musing

slightly devious. someone entertain me, please

i think twitter is a huge experiment in human interaction. what does a group of users do when given a service (for free) which does essentially nothing, with no real direction or constraints on its use? they play. yesterday i got to witness a twitter microevolution firsthand.

a less known feature of twitter is the ability to track certain phrases. whenever someone posts a tweet containing that word, you will see it even if you're not following the user who tweeted. the most common example is "overheard". in fact, twitter has been telling its users to "track overheard" for quite some time. judging from the lack of tweets they must have disabled it. until yesterday, that is.

sometime around noon, all hell broke loose. twitter began sending out updates to all the curious users who had ever tried to "track overheard". most of them had no idea what was happening. so they start responding:

gordon b. hinckley, prophet and president of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, died today. he was a good man. i'll miss him.

:(

one: it turns out i'm not so good at guitar hero.

two: that doesn't matter as much as spending time with my brother, sister and brother-in-law (who are all better than i am...)

three: i can still beat up my little brother.

my bicycle doesn't have a freewheel, or any way of coasting. it doesn't have gears. it doesn't have brakes, or brake levers, or cables.

i've found that the easiest way to explain my bike is in terms of it's differences, or things it doesn't have.

with a short list of the ways in which my bike differs from most other bikes, you gain a lot of information.

how often do we do this? and is it necessarily a bad thing?

with the understanding that a lack of components doesn't actually indicate a deficiency, it's far easier to describe my bike in terms what it lacks rather than what it has.

a couple of thoughts on National Blog Posting Month

first, i now know never to try national novel writing month. i'd never get anywhere. i wrote far too many "just before midnight" posts to fool myself into thinking i could actually write a book in a month.

second, i should prob'ly limit my blog posts a bit, as i tend to post more random junk when i'm trying to post often. one solid post each week would be a good goal from here on out.

third, sometimes it takes a goal to get you moving. i wanted to tweak the style of this site for a while, but it wasn't until i had to look at it every day that i actually made time to do it. i also added a few new content types: images, quotes, and links. so for all my good intentions, it took a goal of making daily posts to actually take action on my intent.

overall, it's been a good month. i think. but then i'm not the one that had to read all these random posts.

what do you think? should i do NaBloPoMo next year, or have you had enough?

thanks for sticking out the month :-)

a couple of hours ago i would have sworn that i knew and understood the algorithmic approach to changing the base in a difference equation. it's unfortunate that tests, while great for establishing application of a memorized algorithm, do so little to show understanding and internalization of the concepts which that regurgitated problem solving strategy actually represents.

a.k.a. no matter how much i fiddle with the terms, it appears that i have forgotten the formula :-(

i got a credit card offer today that was printed on "50% post-consumer" recycled paper. forgive me for not being excited.

remember when you were a kid, and they taught you about the three Rs? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. that's how you save the environment. but it seems that everyone has forgotten about the first two in their rush to embrace the third. i think we're missing the point here.

take paper for example: paper recycling might do more harm than good.

apparently i'm 88% addicted to the blagosphere. i think that might be an underestimation...

as i post this, i'm listening to one blog and reading another.

88%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

i just got a great spam message. it's kinda zen if you can get past all the stuff about microsoft office. almost poetry.

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