If any friends or family in the Portland/Beaverton/etc… area would like the pleasure (or displeasure, depending on how you look at it) of our family’s company the night of Thursday, October 6th, and has room for all four of us (my wife and I and two daughters) to crash there for the night, send me an email or note or something (jake {at} orty {dot} com). I will be attending a funeral on Friday morning (the 7th) in Forest Grove and I can’t say that I really want to drive from Bend at the crack of dawn if I can avoid it (that’s time I’d rather spend with my family up there). I’d ask the family I have in Forest Grove, but I have a feeling that they’re already going to be full up (as there are people coming in from all over for this funeral).
Month: September 2011
I’m Such A Nerd
But I’m sure I’m not the only one that recognizes that Imperial March being played by two floppy drives is pretty dang impressive:
Craigslist Sues Man, Wins $1.2 Million Default Judgement, All Without Him Knowing
Does anybody else find craiglist’s tactics a little psychotic here?
The guy started a reddit thread that discusses this whole idiotic mess as well, but craigslist is basically trying to destroy the life of a man who created software (which he’s since pulled) that made posting to craigslist easier.
Video Dump
Enjoy!
Need Some Decor For Your Office?
How about some do-it-yourself paper people?
Everything’s Better With A Little Facial Hair
Especially when it’s facial hair that’s as awesome as Tom Selleck’s moustache:
Why Netflix Is Splitting Itself In Two
Leave it to The Oatmeal to explain this stupidity perfectly.
Reading Material
- Comcast’s low-income $10-per-month internet service goes live. It’s for families who have children enrolled in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which, I think means I would qualify, since my kids get reduced lunches at the schools. Wish they offered something like that here.
- Super Smash Land is an epic demake of the Smash Bros series to make it look like it’s being played on an old Game Boy.
- The Boston Globe’s new design takes fluid design to a whole new level. It’s brilliantly done. A designer in that was part of the project wrote up his experiences here and Hacker News has some good comments.
- Something for my project list: How to Automatically Cool Your Entertainment Center When It Gets Too Hot.
- Teen with no vagina becomes pregnant from stab wound.
- The Monks that participate in Kaihogyo are nuts, running thousands of miles over a three year span. Read more on everybody’s favorite source.
- Bear Grylls fan? He’s answered some fan questions.
- Writing a web application is not just LAMP any more. There’s more to it.
- Fix for VLC (my media player of choice) Skipping and Lagging on High Def videos.
- Like Synergy, Mouse Without Borders allows you to share a mouse and keyboard among multiple computers. It only works for Windows 7 (while Synergy works on multiple OSes), but it’s really slick and easy to setup.
- Sick of ads playing in Flash videos? AdBlockVideo for Firefox might help (haven’t tried it yet personally).
- This man is such a rebel.
Does Anybody Else See This As A Really Bad Move For Netflix?
You can read the official word from Netflix here, but it just seems that their plan to spin off their DVD-by-mail service into a new entity (Qwikster) is going to kill their hard-earned brand. Nevermind the other hassles that come along with maintaining two similar, but different, accounts on two different sites (I’m sure somebody will create a browser extension or Greasmonkey script to make things easier by pulling content into one or the other).
Personally, this comment is probably the best explanation of all this I’ve seen:
This is great news! My dentist just did the same thing. It’s so much better. Now when I have cavities on my top row of teeth I go to one dentist, and when I have cavities on the bottom row, I go to the other dentist across town. Sure it’s frustrating that sometimes they can’t access my dental records that used to all be in one place, and yes I admit that it seems strange that they now charge me almost twice as much for the exact same dental care I received six months ago…but they are innovators! Besides, what choice do I have? They’re the only two dentists around. Well done Netflix! If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Simply hike the price, alienate your customer base and complicate your user interface under the guise of “progress”. Kudos.
That all being said, if it gets me incredible streaming service, I’ll drop my DVD-by-mail service in a heartbeat. If they had their entire DVD library digitized, then I wouldn’t even have to worry about this whole mess. But Netflix’s recommendation engine has found me some cool shows, and I hate to lose that when I have to maintain two separate queues and rating systems that won’t communicate with each other.
Idaho Has Some Nice Areas…
…but with the slowest Internet in the country, you better believe I wouldn’t move there. Sorry, even in the middle of nowhere, I need good ‘net access that isn’t affected by bears rubbing against towers.