E-mail spam

If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.

I was looking through my spam-catcher account (you know, the e-mail account I have simply to throw at all the online forms that inevitably add the bulk to your inbox) for a lost password when I realized that the first 187 messages were sent today.

Granted, I’ve had the e-mail address for a while and I do give it out a lot, but 187 is a shitload of spam for one day.

And then it occurred to me that if I wanted to be a really seedy bastard, I’d charge advertisers to drop ad e-mails into my users bulk folders. Because they can’t really complain - after all, my spam blocker caught the spam, right?

But everyone goes through their bulk mail every now and then, just in case. So sooner or later people are going to at least see the e-mail subject lines. Boom: advertising.

I wonder if that actually happens, because 187 e-mails is a LOT.

March 31, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

E-mail woes (continued)

I’m one of those people that has too many e-mail addresses.

I check all of them pretty regularly - even my spam-catching account - but I have a hard time picking one to run with.

For a while I thought the address from my school would work, but then it occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be able to keep that address for life, so that wasn’t going to work.

Currently, my favorite is j at jason-preston.com. I access at least four e-mail accounts through Outlook right now, and that works pretty well, but every time I log into gmail, I get seduced by the ridiculously nice search feature and the coolness of the conversation view.

I’m really tempted to switch all my accounts to “forward to gmail” and try and use my gmail address as my main account. I double checked, and it looks like it is possible (although sometimes difficult) to backup your gmail messages to a computer, which I would want to do regularly.

The problem seems to be that while I like having a mail client on my computer (and I think I really would miss Outlook), I use both my laptop and my desktop every day, and it’s annoying to avoid checking my e-mail while I’m on my laptop because there’s no good way to sync the two copies of Outlook.

I’m tempted to try, but I’m not sure I’m going to do it.

Some day, I need to find a killer e-mail app and address solution, move everything to that one place, and stick with it.

March 31, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

My iPod case

In one of life’s great ironies, the heavy-cloth case I bought to protect my ipod from getting scratched has in fact scratched and marked my ipod more than my pocket ever has.

March 30, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

The Key

I’ve posted before about how I wish my writing was better.

It’s generally true that I’m never actually happy with anything I’ve written. Whether or not I actually know how to fix it is something entirely different. Usually it’s just a matter of diction and sentence structure conspiring to make my thoughts look awkard and clunky on paper.

But good writing isn’t just about looking pretty. More and more I’m convinced that good writing is the art of doing someone else’s thinking for them.

March 30, 2006 | Filed Under Nonsense |  

Which Apple music store?

Once again, the Beattles are having legal problems with the other Apple (the Beatles own Apple Corps, and have since before the formation of Apple Computer).

There’s a trial going on in London right now about whether or not Apple Computer has broken a 1991 agreement not to enter the music business.

To me the answer is obvious. Of course Apple is in the music business. They have a “music store.” They sell music.

But Apple Computer is apparently claiming (and apparently the trial doesn’t have an obvious ruling) that the iTunes store “merely serves as a conduit for the transmission of music in the form of digital data.” Meaning that they’re in the “data-delivery business,” not the music business.

But then what the hell is a record store? A place that sells plastics, paper, and other materials?

That’s a pretty bullshit defense if you ask me. I hope they either come up with something better, or lose the lawsuit.

March 29, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

Insomnia

A little dose of insomnia never hurt anyone, right?

I can’t believe I’ve been up past 4:30am for the past four nights in a row. I can’t get my schedule straight.

Insomnia
March 29, 2006 | Filed Under Nonsense |  

Busy little sidebar

So I’ve spent some time adding things to the sidebar today. I added two little buttons on the right that point to both my 101 list and my Gift List wiki (the latter of which is a wiki that, well, is basically my big ol’ wish list to give ideas to family and friends who are nice or stupid enough to buy me gifts).

The other thing I added was a plugin called Addictions, which lets me add my current book, music, game, and movie addictions to the sidebar, like many people do in their Typepad blogs. I like it so far, although I wish I could list more than one item at a time for each category.

March 28, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

My 101 list

I’m going to steal a page (almost literally) from Ted Leonsis‘ blog and make my own 101 list: a list of 101 things that I’d like to accomplish in life. I think it’s a really cool idea; some of the things I’ve already checked off my list, and many of the things I have yet to accomplish.

As I’m compiling this list, I’ve realized that some things are ones that you un-check if you fail.

This list is a work in progress - I’m kicking it off with only 34 items. You can always find it with the link on the right sidebar, and I’ll be adding to it periodically as things occur to me. I’m still trying to figure out how I can avoid having to re-number everything whenever I add something to the first two categories.


    Part 1 - Goals

  1. Write and take part in creating a Science Fiction film
  2. Write and take part in creating a Comedy film
  3. Start a business and turn a profit running it
  4. Publish a short story
  5. Find a job that I enjoy
  6. Never be in debt
  7. Hike to the top of Longs Peak
  8. Make photography a bigger hobby
  9. Learn at least one programming language
  10. Read every book I own
  11. Register a patent
  12. Learn to draw
  13. Create or take part in a comic or webcomic
  14. Create or take part in creating a video game
  15. Meet a Bond actor
  16. Get Quoted (like on the Google homepage)
  17. Meet a Bond Girl
  18. Write a cool epitaph
  19. Learn to drive a manual transmission well

    20. Part 2 - Travel

  20. Live in another country (i.e. not the US) for at least 3 months
  21. Visit Japan
  22. Visit Russia
  23. Visit Australia and New Zealand
  24. Travel Europe by train
  25. Visit South America
  26. Visit Israel
  27. Visit Africa
  28. Ski in the Swiss Alps
  29. Travel the world randomly one destination at a time
  30. Spontaneously take a vacation
  31. Travel to Space
  32. Live in New York for at least one year
  33. Live in Los Angeles for at least one year
  34. Locate and visit Gray’s Lake Walking Bridge (and bring a “go kart”)
  35. Sail somewhere
  36. Enjoy a “Priceless Vacation”
  37. Go to Wimbledon (during the tournament)

    38. Part 3 - Family Life

  38. Find and marry the perfect woman
  39. Never get a divorce
  40. Have at least one child
  41. Become a good parent
  42. Stay close to my parents (I guess this is one you un-check)
  43. Stay close to my sister and brother (another un-checker)
  44. Stay close to my extended family and cousins (ditto)
  45. Live to be a grandfather

    46. Part 4 - Shallow Materialism

  46. Own my own home
  47. Have a nice watch
  48. Own a nice pen
  49. Own a pool table
  50. Have some sort of large-screen home theater setup
  51. Have a nice massage chair
  52. Have a hot tub
  53. Put an original Eames chair in my home
  54. My second car will be a hybrid
  55. My third car will run on an alternate fuel source
March 28, 2006 | Filed Under Nonsense | 5 Comments 

Advertising or Content?

Last July, Fred Wilson wrote a post about tracking and advertising that made me think about what exactly drew the line between content and ads.

When I drive around in my car listening to the radio, I find the ads annoying. Unless they are about something I care about. Then I listen intently.

When I watch TV, I experience the same thing. For the most part, I fast forward through the ads on the Tivo. But if it’s an ad for something I care about, I slow down the Tivo and watch the ad.

I remember when TiVo first let people download and watch upcoming movie trailers, studios were surprised at how many people voluntarily requested to watch trailers–essentially ads–that they paid who knows how much to put in front of movies at the theater.

This is because if the product is right and the ad is informative, it can become content.

I experienced this today when I went to the mall to get my watch repaired. They said there was a pretty simple fix if I wanted to wait around for about 20 minutes, so I said sure and went to browse the rest of the mall.

I wandered into the Bose store, which is usually pretty fun because it’s basically a collection of cool high-end stereo equipment. It turns out that this one also had a little home theater demo room setup, with a little fifteen minute presentation that is, essentially, a big advertisement for Bose speakers.

But I enjoyed it. Because it told me a lot about their new GSX Home Theater system and gave me an awesome demo of cool music and sound. Apparently Bose is getting into the market for all-in-one home entertainment as well. They have some options for putting music on a centralized system (as far as I could tell, it had to be a Bose music server) that would let you play different channels of music all over the house, depending on where you had speakers (these didn’t have to be Bose).

Anyway, the point is that because the Bose presentation was tailored to my interest, was well put together, and entertaining, it was basically content.

I’m not sure I agree with Fred that tracking consumer behavior in what I see as increasingly invasive ways is the best way to target advertisments, but I do think that making ads relevant would be the ideal arrangement between advertisers and consumers. I’d like my ads to be content.

March 27, 2006 | Filed Under Favorites, Technology |  

Yahoo! is out

I’ve been doing a lot of little things in preparation for getting Flicker re-made into it’s old new self, and one of the decisions that’s been running around my mind is where to get CPC ads from.

I had intented to use Yahoo! Publisher Network instead of AdSense just to keep things separate and make accounting easier (I run Adsense on this site).

But, according to Boing Boing, the Yahoo! terms of service require that you block non-US visitors from seeing the ads.

Not only is that lost revenue, but I have no idea how to do that. So I guess Yahoo! is out, and AdSense is what we’ll be using.

March 26, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

LA sentiments

I heard someone yesterday say that “LA is a fun place to visit, and a great place to leave.”

The more time I spend here, the more I’m inclined to agree with them. It’s fun, but every time I’m in LA my health goes to shit and I get sick of the smog.

I’ll be glad to go back home.

March 26, 2006 | Filed Under Nonsense |  

How To: Make a fake Mac

Out of curiosity, I decided to see how close I could get my laptop to looking like a Mac. As usually happens when I set out to do something like this, I discovered that there’s a both a hard way and a really simple way.

The hard way uses a bunch of different applications and tweaks, some of them are free, others are not, and overall it’s not even quite complete. But I wrote up a bunch of the steps before I found the easy way, and it could be fun to do them piecemeal, so I’ll list them below anyway.

What’s the hard way? Here’s the recipe:

* Obviously, install the widget engine before you download and run this widget. Also, the Firefox theme should be installed using Firefox.

After you’ve downloaded all the programs, go ahead and install the Yahoo! Widget Engine, Firefox, and TopDesk. Go ahead and download the volume widget. Once you’ve “run” the widget by double clicking on the widget file, hit “F8″ to see the volume widget and you can place it where you want on your desktop by dragging it around.

Now go to the page for the iFox theme. Click the “install now” link, and allow the installation. Firefox will look like Safari the next time you open it. There’s a guide to a more complete makeover found here, but it looks like getting the final adjustments required having a program called WindowsBlinds. (This theme is slightly different from iFox, and it’s what I used).

The trickiest part of the whole operation is the ObjectDock. After you install it, follow a few steps to get rid of your windows taskbar:

After you install ObjectDock, start the app and load the dock with all the icons you want to be able to use. Remember that you won’t have a start menu after this conversion is complete, so just drag any icons you’d like to be able to access onto the dock.

Next, click the “configure dock” link. Adjust the size and magnified size to your liking, then set the “Position on screen” to “bottom.” Click Autohide if you want. Also, use the slider near the bottom to set the dock to be semi-transparent.

Then go to the “Dock Contents” tab, and click on “Hide the windows taskbar.” Also check to make sure that “Load ObjectDock on startup” is selected. Hit OK.

That should replace your taskbar with ObjectDock.

Now. Ready for the easy way?

Download and install FlyakiteOSX. That’s it.

Flyakite messes with a whole bunch of your system files and redoes your desktop entirely. The installer is pretty flexible, and it lets you choose what things you want installed on your computer, and it includes an uninstall that, while I haven’t tried it yet, should work just fine.

The full install is about 250 megabytes, but at the end of it all, your desktop looks like this:

The only thing Flyakite didn’t come with was the expose-style funcionality I get from TopDesk. But it looks pretty good.

March 25, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

This is ridiculous

I think that the French law is the most reasonable thing I’ve heard of in the digital consumer sphere. For the US Government to be backing Apple in the whole “fuck the customer” mentality is just stupid.

From Engadget:

At issue is a draft law that would require Apple and other companies to open up their DRM to competitors or allow consumers to do so on their own, so that music purchased in an online music store could be played in any manufacturer’s digital audio player.

I bought the damn music. I should be able to play it on whatever device I choose. And you’re not going to convince me otherwise with scary words like “freedom fries.”

March 23, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

The Scientology episode

Curious about the (latest) banned South Park episode? So was I.

It turns out that the full episode is available on YouTube here. I have no idea how long it will stay up.

March 23, 2006 | Filed Under Nonsense |  

Leading the charge

Last summer, I took some flack for hating on Apple and the way they name their operating system.

But despite the fact that I’m a real PC-user, I’m not in the habit of turning my nose up at cool features just because they came from the brains at Apple. Part of what I like about using a PC is that I can do just about anything on it.

Two of the features from OS X that I’ve always really liked are expose and the object dock.

It turns out that there are two apps for the PC that let you do both of those things in XP. Stardock makes a free app called ObjectDock that is really simple and it works perfectly. It integrates seamlessly and it’s really cleaned up my desktop - I just put all the old icons onto the dock, and I’ve had no problems with it.

The other app is not free, although it gives you a very generous 30-day trial period. It’s called TopDesk, and it works really well. I did end up buying a license to use it, and the full version has turned out to be more stable than the trial version I was using (occasionally it would hiccup and have trouble resizing my open windows). There are other apps that give Windows XP the expose-like functionality that I’m after, but none of them have the same smoothness and polish that TopDesk offers. In my mind, it’s definitely worth the $10.

March 23, 2006 | Filed Under Technology |  

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