Don’t you laugh at me, Moffat…I’d say every time I’ve watched a Moffat production the second time, I’ve caught things I didn’t see the first time.1 Damn him. This almost goes without saying, but don’t read further if you haven’t seen the episode. Here’s what I did and didn’t catch the first time:
Short is relativeSuck at brevity, that is. 1 That post has some useful links I’m quite confident I’ll look forward to re-reading. As this blog is as much an external extension of my memory as it is a method of expression, I’m hopeful you might find them interesting as well.
Dear Google,
You’re over-reaching. A year ago, I would have defended your name against accusations of evil-ness. 1 Today, is a different story.
Google, you’re in my work computer, my laptop, and my phone. You already know my every move – and yet you’re always asking for more. You have my credit card, you see my work e-mails, personal e-mails, cell phone calls, where I live, my wifi router, IP address, and even the IP address and physical location of anywhere I log in with a Google service. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure you know my race, gender, exact birthday, social security number, name of my immediate family, and have a complete list of friends. 2
You’re like a needy creepy co-worker who just shows up at parties. Parties where everyone made a lot of effort to not invite you to. For a variety of reasons I live a double3 online life, the likes of which Don Draper would appreciate. This online life does not intersect with the other online life and that online life tangentially intersects my real life.
Four years ago I signed up for a Google account – which still has e-mails in it. Then Youtube insisted I log in with a Google account, so on a whim I used this four-year-old account. And Google asked for my birthday. 4 On yet another whim5 I used the birthday of a website of mine – since that’s the reason I was logging into Youtube. Since that website is only four years old, Google shut down that account as swift as can be. If I want to unsuspend the account I’ll have to (a) give Google a credit card they can charge and use to verify my birthday (b) send, e-mail, fax, or mail a copy of some government ID with my birthday on it.
No, Google. I will not do this. Burn the account. Destroy it and all the e-mails. Google, you certainly have a way of reminding me that the things I use are not mine – they’re yours. Let’s say I decide to change our relationship? What does that mean?
Both of my jobs use Google to support their mail. So, that’s out. Otherwise, I’ve got four Google e-mail accounts. Could I do without them? Yeah, I really could. What about Google analytics? I like it, but I don’t live and die by them. Most of my sites are WordPress now, so I could just use WordPress’s JetPack/stats plugin instead. Adsense? I make so little off of Adsense I could give a crap. Google+? Don’t make me laugh. Google, for the moment you’re my default search engine, but you’ve made that creepy too. There’s no reason I couldn’t switch to something else.
After twelve years, I’m finally had enough. I think I’m ready to start cutting the cord. I should nuke all of these worthless Google accounts. What the hell do I need this kind of grief for?
Sincerely,
MakerBlock
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Yay!!! I’ve got the DVR set – and I’m watching with rapt attention. Now that Masterpiece Theater is doing an intro, I can afford a few moments to blog/tweet. But, that’s it until it ends. See you after.
((
Photo Credit: Scott Monty via Compfight))
This awesome Dilbert comic reminds me of this awesome XKCD comic.
Here’s the scary thing… I could seriously imagine this actually working.
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Geek Chic @ Maker FaireAfter we already bought weekend passes for the Maker Faire Bay Area, I happened to have been given an two day pass tickets. (( Photo Credit: Steve Jurvetson via Compfight))
Now, what is the best way to give these out? I think I’d like to do a design challenge, but I haven’t decided. Do you have any suggestions?
I cannot express to you how much I just love this new CompFight plugin. 1 Snagging images off of CompFight/Flickr and dropping them into a post is so freaking easy now. This is definitely going to become one of my stock-plugins for a fresh WordPress installation. I’m happy to say that I contributed a small bit of code to this very very awesome plugin. Since that comment, my modification of their code was merged into the main plugin. I’ve also added a few small tweaks to my version of this plugin. By modifying the javascript file very slightly, my copy of this plugin also:
Admittedly, these implementations are just a little bit buggy – I just hacked those bits in without really doing any serious testing on them. Once I have kicked the tires on this code a little, I’ll post it to the plugin’s page. If you want to take a look at it before then, just drop me a line.
Sometimes the right post just needs the right picture – I’ve actually had a lack of a good photo hold up a post before. I’m happy
and I’m still not satisfied with it. ((Photo Credit: Emi Yañez via Compfight)) Ze Frank may just be my brand new hero. You see, all the things he says in this video are the exact kinds of things I could really stand to hear right now. I’ve listened to this particular video probably three times now. I don’t want to listen to it too often as I will probably accidentally memorize it. I don’t want his words to be like the world “oatmeal” when repeated over and over so that it becomes mush in my mind, devoid of meaning. I want it to feel like he’s calling me up and leaving an awesome voice mail on my phone.
The title of this post is an interesting thing/problem. I had several amusing and slightly clever titles. I rejected several of them after writing just a few words, rejected before they were even fully articulated. Finally, as with the pencils Ze mentions, I found that the pencils at my disposal were sharp enough. It was more important to start, than to get it right at first.
No, I’m not just referring to the title of this post. I’m in the process of launching something on this other website. I’ve been working on this project off and on for three years. It’s been super close to launch for the last few months – just waiting for me to do some finishing work. I’m almost there…
My pencils are sharp enough…
While the real story isn’t that exciting, it would be a far more apt description to suggest that I did so by wedging my foot firmly in my mouth. 1
I’ve got this website I’m working on and I’m trying to launch a new product. 1 The last time I launched something there I built a quick hacky WordPress plugin using PayPal to serve up the product once a person had made an electronic payment. Not only was it hacky, but looking back almost 2.5 years at that code I want to cringe.
Here’s part of the problem. I hate PayPal so much. They have ugly payment buttons, all the buttons are branded PayPal – which is a mixed blessing2 , unless you have a merchant account your users have to go through PayPal’s payment screens on their site – which causes users no end of angst, the user has to sign up for a PayPal account – which is a whole new layer of tech support nightmares when dealing with the technologically challenged, and I could go on.
I figured I’d give Stripe a shot, it’s supposed to be developer friendly. After wrestling with it for two hours I’m giving up. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that I’m tired and I’m just not getting it and it’s easier to think like myself-as-a-crappier-coder-two-and-a-half-years-ago and fix up what I’d written than it would be to learn Stripe and shoehorn new code into my old code.
Some days I just want to tear down that website and start from scratch. I just don’t have the time.
On a completely unrelated note, I’m loving this new CompFight WordPress plugin. I’m extra happy about it since I contributed a quick one-line fix that helped improve the plugin. This one little plugin is going to basically make it about 100 times more likely I’m going to be able to drop a fun image into my posts. CompFight is a website that streamlines searching for Flickr CC licensed images. I was actually toying with the idea of making such a plugin when I found out they just developed their own. Awesome.
