IVL

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Saved by Syndication

I have a list of essential websites that I check on a daily basis. With the advent of RSS syndication, this has gotten much less time-consuming now that I get a little popup telling me when one or more of them have been updated. No more do I have to spend precious minutes clicking a multitude of links in my rather long bookmark list.

It's heavenly. *Hugs RSS*

So here's my list of must-see website reads - some of the sites of course belong to friends and family, but there might be one or two you'd find useful or amusing.

(Links go to the site's RSS feed, so don't click them unless you want to add them to your aggregator)

1. Ain't it Cool News - Harry Knowles irreverent movie/tv/comics news site. I could do without the HUGE FONTS and plethora of exclamation points, but I gotta give them points for enthusiasm :)

2. Blogger Buzz - I kind of like to know what the gurus and honchos at Blogger.com are up to.

3. Boing Boing - A directory of wonderful things according to their title. I love this site and it's a new discovery for me so I get a little excited when they update. They showcase everything from someone's Flying Spaghetti Monster costume, to links to the coolest 'Hand Sports' videos (including pen twirling and cup stacking!)

4. Captain Wow and the Movie Blog of Doom - What kind of IndyKnow whore would I be if I didn't plug my fellow blogger's umm, blogs. :D The Captain is probably the biggest fan of the cinema that I've ever met (I thought I was a movie buff - he puts me to shame.) His blog's definitely worth the read.

5. CNN - I almost feel like I have to have something about national/world news in my aggregator otherwise I feel out of touch. Not good when you work for a newspaper eh? CNN actually has tons of RSS links and you can pick and choose. I went for the breaking news feed.

6. Defamer - Yeah ok I admit I like celebrity gossip. But this site does it with such a mocking, snarky attitude. It's good stuff.

7. Fark - The best part of Fark is the headlines. Members of Fark can submit any news story (but the weirder the better) and they can write their own headline for it. It seems to be a status thing to write the funniest headline which makes for daily entertainment when checking for updates. It might also be best to read Fark via an aggregator at work because there are a lot of boobies on the main page. Save that for later ;)

8. The GetIndyKnow Forums - The forums on GetIndyKnow are syndicated. This is so handy when forums have this option. I'm a forum geek and visit a lot of them so having this option rocks.

9. IMDb News - Movie news from the Internet Movie Database. This one is irksome because they don't even provide a short summary of the links - they make you click on them to get the story, so I'm just debating whether I should take this off my list.

10. MAKE - "MAKE is a quarterly publication from O'Reilly for those who just can't stop tinkering, disassembling, re-creating, and inventing cool new uses for the technology in our lives. It's the first do-it-yourself magazine dedicated to the incorrigible and chronically incurable technology enthusiast in all of us. MAKE celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend technology any way you want." - I couldn't describe MAKE so I borrowed their description. It's an awesome site.

11. PostSecret - I've mentioned them before but it's worth mentioning again. I wish they updated every day though instead of weekly.

12. Running On - My father's a runner. I got him started with Blogger as a Christmas present last year and as far as I can tell, enjoys posting about his daily runs. It's a nice, gentle blog :)

13. Slashdot - All the news nerds love. It's definitely geek central at Slashdot but if you want to keep up with the fast-moving technology world, Slashdot is essential reading.

14. The Cynic - Corey's the most cynical guy I know. A jaded journalist (ok maybe not jaded but he's been in the biz long enough to earn the nickname) from Florida, Corey takes the news and gives it his special cynical spin.

15. The Sneeze - Half 'zine, half blog, half not good with fractions. I don't know what to make of this weird little blog other than it's an absolute hoot to read and I'm very interested-at-the-same-time-grossed-out by this guy's Tree Brain.

15. The Unbearable Peanut - I just love the name of this little blog :) My cousin began blogging not so long ago. He's a very cool writer and his posts have been among the oddest/most interesting I've ever read online.

16. Touring with Tonya - I'm whoring one more time for IndyKnow :) Tonya's got the backstage passes to some of the rockingest gigs in the tri-state area. Her knowledge of rock music is extensive and diverse. Check out her blog and you'll get to read her concert reviews, CD reviews, see shots of the gigs from backstage, and just have a lot of fun.

17. Wil Wheaton - Yes I've mentioned my favourite geek before as well, but this is his RSS feed. Read up a little bit on this former child actor (of "Stand By Me" and STNG fame) and what he's up to these days (mostly lots of poker playing.) He's a wonderful writer so his blog is a really good read.

So there you have some of the things on my Feed list. Wasn't that fun? :)

Written by atomicweightofcheese @ 5:45 PM || 0 comments |

Monday, September 19, 2005

Well blow me down me hearties!

Avast! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day today!

It all began in 1995 when a couple of guys called Mark and John were playing racquetball and started yelling out encouragement and slags in pirate slang. Neither are quite sure why, but the concept snowballed from there.

And so with a little help from Dave Barry each year on September 19th, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day.

So take a little time out and confuzzle the colleagues and confound your kids, mateys.

I'm off to shiver some timbers.

...Actually that sounded quite rude. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Written by atomicweightofcheese @ 1:21 PM || 2 comments |

Friday, September 16, 2005

OMG! FDL!

Typing is a pain in the ass. The typos, the misspelled words, bad grammar - all of that is exacerbated when you come online and begin chatting. Granted your typing speed will pick up and you might progress from the 'hunt and peck' type to 'manic secretary' as you become more proficient. But speed does not a typist make.

Ok but you didn't plunk down your money on broadband just to improve your mad typing skillz. You wanted to meet people from all over the world and converse with them. The problem is that doing so requires you to damn near learn a new language.

Internet-speak is replete with acronyms, abbreviations and slang. It's just faster to type 'lol' than to actually spell 'laugh out loud.' (And if you want to laugh at me, I just typo'd three times while trying to spell out 'laugh out loud.')

Other acronyms such as, 'OMG,' STFU' (a personal fave), and 'FDL' all have their place in chat programs like messengers, IRC chats or even old telnet chats like this one where I've been an admin for over nine years. They facilitate conversation in a world where speaking out loud just doesn't happen. You are solely dependent on text to convey your meaning, tone and intent, all in real-time. So you end a sentence with a smilie ( :) or :( or :P ) to convey your tone. Or you might find yourself in an environment with several other people at once and the text scroll on your screen will be flying by all Matrix-like and if you don't keep up, you're going to be ignored.

Words are often distorted as well. 'Probably' becomes 'prolly,' 'program' becomes 'proggy,' and 'address' is 'addy.' I don't know why, or how those came about but I've used them.

If you want to explore this phenomenon, Wikipedia has a very good explanation of Internet slang. In fact, Wikipedia is pretty damn cool itself so spend some time there and poke around.

In other words, RTFM.

Written by atomicweightofcheese @ 6:49 PM || 0 comments |

Saturday, September 10, 2005

IM-ing

Today I was having a conversation with my father. Normally that's not very unusual, but this time, we were having this conversation using Yahoo's new voice feature. We spent 45 minutes on the "phone" (it really is like making a phone call) and about 35 minutes of that was spent marvelling at the technology and saying, "This is neat!"

The quality was really pretty good, better in fact than it used to be because chatting through an instant messenger such as Yahoo or MSN isn't that new. It's just better. And the best thing of all? It's FREE. I am all about the free stuff, let me tell you.

I can talk with my peeps in England if I want to, for as long as I want to, all free. I'll be annoying my sister on a more frequent basis now as well as some of my good friends in Chicago, California and Florida. My aunt in Lincoln is getting into it. My father will be hooking up with his friend in Italy more often now. It's neat!

The benefits:

Free. I can't stress that enough.

Yahoo's voice technology is really clear, with little delay. I would liken it to using a mobile phone.

It will encourage you to talk more to your loved ones who live far away. It might even bring you closer to someone you've never even met - only ever exchanged some text messages with.

If the person you try to call doesn't answer Yahoo allows you to leave a voicemail they can pick up later. How freakin' cool is that?

Did I mention it's free?

The drawbacks:

Well it's not all that portable. Unless you want to lug around your laptop and try and find Wi-fi when you need to contact someone on your contact list.

You will need to download Yahoo messenger, and you'll need a microphone. My laptop has a mic built-in and when I'm on my desktop, I just use the mic built-in to my webcam. If you don't have a mic, they're pretty cheap - my father picked one up at Office Max today for 15 bucks.

Obviously the applications for this are far-reaching, from the perverse which I will leave up to your imagination, to the practical. You can conference in several people and have a meeting or you can have one-on-one chats with friends.

Or you can be sad like me and use it to "call" your daughter sitting in the next room on the other computer and ask her to bring you a Coke :)

Written by atomicweightofcheese @ 11:00 PM || 0 comments |

GetIndyKnow.com blogs are collections of short, frequently updated posts by members of the Grand Island community and Nebraska natives. Bloggers, and comment posters, are solely responsible for what they say.

If you're interested in blogging for GetIndyKnow, email us at yo@getindyknow.com with some sample entries and we'll check 'em out.
elementopia