via Pharyngula
A Great Parable
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But what is Twitter for?
I was out at Rob Tarzwell’s birthday celebration at the Yaletown Brew Pub a few weeks ago, and a few of us pulled out our iPod Touch/iPhones to check on something online — I found free wireless so my Touch worked just as well as the iPhone without the expense of a ridiculously priced data plan.
While I was on, I checked Twitterific, the free iPod Twitter App, announced a few updates I saw and got some questions about what Twitter was.
Twitter, I explained, is a mini-blog that lets you post short entries that anyone can “follow”. It lets you stay connected to friends without the one-on-one requirement of instant-messaging or the longer, more formal writing of a “blog post”.
“Ok,” asked Jennifer, “but what is it FOR? Why do you need to be able to do that?” She and Rob stared at me waiting for a response.
My answer wasn’t all that good. You don’t have to follow friends on Twitter — there are “official” things to follow. My secondary webhost Dreamhost has a Twitter account that they use to announce downtime, problems and other important updates. Heroes actor Greg Grunberg has a Twitter account, and interacts with his fans there, including my friend Josh with this fun update:
(Greg’s character Matt Parkman is a mind reader)
Mostly I just like staying in constant touch. I am, as a friend once said, “jacked-in”. I love the online world, I like staying in touch with people online without requiring a formal conversation, and I love regular updates. There are times when I’m working and will check Google Reader and see no updates on the sites I’m subscribed to and I’ll be a bit bummed. Geez, I only checked there 15 minutes ago, why isn’t there something new!?
Of course, this can get out of hand…
But not everyone is like me, so it was difficult to describe why “regular people” should be using Twitter. I just knew they probably should.
Well now I have an answer.
Rob’s father-in-law, Doug Pink, ended up in hospital earlier this week. We were playing poker on Sunday when Jess phoned Rob to give him an update and it didn’t sound good. That night I drove Rob out to the ‘wack so he could be with Jess (his tiny sports car had summer tires) and help her out through this tough time.
And then I waited for updates on Doug’s condition. And waited… I’ve known Jess for ages, and Doug was always a really friendly, pleasant guy, and he loves his daughter, and I know she loves him. I cared what happened, but couldn’t find out!
Finally, Rob made a Facebook status update, and I posted a comment on it thanking him and then noting that, hey, this is exactly what Twitter is good for — getting status updates on important news out to lots of people without requiring big formal blog posts, or one-on-one-conversations over and over again.
Rob agreed, got a Twitter account, and has been updating it with Doug’s condition, which I’m happy to report is getting better. You can just check that URL, or get your own Twitter account and have it automatically updated with posts from there (and anyone else you want to follow).
So there you go. What’s Twitter for? Connecting. Maybe not all the time every day like I and the other technophiles do, but when that connection is really important, Twitter is an invaluable tool.
Also, it’s free, geez.
Null Christmas
Yes, I’m an atheist who enjoys Christmas. How can you not? People get time off work, are nicer to each other, get together and get social and friendly. Just because the “reason for the season” is (arguably) a religious myth’s birth doesn’t mean the effect isn’t enjoyable! I don’t go as crazy for it as some people, though.
But this holiday season has been one of heavy snowfall here. So much so that we, and others, can’t go anywhere. Mel and I usually go up to Pender Harbour to spend the holidays with my family, but that had to get cancelled when at first they got a big freeze — my mother’s car had to be abandoned “in town” — and then we got a big dump of snow.
And just as the weather seemed to get warmer yesterday, promising the break needed for socialization, we’re getting a second big dump of snow!
Our new house is great for socializing and gaming, but that doesn’t mean anything if people can’t get over here!
So instead we’ve stayed in, played World of Warcraft, watched a few movies and the Doctor Who Christmas Special (it was great!) and just waiting for a thaw that’ll let us see family and friends.
But, thanks to technology, it’s not totally lost. I can IM with my friends, play games online with them (geez guys, buy Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 already! They’re on sale!) and if I bother to hook up the old webcam I can videoconference. Sure beats the old-timey days when all we had were phones.
But I can do all that stuff any time. As a holiday this Christmas has been a bust.
Bonus: Here’s our car in the driveway, and the snow continuing to come down. You can see I dug out access earlier, but it’s filling up again.
Google Reader = Awesome
If your Internet habits are anything like mine, there are a lot of web sites you check up on regularly. I’d tried a few RSS readers before, but didn’t like having to run yet another program, or I didn’t care for the way it worked in the browser if it was integrated and finally just ignored them. Instead I used tabbed browsing and “groups” of links. I’d have a folder of, say, “Blogs” and I’d use my browser’s “Open all links” function to open each blog in its own tab. This got slow, of course…
Ok, I linked to the Wikipedia on RSS, but here’s a summary: RSS is a way to offer a “feed” of the posts on a site, independent of layout and using a standardized presentation so it can be viewed by any “reader”. Many RSS feeds, such as the one on my blog (at this time, anyway) are simply “snippets” of each post, with the URL on how to read the full article. Others have all the information.
I started seeing a few news articles on Digg about Google Reader‘s new look/features and finally decided to check it out. Wow, I wish I’d started using it earlier. What an incredible, easy-to-use, and most of all helpful web site!
All you have to do is go to http://reader.google.com/, log in with your Gmail account (sign up for one if you don’t have it — Gmail is the best way to deal with Email right now, hands-down) and start adding site feeds.
My Google Reader page, using the Google Chrome Browser
So there’s my Google reader. Boldfaced subscriptions are those with new entries, I can click them individually to see them, or click “All Items” which I currently have to set “New Items Only”.
And because it uses AJAX (a technology that lets web pages update with Javascript without the entire page being reloaded — you see it everywhere these days) you can just keep the site open in a tab and it’ll automatically check for updates all day.
Here’s where it’s vastly superior to other feed readers I’ve tried: Because it’s site-based rather than program of browser-based, I can check on the sites I’m following from anywhere. I can check it at home on my main desktop, or while on the couch watching TV, or even on my iPod Touch through its Safari web browser. Google Reader recognizes the iPod and formats itself a little more pleasantly for such a small screen.
I’ll never have to load up 20 tabs at a time again! If you read even a few sites regularly, you really owe it to yourself to try out Google Reader!
Harper values his position more than he does Canada
The non-Conservatives decided to form a coalition government because Harper wasn’t doing anything about the crumbling economy, and what does he do? He suspends parliament for seven weeks, so absolutely nothing can be done.
And already the attack ads have begun. Almost two-thirds of Canada voted AGAINST the Conservatives, yet Harper is calling the coalition creators “undemocratic”. What’s undemocratic, Mr. Harper, is you and your Canadian neocons decided that being a minority government means you can try to screw over the democracy-ensuring voter-credit political parties get and further your right-wing failed-in-the-USA unregulated market ideas to make yourselves and your friends rich.
Why did people vote Conservative? Much like G.W. Bush, Harper doesn’t give a crap about his country, just the profits of his corporate buddies, and the future of his party’s place in power.
Don’t give up, NDP & Liberals. Fight against this guy and his party, for the future of Canada. If you let him get away with this now, he or others like him will think they can get away with even worse.
National Car Rental Sucks at Reservations
I reserved a 16′ Cube Van for today on Thursday. Here’s pretty much what happened when I arrived to pick it up:
The guy at the counter said there was “nothing he could do”, and when I asked when the earliest they’d have a truck available was, he said “Thursday or Friday”.
I phoned up their customer service when I got home and they apologized and did say “We do have a confirmation of that reservation,” to which I responded “Yes, but you had no truck.” He apologized again and said the place to talk to about that was the “counter” which meant the place I was just at who said “there’s nothing I can do.” I demanded someone higher up that than, and he provided me with a manager’s number, which I phoned and got no answer at.
Screw you, National Car Rental.
Thankfully, Budget has an available truck which we’re going to get now.
For Sale: PS2 Slim + Guitar Hero I & II
We’re in the process of clearing out our stuff for the new move and it’s time to get rid of our Playstation 2 (Slim version). I originally bought it to play Guitar Hero and it’s served me well though it hasn’t really got much use since the series moved to the 360.
Included is a PS2 Slim, Okami, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, two Guitar controllers, one PS2 Dualshock controller, and an 8MB memory card, plus the standard power and RCA video cables. All are in great condition though I can’t find the case for Guitar Hero II.
Before I put this on Craigslist I figured I’d offer this to my friends first. How does $100 sound?
Ron Howard on the US Election
See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die
I hate moving
Our landlord dropped by yesterday and told us that because of the economic crisis (and his father’s reaction of dumping all his stocks) that he has to put our house up for sale to get some instant cash. However, as he pointed out, the market for housing is terrible for sellers right now, and it could take months before the place sells. He thinks the soonest he can sell it is February — there are three or four similar houses in our neighbourhood that have been listed for months already.
To cushion the blow, he’s lower our rent for a bit as long as we’ll be here, but it still totally sucks. We love the area we’re living in, and while this house has faults none of them are major. Loki has a big back yard to play in, we’re in walking distance to Metrotown, many great restaurants, and Skytrain. On top of that, despite being by two major roads, we’re off them enough so that the area is quiet, and gets little through-traffic.
But now we have to look for a new place. We’ve got too much stuff to go for an apartment, and house-hunting is difficult. Most say “no pets”, though the last two we’ve rented have said the same until they met Loki, who is awesomely loveable.
And no, there’s no way we could afford to buy right now, even with a slumping market. We don’t have a downpayment, and prices where we’d want to live are still high. Moving further away would just increase our fuel consumption to get Mel to and from work every day and with gas prices the way they are we might as well just live closer and pay a bit more.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and the house won’t sell, and our landlord’s finances will recover some other way. He really felt bad about giving the news to us, and his long-term plan was to keep the house with good tenants (us) in it as a future investment and this is a blow to him as well.
Conservative Party Will Reintroduce the “Canadian DMCA” If Elected
It failed once, thankfully, but that doesn’t mean their corporate backers don’t want them to try again.
The Conservative Party has released its platform and it devotes a half-page to copyright that leaves little doubt that it plans to bring back Bill C-61 and continue to support ACTA. According to the platform:
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will reintroduce federal copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance among the rights of musicians, artists, programmers and other creators and brings Canada’s intellectual property protection in line with that of other industrialized countries, but also protects consumers who want to access copyright works for their personal use. We will also introduce tougher laws on counterfeiting and piracy and give our customs and law enforcement services the resources to enforce them. This will protect consumers from phoney and sometimes dangerous products that are passed off as reliable brand-name goods.
Read more at Michael Geists’ site (found via BoingBoing)
The upcoming election has me worried that our multi-party system might just hand the Conservatives a stronger government. Here in Burnaby-Douglas the NDP and Liberal candidates are running extremely close, and both are legitimate options for a “not a Conservative” vote, but the local elections don’t take that into account and it’s worrisome.
I’m also baffled by the Conservative Party’s platform and that anyone would buy the bullshit they’re spreading. Their ads are pushing things that nobody I know is incredibly worried about, aside from promises of lower taxes, which any Canadian knows is either a lie or just a reason for them to cut the social services we’re so proud of here.
“Tough on crime” is something that’s supposed to get you votes in Canada? I got a flyer from the Conservatives that talked about how prisoners have tattooing rooms and that’s a luxury and the Conservatives would get rid of them. Oh good, so then prisoners can go back to sharing dirty needles to get their prison tats done in secret and they can spread around HIV and hepatitis. And then they get released… Surely the Conservatives know that’s the reason for those rooms, but they don’t care.
I can’t even figure out why Canadians are backing them so much. I’m pro-business, but our Conservatives want to make Canada more like America and surely every single Canadian can see how that’s working out for them there — collapsing markets, unending wars, civil liberties being thrown out the window and corporate interests controlling the government as the entire country seems on a nosedive to complete disaster.
I’m normally a pretty solid Liberal voter. The party suits my centrist (for a Canadian) beliefs in the free market (with a watchful eye) and social services (for the important things). The NDP are generally too business unfriendly for me, though I’d rather have them in than the Conservatives. But I’m actually thinking about voting NDP in my riding simply because he’s the incumbent and from what I’ve seen has the better chance of beating the Conservative. I don’t want to “split the vote” so that we get some ridiculous outcome like the Conservative candidate getting 35% of the vote but winning anyway because the Liberal and NDP each got 32%.
Even an NDP government gone crazy socialist could be recovered from. But we might not recover from the Conservative party’s pro-corporate, anti-freedom laws like the Canadian DMCA, and I’m scared.
Update: Yup, it appears the NDP is ahead, but there’s a strong danger the Conservative candidate could take advantage of a vote split and win our riding. Ugh, I’m voting commie this year.