I find answers!

November 3, 2009 at 5:58 pm (I Lol'd)
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So I was showing a friend Window’s Speech Recognition Program and how cool it is to use voice commands to control your computer.  Especially since I like to knit and with this software I can knit and dictate my homework at the same time.  However, my computer was also rendering frames out of Maya so I’d have some things to show my group tomorrow (always multi-tasking, I am) and while I was in notepad showing my friend the dictation, my computer was doing some crazy things.  After a phrase or two, we stopped talking and this ensued:

You can be even harder for them to discuss coming in the end of the fifth time talking you lose his life he know that in the universe is a tour is the saddest zip is this isn’t a whole host of that and how to a total V whom it is totally if you’re you knew this room this is late computer readable or not looking mediators 3611 at-let it slide also that I think this is a leading computer and letting the house of sky animals have an opportunity there’s 3611 at let it slide also than I think I would argue that This is a test this can be eaten the designs of the hidden camera that was loaded with the movie reviews use of its eternal working.

Then it opened Firefox, took me to MSNBC, opened a help window and idled.  My computer is a poet and I didn’t know et.  Maybe I’ll leave notepad open more often while I’m idle, publish the results and get rich haha.  Which fulfills this plan outline I have:

  1. Buy Computer
  2. Run Notepad
  3. ???
  4. Profit

I’m glad finally that 3rd section has been filled in.

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Heard about the .gay thing?

October 23, 2009 at 5:14 pm (Awesome News)
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So today I was reading a New York Times article about two different groups pushing for a .gay internet suffix.

“Two for-profit groups are pushing for one. The Dot Gay Alliance (dotgay.org), out of New York City, is being led by a longtime gay activist. And dotGay (dotgay.com) is being spearheaded by a heterosexual German man in Riga, Latvia, who has incorporated a company in San Francisco.”

The best part though, wouldn’t be having websites like pride.gay or hotels.gay, but part of the profit which would be generated by people paying for .gay domains would be donated to gay rights groups and charities.

“The domain-registry business can be lucrative, potentially spinning off millions of dollars per year as each registered Internet site pays annual fees of $8 or so. While neither group is nonprofit, both say they plan on funneling those funds toward supporting gay causes. “This could be a significant source of funding for organizations fighting, doing very good, important work,” said Joe Dolce, founder and executive director of the Dot Gay Alliance, and a longtime gay activist.

Mr. Dolce said he got the idea for a .gay domain as a way to raise money when he was working with Minds and Machines, an Internet-domain consulting service that is helping with the creation of a .eco domain. He was intrigued when Al Gore, the former vice president, said he would support .eco only if half the proceeds from the registration went to environmental groups, and thought that model could be applied to gay causes as well.

Since June, he has been working with the parent company of Minds and Machines, which will provide the financial backing for the expensive application process. The plan is for 51 percent of the proceeds from domain registration to go to gay causes, he said.

“It’s a very novel way that doesn’t involve putting your hand out, doesn’t involve another benefit or charity function,” said Mr. Dolce, 52, who saw many of his friends die from AIDS in the 1980s. He added: “This is a community that has to sustain itself. There was very little help from the outside world, very little help from the government.”

I think it’s a cool idea and a cool way to fund raise since it doesn’t really take any extra effort. Of course at some point, I (as I’m sure others wondered), well why just.gay? what about bi and transsexuals and such?  But the article explains that too.

And why .gay and not say, .lgbt — a commonly used short-hand term for “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender”? Mr. Dolce said one reason was that “gay” is an internationally recognized word, while the L.G.B.T. acronym differs across different languages. Also, he added, “gay is a nice three-letter word, which fits Internet naming convention.”

Good point Mr. Dolce.  Certainly can’t just chop the T off the end of LGBT without pissing off a bunch of people.  So what do you guys think? .gay a good thing?  Pointless?  Does it matter to you? Do you think crazy fundies will attack this like marriage?  .gay jeopardizes the sanctity of internet!  It’ll teach kids that internet should be a neutral, non-censored media! WE CAN’T HAS THAT!

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Beware the pickles!

October 12, 2009 at 11:16 pm (I Lol'd)
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This is terribly sad, completely pathetic and also hilarious all at the time same.  This lady has the strongest, most bizarre, irrational fear I’ve ever seen.

I have a couple irrational fears like everyone, but I cannot fathom something so benign causing such a strong reaction.  And the fact that she’s on TV for it makes me wonder how much she’s faking.  People will do all sorts of things for airtime (see Jackass) so a simple fear could be extorted into a huge show if it means 15 minutes on Maury.  Then again, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

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I wanna put on MY funky shoes

October 12, 2009 at 8:04 am (I Lol'd)
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I love birds (except for greedy geese who will do anything for food, and city pigeons who are just rats with wings).  They are just so interesting, fun, pretty and entertaining.  Especially Frostie:

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No wonder I’ve had writer’s block

October 8, 2009 at 3:56 pm (I Lol'd, Other Blogs)
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A great letter from Emails From Crazy People (god I that site).  It full of so much crazy and I just to this short one with you all. I you it as much as I.

(This was an email in response to our University’s latest mailing of our Alumni Magazine. I have removed all specifics to protect the guilty.)

You should know that before I throw in the trash your stupid “alumnus” magazine, some of us have good education and recognize evil when we see it. Where is the report questioning the awarding of degrees in Sociology, Women’s Studies, and the like? Where is the article questioning the renaming of the Business Administration school to something from outer space like management? There isn’t such a thing as “management”, it’s just a title awarded to employees instead of giving them a pay raise. Come on Uof__, get with reality. Jeepers. You’re looking like a bunch of fools.

Look, its time to realize that woman aren’t people. They just repeat yesterday all over again each day. If you listen to their conversations, you will note the absence of verbs. They can’t do life. They can’t do Earth. You shouldn’t have all your staff positions occupied by non-humans. It shows in your Alumnus magazine. Fake nonsense is not a good idea.

Class of ‘65

Translation for the above for my non-female readers who need verbs:  “Found a great letter from Emails From Crazy People (god I love that site).  It’s full of so much crazy and I just had to share this short one with you all.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.”

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Burgers Anyone?

October 5, 2009 at 2:23 am (D) None of the Above)

Going through my RSS feeder as usual, I came upon this article about how unscrupulous and horrid the beef industry can be.  However, this article wasn’t about treatment of animals while alive, but rather about the treatment of the beef after the slaughter.  NYTimes presents the information with a story about a 20-year old dance instructor who was brain damaged and paralyzed from a powerful strain of E. coli in her hamburger.

HOLY CRAP!

I didn’t know that was even possible.  Talk about completely scary.  Could you imagine nomming some delicious ground up cattle only to end up in a forced coma 10 days later because the seizures you were having were so constant and hardcore it was going to kill you?! Hefty price for BBQ.

The frikkin 6-page article goes on to talk about how suppliers and grinders are horrible people who don’t always test the meat like they should.  Some suppliers won’t even sell to grinders who retest the meat (because the weight of assuredly clean meat is on the supplier, for obvious reasons I think).  Of course no supplier really wants to test, because you don’t ask a question if you aren’t going to like the answer.

Of course this brings a question to my mind… HOW DO THEY SLEEP AT NIGHT?!  There is no way I’d be able to live a happy life knowing that I could be killing or paralyzing (or even just making sick) unsuspecting people because I’m too much of a heartless, greedy cheapskate to test meat for POTENTIALLY FATAL BACTERIA.

At the end of the article, it mentions that Costco tells the suppliers to nicely fuck-off by double testing their meat, and reminds people to cook their burgers at 160* F (for the love of God(s) PLEASE do!!) to kill any E. coli.

So apparently eating ground beef is like playing Russian Roulette, but if you buy meat from Costco and cook it properly, your gun can have more than 6 chambers.

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TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY?!

September 23, 2009 at 7:13 pm (D) None of the Above)
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Crazy, but I wanted to share this.  Minimum sarcasm even because I think this is something that deserves a bit of seriousness (without being uptight).

Yes it’s from the UK, but it’s relevant nearly everywhere.

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Human Nature and the problem with new bans

September 23, 2009 at 1:03 pm (D) None of the Above)
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So I actually got wind of this news the old fashioned way (yes, believe it or not I talk to, and see people face to face. No electronics necessary). I then, of course, hopped on the interwebs to read a full article, but mostly because (it was entertaining to read the comments) it’s easier to blog about news when you have something to link your readers to.  Of course, I did go and find a better article for you all, so no stupid comments, but a more interesting article.  Perhaps a win win for most of you.

Anyway, preface aside, the FDA has banned clove and flavored cigarettes.  Well just flavored cigarettes, but that apparently includes cloves, even though no one really counted those as a “flavored cigarette”.  It’s a clove.  You smoke the cloves with the tobacco.  The smoke is different.  In fact, it’s more dangerous, but … well anyway; bottom line, it’s illegal to sell now.

The most interesting part of this though, is my reaction.  I don’t smoke cigarettes of any kind.  I don’t like smoke from cigarettes, I’ve never really cared to smoke any cigarettes.  But now I want to smoke clove cigarettes. Just for the hell of it.  Not regularly, just like, try one or so; and its just because all of a sudden I can’t, and before I could.

In high school I had friends who smoked cloves, and I liked that the smoke smelled nicer, so I didn’t resent them for smoking around me, but I never really cared to do it myself. As highschool kids, we were underage, so we weren’t allowed to buy them anyway. The difference is that the under 18 ban on tobacco is old.  We grew up like that. No big deal. Same with booze.  Now though, this ban is new, so defying it is fresh and edgy.  I guess the bottom line though is that I still won’t smoke them.  It’s harder to get them, they are more expensive &e. But it just piques this little part of me that wants to rebel against laws like this.  No new studies have come out, the dangers have been well known, there was no major incident.  Just BAM! banned.

It irks my libertarian side.  Maybe it’s not so much human nature as American nature.

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Wow ok..

September 17, 2009 at 3:44 pm (I Lol'd, Other Blogs)
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so I will be the first to admit that I am blog-keeping fail. I told myself I wouldn’t be like this because I was so good at it in Holland, but alas here we are, with several days (near several weeks) between blog posts. I have good reasons though, I promise. And I numbered them, for convienence.
1) I am exponentially more busy here than I ever could have possibly been in Holland. Going to school full time means that not only do I spend most of my day occupied on campus, but I spend most of my nights doing damn homework. The time I have that I am not busy doing school work or actually in school I spend working, sleeping or running tiny errands (like buying new nuts for my scooter because either some jack ass stole them or they fell off somehow).
2) When I do find myself with free time, I’m usually so busy catching up on the internets (which obviously speeds along without me) that I never end up with time to actually post or share anything. And so I resort back to what I was doing before; ie just spamming friends on IM with links.
3) While in Holland a whole bunch of stuff-to-do-when-I-get-back piled up. I have a list. Seriously. The back log is big enough, and my schedule is tight enough, that I’m still working on relieving that. And I’m talking stuff like “Going to bars with my friends because I’m finally allowed in” hasn’t officially happened yet. And just yesterday I finally managed “Challenge ARTS 125 before I shoot someone.” with success. I have to say, I was super thrilled too. Like bouncing up and down squeeing thrilled that Mr Bishop didn’t exercise his douche powers all over my graduation schedule. Anyway
4) There was a lull in good internet. Maybe a weak excuse because maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places. But for a week or two I feel like all my usual haunts were running dry. Things were entertaining, but not dog-eating-cotc entertaining. So I had no drive to force blog time into my schedule.

Now you might be thinking “But Ginger Kid, you’re blogging now, and you’re up to 364 words. That’s a fairly alright sized entry.” And I’d say “Why yes, thank you. It’s not my best, but that is a couple good paragraphs.” and then you might say “No, what I mean is with all those excuses, what are you doing here?” and I’d facepalm and go “Oh oh, right. Well you see, life is ever changing-” (and what you didn’t see, is me struggling to spell a word that I didn’t end up even using because I realised it wasn’t appropriate there.) “-and the situation has shifted a bit.” and you might then follow up with “do you have to be so vague?” and I’d snarkily say “but being vague is almost as fun as this other thing…” before starting the next paragraph.

As I mentioned, I successfully challenged 125, and I have yet to add 325 (which is the next drawing class). which leaves me with an AMAZING 5 hour chunk of time between my other two classes of the day. This chunk is temporary, but I am celebrating it’s short-lived existence. How?! With youtube and twitter mostly haha. I just watched at least an hour of vlogbrothers videos. Which has got me all hyped up to blog (well vblog, but since I have been neglecting this place I’m channeling that energy). You can’t tell, but I am thinking and typing very quickly, much as John and Hank speak very quickly. If you read this entry with as much speed as possible, that will make it more of an authentic experience.

Also, on twitter I was lead to this delightful piece of wtf internets. It’s a small picture gallery of wildly inappropriate toys for kids thanks to the huffington post. I’ve seen the breastfeeding doll before, since there was news that it would be coming to US soonish or something back in the summer, but the rest of these toys are even weirder. Pole Dancer is my favorite though.

I also have to say, I love the new Kanye meme running around like wildfire. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read an article on the crap he pulled at the VMAs and then scroll down. Or scroll down first, be confused and go read the article and possibly come back to re-see whats below (which is probably more likely because that’s what I would do).

There are TONS of these and a good chunk of them spring up THAT NIGHT. That’s the power of The Internet, people.

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Not upgrading IE6 is killing children

September 7, 2009 at 4:53 pm (Awesome News)

I’m not even exaggerating. I will admit to using dramatic words though, but that’s what make life more interesting, isn’t it? Being in web development, and being required to support IE6 with our websites, I am one of the angry masses who hate people who haven’t upgraded their IE to at least 7, or better yet, to Firefox.

However, Microsoft really is donating to Feeding America for everyone that downloads IE8 from their sponsored Browser for the Better page. And they are doubling the contribution for people who update from IE6.

So if you’re still running crappy IE6, you’re not just angering/annoying random internet people, but you’re withholding food from hungry families. You’re hurting your internet browsing experience too, but think of the children man. Think of the children!

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