I went to the Madison Curling Club’s Open House today with my roommate Aaron and some of his friends. This is him and I showing off our made brushing skills.
Basically we got to pay just a few dollars to have club members teach us the technique of the game. It was a lot of fun and not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. Click through to see the full set .
Time for a little Cat Stevens on this wonderful Friday evening.
My 501s from the original Operation Levi’s are being laid to rest. They got a lot of wear, and now the seat is so threadbare that holes are beginning to appear. Time to send them to Goodwill so someone can make.. I dunno, a quilt out of them.
The shrink-to-fit 501s didn’t turn out as great as I had hoped, but they are decent. I think my next pair will probably just be some 514s.
Oh hey, it’s my mom in today’s Daily Universe. She is a funny lady, but congratulations to her for finally finishing her college degree this year.
I have had a couple of people complain about getting repeated blogs posts from me today, and if this includes you, make sure you are not subscribed to multiple feeds of mine. You should only be subscribed to one feed and one feed only:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/bismarksblog
What happened is this:
About two months ago, my .htaccess that should have redirected everything from my old RSS feed to my new RSS feed stopped working. I didn’t realize this until last night and now I have fixed it. Some people are subscribed to multiple feeds from me (http://cpanra.org/ryan/feed, http://www.iambismark.net/feed, etc) all of which, as of last night, correctly redirect to the feed posted above. Thus the repeats.
Marco Arment on not wasting your life on crap.
Words to live by. I’ve started blocking worthless websites in my hosts file just like he mentions. I guess that means my friends will be getting fewer LOLCat pics from me. I guess they can choose if that is good or bad.
Well, I have heard that publicly sharing a goal is one of the best ways to find motivation for it, so here we go: I am going to start using my Japanese again. @molecularbond sent me a link about cat cafes in Nagoya, and even though I think the only real purpose cats have in this world is to provide us with funny pictures, it still made me 懐かしい for all things Nihon.
My Japanese pretty much sucks now. I used to be able to read newspaper articles and carry on conversations about philosophical beliefs for hours. Now I can barely remember how to correctly use certain grammar particles. Sigh.
So, time to re-rip my J-Pop albums, finally get around to watching Ponyo, and pull out my flashcards. I am working on my Spanish currently, and I think getting my brain back into multilingual mode will actually help with that.
I would actually love a job where I could both program and use Japanese. I should start looking for something like that.
I am turning this on for kicks… come ask me a question! You can even do it anonymously if you would like! I will answer in the form of a blog post (assuming it’s worth answering).
Meridian Magazine: In Chile: The Lord’s Earthquake Warning
This article has been passed around quite a bit this last week on the Mormon blogosphere. Just wanted to point out my little brother Adam in the picture above.
A short personal account of the mission’s preparations from a letter Adam wrote on February 15th:
I don’t remember if I mentioned last change that we all got water filtration bottles. Well this change we got instruction sheets for what to do before, during and after an earthquake, and evacuation plans. Something big could happen soon in Chile!
An app called “a Hands Heater” has been sitting in the iPhone App Store top 25 of the paid apps for awhile now. It’s a stupid gimmick app that makes the screen appear like a set of heating coils emmitting heat. Amazingly the app ‘s description takes three paragraphs before it mentions that it doesn’t actually do anything. Kind of a slimy thing for the developer to do.
The really sad thing though is how many people are buying it and subsequently leaving reviews saying “Doesn’t actually work, I want my money back!” Though the reviews certainly have worse grammar and spelling; think YouTube comment level of English mastery. The developer is raking in cash due to stupidity. I dunno who to fault more.
Anyway, aside from making me really fear for our world, this makes me really want Android to win. If Android were to become the Windows of mobile devices, all of this crapware could go over there. Have you ever tried find a quality, well designed piece if software on Windows? It’s a joke. Every search brings up results for crap shareware on stupid sites like download.com. I love how they present advertisements with “Download Now!” buttons that are larger than the link for the software you actually want. Barf.
On the other hand, it seems like there is always at least one beautifully designed piece of software for all genres and needs on the Mac. I’ve paid for many pieces of independantly developed Mac software, and they all are a joy to use.
It may sound elitest, but I think it would be great if Android wins the marketplace so the App Store can start losing the cruft and just be filled with beautifully things I want to buy even if I don’t really need them.
