Stuff on the Internet: Death Metal Rooster Edition

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Another week of browsing the web - here's the sharables from this week.

Stuff on the Internet

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One of my daily habits (alright, multiple-times-per-day habits) is to open google reader and scan through the blogs that interest me. Google reader is an incredibly efficient way to browse sites that have a decent signal-to-noise ratio. It means that I don't have to have a list of 100+ bookmarks for all the sites that I like to read. I simply point google reader at it and it keeps track of all the stories. What this lets me do is stay on top of what's going on in fields that interest me the most. Anyway, one thing that I think I might start doing a little more of is posting some links to stuff that I've found that are cool. So here's what I've found this past week or so.

All of these were stuff I shared with google reader. You can see these items and more on this shared page: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/heraldk.

Heraldk

Dinner and Edmonton Tweetup

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Last night after I finally had to give up on the UPS guy coming with the RAM for my Mac Pro, I went to go pick up Diane on our way to her coworker An's place for dinner. An had spent the entire day cooking up a storm. When we got there, her entire kitchen was filled with lots of food! We started our dinner off with salad rolls -- they're kind of like not deep fried spring rolls. Next were some freshly deep fried spring rolls, and then a bowl of wonton soup. After that the other two guests arrived and we continued to eat. There was grilled pork ribs, shrimp and chicken skewers, shrimp and squid stirfry (I've never had squid so tender and non-rubbery before!), and a bunch of other great foods as well. I ate so much that I didn't eat anything all day until dinner. Today was the Edmonton Tweetup. A while ago, I joined twitter and blogged a bit about the experience. To put it quickly - I was a bit bummed out that I was the first of my group of friends to join the twitter experience. Well that's changed a bit, thanks to @mastermaq who found me using twitter local. After just a couple of weeks, I had several twitter friends and the service became useful for me. Not long after that, Mack started organizing a twitter meet, which apparently is affectionately called a tweetup. The planning and organizing ended up with today being the day for the tweetup.

I showed up with Diane and we had a great turnout. We had at least 14 or 15 people there, and it was great to meet everyone. There was quite a large range of people who showed up -- young people, older people, and a fair range of fields (although most were tech related in some way). It was quite a fun time actually. I spent a lot of time chatting with @bruceclark since we shared an interest in photography, but I also chatted with quite a few other people. It was a most enjoyable afternoon.

After the party seemed to have waned a little, I returned home for a short time before heading out to the airport to pick up my parents who were in Europe on holidays for a month. I took them out for supper as a mother's day thing since the actual Mother's day involved driving my sister to a couple of gigs. I got to hear a little about their trip, and it was good to have them back in town :)

This evening I played a bit of poker, having my first real downswing at 200NL since an early downswing when I first moved up. Downswining 7 buyins is not my idea of a fun time. All sorts of crap happened to me that I had somehow avoided for the most part over the last little while of playing. Oh well, it can't all go my way. I'm still up playing those limits, it's just unfortunate that I couldn't continue the trend that's been lasting for the past little while. I guess it brings my winrate down to a much more sustainable level. It just sucks for it to happen all at once like this.

So I'm off to bed. I'm taking Megan to her first of two gigs tomorrow at the Radisson Hotel (formerly the Coast Terrace Inn) tomorrow morning. If you're in the mood for some fancy brunch with some harp music for entertainment, feel free to stop in between 10:15 and 2:15.

Heraldk

Linkety-Link-Link

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Here's a new idea. I'm gonna try and collect a list of neat stuff I find on the internet and post them in a spew of links on a semi-regular basis. There might be some brief discussion, but mostly it'll just be a spew of links for you to check out if you're bored. Lemme know if you like it or not. Clever AACS Tshirt Canon in D improv I'm a Marvel ... and I'm a DC How to kill a President

Heraldk

24 Hours of Flickr

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The 24 hours of Flickr. Boy does this look cool. I'll have to make a point of taking my camera out and see if I can't get a couple of good photos to contribute. It would be pretty sweet to have one of my photos in the commemorative book that Flickr will be putting together. Admittedly, chances are slim to hopeless that I'll take one of the winning shots - but it would be pretty darn sweet! Heraldk

Facebook

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Wow, I can't believe I've found a social networking site I actually don't hate. I can't stand myspace -- most pages are garish and poorly presented. Orkut became meaningless when people lost interest with it in the first couple months. So I never really considered joining facebook since I assumed it would be another waste of time. Eventually though, I heard enough people talking about it that I decided I needed to give it a try. Boy was a surprised. The first thing that struck me is that the site is well-organized and easy to browse. It is very much a web2.0 style done right. Just enough AJAX (I'm assuming) to make the elements of the page interactive to the right degree. Everything feels very easy, but the lack of full customization means that viewing other people's profiles is actually pleasant (unlike myspace ... *shudder*). So all in all it is an impressive piece of software.

The other big thing that struck me right away is just how many of my former schoolmates were on facebook already. I suppose mileage might vary depending on whether facebook has hit critical mass for the people you know. Definitely, however, a large number of people I went to high school, junior high, and even elementary school with are already on facebook. What that meant was within a few days of creating a facebook account, I already had more than 50 people on my friends list. Insane.

The last thing that I think facebook does amazingly well, is it gives you a big reason to login on a regular basis. When you login, you get a list of 'news items' for the people on your friends list. This means that whenever you login you are notified whenever someone adds a new person to their friends list, or when they update their profile, or ... all kinds of stuff. This means you can see what's going on with other people's friends networks and update your own if you see someone you know get added to someone else's list.

So, I have now fallen to facebook and it appears to be another good time waster. Just what I needed.

Heraldk

Index Card Comics

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I've found a delightful little comic written on index cards. Each index card shows some mathematic-esque graph or diagram with labels from real life attached. The comic is simple and charming in so many ways, and I laughed out loud when I read several of them. I'm gradually working my way through the archives, and it looks like the author maintains a pretty high quality and a lot of creativity even all the way back to when she started in August 2006. Check it out! Heraldk

Escher-like paintings

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Wow. I think I have another favourite artist all of a sudden. His name is Rob Gonsalves, and his paintings are very satisfyingly Escher-esque ... and there's a lot of them! Now ... if only I could afford purchasing one of these guys. The trouble would then be, I guess, picking one of them! I think this one's my current favourite, but really, they're all very stunning.

Here's some more links to galleries and product pages.

Heraldk

iTunes and non standard pricing

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This is a really interesting article: This guy is claiming that the real reason the record companies want to change pricing at the iTunes music store is because they want to establish 'image' that a higher priced song is 'better'. It makes a lot of sense.

The iTunes music store currently sells all tracks at $0.99 a song. If the record companies get their way, then they would sell more popular tracks for more money. But now what happens? If popular, 'good' tracks sell for $3.00 a song, then what kind of song is a $0.89 song? You or I might might be able to say that it doesn't matter, but the majority of people will automatically go for the higher priced songs because they are what are 'cool', 'popular' and ... 'good'. Now the record companies have another barganing chip in their deals with artists. Don't want to agree with what we want? We'll price your songs lower.

You know, I like music, but at times I wish I didn't like it so much. I really like to support artists I listen to, but when most of the money I pay for their music goes to these damn record companies, it makes me feel kinda ... unclean. Maybe I don't know how everything is from their side of the issue, but really ... when every move they seem to make is an attempt at keeping their wallets padded, I can hardly show feel like they have the best interests of the music artists at heart can I?

Heraldk

Super Mario Bros

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Seemed to be a theme this month. First, someone plays a level's worth of super mario brother's theme music plus the sound appropriate sound affects entirely on guitar. Craziness. Then, someone comes up with a super mario brothers opera. Yes, really.

Some people, I tell ya. Crazy!

Still, I can't help but be intrigued. Somehow, mario still holds my interest.

Heraldk