Sean’s Blog

I keep finding more useful ways to use Remember The Milk.  My booklist, my wedding planning, my bills.  It is just a generally great tool.  Last week though, when I went on vacation I ran across a really cool feature that I’ve never used.  Tags.

I had a whole bunch of tasks that that I wanted to get accomplished during my week off.  The problem I had was they were spread across a bunch of lists.  Some were things I needed to do for the house, some were things I needed to do for the wedding, some were things I wanted to do for my blog.  I didn’t want to make duplicate action items in a new list, but I wanted one place to be able to view them all.

So I added a tag.  That way, I could just click on that tag and it would pull all the items I had tagged to a list and let me work off that.  I know this is a pretty obvious feature, but I was really impressed with how well it worked.  Generally, the only way I’ll learn a new feature is to actually have some sort of use case like this.

I’ve been smoke free for just about a week now.  It hasn’t been any where near as bad as I was thinking it was going to be.  I’m a little more irritable and a little twitchier, but all and all it is going pretty well.  I’ve really found that the hardest part so far has been at work.

At work it gives me a great exuse to get up and go outside for a while.  And I’ve been missing that.  Luckily, I don’t have any smoking buddies in my department, so everyone I talk to is already out there and they don’t come in to see if I want to go out.

I’ve been using the patch, which for me, is really the only effective method that I’ve tried.  It curbs the cravings enough that I’m not constantly thinking about it.  It does manage to give me some really crazy dreams though.  I don’t really remember what they are about, all I know is they are weird.

I’m feeling pretty good about this attempt though.  I actually really want to quit and while everything hasn’t gone perfectly, it seems to be going pretty well.

I’ve added some more services to the social page.  Check it out here.  I’ve got my twitter, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us, and more accounts out there.  If you know me and use one of these services, go ahead and ping my on them.  If you don’t know me, ping me anyways.  I always like meeting new people.

Since we’re on the subject of being social, I’ve been using Twitter for about 2 weeks now.  I gotta say, I didn’t expect much out of it, but I really like it.  There is a active community and most everyone s very friendly.

The learning curve beyond the basic posting and replying is a little confusing sometimes thought.  There are groups that you can follow, retweeting, a whole bunch of other stuff that you really need to see in action to get a basic understanding of what is going on.  Actually, the best way to get a feel for twitter is just to dive right in and try it out.  You get the hang of it very quickly and it has really opened my eyes to the local technology scene here in Columbus.  I haven’t yet met many people in real life via twitter, but I definitely plan on checking out the next Columbus Tweetup when it rolls around.

So if you are thinking of trying, jump in.  Don’t know anybody?  Ping me at @seanelavelle on twitter and I’ll follow you. (At least as long as your not following 45,000 other people.  Just looks like spam to me)

Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart

A while back on Whatever, there was a discussion on literary one hit wonders and Barry Hughart was talked about quiet favorably. I’d never heard on Hughart or Bridge of Birds before and I though that I would give it a try. Boy was I glad I did. Bridge of Birds is a very funny book. The best way I can I can describe it is like a kung-fu Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

After the children of his village are poisoned, Number Ten Ox goes to Peking to find a wise man to help cure them. With very little money he is laughed out of all the houses of the reputable wise men and stumbles in on the drunken Master Li who “has a slight flaw in in his character”. From there they set out to find the Great Root of Power.

I can’t possibly go into where the story goes from there, but it includes sword dancing ghosts, the most desirable women in the world, giant invisiable hands, and underwater cities. The names in the book are great : Henpecked Ho, Cut-off-their-balls Wang, Ma the Grub and others.

Lastly any book that references the All China Freestyle Blasphemy Championship is OK in my book. I would really recommend this book for great fun read.

I’m messing with some new themes, so that is what’s up if everything looks weird.

I’ve decided to move the links to the weekdays.  Weekends are just two hard to post since I’ve been so busy.  I’m going to try to keep them to fridays unless I have a full week of posts.  Here’s the links:

• The Natural World : Tigerland - On the border of Bangladesh and India is a huge mangrove swamp.  Sharks, snakes and crocodiles patrol the water, but the land is ruled by the Royal Bengal Tiger.  This is the story of the land and the people who live there.  A fascinating read from the New Yorker.
• The Eligible Bachelor Paradox - How game theory predicts that less desirable men are available as we age.  Worked for me
• The Marathon Is Easy, There Are No Lions - Six Masai warriors run in the London Marathon to race money for a well.  Right now “We have a dam that we share with wild animals so every morning the children go to get water, it’s dangerous for them. Some have lost their lives. Next week we will drill and get clean water for the top life.”

Much to my shock and disappointment, Sean’s Blog did not make it into Time’s Top 25 Blogs this year. Well, there is always next year.

On a related note : Slashdot and Ars Technica were listed as 2 of the most over rated blogs? I’m sure if they were owned by Gawker and changed their name to The Slashdoterist the would be “Snarky, irreverent and hip”, instead of “infuriatingly smug and cares passionately about stuff you don’t care about”. Well done, sir. Well done.

I’m still slowly getting my pictures put together from my last trip to Puerto Rico. This week I have put up underwater pictures I took during that trip. All were taken off the beach behind Mimi’s Guesthouse in Guarnica, PR.

This is the first time I used my underwater housing for the Canon Powershot SD900. It worked great, but the viewscreen was almost impossible to see if the sun was reflecting off of it since the housing isn’t anti-glare like the actual camera view screen.

Here is the link to the gallery

One of the really great things about the Firefox web browser is just how extensible it is.  Using extensions has really allowed me to make my browsing a much better experience.  With all these free extensions available, I am still shocked by how many people don’t actually use extensions.  I thought I would list some of the plugins that I really like and use all the time as well as a couple that i haven’t used that frequently, but are just really great ideas.

Read more »

Earlier this year, I took a bunch of pictures of the moon through my fiance’s telescope. All I did was to hold the my digital camera up to the eyepiece and snap away. A little while ago I did it again. I learned a couple things from that experiences.

First off, the light coming through the telescope on a clear night is BRIGHT! I had to dial back the exposure some and I didn’t didn’t need to set the ISO high at all. A tripod was impractical as well, as the lens had to almost be pressed against the telescope’s eyepiece.

All that said, I think the pictures came out pretty well. The ones that are up have not been processed at all and I think they look pretty good.

Here’s the link to the gallery