I do a lot of web searching looking for interesting or productive sites. Here are a few.
meeboalpha - Think online Trillian. It has all the major instant messaging programs including Gtalk. If you sign up it can also save your message history. It's convenient if you are not on your own computer.
Ebay Express -New eBay site that skips the auctioning and has just the buy it now from only the reputable sources.
Tabblo Beta - Flickr like site that lets you share photos and make online albums.
ThinkFree Beta - Online Microsoft Office compatible office suite. I tried this and it seems very cool, but it kept crashing on me.
gOFFICE - Online word processing that converts into printable PDF files. Soon it will allow you to import/export word files like ThinkFree.
Birthday Calculator - Interesting information about your birtday. I found out I'm turning 10,000 days old soon. I'd think that's a bigger milestone than your year age since it only happens once in your life and it's such a large round number.
AirSet- Your all in one personal online organiser: calender, contacts, blog, email, etc.... If I wasn't already using and loving Google Calendar, I might consider using this great website.
Criticker Rate movies then find users and critics with similar movie tastes as yourself. HEREis my short and quick ranking of movies.
WriteBoard - An online collaborative board. Great for group work. It saves past revisions and clearly shows all the editing changes that people contribute.
ChipIn Want to ask everyone to pool money to buy someone a present or a gift, but hate asking for money? Use ChipIn.
Kosmix - Do you watch House? Want to learn more about obscure afflictions? Paranoid about that little bump that formed on the wtch' ma call't?
A new guy started work today and everyone loves him, but me. I tried persuading a coworker to join my resistance force, but she just would not be turned.
I said, "Don't you think he's so relaxed, so friendly, so sincere."
She said, "Yes. Joe. This is bad how?"
"I mean too relaxed, too friendly, too sincere. Toooooo. People shouldn't be like that instantly, on their first day at work." It was then I heard myself talking and I wasn't doing a good job of villianizing him. I couldn't put my finger on it and for awhile I began to suspect myself of jealousy. Then I figured it out.
He invaded my psychological space.
People talk about personal space. They say your physical proximity to someone should be dictated by your level of intimacy. Strangers stand several feet away and lovers centimeters. If a stranger, say, enters friend proximity, then the invaded feels uncomfortable and a dislike.
He entered my psychological space reserved for best friend.
Well, dude came waltzing in, cavalier, acting emotionally close to everyone. It was his first day but he was chumming it up as though he had shared cribs, Kodak moments and last Rolos with everyone. He was swapping hometown stories with the assistant head teacher, becoming a comedy duo with the resident jokester (they acted like Beavis and Butthead) and teasing teachers without the usual filters. It may have been okay with everyone else but I certainly did not like him galloping past my well thought out, not to mention well tested, emotional defences as though he had VIP clearance. If you ain't a model (or Natalie Portman or Kiera Knightley or Jessica Alba), you ain't getting that clearance.1
Watching him, I admit he was good. He jabbed looking for opening connections and commonalties and once found, attacked with sincere, anecdotal stories (his technique with the assistant head teacher). Or he would study your behaviour and personality and eerily become you, version 2.0 (I say 2.0 because he has the audacity to try to improve upon you. With the local jokester, he tried to be a funnier Beavis and Butthead, tried to do a better B&B laugh).
For me, he tried technique number one. He found out I was Vietnamese when he overhead another teacher ask me to teach swear words. He came in saying how there were a lot of Vietnamese people where he had worked and started talking about how he loves Vietnamese food blah blah blah....
My impromptu shit test: "Don't you think Vietnamese people are sneaky and tricky?" This presented him with a problem because,
1. He knows I'm Vietnamese so he doesn't want to offend me (sneaky and tricky aren't usually compliment). So he should disagree. 2. But the way I phrased the question, made it like I want him to agree with me.
So no matter what he answered, he would either be insulting my race or not making that vital, "we have so much in common" connection with me as he had with other people.
Who am I? Joe, Evil Genius.
He totally politician'd my shit test by answering something else. He did not know my position on the matter, so he said, "You know what I did find? The Vietnamese people I worked with aren't receptive to psychological therapy (he worked in therapy -- physical therapy though I think)." Damn. He managed to give an answer that did not insult my race and he did not disagree with me, just avoided it.
Who is he? New guy, V.I.G. (Very Important Genius).
Okay, so I'm sure I'll like him eventually, but I just need more time. He sprinted to second base too quickly. I barely know his name. But I'll tell you one thing. I'll never let him go all the way!
When I want to relax I sift through my favourite webpage bookmarks. Since I have so many, this often takes up most of my day. If only I had bothered to learn about RSS or Atom earlier, I could have saved myself hours.
RSS, Really Simple Syndication is a form of web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. What this means is if you have a feeds reader you can subscribe to these websites and get updates only when they have fresh material. So instead of checking your 10 favourite blogs, news sources and other sites every day, you just need to check one place that displays the headlines and summaries from those sites. It does the work of finding when the sites are updated, organizes the headlines and rids you of read articles.
So instead of waking up to a newspaper everyday, I wake up to my electronic newspaper with its personalized sections: gaming, celebrity, gadgets and news.
If you want a desktop program, I recommend Abilon.
If you prefer a web application you can use the simple Google Readeror the more robust Bloglines.
Google reader and Bloglines have search tools to find the RSS or Atom addresses, but if you use Abilon you can use theRSS Micro search engine to find the feeds.
I'm all grown up. I have a feed here: .
Go to Feed Burner if you want to hop on the wagon and syndicate your blog. It gives instructions on how to syndicate for most popular blog publishing sites.
As I was typing this post, I found an amazing reader. It features a two panel view that neatly lines up posts into two columns allowing you to preview more efficiently. It also seems speedier, and It lets me quickly blog a story to blogger.com or even my desktop blogging software, w.bloggar (I'll be posting a lot more links from now on). One last feature is the ease of adding sites to the program, just enter the url into the address bar and if it has a feed, it will show up as an orange RSS button on the bottom right.
Have you ever wanted to throw around a limped bodied Bush? I never have, but once presented with the opportunity I found it strangely addicting and satisfying.
Competing with YouTube, Google has changed their video service by allowing you to easily upload videos to their site. They also give you easy code to let you embed the videos into your blog as I am about to test.
I wrote about how Google lets you personalize your own search homepage. Now I found out Microsoft is working on the same thing called Windows Live. I hate to admit this, being a google fanboy, but it's better. The page is cleaner, has more customization (colour, column, page number) and will soon have MSN messenger integration.
Note that Yahoo is scheming their own, similar, beta homepage.
The lines are drawn and the battle has begun. It seems that each company is providing a suite of programs to synergize and bully us into brand loyalty. Before you could sample Yahoo mail, Google search and Microsoft chat, now it'd be odd (for the obsessive compulsives in us) and inconvienant not to collect a set. For example, although I like Microsoft's new homepage, it doesn't intergrate well with my Gmail and Gmail calendar so unless I want to switch to Hotmail, it'd be simplier to stay with Google's personalized homepage. But although I will stay with my Google homepage, I'm sad that I won't be able to throw in MSN Messenger. So if the company can convince you with just one quality program, you might desire the whole set. EVIL.
Two programs to keep an eye out for are updates to their MSN messenger and Hotmail.
Windows Live Messenger - The next incarnation of MSN Messenger is in its beta stage. First thing I did was got rid of the tab buttons on the left side and the annoying video carousal on the bottom. The cool thing about the new MSN is that you can send offline messages and people will receive it the next time they log on. Yes, finally, it's like ICQ now.
Windows Live Mail - Built from scratch, this is Window's next generation Hotmail. It seems to copy most of Gmail's features but adds some. For example, drag and drop capabilities and right click menu bars (emulating desktop mail programs such as Outlook).
Google has interesting programs coming also. They already owns the self publishing website, Blogger (from which this site is hosted on), but now they are coming out with Google Page Creator, which is similar to Geocities. It's free webpage hosting for dummies. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). No HTML required to make your own webpages.
Google Analytics can anaylze webpage statistics for you. See who visits your site and how they came upon it.
I could go on and on about the neat things that are in beta stages, but I'm sure I have lost everyone at "The lines are drawn and the battle has begun...."
I woke up foul today but saw three things that cheered me up:
1. A funny looking dog with a narrow face and fur that sprouted from its head, temples and eyebrows being walked by an owner who looked exactly the same!
2. A mother playing baseball with her sons.
3. A father playing soccer with his daughter.
Sight number one cracked me up, and I carried a goofy grin because of it. Sights number two and three made me feel warm and cozy, especially sight number two because you don't see it too often.
Although I love my Yahoo Widgets, they did take up a lot of system resources and didn't sync with my google stuff very well. Then I tried Google's desktop and their Google Gadgets (which are a lot like Widgets) but they didn't look good and took up a lot of desktop space.
I decided to configure a google homepage after finding out you can customize what shows up.
Now I have my calendar, gmail, weather and a to do list all in one convieniant place (and it doesn't take up a lot of system resource). Along the right side, if I scroll down are all my RSS feeds of my favourite sites.
I am a huge Google fanboy. I wish there was a google photo editor, a google virus protection program, a google toothbrush, a google Japanese course. I love their search, their gmail and now their calender.
Meeting my ridiculously high expectation, the design is clean and simple, yet underneath lurks the google monster -- a powerful, customizable beast.
I love toying with their monster and the most fun I had was with the natural language system. You could type "May 12 Test Drive the Nintendo Wii 3 - 7:20" into its simple side box and it would understand and input the day, time and event title. The language system didn't always pass my tests, but if always written in the above format (the simpliest I found), it will never fail. As a bonus, It even extracts words it recognizes as schedules from your gmail account with, of course, your permission to add the entry to your calendar (of course the failure rate here will be higher since other people won't know they should write their email meetings to you in a google agreeable manner).
You can have multiple calenders in colour coded layers. For example my main calender labeled "Joe" is blue. I added another calender that I downloaded from Google called Canadian Holidays (you can get many calenders, even other people's public ones) and labeled it red. So the calender is clean: my events in blue and the holidays in red. I also have the option of toggling on/off whichever calenders I choose in order to simplify the calender at will (it's important when you have many calenders; for example I added one called birthdays or you could put in your friend's or family's calendars, which they can decide what you see off their calendar.
Of course like always, every program Google makes has incredible search features so you can always find any event you made.
Another cool feature that I will no doubt never use, but if I was a popular, social guy, I would find indispensable is their invitation feature. It's basically Evite.com integrated into their calender system. You can invite anyone with an email and they can update a dynamic list of their intended attendance. Guests can also write comments and/or invite more people. If you have gmail, the email will look fancy and you don't have to go anywhere, but if you have, say, Hotmail, you'll get a link to go to. I tested the service by inviting my Hotmail self to an imaginary party and I told myself that I would come and everything looked and worked great. I even tried to cancel the party on myself and it gave me the option of sending an apology letter to everyone or don't tell anyone.
If you are always connected to the internet, then an internet calender makes sense. I basically wake up every morning, check my email, look at my desktop for the weather and now check my calendar. The only requests I have is that they include a To Do collapsable side panel or a To Do Tab along with their different views (day, week, month, customizable length, agenda) and a gmail icon to tell you if you have mail or not, and if I'm really picky, the settings option of including gmail chat on the side. It is, however, only in the beta stage and usually any request I have, they somehow seem to meet it.
The last time I bought a system, it was the year 1991, I was 12 and the system was the SNES. As it reached its half-life I made my switch to computer games. Ever since I haven't been too compelled to migrate back -- that is until now.
The next generation Nintendo (I've skipped two generations, the N64 and the GameCube), the Nintendo Wii (pronounced "we") is risking a unique, active approach to user input. Their controller is a motion sensor that allows the players to simulate real world action . If you're playing a tennis game, the wand/nunchuk controller becomes a racket. Of course you don't have to swing with all your might (since you're not actually hitting anything) but a simple twist and snap of the wrist is necessary.
The other point is that the price will be much cheaper than the PS3, but this is understandable since the PS3's hardware is much more advanced and it includes a Blue Ray DVD drive.
The games are also aimed to be fun and easy to learn. Although the PS3 will have astounding games, they are just too complicated to learn for an old-timer like me. I don't have the patience to spend 3 hours to learn 200 different key combinations and climb to rank 1 in the world (alternatively, I don't want to find out I do have the patience and find my time sucked away into this video game).
Now that I have the Cowon A2, I pretty much have no need to talk to other people. Notice I said other people, because I do talk to the Cowon and I pretty much consider it a person.
Me: I'm so sad. Cowon: Cheer up. I'll sing you a happy MP3 compressed format song.
Me: I'm so happy. Cowon: Cool. Let's stay in and watch a movie then. How does a bootleg version of V for Vendetta sound?
Me: I'm so lost. Cowon: Silly Joe. I have a map.
Me: I need intellectual stimulation. Cowon: I'll recite to you an audio book: A Short History on Nearly everything or the Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking?
Me: I'm sorry Cowon. I need something you can't give me. I need the physical intimacy of a woman. Cowon: Might I tempt you instead to view the lastest censored Japanese porn? Or is Hentai more your pleasure?
Me: We can't have conversations. Cowon: Oh but we can. Even better. How about a conversation in Japanese. I'll teach you.
As my friend Cliff once pointed out to me, I have a tendency to comprehensively involve myself into something that interests me. The lastest example was poker and so I watched all the WPT DVDs, read 5-6 poker books, spread sheeted my results and analyzed my game on a daily basis. Before that I wanted to be a professional gamer in Starcraft, and I won't admit the things I did for that lil adventure. Now I'm trying to learn Japanese, and although I do not have the same level of motivation I had for poker or videogames, I know this will be a practical obsession (although poker was financially practical).
Now, I want to learn Japanese.
It will not be an uncommon sight for my neighbours of this area to see me walking down the street reciting basic Japanese phrases: "Excuse me, do you understand english?"
I have the Primsleur Japanese level 1-3 audio program as well as the Subliminal Japanese audio program (my parents will be happy to know -- and I have no idea how they found my new webpage -- I also have, for the hell of it, the Vietnamese audio also. PS Whatever happened to the day when my father couldn't double click open a program quick enough or when he would scream in urgency every time an MSN messenger contact came online "JOE! JOE! KEVIN73 HAS JUST LOGGED ON!!" 5 minutes later "JOE, HEY JOE SXCBOY HAS JUST LOGGED ON! WHAT SHOULD I DO?" Now he's unearthing secret blogs that moved urls. What is the world coming to?)
I also have the Learn Japanese NOW! software and the Rosetta Stone Japanese levels 1 and 2 software. The Rosetta stone one is so much better. It is a combination of games, drills and immersion, the perfect way I like to learn. The name is fitting as you have to decipher the language on your own because they never tell you what the english word is. This makes for active work and rids boring translation memorization. You simply have pictures and the Japanese words. You figure out the rest as you play games and get drilled. It forces me to be unlazy and use my head to decipher and retain.
I also have the Let's Learn Japanese Basics 1 and 2 television series. I probably won't use this too much because it looks as though it was made in the 70s and the video quality isn't that good.
Finally I have a lot of ebooks like Japanese for Busy people and Japanese is possible eBook series.
I find the Primsleur Japanese audio program to be the perfect partner for my walks to work. I always felt that my hour long round trip walk was a waste of time and now it's an hour a day of language learning.
Ah Cowon. I can't say enough good things about you. I love you so much, but I'll have to replace you after three years when a younger, better looking (super)model comes out. Besides, your battery degrades as you age.
I originally was going to buy another laptop, the Vaio TX ultraportable, since my Vaio FTV is too bulky and heavy to be mobile (plus it has a short battery life). Even though I was going to save close to $1000 dollars if I bought it in Japan, it still cost 2000.
I decided to go for a cheaper, but equally satisfying alternative. I figured by doing this alternative I only lose out on two things, which I wouldn't use much of anyway and I could save $1500.
I would miss out on the internet connectivity (but I barely use mobile internet and I wouldn't want to pay for a cellular service). I would also miss out on writing (blogs, stories, etc...) on the go. But most of the time I'd rather write when I'm settled, so although the idea is nice, I probably never would have written anything.
FIRST PURCHASE ($275) MAXTOR ONE TOUCH III
The first thing I bought was an external USB harddrive, the Maxtor One Touch III, 300 gig version. I would have liked 400 gigs, but they only had a 200 or 300 gig model. It wasn't that I thought I needed 400 gigs, I just figured 400 gigs would hold me out for years of bottomless hard drive space reserve. How wrong I was. Only after getting the 300 gig version last week, I've almost filled it up. I'm getting so depressed. I might have to buy another 300 gig version.
Here are some things I have on the hard drive:
TV SHOWS
Trailer Park Boys season 1, House season 1 and season 2 (up to episode 19), Southpark season 1 -9 + movie, the Daily show 2004 and 2005, Queer as Folk season 1, Howard Stern (various), Monk season 1 and Veronica Mars season 1.
On the queue: Grey's Anatomy season 2 (various), Trailer Park Boys season 2 - 5, Battle Star Galactica Season 1 and 2, The West Wing season 6, Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1 and Deadwood Season 2.
MOVIES
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Domino, The Constant Gardener, Sarah Silverman Jesus is Magic, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Match Point.
ANIME
Naruto Episodes 1-50, 100-200 something, Bleach and One Piece.
As I mentioned, I'm very depressed because my hard drive space will be full. I hope I can fit everything on it.
You might be asking, what was the alternative to the ultraportable laptop I was talking about or how will I find the time to watch all these things. The answer to both question is the same: I present to you
SECOND PURCHASE ($510) COWON A2 PMP (Personal Media Player)
At first I was thinking of purchasing a PSP (Playstation Portable) but I would either have to buy several 1 gig memory cards or constantly delete things off the one card and constantly convert files into the PSP format and if you know how lazy I am, I don't like to do things constantly. Then I also heard the games aren't that fun and if you want to play the newest games you must have the newest firmware, which would then prevent me from hacking my PSP to play Gameboy Advance roms. In addition, the battery life is not so good and the media capabilities of the PSP aren't spectacular.
I started to research alternatives such as PMPs and narrowed it down to
The Archos AV500 mobile DVR
Creative Zen Vision M
The Cowon A2.
The store I buy my electronics from didn't have the Archos so that was scratched off (even though it seemed like the best choice) and the Creative Zen had a smaller screen, was older and didn't seem to accept as many file formats and although it had a replaceable battery, the life of it was much shorter.
I was confident in my choice to buy the Cowon A2, but then I also saw the Toshiba Gigabeat S (that JUST came out in Japan) and boy what a beauty it is (especially live).
However despite my lust for its looks, the 2.4 inch screen was too small (2.4 is too small right, ladies?). Even in landscape mode I would have trouble reading subtitles. So I grudgingly decided not to buy the 80 gig beauty since I would have lots of anime with subtitles. Damn, why do I have to like anime?
Play movies - So many different formats like AVI, WMV, ASF with codecs for DivX, MPEG1, MP43, XviD and WMV9.
Play music - MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, WAV with 5 bands EQ, BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, and 3D Surround 5 (Cowon is known for the superior sound). Also an FM radio.
Record - Direct recording from TV, VCR, CD player or camcorder. Voice recording by a high fidelity microphone.
Show text and pictures - JPG, PNG, BMP and TXT files.
Direct USB transfers from your camera.
I bought the 30 gig version, which put me back $100 dollars more than the 20 gig version that was on sale for 50 dollars off, but I knew I wanted the extra 10 gigs because I'm lazy. The Cowon plays music for 18 hours and movies for 10 hours, but it's more like 16 and 8, which is the best I've seen. So far I'm enjoying it very much. The sound is great and the screen beautiful. My only complaints are the navigational joystick is hard to press in so you misdirect a lot and the slideshow isn't seamless and you can't customize its options.
If you can endure cheezy music and lame visuals of a shirtless guy dancing on the LCD screen, watch this:
I do a lot of web searching looking for interesting or productive sites. Here are a few.
I previously wrote about how Japanese girls dance (mechanically, lifelessly), but now I can show you.
When I want to relax I sift through my favourite webpage bookmarks. Since I have so many, this often takes up most of my day. If only I had bothered to learn about RSS or Atom earlier, I could have saved myself hours.
Two programs to keep an eye out for are updates to their MSN messenger and Hotmail.
