This Ain't Rocket Science

Blog Maverick

If you aren't reading Mark Cuban's blog, you should be. I wish the owners of the professional sports team that I follow were as forthright and passionate about their teams as he is.

I don't much follow the NBA. It hasn't really grabbed me since MJ left Da Bulls, but the NBA should thank their lucky stars that they have an owner like Cuban and professional sports as a whole would be better off if there were more owners like him.

Still Alive

Just a quick post to note that I am in fact still alive. It's been a hectic week and half or so, and will probably continue to be hectic for another week or so. I'll try to keep updating here semi-regularly but work has picked up a bit and I've been playing around at home with some new toys.

So to my 2 regular readers, my apologies and I'll try and be a little more up to date, even in the hectic times.

Jazzy

I was driving to go get some lunch today when I passed a sign that read: Come try our Jazzy Power Chairs! As I passed it I sort of shook my head. Jazzy isn't an adjective that I would normally use to describe something like a power chair. I sort of formulated this whole ranting post about the use of jazzy in this sign as I was driving back from lunch. I sat down at my computer finally ready to write. I wanted to get a link to a power chair company for my title link so there would be something to click on, so I Googled power chair and lo and behold... the Jazzy line of power chairs.

Granted I'm not the target audience , but do you want to put your mobility in the hands of a jazzy product? I would think you would want things like ReliaChair, SteadiChair, or GetsMeWhereIWantToGoWithoutTippingOverChair. Never would I be thinking, hey, I need a motorized chair to get me around my house or while I'm out shopping. No, not one of those plain models... do you have something, more... I dunno... jazzy? But I suppose that's why I'll never be the number one power chair salesman at Burt's House of Power Chairs and Nebulizers.

FOXNews and web design

I don't normally do a lot of surfing at the major news sites. I get most of my news through a combination of an aggregator, Google News, and Yahoo headlines, but when I saw the link to FOXNews from Spoons I had to check it out. I have to go with the majority on this one, if it’s not the worst site design EVER it's certainly up there.

I've been bemoaning the changes in site design going on at ESPN for awhile, and the FOXNews site makes ESPN look sleek. It's not just the horrible hodgepodge of images, stories, frames, and ads just thrown together... well actually it's mostly that. Now I realize that I'm not a professional web designer or anything, but there is something to be said for simplicity. If you are a major news organization and people aren't able to even find the story that they are looking for, you have issues. Add to that the fact that your page looks like something that belongs on Geocities and your setting yourself up for a world of hurt.

(Ed Note: Instead of linking to the Geocities main page I was going to link to a Geocities website displaying some of the horrible design decisions that are similar to the FOXNews page, but in my admittedly quick perusal there were none that were worse than the page Fox put up. So congratulations again to FOXNews for a really horrible design. )

Words For My Enjoyment: People Who Fear Conversation

I've never been one for starting up conversations with random people. I HAVE however done a lot of starting random conversations with people I know, and it occurs to me that I should probably do more of that here. I guess for the most part I'm still getting used to writing on the blog, that I haven't really hit a comfort level to start spouting off those random conversationesque things here. Though it's not like I have a big readership audience here to worry about. (Though I did see my first blogroll link today! Thanks to Heroes from the Past for the link! And if there is anyone else who wants to dispute his claim, well... that's too bad. He's the first one I saw so he gets whatever credit there is in being first.)

So long winded blog entry short, I'll try and get some of those more entertaining, and possibly rambling diatribes down here for your viewing pleasure, while simultaneously keeping up with the opinion on all things not rocket science, and the few that are.

for word geeks

For what it's worth I got 159 out of 200. It was a fun little quiz, even if some of the words were really far out there.

Narnia Movie

It appears that there is a Narnia movie in the works scheduled for a release in 2005.

I've never really been a big Narnia fan and I'm not sure why. I never really got into the series when I was young and by the time I was in college I had to read C.S. Lewis writing on theology which didn't make me a big fan.

That being said, and all geek jokes aside, I'm glad to see it being made into a movie. It's nice to see some quality fantasy movies being made. With all the plotless disaster movies or horribly written action movies, I could use a good dose of well developed characters and plot. Granted that a fantasy movie doesn't guarantee these, after all there have been really horrible fantasy movies too, but when taking material from an enduring series the odds of making a decent movie have to be pretty good.

Why Garfield Won't Flop

The Curmudgeons have an article on the upcoming Garfield movie. Undoubtedly it will make money and be commercially successful on name recognition alone, even though the trailers show it to be a horrible movie that not even Bill Murray can save.

Lack of Updates

The lack of updates isn't because I've soured on blogging, quite the opposite. I'm enjoying it just as much as ever. However, I've found that PyDS just isn't quite what I want as my platform. Getting it set up wasn't bad, and if you'd like to just use it out of the box, it performs quite well. The features that PyDS has when coupled with PyCS have worked as well as advertised.

My main issue with PyDS as a blogging system is that I am tied to one pc to blog from. I realize that there are ways to get around this, such as setting it up on a server somewhere, but I have neither the server, nor the know how to get something like that up and running. I realized this was the way that PyDS worked and I didn't think that it would be much of an issue, but the more I blogged the more that I wished that I could do it from both home, school, and wherever I had internet access.

My second issue stems from the community. By all accounts the people in the PyDS community are all nice people who probably know a lot more about this than I do. But there just aren't many people using PyDS compared to some of the other platforms, so the support for it is somewhat diminished by the lack of usership. I think at this point in my blogging career, a platform with a more established userbase is in my best interest.

After looking at a number of different platforms, I think that I am going to give Wordpress a whirl. It looks like it has an active community with a larger userbase than PyDS, and it should fit my needs as a blogger a bit better than PyDS is doing right now.

As soon as I find a place to host my Wordpress effort, I will post here to let anyone reading know where I will be focusing my effort.

Update: After playing around a bit with Wordpress, I'm not completely sold. After all is said and done, I may end up staying here. So I will keep trying to update as regularly as I can, and if I ever figure out another package works as well as this one, then I can always import posts over :)

Obligatory X prize update

Here's an article on Burt Rutan's entry into the X prize competition. The whole X prize contest is worthy of following and I'll be interested to see what happens come June 21st when SpaceShipOne makes a push for the 100km mark.

Enuf is enuf!

There are plenty of things worth protesting out there, but do we really need to protest the spelling bee of all things?

Protester Elizabeth Kuizenga, 56, is such a good speller she teaches English as a second language in San Francisco. She said she got involved in the protest after seeing how much time was wasted teaching spelling in her class.

See now to me, learning the proper spelling of your language isn't really a waste of time. Yes, it can take a bit of work but with enough practice from doing things like reading, just about anyone can grasp enough of the basics to avoid being functionally illiterate. The solution isn't new rules for spelling, it's getting people to read and write more rather than complaining that it's too hard.

"Fair and Balanced": Who Else But Dennis Miller?

Orson Scott Card has an article up on The Ornery American about various political commentators and why Dennis Miller is the best of the bunch.

I watched him interview a charming spokesperson for PETA and, while Miller made it clear that he was unpersuaded by her, he did the unthinkable: He let her speak her piece.

His questions were, if sometimes underinformed, never toadying, and often quite pointed. They were not easy to answer, and when he disagreed, he said so.

But she had her say. There was no entrapment. Conservatives, liberals, libertarians, and those of even less savory political persuasions are not "grilled" or "skewered" a la O'Reilly; nor does Miller try to show off that he's more of an expert than the experts, as Van Susteren does.

He admits he's a regular guy. And, well, he's right -- he is. Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong. Sometimes he gets it, sometimes he doesn't. But he states his opinions cleverly and entertainingly -- even if they're unpopular -- while allowing his guests the same courtesy.

The whole thing is worth a good read.

TV Tuesday

1. In the US many stations run "marathons" all day on Monday, many stations have also went to running all weekend marathons of old sitcoms. So question number one is: Did you watch any of the marathons running this year? In part? In whole?

I watched part of the Law & Order marathon on Monday. I love the show and it's not like there was a whole lot on.

2. Is there a show you'd like to see run an all day marathon? On the flipside is there a show you'd avoid in marathon?

I would watch a News Radio marathon. It's another show that I never felt got it's due. Shows I would avoid in marathon, I don't know The Bernie Mac show?

3. Is there a show/movie/program that brings back special memories for you and what is it?

Sticking with the News Radio theme, the episode of News Radio after Phil Hartman was killed was a pretty emotional episode and the people over at News Radio handled it very well.

Gum Returns to Singapore After 12 Years

Just when I think that OUR legislation is getting out of hand to the point of absurdity, I get a reminder that I'm glad that I live here and not somewhere else.

State Senate Expected to OK E-Mail Bill

I personally don't see what the big deal is here. If you think that Google's automated scanning of your email is an invasion of your privacy, then don't sign up for it. Don't start passing legislation trying to prevent it from happening. Though I must say, it sounds like some cooler heads in the CA Senate prevailed since the new revision of the bill sounds like it only prevents profiling customers with the data, or having people read the emails. Things that Google wasn't going to do anyway.