» barbed wire tattoo on bicep
» chinese character tattoo
» earring
» convertible
» new (younger, blonder) wife
» gym membership (unused)
» exercise equipment (unused)
» highlights(hair)
» shaved head and goatee
» baseball hat (backwards)
» jewelry
» new guitar/drums/keyboard (we’re gettin’ the band back together, man!)
» expensive sunglasses
I was egosurfing yesterday and found this. Pretty amazing that some random guy found our old record. Even more amazing is that he liked it. At the time we recorded the EP, I distinctly remember thinking that we’d inevitably become rich and famous. Sadly, my rock star dreams were dashed, probably due to the crappiness of the recording and/or material.
I was goofing around with YearbookYourself.com a little while ago. It’s a site that allows you to insert your face into different yearbook photos from years past. The interface is a little funky but the finished photos are hilarious. Check out my family:
Me - Class of 1960:
Maria - Class of 1964:
Gianna - Class of 1962:
Sofia - Class of 1958:
I’m still working on my wife Lisa’s pic. I’m trying to get her into an 80’s look.
I read recently that insurance companies have started testing a ‘black box’ for cars, similar to what already exists in airplanes. The idea is to compile data on a person’s driving habits and then use that data to determine a fair insurance rate. For instance, someone with a lead foot who constantly guns it off the line would have to pay a higher premium than someone who slowly accelerates to a sensible speed limit. Or someone who is constantly slamming on their brakes would pay more than someone who gradually comes to a stop.
Idea 1: What about networking these devices together? You could then compile data like, average trailing distance, average number of cars encountered during your daily commute, and speed relative to surrounding traffic. Add this to the data described previously and you’d have a much better gauge on the expected safety of a particular vehicle.
Idea 2: Why not give the user access to this data? Drivers would then have an economic incentive to self-regulate their behavior, resulting in safer driving conditions for all involved. Users could modify their commute times in order to avoid peak traffic and be rewarded with lower insurance rates. And I’m sure it would be much easier to stifle the urge to tailgate if you knew it would save you fifty bucks off your quarterly bill. The sensor itself should also give the user feedback - maybe a dash mounted light that glowed green when you were an acceptable distance from the car in front of you, gradually turning from amber to red as you got too close.
A system where insurance companies collect the data anonymously and allow the end users to modify their habits in return for monetary reward would be much more efficient than the current “age/miles driven/geographic area” method.
As you might expect… a boring drive to work today.
I recently switched from Comcast to FIOS for my tv, phone, and internet and it’s been a (mostly) smooth transition. I’m still not crazy about the limited on-demand lineup, but Verizon’s internet connectivity/speed and phone performance has been much better than Comcast’s. The only real problem I had was with the Verizon wireless router - it was incompatible with my existing Belkin router and range extender so my second PC on the opposite side of the house wound up with a poor to non-existent signal. I could have swapped out their router, but then I’d have issues with their channel guide and I just didn’t feel like klugeing up the tv with an interim fix.
The solution? The Actiontec Megaplug ethernet adapter, which uses your home’s existing electrical wiring for networking. Ordered two from Amazon, plugged one into a power outlet next to the router and one into the power outlet next to the remote PC, hooked up the ethernet cables and… choirs of angels began singing the Hallelujah Chorus as the sun broke through the clouds. 10 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload and no setup required. Sweet. It’s the rare tech item that just works. Highly, highly recommended.
I recently ran into a small problem when trying to add two different size adsense ads to a single page on ralphworld.com. What I wanted to do was display a small ad halfway down the search results page, embedded into (but visually distinct) from the content. But when I pasted in the adsense code I kept getting the same size ad as the header, even though the code specified a smaller size.
I finally tracked down the problem when examining the page source. It seems that using consecutive echo() functions in php outputs the echoed text to a single line. Some of the google adsense code requires line breaks to display properly. The problem disappeared when I added the newline character “\n” to the end of each echoed line. I’m hoping this improves my click-through rate.
I think this pretty much answers who would prevail in a leopard vs crocodile deathmatch. Next question - who would win in a fight, an Oompa Loompa or a Munchkin?
Here’s a snippet of an email I recently received from a new client:
I LOVE THE NEW SITE!!! Is it okay that I pass your name along to others! I think you were a pleasure to work with and also LISTENED to what I wanted and delivered a perfect project!
thanks again (email an invoice so I can pay you quickly)
How can you not love feedback like that? You can check the site here.
Fontstruct - a free, flash-based online font building tool. Very clever and intuitive interface. Plus, you can download your creations as True Type fonts. Level of Awesomeness: +7
Jott - I’m not sure how they do this, whether they use voice recognition, human transcription, or some other weird voodoo, but it works. Basically, it’s a (free) call-in service that will transcribe your spoken messages and send them as emails, save them to your calendar, create to-do lists, create blog posts, etc. I mainly use it to update my Google calendar when I’m on the road. The software interfaces with Wordpress, Twitter, Typepad, Blogger, Yahoo Groups, Google Calendar and just about any other social/blogging/calendar app you can imagine. Level of Awesomeness: DEFCON 5
Google Analytics - Another free (sensing a pattern here?) online tool that allows you to track visitors to your site. For example, thanks to Google Analytics, I know now that ralphworlddesign.com has had visitors from as far away as Hyderabad, India and Islamabad, Pakistan (though I’m sure that’s just where the comments spambot is routed through). That’s the simple overview. The depth of detail is way beyond a quick blog post. I’ll probably post further about this after I gather more data. Level of Awesomeness: WARP FACTOR 11