Of course, you do realize… now that I’m actually finished with school, the very next day WOULD be the day they turn on the Hadron Collider and destroy the world. It was inevitable. If you notice (not sure when it will change, so it may not be the case by the time you read this) the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board changed their alert from “Green” (Earth is A-Okay) to “Red” (/demoman, ka-boOOOOooom), with the following alert:
It is our duty to inform you that as of 7:35:05am UTC on September 10, 2008, the Earth has been destroyed.
Yeah… I guess you can blame me. I think I did actually say at one point, it would be the end of the world before I finished school.. heh.. sorry. (more…)
(Ugg.. I can feel the storm clouds gathering already)
Short post… had a funny moment in chat with Jim today and wanted to share. Enjoy.
JIM: i want an appletv but i have a crap tv to begin with ME: well.. step 1 is to get a better TV ME: OR.. get the appletv, and then that will motivate you to get a new tv JIM: i can afford only so much electronics in a year JIM: i might see what happens around christmastime JIM: cuz jesus wants me to celebrate the incarnation through enslaving myself to electronic media ME: it’s true ME: isn’t that in Maccabees? ME: JIM: hahaha JIM: Maccabees I, II, III, IV, and TV ME: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Yes, yes.. I admit it. I have fallen victim to the micro-blog craze. I’ve had an account with Pownce for a long time, but never really used it (the only reason I got it was to support dear ol’ Kevin Rose). I’ve also had a FaceBook account since.. well.. since way back when it was only available to college students.
Anywho… recently I began actually updating my FaceBook status on a semi-regular basis. I installed the FaceBook toolbar for Firefox (which I HIGHLY recommend) which gives me a little pop-up showing my friends’ status updates… so I started updating mine more often.
A few days ago I noticed my friend Roy had become a fan of something called BrightKite. Naturally I clicked on the link and read up about it. I liked the idea of “checking in” and seeing who was in the area… and possibly helping to create an interactive profile of locations, so I found someone with invites to spare (the service is in Beta at the moment) and got myself an account. This was closely followed by activating a Twitter account.
I suddenly found myself in a position where I had multiple micro-blogging sites (each of which has a target audience), and no desire to send 100 messages to different sites whenever I wanted to say I was doing something. Normal people at this point would simply have picked one or two and left it at that. I, however, was determined to find a way to sync everything together so I only had to send one message, two max, and have everything be updated automatically for me. I tried a few different methods, but they were all either clunky, or screwed something up (like HelloTxt updating Pownce twice for every message.. wtf?).
The answer turned out to be yet another beta service: Ping.fm
As of this posting, Ping.fm can update the following services for you:
Bebo
Blogger
Facebook
hi5
Jaiku
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
MySpace
Pownce
Tumblr
Twitter
If you use it with an actual blog (like Blogger or Live Journal) you can post whole bloggs.. title and all. This service is fast, reliable, and super easy to use. There is an AIM bot so you can even update by sending an instant message (I did that for the first time this morning :D). There is a fantastic moble aspect that is fast loading so you can send out quick messages from your phone’s browser. You also have a unique email address you can send messages to if you want. Fantastic. I love it.
At this time, Ping.fm does not sync with BrightKite. That’s okay for me, though. BrightKite is a little different. I check into locations there, not just update status messages. BrightKite can update your Twitter location though. Which is cool.
Anyway… the long of the short of it is, with Ping.fm I have all my micro-blogging synced finally. And I am really liking the BrightKite concept of location-based social networking (they’re not the first ones to do it, but it’s the one that has sucked me in :P).
If you would like to try out BrightKite let me know. I have a few invites.
If you would like to try out Ping.fm let me know. You can sign up and get a beta account, but you need the current betacode… which changes frequently. Let me know if you would like to sign up and I can get you the most recent betacode.
I had heard this earlier this morning, but I could only find chat-room accounts of his death (though his Wikipedia page had already been updated). I was afraid it might be one of those, “Rumors of my death” situations so I thought it best to refrain from blogging about it until I found confirmation.
I’ve been interested in D&D since High School. Back then my parents wouldn’t let me play, but my best friends had all the books. I can remember being over at their house and reading and rereading rulebook after rulebook. I found it incredibly fascinating and something I very much wanted to be a part of.
I’m happy to say that I’ve been playing D&D for solid number of years now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Over the years I’ve even tinkered with designing my own RPG systems… all of which have been heavily influenced by Gygax’s work.
So ingrained is he in our collective fantasy-subconscious that his visage pops up in places such as Futurama along side Uhura and Steven Hawking. He has been a visionary in the world of fantasy role playing, and we will miss him sorely.
So… the next time you gather ’round your gaming table, pour a little Mountain Dew out in his memory; leave an empty chair at the table; set aside a bag of your best dice. Here’s to you, Gary. You’ve changed the world through your vision, and we will never be the same again.
EDIT (3/7/2008)
My favorite web-comic (XKCD) put this up today.. not only is it funny, it’s still reverent and captures what we all imagine must have happened
Big phone and cable companies are trying to get rid of Net Neutrality, the fundamental principle that prevents them from discriminating against your favorite Web sites and services.
Unless we speak out to our members of Congress, they could move to allow large telephone and cable companies to control what you do, where you go and what you watch online.
Visit the URL below to learn more about what’s at stake and send a loud message directly to Congress:
I had heard this earlier this morning, but I could only find chat-room accounts of his death (though 
I’m happy to say that I’ve been playing D&D for solid number of years now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Over the years I’ve even tinkered with designing my own RPG systems… all of which have been heavily influenced by Gygax’s work.
