Crumpled

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Freedom Party 2008

We had a party at our house this weekend to celebrate our freedom from the oppressive British.
The only references we made to the British during the party were probably rock and roll related.

posted by Elex | 1:38 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Clint, is that you?

At work we get a publication called Windows IT Pro. I never read it, although I'm probably supposed to. Today, though, I took it home because of the ad you see above. You see, I'd really love to see a product that will allow a manager of SharePoint heart his job, I just don't think it can be done. Actually I took the issue home because the guy in the picture above looks exactly like my friend Clint. (most of you know who I'm talking about.) Clint is that shape, has those eyebrows, has that mouth, wears those smaller shirts, wears jeans, same nose, same hairstyle (though, not usually highlighted thus) same eyebrows, wears that facial expression, and he even hearts his job. Same arms; everything. except, like anything, if I stare at it long enough it stops looking like the thing it was supposed to look like. So, I don't know. The biggest clue that it isn't him is the hair highlights. I brought the magazine home and showed Thalisha, "Hey look at this picture." After a moment of looking she said, "That looks like Clint." So now I bring it to you ladies and gentlemen, you decide. Is this Clint?

posted by Elex | 7:20 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Colin Heard the Squeak

It's not that mysterious, but while looking for advice on a faulty wireless headset at work, I ran across a phrase that repeated itself in search results and was always found with other nonsensical phrases.

Check out this query for "Colin heard the squeak"
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22colin+heard+the+squeak%22

I guess some dynamic spam bots aren't that dynamic.

posted by Elex | 2:54 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, June 22, 2008

accessorize!

As part of the creeping changes to crumpled.com, I've created a favicon.ico. In all the years this website has been up there has never been a favicon.ico, resulting in countless 404 errors. I didn't create the favicon.ico to alleviate the 404 errors. I created it as a celebration of crumpled.com's continued existence, and artistic legacy.

So... the icon, which accompanies bookmarks and appears beside the address in your address bar, has been added as an asthetic element to sort of spruce up the place a tiny bit.

The design of the icon is inspired by the original crumpled.com design from way back. and its colorization is a tribute to one of crumpled's favorite subfolders /negen2/ or Negative Entropy Squared.

The thing that makes me happiest about crumpled.com is the fact that other people are using it. I'm going to have this domain forever, and hope that it can continue to be a place where people contribute their thoughts, feelings, and ideas to the world (Even when I don't).

posted by Elex | 4:14 PM | 0 comments

Things I'm Doing Instead of Softball

So far they've included: sleeping, motorcycling, photography, coding, and video production.

Those are all things that are good for my personal development. Softball was too, but values can be assigned to these activities based on the type of person you are trying to develop yourself into.

For additional exercise, I was planning on a martial art if the teachers aren't too strange.

Further things I could do, but haven't yet: Shadowrun, online courses, and watch a softball game.

Go Team!

Disclaimer: I don't really need to account for my time. :P

posted by Elex | 2:27 PM | 0 comments

Monday, June 16, 2008

Hey, Left Hand, look to the right!

Google is underutilizing the very things it championed last month.

"Hey," they said, "look at how we index your GeoRSS feeds!"

"Well," I replied. "Where are the lat/long fields on Blogger?"

"Dude!" Myspace exclaimed, "Check out how we made our message system searchable in real-time using Google Gears!"

"That's nice." I grumbled. "I wonder why I have to wade through page after page of Gmail to delete my unread and unwanted email."

Then there was the new Google Maps API where they showed how easily a person could implement the new Google Earth 3D map in any existing Google map application. I had such an application, and I tried it out. It was unsatisfactory. Foremost, unlike the other Google Maps views, this one was conspicuously missing the buttons to return to any of the other views. I couldn't use it for my application. In fact, the engineer who showed off the new API and was keen on demonstrating how easy it was to implement, showed us an example of the implementation on his site (trulia.com). But guess what? the implementation isn't public. It was a tease! Because (gasp!) it doesn't do what it should be able to do!

Don't get me wrong, I love the Monster Milktruck, I'm just waiting for some home delivery.

Edit:
Also, I can't even visit YouTube if I have my javascript debugger turned on. The amount of javascript error notifications is crippling. I certainly hope that YouTube wasn't enhanced using the Google Web Tool Kit, which claims to compile Java into optimized javascript.

Labels: IO2008

posted by Elex | 8:29 PM | 0 comments

IknowIknowIknowIknowIknowIknowIknowIknow
This blog is a shambles.
No stylesheet.
hardly a post in sight!

I hope you'll stick with me just a little while longer.

posted by Elex | 8:25 PM | 0 comments

Friday, May 30, 2008

Check out these brains

I'm at the google developer's conference and I don't know how to feel.
Part of me is stoked that I can grasp 95% of what is said. Another
part of me is really bothered that I'm missing a key 5%

As an "IT" guy, I don't have cause to use these cutting-edge
development tools and platforms because it's not my job to innovate.

I don't work on things like this after hours. A big part of that is
not having the internet at home. Even if I were to work to create an
awesome web app, I wouldn't even really be able actually use it.

I'm gonna try and stay cool and figure something out. But, I aint
getting any younger. I can't give the best years of my brain away to
companies who don't pay it back. I have to prepare for my
intellectual retirement.

posted by Elex | 2:19 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Everyone else is blogging it...

So here's my post.

io2008