Christopher's Lives (v5.4) » internet/web

a tour of my desktop

christopher — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:52:48 +0000

(originally posted on Flickr – but, i wanted it here, too…)

(click the pic to view original size)

first i want to point out that this is on a 42" lcd hdtv in the living room and i use a wireless kb and mouse…

second, pretty much everything you see is Yahoo! Widgets, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and Stickies… if you want your desktop like mine, just google those names…

on the left is our budget for the month using Stickies, but, if you look, it is a bit transparent and you will see it is actually the top sticky atop a few others, but this is the only open one – they roll up… (i hide windows desktop icons under my sticky notes…) you can see i have another little note in the middle of the screen, at the top…
beneath the budget are a couple icons of stuff i need to do – check out the PlayOn app, put Iron Man on my mom’s psp, etc…. it’s sorta’ my to-do stack… and the bottom left hand corner – that little blue thing – i can drag a file onto that and it will auto-magically upload it to the ‘stuff’ directory on my website…

ok, at the bottom edge is ObjectDock – ya’ know, like the dock on a mac… it is hidden until i hover my mouse at the bottom of the screen and, as my mouse moves, the icons under it enlarge… in this pic, i clicked on ‘APPS’ and it opened the assortment of apps i keep handy… not pictured is the other ObjectDock, which i have set up as the system tray/task bar – it’s hidden on the left… i have used ObjectDock (paid version) for years and can’t live without it… it does many more tricks i won’t get into here…

ok, the news headlines are Rainmeter – which is like a widget engine, but not for the faint-of-heart – it is very complex to customize and you need to have some coding knowledge… as you see, i have rss feeds from home-barista for coffee geek discussions, playstation lifestyle for ps3/psp stuff and google for "real" news…

in the middle, since i love love love photography, a Yahoo Widget showing recent popular photos posted on DeviantArt on the left and another Yahoo Widget on the right with recent popular photos posted to Flickr… they are set to change every few minutes… i leave room since the photos come in all shapes and sizes… both have very impressive customization settings as far as what kind of content to show… for instance, the deviantart widget, of course, has tons more types of art than photography and the flickr widget can show your own stream, favorites, photos from groups and/or contacts, and you can even use it to upload to flickr…

at the top, pretty obvious, Yahoo Widgets for date/time, cpu usage, and upload/download speed…

which brings us to the right edge… i have been a webcam junkie for years and this is a Yahoo Widget called WebImages – several instances of it, of course… i have used several methods for desktop webcam monitoring and this one blows all the others away… the depth of options and customization can be intimidating at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SOOOO worth it… the radar is the local weather radar, of course… the rest are cams that update once a minute… i have each set up to sort of a theme and each contains more than one cam – when it updates, it switches to the next cam that one monitors… for instance, the top is local – alternating between a cam in cloudcroft and one in las cruces… the next down is home – albuquerque – four different cams and once a minute, it shows a different view… the next three are assorted cool/interesting places – cams in las vegas, italy, california, and others – all three contain a list of all my favorite cams around the world and, once a minute (or whatever i choose to set it to from once a second to once a day) it cycles to the next cam in its list… or, if one of them has something really interesting going on, i stop the cycling and set it to update in near-real-time and each one has a button when you mouse over it to enlarge it as big as you like… you can hit another button to save the current image, even…
but, now i’m gushing ;P
oh, and the very bottom one is NASATV – the widget can stream the video, but, i just have it set to show a still every 15 seconds…

anyway… that’s my desktop…

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Bird’s Eye Tourist

christopher — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 04:08:41 +0000

if you have been too busy playing with google earth to explore windows live local’s “bird’s eye” views, here’s a very cool way to get acquainted with it…

Bird’s Eye Tourist

From the site:

First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth. Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local, featuring stunning new imagery. Bird’s Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area.

This website is the definitive guide and repository for the coolest Windows Live Local locations.

with a blog format and links divided into locations (where i found the sandia peak tramway) and categories (DO NOT miss “our favorites“), this is a very cool site…

at the moment the front page includes “the bat cave from the old TV show Batman“, “the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, CA”, “numerous hovercraft at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia, “The Simpsons mural at Fox Studios”, and “the fake McDonalds”…

oh, and they also have a list of all the cities covered by windows live local… very cool – even microsoft doesn’t offer that anywhere, as far as i know…

this is one to keep an eye on… (btw, they DO have an rss feed!)

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links – couple of star wars dvd bits, a few various

insidious_plots — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:31:25 +0000

The true cost of free iPods – Engadget

Boing Boing: Lucas put malicious Xbox trojan on Star Wars DVD
Star Wars DVD Grosses $115M

Google Search: star wars holiday special
[not only do i remember the fam rushing home so my brother and i could watch this over 25 years ago, i have always rather vividly remembered a couple moments from it (like the stormtroopers searching the wookie kid's room), and the images at these sites were so familiar i found myself saying "oh yeah, i forgot about that part"... yet i have trouble remembering my own phone number...]

ICQ Chat Request

A visual history of spam (and virus) email
The Spam Weblog

Boing Boing: Fave music site: Oddio Overplay

Play the PlayStation Portable — in Japan – Engadget
[um, yeah, i'd probably like to play with that... btw, best pics of the PSP i've seen yet...]

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Ruined by R ratings
[something of a history of not-safe-for-network-tv language in movies being dubbed for broadcast...]

NetRatings: Broadband users a majority in U.S.
[i somehow missed this news until now...]

The Making of a THX LaserDisc

Cities Collection [via RefDesk's SotD]
This NASA site offers outstanding astronaut photography of cities taken during space-flight.

craigslist – Gorgeous 2br Penthouse on Las Vegas Strip [sigh]

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an english lesson for the internet age

insidious_plots — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 17:36:08 +0000

this was in the march 2004 issue of Nybble, and it has taken me this long to post it…

Hey, since we’re now living in the time of e-mail and the more common use of the written language, it is time for an English lesson, mmmkay.

So, with tongue firmly in cheek, here are some rules to keep in mind when using the Queen’s Engerlish:

Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.

It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat).

Always avoid annoying alliteration.

Be more or less specific.

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

No sentence fragments. No comma splices, run-ons are bad too.

Contractions aren’t helpful and shouldn’t be used.

Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.

One should never generalize.

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Don’t use no double negatives.

Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

One-word sentences? Eliminate.

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

The passive voice is to be ignored.

Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.

Kill all exclamation points!!!!

Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

Understatement is probably not the best way to propose earth shattering ideas.

Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.

Puns are for children, not groan readers.

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

Who needs rhetorical questions?

Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement.

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

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links – a few various, a few from site feeds, and a .name

insidious_plots — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 01:00:32 +0000

Waxy.org: Links Miniblog

Pioneer CLD-D704 notorious for streaking problems???(!!)

Bartender Magazine
Webtender.com – “In My Bar” – “Tell The Webtender what you have in your bar, and get a list of all the drinks you can make.”

Earth and Moon Viewer: Expert Request

the following links come from my LiveJournal Friends page, which i use as a simple online aggregator of site feeds…

boingboing: Deaf children in Nicaragua create new language
boingboing: D&D rarities sold off by terminally ill TSR illustrator
boingboing: Remembering

fark: VIDEO – Reporter covers dangerous intersection – huge crash happens behind him, live

Engadget: The Godfather horse head pillow

RefDesk’s SotD: MapMachine
”National Geographic’s redesigned online atlas gives you the world – your way. Find nearly any place on Earth, and view it by population, climate, and much more. Plus, browse antique maps, find country facts, or plan your next outdoor adventure with our trail maps”

and i finally bumped into a website with someone using the .name domain… i really wanted one of these for a long time, before i decided to just get a .com…

http://grant.henninger.name/

btw, it is just some guy’s blog, so no telling if it will be of any interest to anyone, it is just the domain name that caught my attention…

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links – various, from karl, from SOTD, for family

insidious_plots — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 21:44:42 +0000

first, the various…

Ender’s Game
“Intruder Signal” on 40 Meters Remains a Mystery for Now
Creepy crawly blanket
apod: Above the Eye of Hurricane Ivan
me with my LaserDisc evangelist hat on

karl sent me these months ago… yes, i am just now getting to them…

MetaSpy
OpenDiary.com
Web FTP Client Version3.5.0
Phone Phreaking Trips [RealAudio]

these links with descriptions are copied from three RefDesk’s Site-of-the-Day email newsletters i have had sitting in my inbox, meaning to check them out…

MIT OpenCourseWare
   ”Welcome to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare: a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. With the publication of 700 courses, MIT OCW offers educational materials from 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT’s schools.”

Time Capsuler
   ”To begin your trip in this Time Capsule enter a date. You will be presented with your own customized page that includes all the information you’ve chosen, plus typical consumer prices from that year, Academy Award winners that year, etc. Site has data online for the years 1800 through 2002, although data for the years 1800 – 1875 is probably spotty.”

The Yahoo! Buzz Index Weekly
   ”Check out the top 20 search subjects on Yahoo!, complete with a sardonic round-up of all the newsmakers that are moving and shaking web traffic this week.”

and i am posting these specifically for members of my family…

one for mary, one for mom, and one for jeff (i have been meaning to point this one out to him for something like three years)…

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links – web-based tools and the world’s biggest cyndrical aquarium

insidious_plots — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 20:50:42 +0000

these tools/resources will mostly be of interest to Dreamcast/WebTV browser users, though, a few might be worth a look for anyone who works with with web pages…

AnyBrowser.com – Your Source for Browser Compatibility Verification
WDG Copy/Paste HTML Validator
Cynthia Says – Accessibility Validator
Doctor HTML Quality Assessment Validator

Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker
HTMlite tutorials
extended ASCII – Webopedia.com

TL/2 – “a FileManager specially designed for thin-client browsers and a sturdy [webspace tool kit]“.
Draac.com – Web Page Tools
MAiP Developer Tools
Domania Directory Mover
net2ftp

Email Address Encoder
Adobe Acrobat – Adobe PDF Conversion by Simple Form

“JSMFeed is a Perl script that converts RSS XML feeds into standard browser side Javascript in JSMsg convention.” – “Display RSS Feeds on your site- Convert your RSS feeds to JSMsg feeds for easy web-page display”
“phpMyChat is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use multi-room chat based on PHP and a database, supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and ODBC.”

and, behold The World’s Largest Cylidrical Aquarium…

AquaDom Aquarium [via BoingBoing.net]

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a few various links

insidious_plots — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 01:06:56 +0000

Why I hate Microsoft

DTS Online – Consumer – Home Theatre – DVD Title Search

Chicago Sun-Times – Roger Ebert – Movie Answer Man

Museum of Hoaxes – Time Travel Spam
Wired News: Turn Back the Spam of Time

Achaea – Dreams of Divine Lands
IRC Roleplaying – Dungeons and Dragons Games Looking for Players

The Morning News – Tricks of the Trade

SpamTown :: Current Spam-Blocking News And Information
Welcome to Spam Town. We don’t make spam, we learn to live with it.

i may do this more often…

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ABQ finally gets craigslist

insidious_plots — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 16:13:17 +0000

http://albuquerque.craigslist.org/

Related posts:Craigslist now in the final frontier links – blog stuff, Psion/Epoc, and a great craigslist post Fw: Man killed in shooting behind Albuquerque restaurant

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fark.com radio commercials

insidious_plots — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 17:48:59 +0000

on april 28, a request was posted on fark.com for people to make their own radio commercial for the site… there a are a couple really good ones, if you are familiar with fark…

(and, to make sure they don’t get lost, i have added them all to our mp3 subdir…)

Related posts:My LJ Feeds Link finally got change detection . . . → Read More: fark.com radio commercials Related posts:

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we have been online three years today

insidious_plots — Sun, 15 Feb 2004 00:30:02 +0000

[moved from my LiveJournal]

here is the latest version of the same post i have made the last two years on this day…

on this day, three years ago, we went online with our dreamcast and little junky planetweb 2.6 browser on the feb ’01 ODCM demo disk for the first time…

of course now it is 2 online dc’s and japanese browsers and our Psions are also online, of course…

unlike probably most people, we actually have a videotape of our first time logging onto the web… we just let the tape roll… really fascinating to see yourself klutz around the web for the very first time…

for the record, first site we went to… google

we have our first irc chat on tape, our first time in an online game (PSO) and several other firsts, like when we signed up for hotmail and could not use a space in “insidious plots”, which led to the handle being the way it is to this day: insidious underscore plots…

heh, weird little collection… but, interesting to look back on from 3 years later…

sort of like our own little wayback machine…

(when i fast scan forward on the tape it makes me think “so… this is what broadband would look like…” :D !)

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101 Ways to Save the Internet

christopher — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 17:32:42 +0000

[moved from my LiveJournal, where there are also comments on this post that i have not moved to here...]

101 Ways to Save the Internet [wired.com]

Where’s a superhero when you need one? The Net, which once seemed so invincible, is under attack by the forces of evil. Viruses knock servers to their knees.. Spammers hijack our inboxes. Hackers and identity thieves menace our collective security and personal privacy.
Desperate solutions range from abandoning email to requiring a license to log on. Halt, fools! The Internet’s problems stem from the same virtues that make it great: open architecture, the free flow of information, peer-to-peer cooperation, and a bias for linking strangers, not disconnecting them. Take those away and the Net might cease to infuriate us – but it will also cease to amaze us.

Here’s a smarter approach: 101 proposals that harness the Net’s own superpowers to defeat its foes. Up, up, and away!

a few examples…

Build a .sex red-light district – Icann, the committee that assigns top-level Internet domains, refuses to create an adult zone that can easily be kept from kids’ eyes. Porn won’t disappear, so deal with it.

from the “Microsoft To-Do” section of the list…

Hey Steve, fire someone – Somebody’s not living up to the company’s tough talk on fixing bugs. Developers, developers, developers should be accountable, accountable, accountable.

Give away a good spam filter

Ship antivirus wizard – Why can’t the paper clip guy tell us something important, like “This message is infected with Sobig”?

Take the blame – Software license agreements that absolve you of, oh, deleting three years’ worth of email are irresponsible. Bugs are negligence, and negligence should cost you, not us.

from the “Google To-Do List”

Crawl the Internet Archive

Let us link to a page we hate without boosting its ranking

from the “Your To-Do List” section…

Switch your ISP – Some offer anti-spam and anti-virus tools and support. If your current provider won’t help you defend yourself, find another that will.

Death to fax machines – Send us an attachment instead.
Stop with the jokes – If we get the one about French military victories one more time, we’re going to come over and unplug you personally.

people who continuously forward junk to me get treated like any other spammer…
people, please, just repeat the mantra from the Earthlink Internet Hour radio show:

I will not forward forwarded email
I will not forward forwarded email
I will not forward forwarded email

Turn off your HTML email – It makes you vulnerable to viruses – and bugs us.

Tell Kelly on Geocities to take down her Macarena tribute page It’s over, Kel.

damn straight! i have written much on this subject in the past and i am sure i will write more in the future…

Celebrate diversity – With nearly every computer on the planet running Windows, Outlook, and Explorer, it’s too easy for a single virus to spread everywhere.

and, finally…

Add a “Skip All Flash Intros” option to Macromedia players

in the words of Sam Steele, “Flash is evil.”…

ok, final thought, say it with me now…

I will not forward forwarded email
I will not forward forwarded email
I will not forward forwarded email

go and do likewise…

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