Category: Personal

Browser In/Efficiency

I love Google Chrome.  It’s probably the biggest boost to my at home/at work productivity since I added more RAM to my laptop (before I did, my IBM could only handle 1 window of Firefox open at a time: this isn’t a good thing for someone who is currently blogging with no less than 10 tabs, two separate windows for gmail and gdocs and a music player open).

Now you might be wondering how it increased my efficiency.  There are a couple of ways, mostly more noticeable to me when I’m not using my regular computer and Chrome.  They are: 1 click access to the most important sites to me (which I have listed across the bookmark bar, just as icons…when you create a bookmark in Chrome, just delete the title if the site has a nice favicon and voila: instant mini shortcuts.  I bet you could fit 50 or more along the bookmark toolbar) and 2 click access to my most frequently visited sites (whenever you open Chrome or a new tab all of your most recently and frequently visited sites are listed).  It’s telling that my top three sites are all work related, followed by blogger (1/2 work, 1/2 play), Flickr, whatever Fantasy sports league I’m in at the time, Apple Movie trailers (I love movie trailers) and a couple other that change like the seasonal aisle at your local pharmacy or grocery store.

Chrome is also great cause I can have 10+ tabs open in multiple windows and they all show as much of the webpage as possible.  I am really sold on Google’s design and am a huge Chrome-fanboy.

That being said, never before have I ever not used a website because of browser incompatibility–until now.  I often switch back and forth between FF and IE to test sites and visuals when designing a new site, blogging or building courses, but if I think something is going to be a highly frequented site then I want it compatible with Chrome (because that is more and more my desktop).  To manage my side-business finances I really want to use Quickbooks Simple Start as opposed to just a spreadsheet.  But they don’t support Chrome.  They also don’t support FF on linux/Ubuntu.  That has been a big enough obstacle to prevent me from using their product so far, even though it’s free and I could easily open FF instead.  I might make the leap but only after a lot of searching for an alternative.

It’s not that I’m super picky, it’s that I hate inefficiency (even if it decreases over time) no matter how minuscule.  I think it’s telling too that as a consumer of online information and applications that I would be so turned off from adopting a product that doesn’t work at all/as well when paired with another technology (this is a derivation of incompatibility of OS and programs as well, however the barriers are smaller when we’re talking about browsers–but no less significant to the end user).

So, I guess the conclusion is that even if your product is the bee’s knees, it better work on whatever I’m using.  And if it doesn’t (cough, Quickbooks, cough) then you might not get me as a customer as easily.  And as a provider of such products in work and personal, the sites better work the first time someone comes to them or there’s probably a good chance that you’ll lose that person forever.

Now, if only I can find a better online program than Google Docs to manage our small business finances that would be sweet (suggestions welcome).

New guards for their future security

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

-The Declaration of Independence (America’s Greatest Hits – DailyLit.com)

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  Reading this document of documents really shows how our forefathers were the original punks.  They also probably would have quit jobs they didn’t like pretty fast.

Eatertainment and Cravability (possibly the end of being healthy)

Eatertainment (noun): the art of cramming as much hedonistic pleasure–flavor, oil, saltiness and overall satisfaction–into a food without regard for the absurd amount of calories, fat or even carcinogens contained in the “food”.

You’ve seen the new Doritos commercial with the attractive girl eating a bag of “Late Night: Tacos at Midnight” which show her cruising through some unnamed metropolis in a taxi, eating these magical, triangular bits of manufactured corn crisps with neon cheese powder.

devil chips
devil chips

It’s fancy marketing.  But it’s a problem.  I’ve struggled with my own weight since I was a kid.  I’m not obese by any means, but apparently the proverbial chips (no pun intended) are stacked against me.  I run a lot (more than any of my friends) but I still have a dozen or so pounds that just won’t come off.  So I’m stuck in stalemate between where I want to be and where nature does.

According to a recent article in the New Yorker (and decades of research on the topic of American obesity) I’m not alone.  Somewhere over 1/3 of Americans are now considered overweight.  An many are extremely overweight to the point of physical endangerment.  I do my best to eat healthy (no Doritos for me, mayo is a no-no, and I haven’t had a candy bar or non-diet soda in about 10 years).  But the struggle is hard.

Some research suspects that our natural inclination is to pack away the pounds because our instincts are worried about being broadsided by a period of famine or scarce resources (like a 10-day meditation retreat or Ramadan…).  Makes sense since it must have been really friggen hard to take down a woolly mammoth back in 10,000 BC (don’t go see the movie).  I’ll believe that research, considering it’s damn hard to drop the pounds or forgo that next piece of Costc0 Pizza (come on, it’s seriously only $1.50!).

Anywho, in the New Yorker they go back and forth on what really the cause is.  They also give some cool new terms to the US overeating issue like “craveability” and “eatertainment” and “conditioned hypereating”.

“conditioned hypereating”…describe[s] how people respond to these laboratory-designed concoctions. Foods like Cinnabons and Starbucks’ Strawberries & Crème Frappuccinos are…like drugs: “Conditioned hypereating works the same way as other ‘stimulus response’ disorders in which reward is involved, such as compulsive gambling and substance abuse.” – Elizabeth Kolbert, XXXL in the New Yorker (pg 2 online)

The sum is that it’s a huge problem.  Like cripple our national health care plan huge.  My take away is that there’s a strange convergence of factors that are making this issue balloon like a stomach after a chinese buffet.  Human instinct, fancy marketing, low cost of processed foods (especially those that are corn-based) are making a crazy, delicious, edible layer cake of medical emergency.

Which brings me back to what was supposed to be the point of this post:

Dear Doritos,

We’re on to you.  Stop making those ridiculously named snacks that entice our taste buds and enlarge our backsides.

Munch love,

Joe

The new News.

In a recent news article from Austin360.com‘s Omar Gallaga he reported on the news about the news that surrounded the death of the King of Pop (..tear..), and I think, got something right on.

The basic analysis is that TMZ, a celebrity gossip site and atrocious television show (honestly I want to hurt myself when Molly puts it on, it’s possible worse than the Hills) beat out CNN as the faster, more reliable news source.  I’ll give them that (for celebrity gossip only) considering they have 100s of free lancers stalking the protagonists of their “news worthy” news stories (before they even make the story).

It’s an interesting point, but this quote is really sums up what has happened:

It was a make-or-break moment for TMZ: …a clearer signal that the torch for breaking-news coverage had been passed from cable news to scrappy online news sites. The 24-hour news cycle may now be closer to 24 minutes.

So thanks Twitter, for giving ADHD to our ADD.

I

I’ve been waiting to see this since I nearly peed my pants watching the trailer about 9 months ago.  And I’m going tonight.  I’ve been a little worried though after reading some of the reviews of the movie (notably the one on nytimes.com).  Sure, sure Bay loves to merchandise, sell out and blow up some stuff with the support and permission of the US Army.  But honestly, who in his position wouldn’t use transformers to blow up some tanks and artillery (even if you can make it look just as good with CGX)?

That’s all until I read the most amazing movie review ever on io9.com (part of Gawker media group).

So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF. [emphasis is mine]

AWESOME.

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