FlightWait

I will soon be taking a few flights, which I expect as much fun from as a root canal. But at least I can get some nice visual data candy for possible waits from FlightWait.

The shot above is from today, Friday the 21st, the weekend before Christmas weekend. Sucks to be in Chicago and NYC is not much better.

Thanks to Paul’s consistent posting on FlightWait.

Meebo Speeddate

Meebo and SpeedDate, I think it’s a concept that works.

From TechCrunch.

Facebook Is MySpace With ADD

Good stuff from Wallstrip on Facebook.

Thanks to TechCrunch.

Leo Destruction

An interesting post on A List of Mac Freeware that Leopard has Mauled to Death.

And from my personal experience

• Adium: Huge fan of this IM client but Meebo killed this for me ages ago.
• Center Stage: I love Front Row since I use my mini for my media center, and the Leo improvements are nice, even if I am a bit annoyed that music won’t keep playing when you switch to the OS.
• Firefox 2.0: Firefox (Mac and PC) is a memory sinkhole but it still has the features I require, while Safari does not. Google Browser Sync being one.

Thanks FSJ.

URI vs. URL

To respond to an implied question masked as a link in my Wordbook article. Uniform Resource Identifier Wiki:

A URI can be classified as a locator or a name or both. A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a URI that, in addition to identifying a resource, provides means of acting upon or obtaining a representation of the resource by describing its primary access mechanism or network “location”. For example, the URL http://www.wikipedia.org/ is a URI that identifies a resource (Wikipedia’s home page) and implies that a representation of that resource (such as the home page’s current HTML code, as encoded characters) is obtainable via HTTP from a network host named www.wikipedia.org.

So basically, a URL is a URI that includes the “http://”.

Wordpress-1
K-Ma-0

Giant Rats

For years now I have seen giant inflatable rats every once and awhile in the city. Always thought is was a bizarre promotional decision for a fumigator. Well, today I learned something new, and why they are used.

Construction and General Building Laborers Local 79 says it introduced the rat to New York about 1997, borrowing the idea from Chicago unions. Since then, other unions have bought inflatable rally rats of varying sizes, and at any time there could be more than half a dozen rats humiliating employers around the city. While unions set their own standards, Local 79’s system is probably typical.

A ”rat contractor” is an old phrase in construction and can refer to an employer who is not providing proper safety equipment, benefits or wages

Totally makes sense now. So they have been doing this for 10 years and the New Yorkers I have talked to didn’t know this is what it meant… that’s some bad marketing.

Thanks to Times in New York.

Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam

Feels like a season for new books. This one is not written by a friend but written about him! You see, he has quite the sorted past and one must be wary of Bronx residents that move to Virginia (hi Guy!).

Prodigal Son by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is being featured on IndieFeed as “Part 4 of a 9 part series, celebrating the release of
Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through 20 years of the New York City Poetry Slam by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz!”

Words in Your Face on Amazon

I already have a copy of the book and now just required the GLG signature to guarantee my early retirement to Tuscany.

Wordbook

Earlier this year I moved from Myspace to Facebook, primarily since I moved companies and much like IM client preference, everyone used Facebook instead of Myspace. I also never really got into Myspace on a daily basic, so no big change there. But for most of this year I have been pretty religious about checking Facebook and playing with it. It may be a company I don’t totally trust and think they need to do less evil, their social network is a lot of fun.

So finally playing with a Wordpress plugin, Wordbook, to send my blog posts over to Facebook thru the Facebook API. The installing of the Wordpress plugin was a breeze with a simple FTP of the files. Then all that was needed was clicking on two Facebook icons for the install. The only annoyance was that it wasn’t clear that the Facebook icons were more than just decoration.

Now let’s see if this posts makes it way across…

New Book: Sentenced Before Birth

A friend who now lives in France has written a book about her experiences with DES and trying to have a baby. The official release is December 17. The book is titled Sentenced Before Birth: A Journal About Infertility and Miscarriages: A Womans Hope, Faith, Fortitude and Resilience by Cathy Ramey-Johnson. More on DES from Wiki.

As a woman, Cathy never questioned having children. When the time came, she discovered with horror the terrible chemical molecule named DES. Cathy is a DES daughter, as her mother took it when she was expecting. Aside from facing some uterus cancers, DES daughters have tremendous difficulties conceiving and/or carrying a pregnancy, and when they are fortunate to do so, it remains a story of pain, despair and everlasting hope: a true crusade against fatality. This is the story of Cathy’s five children who never became more than embryos or fetuses. Legally, they’ve never existed, yet they have changed her life forever; they are her shooting stars. As of today, Cathy’s refusing to accept the fatality of DES; she will continue her crusade for motherhood.

Link to Amazon

Here Comes Another Bubble – The Richter Scales

Thanks to Jeremy.