Adri Music & Blog, Canadian Female Indie Electronica. - Technology

A Curse Upon You Spammers!

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 01:44:51 -0700

I place a curse upon you evil spammers! You are the scourge of the internet!

If you thought receiving spam was annoying, try having a spammer pretend that his or her spam is originating from your very own personal email address. Yes folks, it does happen, and it appears that it's happening to to me as we speak.

FOR THE RECORD, I DO NOT SEND SPAM, I AM NOT A SPAMMER, NOR WILL I TOLERATE SPAMMERS FORGING SPAM LISTING MY EMAIL AS THE SENDER!

I am feeling pretty irate -- as I do not want to be blacklisted, or forced to abandon my favourite email address.

Gah! That is my evening rant for tonight.

Nerd Cake

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:53:44 -0700

I just ran across the most romantic nerd cake I've ever seen.

If you don't get this cake, then you are not geeky enough yet!

Toast and Jam

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:09:08 -0800

It is generally accepted that eating at your computer is a really bad idea. Especially over the keyboard. Yet everybody does it! Who doesn't like a cup of tea on their desk? A little cookie with their news? A little breakfast in their nook?

Just now, I was eating a bit of late night toast and dropped the bread. Naturally, due to compounding factors in Murphy's law working against my computer and for the bread: it fell Jam Side Down. You can imagine my grief, to see my snazzy Mac laptop featuring sticky orange goo. You can also imagine my relief that it missed all essential bits and landed square on the one empty patch of case. Now it's like it never happened, but perhaps this serves as a warning?

My mom gave me a geeky little keyboard condom the other day... i think I will use it.

Valentine's Day Madness

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:21:19 -0800

Yesterday my sweetie was holding something exciting behind his back and says to me "Now, I know most girls wouldn't find this romantic, but since you're Adri -- I know you will!" I knew right then and there he was holding a piece of gear. It was a small and very light Manfrotto Modo tripod. Yay! I have needed a tripod for years... He had planned to take me out to a viewpoint but it was raining sheets outside. We shopped for shoes for him instead at the Fluevog store. Strangely enough John Fluevog was there, and I told him what a fan of his shoes I was. I wonder if he gets that a lot, now that his face is plastered all over town on billboards advertising Granville Street? Sadly, I was wearing a pair of cheap Aldos at the time, and not one of my 4 pairs of Vogs. For shame!

This morning I found out that a couple of my photos were chosen as finalist in a Flickr group Valentine's contest. I don't usually enter these things, but someone invited me so I could hardly refuse. This was one of them...

Technogasm

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:17:55 -0800

Christmas was kind to me this year: my Sweetie and I treated ourselves to a computer upgrade! I am experiencing a total techno-gasm right now. Eeeee! I can't contain my excitement any longer, and I must record this experience.

I am touching a lovely Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo laptop. It's all shiny and metal. It's a cool quiet best of a machine that really smokes through tasks. It crushes our prior iBook in terms of what tasks it can handle. The screen is brighter, bigger and denser. I feel like someone has totally opened up my work area! Suddenly editing photos seems far easier. What a relief!

I am using my very first bluetooth mouse. I have mapped the Expose feature of Mac OS X to the click of this mouse's little 360 degree scrolling nipple. I feel 200% more efficient when switching tasks now. Switching windows has never been this easy. Forget about tabbing through software, Expose is the shiznit! I haven't been this happy switching through tasks since I had an Amiga back in 1995. (R.I.P. Commodore. May the Guru be with you.)

I wonder what other techno-miracle Apple will think of next. Tomorrow is the big Macworld Expo when Apple typically announces their latest and greatest. I can't wait to see what those crazy wizards cook up next!

Mixed Feelings About TV

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 12:53:16 -0700

I love TV!

I hate TV!

It's a delightfully light and fluffy treat. It's supremely entertaining and a stellar way to pass time when you're really really under the weather. It's also a horrible black hole for hours that could otherwise be productive. TV fills those hours lost with inane culturally bankrupt programs filled with vaccuous pneumatic ladies and irritating men with too-white teeth and slick voices. It's also a really addicting drug, sinking its teeth in you with twists and turns and edge of your seat programming.

Thank god I freed myself from the TV schedule with a PVR!

I'm really noticing my mixed feelings about TV now after hardly watching any this summer. I am both delighted to return to the familiar characters and see the denouments of all the cliffhanger season enders... But I am also mourning the time I won't be spending doing something else more useful.

Does anybody else feel this way when September comes?

Flickr as an Intelligence Gathering Tool?

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:33:31 -0700

Browsing Flickr is giant barrels of fun. You never know when you're going to stumble on a photo of a friend snogging someone taken by a total stranger. That's because the Flickr power users are an orgy of snap happy digital photographers who are documenting their every waking minute. They take pictures of strangers on the street, noteworthy events and places and cross link their posts. One friend of mine is somewhat guilty of this, and as a result he's got a ton of enviable shots in his collection.

Last night, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) came up in conversation. Later, when lying in bed, it occurred to me how incredibly useful Flickr would be for a spy. You can quickly see who's shagging who, who's been where, who ate what and what brand of T-shirts they wear.. Who needs surveillance cameras when the Flickr elite are already doing the work for you?

Flickr is so CSIS' wet dream.

Excellent PR in Vancouver for One Car and One School

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:42:19 -0700

Tonight on the news my sweetie saw someone he knew. The guy in question was showing off the New Hotness in convertible amphibian vehicles. They are selling a kit to retrofit a 4WD Suzuki vehicle to give it magical water powers. Then you can drive off land into a body of water and mill about as though you were a boat. Isn't that wicked?

In the very same broadcast, there was another familiar story! Two friends of mine are involved with an exciting Vancouver historical swordplay school called Academie Duello. The news segment shown made it look like fantastic fun. Perhaps I'd find the courage to try it one day, when I'm not feeling like too much of a delicate flower.

Make Wicked Lists Quick With Dynamite Webware

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:18:08 -0700

I am a total list addict. I have no relief from the millions of thoughts exploding in my brain unless I write them down. Invariably in the past I ended up with scribbly scraps of paper cluttering my home. Grocery lists, to do lists, packing lists... These seemed to end up just about anywhere: the top of the toilet tank, the nightstand and random pockets. It seemed like there were mean little Entropy Fairies taking my good organizing vibes and turning them against me! Lists got lost under meaningless piles, got stained by mugs of tea or were written in a sleepy late-night scrawl.

Then a good friend turned me onto making lists with Tadalist online. Tadalists is online list making webware by 37 Signals. I don't know how I ever lived without this exceptional tool! Now I rejoice in my elegant centralized lists. I have my lists set as the home page for my web browsers -- that way whenever I am about to surf the web I am prompted to review the stuff I could be doing otherwise.

And of course, now I have a few less pieces of paper to clutter my desk.

When Eating Food at Your Desk

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:09:19 -0700

When eating food while seated in your computer chair, I think a bowl is superior to a plate.

Technorati Goodness

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:23:01 -0700

Oooh so I've just made myself a Technorati account for the first time. I feel so hip and cool suddenly. Not to mention pretty tired from the two friggin' huge cups of very black tea I just drank.

Amazingly enough my blog is currently ranked 1,008,603rd right now. What a friggin' huge number. Maybe we can decrease that by eventually shaving a digit or two off?

Shave Your Legs With a Phone!

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Mon, 22 May 2006 00:28:57 -0700

A friend of mine is on break right now from a really intensive drama program. I think she described it as being "trapped in a cave with Shakespeare!" She said she had gotten really disconnected as a result. To prove her point she told me about her unusual reaction to her friends new cell phone... After she complimented her friend on her new gadget, someone said it was a "razor" -- then my friend proceeded to get excited about the prospect of being able to shave her legs and take a phone call with it.

Of course, someone clued her in that the RAZR is actually just a really trendy phone by Motorola. I think she was a tiny titch disappointed.

iPod Fever

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 18:22:49 -0700

Oh my God! I am in a total Gear-lust Frenzy since finding out today about the iPod Nano!!! I want one so bad, it's aching in my bones! I am having one of those consumerist orgasms that you can only have when you find out that your favourite company decided to sell a product that was formerly only a figment of your imagination.

And they also released a pack of coloured skins for it so I can match my wardrobe... bliss

I know, I should not lust after such things... I don't want to be a horrible consumerist whore! But I can't help it... It's just so sexy!

I kept hesitating between buying a bigger iPod (hold the whole collection) or an iPod shuffle (so tiny you can always have it in your pocket), but clearly the Nano is the way to go! It will fit easily in my pocket with my other junk, big enough to take sufficient music for a vacation... But not so big as to create enormous bouts of indecision when sensuously massaging the click wheel.

I think I am in love. iPod Nano, where I come!

Audioscrobbling

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:53:45 -0700

So one of my friends from Fidgital introduced me to a dynamite plugin for iTunes. It's called Audioscrobbler. It does something so cool I am sort of a loss for how to describe it...

Essentially, it tracks what excellent music you listen to and posts them to a really cute web page on their site.

It may sounds like another internet vanity power-user tool on the surface... But it can also help satisfy your insatiable apetite for genuinely good music recommendations. It will point out the users who are your 'musical neighbours' on the basis of statistical taste overlap. I love to peek and see what some stranger with good taste is digging lately. (Of course you can also spy on your friends' potentially questionable listening habits! ) lt can also generate a customized audio stream full of ear-candy you might like but don't already know.

It's also solid gold for the artists themselves. They can view which songs and albums people listened to most... Which is completely different than which singles are being jammed down our throats on the radio and which CDs are flying off the shelves fastest.. It's a totally different way of looking at music consumption.

Here is my very own user page, chock full of what I listened to today.

Beware of the Glare!

nospam@example.com (Adri) — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:10:36 -0700

As much as technology keeps improving, every once in a while someone starts a really horrifying new trend. Lately companies are replacing the lovely matte finish of LCD computer screen surfaces with a really glossy finish! I think I first saw it on some Sony products... It sort of set them apart and I think some people found it sexy and slick.

Of course, a shiny screen creates an enormous amount of glare! LCDs are usually miraculously immune to reflecting the person standing behind you, or the office lights in the room. The new glossy screen practically turns the display into a mirror by which you could easily apply your makeup. Anybody who's worth their salt in computing knows that glare causes eye-strain and the lack of it was one of the major advantages of LCDs. Have I stepped into a weird alternate reality where computer designers no longer have eyes?

I expressed my incredulity to a computer sales associate at a local store... He shrugged and said it's supposed to make the images slightly crisper. To which I replied with great disgust "What is the POINT of a slightly crisper picture if it's obscured by an enormous amount of reflections?!?" He didn't look like he disagreed, but he didn't exactly want to slag his own product in front of customers.

To my great dismay, other companies have started to join in... It's so sinister... Last time I went to the computer store every laptop on display had the horrifying shiny screen problem... Why oh why would they build in a problem and call it a feature? If the others makers started jumping off a bridge would you?

If Apple puts this so-called feature into their computers I think I'll have to stab myself in the heart.