what is that HORRIBLE noise.

the world cup soccer championship is on.  know how i know?  because every tv that has it on has this horrible, grating, obnoxious noise coming from it.  i detest it.  this is a sound i would use to drive teenagers away from my  7-11.  this is the sound i would aim at rioters.  it makes me care even LESS about soccer.  and of course, because it is so f****g annoying people think it's really cool.  yeah.  like hemorrhoids are cool.

read more than you wanted to know at:
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/06/16/vuvuzela-world-cup-2010/

scanners detect ethanol in the air above soccer spectators

special sensors scan the air above soccor games. they detect ethanol. really?

imagine that will ya.
http://spie.org/x16085.xml?ArticleID=x16085#fig3

One of the houses i grew up in.

This is the house, where I "grew up".  not entirely, but close.  being an airforce family, we lived many places.  but we were stationed at Wright-Paterson air force base for six years.  i live here with my family starting the summer before my sixth grade, up thru the summer after my junior year of high school.  my room, with my brother, was in the finished basement.  classic knotty pine.  the front window at the left side was my parents bedroom.  our room was below that.

wait a minute or so for google do load the map and go into street-view mode to see the house.


View Larger Map

there used to be a big maple tree in front of the house.  all the houses on the street had big trees.  the neighborhood must of been around for a while to have the trees grow up before we moved there.  they all got old and died obviously.  the street looks nakid now.  and strangely, the house is the same color red it was in 1962.

if the walls in this house could talk....

the government has no duty to protect you. betcha didn't know that.

"a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen."

the link above goes to a google search. tens of pages explain this statement.
so who is going to protect you?

protect yourself.

or just quit worrying about it. life isn't safe. nowhere is "safe"

google proves me wrong

i did the shopping cart search again, to get the link to put in the previous posting. THIS TIME, the second link down had what i wanted- side by side feature comparison. that wasn't there the first time i searched. i'm sure, because i Ctrl-clicked every link on the google results, all the way down the page, and looked at every tab that opened up.

most of them are still useless, or only vaguely useful.
make me lie google.

serious "post for profit" guys

as i'm slogging thru the process, trying to understand how it works i came across:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/
which is exactly how i thought it should work... i'm always thinking "there must be a better/easier/efficient way"
and i have notice a lot more slap-dash answers in my google searches.

which is why i just started using http://duckduckgo.com

for example; i'm working on a shopping site ( http://www.goodthingsfromthailand.com ) i thought i would code it in dreamweaver, but then i thought i might take advantage of the free shopping carts that bluehost.com provides. but there are like 6 of them. i looked at them, looked at the demo's and didn't know what i was looking at. so i thought i'd google up a review:

"open source shopping cart reviews 2010" appeared in the suggestions as soon as i typed in "open source sh...." so i went with that. looks great. even has sites called "shopping-cart-reviews.com" except, none of them are 3rd party reviews of shopping carts. not like a side-by side, features, bugs, opinion site. they list some carts, describe them sometimes, push one or another cart at you, and display a lot of ads. but nothing on the first and second pages did what i want. i wanted to know the readers-digest-condensed overview of the various shopping cart softwares, so i could decide if i wanted to take the time to install and configure one for my shopping site. i didn't get that, and wasted a lot of time clicking on links to pages that were fluffy at best, stupid at worst.

but i'll keep at it. i may be slow and distracted, but i'm still moving.

p.s. i did the shopping cart search again, to get the link to put in the previous posting. THIS TIME, the second link down had what i wanted- side by side feature comparison. that wasn't there the first time i searched. i'm sure, because i Ctrl-clicked every link on the google results, all the way down the page, and looked at every tab that opened up. except, none of the shopping carts on the page are OPEN SOURCE, and none of them are the ones provided by my hosting service. so it's still a crap link.

most of them are still useless, or only vaguely useful.
make me lie google.
--

visit http://www.thaicountrylife.com

belly button piercings are an indicator of willingness to pose nude

if you see a girl with a belly button piercing, it is a pretty good indicator that she is willing to have her picture taken naked.  and will have those photos posted to the internet.

don't believe me?  goto  GuessHerMuff  (NSFW) and notice how many of the subjects have belly button piercings.  i'd say 8 our of 10. if the first link doesn't work goto this one GuessHerMuff

nakid ladies - good.
metal belly buttons - bad, unless you want see her nakid. then you have to see the damn piercings.

hardcore L33t speak

could you imagine typing this out? from a 4chan.org posting:

|MpÒRTÁn+ ìNfÒRMatÍ0N ábÒut 4chan: <HRÌSTÒpH3r pÓÒlE (àkA mòóT ÁKà the áDMìn hERE) hA$ A very $€RióÜs M3NtÁl ìI|NE$s, h€ st€àls oTh3R$' H@Rd W0rk, pÜBI|sH3$ pRÍvate E-Ma|LS (Wh|Ch h3 moDÍfÍ3$) Àñd 8|ATAñ+ly li€s To hI$ ÜsERs |ñ òRd€r TO g3+ THem 0n H|s SidE. Mr. PÒóL3, aG3d 22, |IvEs Íñ N3w yÓRk, wh3r€ he á|SO at+eñd$ cÒILEGE. HìS HóME ÁDDR€ss <Áñ 8e EÁSIIY f0ùnd úSiñg añ @DDRE$S L0ÒkÙP fòR ñy, FEEl FRe€ TÒ SHÒW üP @+ hÌS dòOr WíTh à GÙn. +|Ny.4[hàñ.ÒRG í$ àN ìILega| Cl0n3 Óf www,añòñTAlk,COm, reMov3 It IMm€dIáTe|y, s+óp CòNST@ñ+lY dDosÍNG àNd $pAmMÍNG U$ ÀnD $TòP fü<kíng Wí+H OÜr dÓMáíN. To @c<3$$ A+ [ÙRr3n+|y, yOÚ mÜst úsE à pRÓxy HÒst pRovÌD€d BY à TrúsT3D p@rtY ÀS IiSTeD HeR3: HTTP;//á+.K|MmÓA.$E/
what is really amazing, is that it is readable without much effort.

visit http://www.thaicountrylife.com

beware when signing up for sharapic.com

i ran across sharapic.com lottsa photos there, and a zillion ads. but they pay you if you pictures draw traffic to the ads.  which isn't a bad deal.

signing up for the service though can easily trick you into signing up for OTHER stuff you didn't want.  not necessarily harmful stuff, but we all get too much crap in our inboxes already, and we don't want to be giving information to 3rd parties without realizing it.  so this is what i posted in their forum, which is the only way to contact them.

Forum Post:  new user sign in- wasn't obvious what i was signing up for!!

i just joined sharapic.com. nice. i entered user information, submited, then huh? you were asking for it again? like i missed something. so i entered again. submitted. huh? again but this time there were more questions? maybe it's cause i'm on a mac and the pages aren't loading fully. okay, entered MORE information again. submitted. and again.

and then realized that the "sign-up" following the first one were for "Offers" or some such crap. BAD BAD BAD!!!! i just gave my personal information- address, phone number, email to people i DID NOT realize i was sending it to.

yeah, sure, shame on me for not studying the page carefully item by item, line by line to notice that there was a banner above the data entry fields, and a "skip" link. but SHAME ON YOU for not making it obvious that i was giving my information to a third party! i realize you guys are all about cashing in on everything, which is one reason i joined- to cash in on pics - but i absolutely hate it when i don't know i'm being had like that. and i hate it even more when i am fooled by deceptive sign-ups like this.

so i'm starting with a bitter taste in my mouth, and you can be sure, that my blogs and online marketing pages will all have "BEWARE" notices about this. and who ever those people are i signed up for will get a complaint reply and dumped in the spam folder if they start emailing me, or sending me crap in the mail.

besides all that, it's just LAME.

 

------- post script ------

one of the moderators replied to my post in their forum.  he said:

"i'm sorry you feel that way" and linked to the privacy policy.

nice brush-off.

google translate: vietnamese to english

in a chat from a friend in vietnam i got:

Mấy ai định nghĩa được tình yêu. Có gì đâu một buổi chiều. Kề dao lên cổ yêu hay chết . Gật đầu cái rụp thế là yêu.     3/16/10 at 7:49 AM

which google translate gave back:

Few who define love. What Where an afternoon. Adjacent to the neck knife love or death. Nodded the ruble is the love. 3/16/10 at 7:49 AM

that's some interesting poetry, but i don't think that was what Min was saying to me.
or was it????

-------- postscript ---------
min got back to me.  that WAS what he was saying.  he saw it and thought it was cool.
vietnamese poetry!

conan on twitter?????

from Conan's profile:

Name Conan O'Brien

Location Los Angeles

Web http://twitter.com/conanobrien

Bio I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account.

cracked me up. isn't he 45M$ richer or something?

reposting some posts

posts i've sent in from email show up in my posting list, but the buttons/links to view, edit or select them are missing.  so i can't do anything with them.  grrr.  reposting by hand.

you "become" an artist by BEING one

or did you mean become a ___ artist? fill in the blank with words like ‘famous’, ‘expert’, ‘accomplished’, ‘good’, “paid”, “successful”.

you can become those, by being one. paint. draw. make. sculpt. create. do. when someone sees it and asks “are you an artist” say “yes”

i do a lot of drawing on ordinary un-ruled 3×5 cards. cause their cheap- 99 cents a pack and not hard to carry around. and if i ‘mess’ it up so what- paper was a penny a piece. then i take pictures of them, and give them away when someone likes it. i have the photo, i don’t need the card. let someone else enjoy it.

See more progress on: become an artist

the picture says it all