Dell and Steve Jobs. (Get a discount, Vote for your fave!)
I just got an interesting email newsletter from ThinkGeek.com, in the opening statement was the announcement "There are two most excellent reasons to eat cake this week--or at least one if you take part in the Mac vs. PC war. Happy Birthday to Michael Dell and Steve Jobs, born a decade and a day apart in February!"
Michael Dell
Born: February 23, 1965 (age 45)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
CEO and founder, Dell, Inc.
Steve Jobs
Born February 24, 1955 (age 55)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.
I found this to be interesting and just wanted to issue a Happy Birthday both today and tomorrow to the computer company moguls. BUT I also wanted to share an opportunity to save on some awesome geek gear at Think Geek in their honor!
The email I received also told of matching coupon codes that will give you either $5 off a $25 order or $10 off a $40 order. You must use the coupon codes by 11:59pm EST this Saturday (Feb 27th). The cool part is that using the specific coupon code for you will be submitting also counts as a vote to Think Geek in order to help pledge your allegiance among their fandom to the computer company dude you love best.
Use the code: IMAPC to vote for birthday boy Michael Dell
Use the code: IMAMAC to vote for birthday boy Steve Jobs
And if you wanna be a rebel use the code: TUXFTW to vote for Linus Torvalds (Founder of Linux)
Happy shopping, and may the best man win! :3
Michael Dell
Born: February 23, 1965 (age 45)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
CEO and founder, Dell, Inc.
Steve Jobs
Born February 24, 1955 (age 55)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.
I found this to be interesting and just wanted to issue a Happy Birthday both today and tomorrow to the computer company moguls. BUT I also wanted to share an opportunity to save on some awesome geek gear at Think Geek in their honor!
The email I received also told of matching coupon codes that will give you either $5 off a $25 order or $10 off a $40 order. You must use the coupon codes by 11:59pm EST this Saturday (Feb 27th). The cool part is that using the specific coupon code for you will be submitting also counts as a vote to Think Geek in order to help pledge your allegiance among their fandom to the computer company dude you love best.
Use the code: IMAPC to vote for birthday boy Michael Dell
Use the code: IMAMAC to vote for birthday boy Steve Jobs
And if you wanna be a rebel use the code: TUXFTW to vote for Linus Torvalds (Founder of Linux)
Happy shopping, and may the best man win! :3
Feb 15, 2010
Post-Valentines Day
Today is the day after Valentines Day, also known as "Half Priced Candy Day"! President's Day also happened to fall on February 15th this year, so for me that's a double holiday right there. We were talking about fun holidays vs. political holidays a few days ago and we decided we should buy a birthday cake for George Washington on President's Day this year to celebrate, but it kind of snuck up on us with yesterday and all. So we didn't make it out to get one.
Anyway, I know a lot of people have issues with our favorite February holiday, but I am a huge fan of Valentines Day! You may say that is because I am in a relationship. But you would be wrong. My first boyfriend when I was 17 at the very end of my senior year of High School, and I have always loved Valentines Day. I'm sure your next assumption will be that I was one of those pretty girls that may not have had a boyfriend but always had admirers and therefore still received a locker full of mystery gifts and that must be why I had so much fun. But that is not true either. I received my first two valentine gifts ever when I was 17 also.
I am a firm believer that lovers/spouses/crushers should not need one specific day out of the whole year to show their lover/spouse/crushee that they love them. If you really love someone you should be able to show them every day, and the nice things you can do on v-day really are things you could do any time of the year. In fact I don't even call it Valentines Day anymore, and I hate the sound of V-Day, I usually refer to it simply as "February the 14th". But I am a huge fan of holidays in general and I don't think that is an excuse to let such an incredibly fun opportunity pass you by. Any excuse to dress up and eat candy and do something out of the ordinary from my every day routine is a welcome relief for me!
I believe that February 14th should be a day to celebrate love in any form that you have it. Regardless of if you are in a relationship or not. You should never think that you are too good to take a few minutes out of your day to remind someone you care about that you love them. Sure it's a capitalist holiday, sure it's one of those times when you sink money into unnecessary gifts. But it's just like Christmas, you do it because the idea of the holiday makes it easier to rationalize spending the extra money or taking the extra time off to do something that will make the person you care about happy. Whether it's a family member or a friend or a lover.
If you're against Hallmark, don't buy a card. If you wanna stick it to the man, don't go out and pay for flowers or chocolate. Every year in school from kindergarten to senior year I dressed up in red and pink, made handmade valentines for my friends, homemade cookies for my teachers, and brought in a shopping bag full of candy and handed it out in all my classes. I didn't ever have a date, I didn't ever expect anything back, but it was just doing something that showed other people that I cared that made me feel really good the whole day.
This year Cj and I didn't have enough money to go out to dinner like we usually do so we stayed in and I think it was probably the best February the 14 we've ever had. Cj decided to get paper lunch bags and we made little valentine mailboxes like in Elementary School and made each other valentines to put in them. Then I made him cookies (linzer hearts, his favorite) which is a tradition from way back when, the same ones I used to give my teachers, they are heart shaped cookies so it's just something I've done every year for as long as I can remember.
We watched the Olympics most of the day and then Cj made me dinner, and then at night while Cj was doing his homework I snuck downstairs and made him and Icehotel-inspired blanket fort in our living room (because we saw a special on the IceHotel and he's been talking about it ever since). We hung out in our little blanket igloo and opened our valentine cards and just spent some time with each other. I have to admit that the night before he did buy me flowers which was also totally awesome. But the whole weekend was just really nice and super cute, and such a great time.
________________________________________________
Now, I know this entry is sort of lacking a little on the geek factor that I usually reserve for this blog, but I needed to rant a little and then sicken you with my adorableness. So to make up for that here are some awesome funny/geeky random gifts I found lurking around the internet this February:
Hand Engraved Random "Sweet Nothings" Heart Necklaces ($44 each, 9 different styles, FredFlare.com)
Two-Person Tee and Undies ($9.99, Socially Awkward Tees and $8.59, Amazon.com)
Pasta Boobs ($10, FredFlare.com)
Giant Inflatable Heart ($22... on sale for $4.99, FredFlare.com)
Lovable Breakfast; Toast Stamp and Egg Mold ($6.50 and $9, FredFlare.com)
Vampire Love; Bleeding Gummy Heart and The Vampire Seduction Handbook ($6.99 and $11.99, ThinkGeek.com)
Geek Love Tees; Binary Heart Babydoll and Men's I <3 My Geek ($18.99 and $15.99, ThinkGeek.com)
Proximity-Based 8-Bit Life/Love Meter Matching Tees ($49.98 for both, ThinkGeek.com)
Anyway, I know a lot of people have issues with our favorite February holiday, but I am a huge fan of Valentines Day! You may say that is because I am in a relationship. But you would be wrong. My first boyfriend when I was 17 at the very end of my senior year of High School, and I have always loved Valentines Day. I'm sure your next assumption will be that I was one of those pretty girls that may not have had a boyfriend but always had admirers and therefore still received a locker full of mystery gifts and that must be why I had so much fun. But that is not true either. I received my first two valentine gifts ever when I was 17 also.
I am a firm believer that lovers/spouses/crushers should not need one specific day out of the whole year to show their lover/spouse/crushee that they love them. If you really love someone you should be able to show them every day, and the nice things you can do on v-day really are things you could do any time of the year. In fact I don't even call it Valentines Day anymore, and I hate the sound of V-Day, I usually refer to it simply as "February the 14th". But I am a huge fan of holidays in general and I don't think that is an excuse to let such an incredibly fun opportunity pass you by. Any excuse to dress up and eat candy and do something out of the ordinary from my every day routine is a welcome relief for me!
I believe that February 14th should be a day to celebrate love in any form that you have it. Regardless of if you are in a relationship or not. You should never think that you are too good to take a few minutes out of your day to remind someone you care about that you love them. Sure it's a capitalist holiday, sure it's one of those times when you sink money into unnecessary gifts. But it's just like Christmas, you do it because the idea of the holiday makes it easier to rationalize spending the extra money or taking the extra time off to do something that will make the person you care about happy. Whether it's a family member or a friend or a lover.
If you're against Hallmark, don't buy a card. If you wanna stick it to the man, don't go out and pay for flowers or chocolate. Every year in school from kindergarten to senior year I dressed up in red and pink, made handmade valentines for my friends, homemade cookies for my teachers, and brought in a shopping bag full of candy and handed it out in all my classes. I didn't ever have a date, I didn't ever expect anything back, but it was just doing something that showed other people that I cared that made me feel really good the whole day.
This year Cj and I didn't have enough money to go out to dinner like we usually do so we stayed in and I think it was probably the best February the 14 we've ever had. Cj decided to get paper lunch bags and we made little valentine mailboxes like in Elementary School and made each other valentines to put in them. Then I made him cookies (linzer hearts, his favorite) which is a tradition from way back when, the same ones I used to give my teachers, they are heart shaped cookies so it's just something I've done every year for as long as I can remember.
We watched the Olympics most of the day and then Cj made me dinner, and then at night while Cj was doing his homework I snuck downstairs and made him and Icehotel-inspired blanket fort in our living room (because we saw a special on the IceHotel and he's been talking about it ever since). We hung out in our little blanket igloo and opened our valentine cards and just spent some time with each other. I have to admit that the night before he did buy me flowers which was also totally awesome. But the whole weekend was just really nice and super cute, and such a great time.
Now, I know this entry is sort of lacking a little on the geek factor that I usually reserve for this blog, but I needed to rant a little and then sicken you with my adorableness. So to make up for that here are some awesome funny/geeky random gifts I found lurking around the internet this February:
Hand Engraved Random "Sweet Nothings" Heart Necklaces ($44 each, 9 different styles, FredFlare.com)
Two-Person Tee and Undies ($9.99, Socially Awkward Tees and $8.59, Amazon.com)
Pasta Boobs ($10, FredFlare.com)
Giant Inflatable Heart ($22... on sale for $4.99, FredFlare.com)
Lovable Breakfast; Toast Stamp and Egg Mold ($6.50 and $9, FredFlare.com)
Vampire Love; Bleeding Gummy Heart and The Vampire Seduction Handbook ($6.99 and $11.99, ThinkGeek.com)
Geek Love Tees; Binary Heart Babydoll and Men's I <3 My Geek ($18.99 and $15.99, ThinkGeek.com)
Proximity-Based 8-Bit Life/Love Meter Matching Tees ($49.98 for both, ThinkGeek.com)
Dec 3, 2009
What in the WWW is Wave?
I'm starting a new segment on my blog called: What in the World Wide Web?, our first topic of investigation is Google Wave.
I finally got an invite to Google Wave. I have been interested but reluctant to join for a while because I know there has been a lot of buzz about it but I didn't know exactly what it was. I joined a few days ago but haven't used it much because I've still really been trying to figure out what it is and how it works. Google has like a 90 min video up that explains it, but who wants to watch a feature length movie just to be able to start to use a new site?
That's where this blog comes in I guess. To save the day?
So What in the World Wide Web is Google Wave?: Google Wave is a real-time communication platform.
I will wholeheartedly admit that this site is intimidating at first, if you are like me and don't even know the basic concept then it makes it almost impossible to troubleshoot through the features. I started to do some research and what I found is that this whole "Wave" thing is really an incredible idea. That is why I wish to share this video, which is one that I found that was extremely helpful in detailing the main point of Google Wave:
So now that you know what Google Wave is, now I'm sure you want to know how to use it. As usual Mashable has put up a pretty all-inclusive Complete Guide to Google Wave that has just about everything you could ever need to know.
Mashable says that Google Wave combines "aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client." Wave is chock-full of innovative features, Mashable details a lot of them, but I'm just going to run down a few and then show another quick video on 15 features of Google Wave.
The first is real-time, obviously, since that is pretty much the main feature of the site. At first by looking at the platform I just thought a "wave" was similar to a "tweet" on twitter. Although there is no character limit and there is so much more you can do with a single wave. But the replies show up instantly within the wave and if you are online at the same time you can sometimes see a response being typed.
Wave also has applications and extensions, like Facebook, or like widgets/gadgets on other sites, developers can build their own apps within waves. There is a Twitter application (Twave, obvi), real-time games, and probably some other really awesome stuff. I haven't gotten that far into it yet so I haven't really been able to check any of them out. I'm really hoping for a YouTube application for embedding video content, which I'm pretty sure I've seen but I have to check out how it works.
Mashable also talks about "Wiki functionality" which is basically just the idea that anything can be edited by anyone. All conversations within your platform are shared with your contacts. So you can not only reply to a wave but you can actually go in and correct information, add information, add commentary. You can write in different colors, styles, fonts. Pretty much everything is customizable.
This idea made me nervous at first because I'm an editing fiend and I usually review everything I post obsessively until it's perfectly readable and aesthetically pleasing. So the idea that someone could go in there and edit and make changes to my thought-out posts was pretty scary. BUT of course Wave has another feature that makes this much less intimidating. It's called "Playback," on every wave you can play back every little addition that has been made. From who has been added, to who has posted, to every change that comes up. It will show the original text and then will highlight the parts that have been added.
Google wave has also perfected the autocorrect function to include "Natural language" which not only corrects spelling but it even corrects grammar as far as even knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It also has an auto-translate function that allows two or more people to communicate seamlessly in real time in two completely different languages.
There is still a lot more to explore, but these were just my preliminary findings in order to answer for myself and others about what the general idea and purpose of Google Wave is. At first when I saw the layout of the site and the way the communications work and the ease of ability to share information and even documents my first thought was that this could be an amazing tool for a business. But then upon finding out about all of the features like the games and the way you can add attachments directly into the message and the translator I started to see how useful this really could be. Especially because if you know me at all you know that I absolutely hate email. I am totally sold on Google Wave, I think it's exactly what I needed and I'm excited to see how it grows.
If you have an invite the first thing you should do after creating your account is go to your contacts box and click on the grey picture next to your name and update your profile. Next use the search box to type in any email addresses of friends that you know use Wave, because the site really is a little useless if you don't have anyone to communicate with. Next find the wave in your inbox that allows you to invite people and use up your eight invites to get some more of your friends on the site. Once you have some contacts you are ready to test everything out.
Good Luck, and Have fun!
I finally got an invite to Google Wave. I have been interested but reluctant to join for a while because I know there has been a lot of buzz about it but I didn't know exactly what it was. I joined a few days ago but haven't used it much because I've still really been trying to figure out what it is and how it works. Google has like a 90 min video up that explains it, but who wants to watch a feature length movie just to be able to start to use a new site?
That's where this blog comes in I guess. To save the day?
So What in the World Wide Web is Google Wave?: Google Wave is a real-time communication platform.
I will wholeheartedly admit that this site is intimidating at first, if you are like me and don't even know the basic concept then it makes it almost impossible to troubleshoot through the features. I started to do some research and what I found is that this whole "Wave" thing is really an incredible idea. That is why I wish to share this video, which is one that I found that was extremely helpful in detailing the main point of Google Wave:
So now that you know what Google Wave is, now I'm sure you want to know how to use it. As usual Mashable has put up a pretty all-inclusive Complete Guide to Google Wave that has just about everything you could ever need to know.
Mashable says that Google Wave combines "aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client." Wave is chock-full of innovative features, Mashable details a lot of them, but I'm just going to run down a few and then show another quick video on 15 features of Google Wave.
The first is real-time, obviously, since that is pretty much the main feature of the site. At first by looking at the platform I just thought a "wave" was similar to a "tweet" on twitter. Although there is no character limit and there is so much more you can do with a single wave. But the replies show up instantly within the wave and if you are online at the same time you can sometimes see a response being typed.
Wave also has applications and extensions, like Facebook, or like widgets/gadgets on other sites, developers can build their own apps within waves. There is a Twitter application (Twave, obvi), real-time games, and probably some other really awesome stuff. I haven't gotten that far into it yet so I haven't really been able to check any of them out. I'm really hoping for a YouTube application for embedding video content, which I'm pretty sure I've seen but I have to check out how it works.
Mashable also talks about "Wiki functionality" which is basically just the idea that anything can be edited by anyone. All conversations within your platform are shared with your contacts. So you can not only reply to a wave but you can actually go in and correct information, add information, add commentary. You can write in different colors, styles, fonts. Pretty much everything is customizable.
This idea made me nervous at first because I'm an editing fiend and I usually review everything I post obsessively until it's perfectly readable and aesthetically pleasing. So the idea that someone could go in there and edit and make changes to my thought-out posts was pretty scary. BUT of course Wave has another feature that makes this much less intimidating. It's called "Playback," on every wave you can play back every little addition that has been made. From who has been added, to who has posted, to every change that comes up. It will show the original text and then will highlight the parts that have been added.
Google wave has also perfected the autocorrect function to include "Natural language" which not only corrects spelling but it even corrects grammar as far as even knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It also has an auto-translate function that allows two or more people to communicate seamlessly in real time in two completely different languages.
There is still a lot more to explore, but these were just my preliminary findings in order to answer for myself and others about what the general idea and purpose of Google Wave is. At first when I saw the layout of the site and the way the communications work and the ease of ability to share information and even documents my first thought was that this could be an amazing tool for a business. But then upon finding out about all of the features like the games and the way you can add attachments directly into the message and the translator I started to see how useful this really could be. Especially because if you know me at all you know that I absolutely hate email. I am totally sold on Google Wave, I think it's exactly what I needed and I'm excited to see how it grows.
If you have an invite the first thing you should do after creating your account is go to your contacts box and click on the grey picture next to your name and update your profile. Next use the search box to type in any email addresses of friends that you know use Wave, because the site really is a little useless if you don't have anyone to communicate with. Next find the wave in your inbox that allows you to invite people and use up your eight invites to get some more of your friends on the site. Once you have some contacts you are ready to test everything out.
Good Luck, and Have fun!
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