Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everybody. And happy 2011, if I don’t find anything to post about between now and then!

I can haz oversight?

Or, why it’s not a good idea to display unmoderated tweets in any sort of official setting. Like, say, during an EU summit where dirty old man Silvio Berlusconi is going to be front and center?

It’s not enough to know that a technology exists, if you have no idea how to use it effectively.

Blast from the past

This video was probably the best forward I ever received while in college, and it still makes me smile. It was viral, before that term had even been coined.

Do not approve

I’m not as sick as I was during the latter half of last week, but I’m hoping that my weakened immune system is also responsible for lowering the threshold for what makes me cry, otherwise I am at a loss to explain why BOTH of these videos made me teary-eyed (and they aren’t remotely sad).

The dangers of tv knitting

All in all, not bad for something I started after work on Tuesday

For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching Eureka as I knit. I tend to watch comedies (or really mindless dramas) when I’m knitting, because they require less attention on my part. I started a new hat today, and I’m feeling a wee bit victorious, since it’s stranded knitting, a style that I haven’t done before. I was finding it surprisingly easy, and really enjoying how fast this hat was going. I said was, because I ran out of Eureka episodes to watch, and switched to Damages. I spent the first half of the first episode watching intently and knitting on autopilot, and now have been unraveling my work for the next hour. Note to self: serious drama and Fair Isle knitting do not mix.

I read the season arcs/spoilers on the wiki, because I suspected that this show was too mean for me. I’m pretty sure it is. Ever character on that show is vile, and I don’t care enough about them to overlook it. I did see that the 5 most recent episodes of Eureka are available on Hulu, so I will catch up and then watch the remaining episodes there.

What is “Something I’m going to regret faster than I would have expected,” Alex?

The answer: Legally changing my name to the ridiculous nickname of a television character.

Although Castle has recently supplanted Chuck as my favorite still-running tv show, I am still really enjoying this season of the nerd/spy dramedy. Chuck as both a show and a character had been getting on my nerves ever since the most recent, and probably final, death of Agent Superman (whose actual name I have aleady forgotten).

His abs I remember just fine.

Luckily, the show somehow turned around for me over the last several episodes, and now I’m firmly back on Team Chuck. Even at its worst, Chuck is a smart and funny show that turns its minuscule CGI budget (I guess they’re not too flush after paying all the cool guest stars like Richard Chamberlain, Summer Glau [reunited with her Firefly co-star, the delusional Adam Baldwin], and Nicole’s Future Husband Isaiah Mustafa) into a selling point, instead of a reason for despair.

I guess I’m  not the only one whose life is enriched by Chuck. I watch it for the lulz, and the former Douglas Allen Smith, Jr. watches it for…motivation? I say former because this man’s legal name is now Captain Awesome, which is the nickname of Chuck’s ridiculously good-looking doctor brother-in-law.

Another shirtless/towel pic, merely for comparison's sake. You're welcome, comparison.

I get why this show is so cool and Captain Awesome in particular is pretty special, but why would anybody do this? The real-life Mr. Awesome’s new signature, which is a smiley face bracketed by arrows, has been rejected by his bank because it’s too easy to forge. I can’t even imagine what other stupid consequences he may have to face because of his new name. I think that the judge who granted the name change was smart to allow this; sometimes you have to do really stupid things in order to learn valuable lessons. Unless the world is nicer than I suspect it to be, I give this name change 5 years, tops.

Everything is funnier when you’re sleepy

I watched this video the first time I made a hat with a pompom. I found these women hilarious and, even better, they taught me how to use my pompom maker, which was sadly lacking in instructions. I watched this video again tonight when I went to make a pompom for a new hat I finished. Perhaps because it wasn’t 2 am and I wasn’t coming off the high of finishing a hat that actually fit my head (as opposed to this monstrosity), I found the video a lot less entertaining this time around. Still, Hatapalooza 2010, or whatever I’m calling this thing, is going pretty well. I may actually finish all the hats I intend to make!

Entertainingly awkward

I pretty much love anything described as “awkward,” so this slideshow featuring awkward celebrity embraces and kisses is my favorite thing ever about today. Enjoy!

There can be only one

I’ve become much more interested in geolocation/check-in apps since I got my Android phone. The two major platforms, Foursquare and Gowalla, don’t really work if your gadget isn’t running the iOS or Android platforms (Foursquare’s texting protocol is particularly underwhelming). I started using these services when I had a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, but getting either service to work well and consistently was nearly impossible. It wasn’t worth the headache, and I let my accounts lay dormant until I switched to Android.

Once I’d downloaded Android’s dedicated Foursquare and Gowalla apps, it was fun to check into various places. I still forget to every now and then, or sometimes decide that I don’t want to share my location at a particular time, but on the whole I like how these things work. I use other location services, too, such as Yelp, although not as frequently. The only check-in service that I won’t use is Facebook Places, since I think Zuckerberg’s company already knows enough about me.

I end up using Foursquare more often because I like becoming the mayor of places and reading the tips that people leave. I decided that it wasn’t ethical to be the mayor of my job, so I’ve stopped checking in there, except when I visit for non-work purposes. I don’t find it as necessary to check in to Gowalla every time I visit a place, because there are no mayorships, and I don’t care about the badges that I could receive.

Gowalla has a smaller share of the geolocation market, so they’ve stepped up their game with the most recent release of their iOS client. It integrates with Foursquare, and allows you to check into multiple services at once. You can also see the Facebook Places, Gowalla, and Foursquare check-in statuses of your friends as they happen. There are several third-party clients that do this, but it’s pretty major that Gowalla’s official app now has this capability. It will be interesting to see if Foursquare makes any move to block Gowalla from doing this, since this is not a collaboration, but an independent move on Gowalla’s part. Gowalla is using the Foursquare API, which could conceivably be changed at any time.

The new Gowalla for Android client will be available in early 2011, and if it still had this functionality at that point, I would definitely use it to check into both services.

The very definition of blaming the victim

I understand that every defendant has the right to be represented in court by counsel, but there are some things that should never be thought, much less said aloud. Any defense strategy that hinges on the idea that a person who was shot six times, in front of her two children, could be responsible for provoking the gunman (her estranged boyfriend, against whom she had a restraining order) is probably guaranteed to outrage and disgust everybody who hears it. I really hope it isn’t possible to convince twelve adults that the gunman wouldn’t have fired the gun in his pocket if the victim’s words hadn’t pushed him past the edge of reason. I wonder if this man wouldn’t have been better off pleading guilty or trying to arrange some sort of deal. I hope they put him under the jail.

Ugh.