Another way to help Haiti

I don’t visit knitting blogs a lot, unless I’m looking at a post related to a specific item or technique. Today, though, I was looking through Ravelry profiles and decided to visit the knitblog maintained by a friend from college because I was fascinated by the post’s title: A Scarf for Haiti. And that’s how I learned about HeartsforHaiti, an Etsy store where craftsters donate all of the items, and all proceeds (minus Etsy and Paypal fees) go to Doctors Without Borders. What a great idea!

A friend of mine had emailed me this morning to suggest that we get together this weekend and knit a spiral scarf, and I always work better with a specific goal/recipient in mind, so now I can make this scarf and donate it to this shop. Also, now I can buy something nice for myself and know that I’m supporting a good cause while doing it. Win all around!

Beyoncé is more inspiring than you ever knew

Because who couldn’t use a laugh right now?

Cute, but I still don’t get why this takes place in January

Improv Everywhere (of the fake Best Buy employees fame; see below) is doing their annual No Pants Subway Ride this Sunday, January 10, 2010. I’ve also included video of this from last year.

If that looks like your idea of fun and you feel like stripping down to your skivvies and traumatizing total strangers, here’s the skinny.

Improv Everywhere, plan one of these babies in a reasonable month like April or October, and I’d be there.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope your 2010 is off to a lovely start.

Satanski and I were watching videos online and I realized that I never posted this one. Jason Mraz + Sesame Street = Two great tastes that taste great together. My nephew was really confused as to why Jason Mraz was on Sesame Street, but thought it was cool to see Mraz singing with Elmo and Big Bird.

First impressions: Barnes and Noble Nook

I read all the time, even when I should be doing other things. I take a ton of books with me on vacation, and as any student/or big-time reader can tell you, lugging around a lot of books gets really old, really quick. I’d been toying around with the idea of getting an e-book reader for a while, and even went so far as to compare the Amazon Kindle, which seems to be the industry standard, to e-readers from Sony and other companies. Nothing really screamed “buy me,” so I put that search on the back burner. I was surprised then, by how fascinated I became when Barnes and Noble announced their Nook. For some reason, it seemed like a better fit for me than a Kindle, which I’ve only briefly seen in action. Why? Now, I really can’t remember, but maybe it was the newness of it. It seemed to me that something newer, which reasonably stood to benefit from the examples of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s e-book readers, would present the end user with a better product. Is this the case? I don’t know.

The wait

After an agonizing day of going over the pros and cons in my minds, and looking at comparison charts, I decided to buy the Nook the day after it was announced. I waited with baited breath until November 30 (the original estimated ship date), and got really angry when, at 4:30 that day, B&N sent out an email stating that the Nook wouldn’t be delivered until December 10. That was a week and a half away!!! I would have felt better if they’d been upfront about this earlier, as they had to have known that they wouldn’t make their initial market date.

They did try to placate those of us who’d expected a Nook on November 30 with a $10 credit to their online store, which was also an instance of epic failure since, at the time, the B&N online store didn’t allow credits to be used to buy e-books. Barnes and Noble’s real books are usually pricey without their $25/year membership, and I’m not a member; 99% of what I want is cheaper at Amazon, so why in the world would I want to buy a physical book from B&N?? Luckily, B&N finally realized how stupid it was not to allow e-reader owners to buy e-books with the “my bad” credit they’d received, and changed to policy to allow store credits to purchase e-books.

The reality

When I first got my Nook, I was in heaven. I was so happy it had arrived that I tore into the packaging as soon as I got home and saw it on my bed. Unfortunately, the people who made the Nook must have thought that a genius would be opening the package only after it was attacked by a band of feral animals, because the opening process was so difficult that it included instructions. And I still found it hard! Once I got over my worries that my troubles in opening the Nook meant I was too stupid to use it, I let it get fully charged and then started to play around with it.

The things I like about the Nook are manifold:

• It’s insanely portable; I ordered  a case that was back-ordered and hasn’t arrived yet, but it fits perfectly into a quart-sized ziplock bag, so that’s how I’ve been moving it to and fro.
• Changing from the default font to Helvetica Neue made a ton of difference for me, and now the text is perfect for extended periods of reading.
• I like being able to browse B&N and Google Book collections on my Nook, and download items directly to it. Also, anything I buy on Barnes and Noble’s web site is automatically sent to my Nook.

The thing I don’t like about the Nook:

• If I’d posted this yesterday, I would have started with the fact that turning pages on the Nook was noticeably slow. I didn’t want to complain about this, but three seconds to get from one page of a book to the next is certainly something that grows tiresome over the course of 800+ pages. Awesomely, the software on the Nook updated today to version 1.1, and now turning pages is much much faster.
• Turning pages by swiping the touchscreen. I have to say that, for the first week or so that I had my Nook, I found this function almost completely useless. When I tried to change the page using the touchscreen, I would be successfully only about 25% of the time. The Nook guide was pretty useless in figuring out the specific movement that would work every time, as it just said to swipe your finger across the touchscreen (um, thanks). And the instructions didn’t mention that I had to swipe toward the left to turn to the next page. Maybe if most English-language books went from right to left, this would make sense, or even if the Nook’s directional buttons functioned in this way, but they don’t, so it doesn’t. Through trial and error, I finally figured out how to swipe in a way that almost always works, but this was no thanks to B&N.
• Although I’m pleased with the now speedier page-turning process, it feels like Nook symbol has become less responsive with this software update. I wonder if that’s possible, but it seems like I have to press the symbol and the touchscreen harder now in order to awaken them after they’ve fallen asleep. This annoys me.

The verdict

I like my Nook a lot, I just don’t love every part about it. I agree with this Engadget review, that says it’s hard to use and lacks any sort of intuitive interface. I think that David Pogue’s review was overly negative, but that it brought up some valid points. I feel that there was a bit of a learning curve, and I’m now familiar enough with this gadget that I understand and like it for what it is. I don’t know if everybody would feel this way, but I’m glad that I bought my Nook.

Unexpected Awesomeness

Although this video is tangentially related to the videos I posted yesterday, really I share it with you, just because. To bad he has no fellas and ladies to do the call and response parts of this song. The singer is Mat Weddle, of Obadiah Parker.

Celebrating the good kids

Sometimes I think that teenagers are evil aliens sent from another planet, intent on destroying or simply just ruining life on Earth. It’s nice when they do something that makes me rethink this idea. Today’s heartwarming kids: the students of Washington State’s Shorecrest and Shorewood High Schools, who sort of had a lip dub-off. Shorecrest started it with Outkast’s Hey Ya, and Shorewood responded by performing Hall and Oates’ You Make My Dreams Come True – in reverse. Both videos are great, but now I have the entire Hall and Oates catalog stuck in my head.

(Via Metafilter)

Want!

This video, which only the Amish and Osama Bin Laden haven’t seen, has only strengthened my desire to have an Asian child. The kid’s talent is undeniable, but for me, the real selling point is the faces that he makes throughout.

Also, as adorable as this is, I’ve seen it a lot in the last several days, so all of those who know of my obsession with Jason Mraz should feel free to cease sending it to me.

The antidote to Vickery

I would never tar an entire profession with the same brush, so I bear no specific enmity toward lawyers as a whole when I think about people like Andy Vickery. I have a lot of friends who are lawyers, and I don’t believe that having any of them end up on the bottom of the ocean would be a particularly good start to anything. They’re all pretty caring people, and the legal world (and the larger one) is lucky to have them. Still, it’s nice to know that my friends aren’t the only cool lawyers out there.

Marc Randazza, the anti-Vickery, wrote the famous Glenn Beck brief, and is proving that his awesomeness in that matter wasn’t a one-shot deal. He’s hilarious (although I wouldn’t want to date or work for him) in this interview. He also has a blog.

“That would be Ott-iss”

It’s always nice to find out that people who you don’t think of as funny have a good sense of humor. Here, Tobey Maguire played a trick on his wife, Jennifer Meyer, two weeks after the birth of their son, Otis, whom they hadn’t named immediately, and who needed a birth certificate. He spelled it correctly on the real birth certificate, and then brought an extra home with the baby’s name spelled as “Oatis.”

Awesomeness ensued.