…this is how I’d grade my final exams.
Austin Powers Ain’t Got Nothin’ On This Guy
This is Austin Powers, Bollywood Style, circa 1981…
Mythbusters’ Adam Savage Helps Out On Ask Metafilter
The question? How to get a can of Coke from 85°F to 35°F as fast as possible (OK, that wasn’t the exact question, but the answers you’re going to get will approach it that way)? The best answer came from one of the MythBusters’ crew.
Link via Waxy.
It Only Gets Worse For The Local DEQ Office
First there was the fire, ice and flood that beat up the local DEQ office a couple weeks ago. Now, it’s asbestos.
More Wikipedia Oddities
I’ve linked to oddball Wikipedia entries before, and here are a few more:
- A very detailed Back to The Future Timeline
- You can just tell by the URL on this one that it isn’t going to be clean or safe for work.
- Sadly, I remember playing this game.
- List of films sorted by the gory death scene.
My guess is you won’t find any of those entries here.
NewsGator Test Post
Just a test post from News Gator’s built-in blog posting tool (experimenting with it, because apparently I get a free copy) to see if this thing works (thought I doubt it’ll replace SharpMT for me). But since I hate posting something that will undoubtedly be picked up by RSS readers out there, even though it might not stay on the site, here’s a practical joke I wish I’d thought of.
Update: OK, after that little test run, NewGator’s blog posting function works, but since I totally hate composing HTML and adding links in Outlook, and I can’t select categories, I’ll stick with SharpMT for now (but I could see it being handy for folks who just have a simple site).
Huge Monty Python YouTube Collection
I’m a Monty Python fan. If somebody were to buy me this for Christmas, I wouldn’t be upset. So when I was flipping through the channels last night and noticed that Michael Palin’s Personal Best was on OPB last night, I had to stop and watch it. While it was entertaining, there were a lot of great sketches that didn’t show up.
So in my hunt for my fix, YouTube was the obvious place to look, but there are a ton of duplicates and copy-cats. So when I found these two pages that provide a bunch of sorted links to Monty Python YouTube videos, I was a happy boy. This video includes a couple of my favorites (neither of which were on the show last night, but could’ve been):
The World Has Gone Mad
The world has gone completely nuts when the most sold book on Amazon for 2006 teaches you how to properly train your dog.
Squirrels Are Going To Take Over The World
At least the Scots believe that, so they’re going to be giving the squirrels contraceptives.
Giving Up FeedDemon for Outlook-based RSS Reader
I love Feeddemon. It’s arguably the best stand-alone RSS reader out there. Pretty much everything the program’s author has written has been great (I have copies of Homesite and Topstyle as well, both his creations and both wonderful pieces of software).
FeedDemon just worked away, downloading RSS feeds like it was supposed to, hidden away in my system tray. The problem is that I generally work and schedule my daily life out of Outlook and posted entries to this site based on what was e-mailed to me, and didn’t have time to go through all my RSS feeds. So I wanted to get an RSS reader that integrated into Outlook so I could just check my feeds out of there. The company that now supports FeedDemon also sells NewsGator Inbox, which does exactly what I need to do (and had used before back in the day). It would sync with FeedDemon, assuming I actually ever opened up again. The problem was that I didn’t have $30 to spend on it (if they gave a discount to folks who already own two of their products, I’m all ears).
Some Googling dug up Attensa For Outlook, which, so far, is doing all I need it to do. The best part is it’s free.
Now I just need to catch up on my feeds, as I’m horribly behind. But having it in a place I’m already working on a daily basis will make it far easier.
Update: Since it was asked, why didn’t I use Thunderbird, which has built-in RSS support? My Outlook agenda versus Thunderbird is mostly for a few reasons:
1) Far superior label/filtering/rules/flagging abilities which makes it far easier for me to keep track of the 13 accounts I check.
2) Powerful calendar integration
3) Many powerful 3rd party add-ons because of it’s stupidly powerful API.
4) It totally blew up Thunderbird when it tried to import my accounts, email, and settings out of Outlook.
It actually has nothing to with Windows and syncing, though I do tend to favor it in that regard, too, as I need to be able to support it on the desktops where I work.
I honestly considered moving to Thunderbird and have been playing with it for the last few days. but after dealing with it, playing with it, trying to make it work how I wanted to, I had to go back to Outlook. I’ll certainly consider it in the future if there are significant upgrades in that regard, but there are just some times where open source != better.