So I’ve been slowly been decorating, and cleaning up my little beach shack. I bought a new bed, and it was what got me in the mood to do some decorating. My bathroom had an old straw shade on it. You see its a full 8 pane window’d door. Who puts a bunch of windows on a bathroom door? I have no idea. The straw was alright but needed to go. With the new bed, I had to do something pronto if I wanted my bedroom to look good. So off to Ikea. I picked up two shades, and a wire based hanger thing.

This was the outcome…

It looks great, However I have one problem. There is no locking mechanism, nor is there a door nob. So I can paint over it, but the door is too thick to put a normal drawer handle on it. I’m not sure what solution to come up with. I know I can probably find some sort of knob, or a handle. Now thats the easy part, but what about a way to lock the door from the inside. I want something unique, something new, interesting, unusual. So what is the solution?

All in all the rest of the bedroom looks great, I got a new bed, a select comfort, after sometime of sleeping in it I’ll write a review

So far the room looks like this

I’ll take some more pictures when its done.

If you have any ideas for a knob and a latch that would be great. Its a wooden door, and a wooden frame.

company A just enforced signatures to be standard. While I agree there should be some standardization across the company, the way they are requiring them to be formated is complete insanity.

For example, this is the signature they are requiring.

FirstName LastName | Position
Company X, Inc.
123 Place St, Suite 1,  City, ST, 12345
Office: 310-555-1212 | Toll Free: 800-555-1212
Direct: 310-555-1222 | Fax: 310-555-1234

Email: n...@company.net    Web: http://www.company.net

Business Grade Voice & Data Solutions
VoIP | Broadband | Co-location | Professional Services

- Notice: Please use “Reply to All” when responding to this email.
- For general support please call 800-555-1234or email supp...@company.net.
- For billing, sales or the general office please call 310-555-1234.

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files or previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain confidential information that is legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any of the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender. Please destroy the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. Thank you.

Alright, so lets make an signature that takes up an entire page. Here is an alternative

FirstName LastName | Sr. Network Engineer
Company Inc.
123 Place St, Suite 1,  City, ST, 12345
Main: 310-555-1212, x123| Fax: 310-555-1222
n...@company.net | http://www.company.net

Notice: Use “Reply To All” when responding.
For general support please call 800-555-1212 or email supp...@company.net. For billing, sales or the general office please call 310-555-1212.

I would make the company name a little bigger, but disclaimers don’t really do anything, granted they might have some purpose in court but for the most part they are going to be looking at the content of the email. If it is the intended recpient taking you to court the content has no value, if its someone else, someone that the email wasn’t intended for then it might serve a purpose. However employees shouldn’t be sending email that could put the company at risk to people in the first place. We provide support and sales stuff. I’m not sending medical records, the whitehouse blueprints.

Also in the first example the numbers are duplicated, why would we put such information twice in an email? why do we need to put all this office stuff and then in a notice put it again? I can’t really imagine why.

Anyway thats my rant for the day.

I decided to throw together a pack of authors and their quotes.

Nook Screensavers19 picturesJan 5, 2010

You may download the entire pack here.

To load this onto your nook, just plug it into your computer and open the drive labeled nook, then extract the folder to the my screensavers folder.

You may have to reboot your nook in order for it to detect the new folder. To reboot your nook just hold down the power button for about 5-10 seconds until the screen turns off completely. Once its powered off, go ahead and hold down the power button for a few seconds. It will take about 2 minutes to start up.

You may skip this step however if your nook does detect the files, you can check this by going to the home screen, and then to the settings folder. Once you’re there go to display and then screen savers. Choose the one called Quotes.

If you have more suggestions for additional authors you’d like to see let me know and I’ll be sure to add them to the collection, just either send me an email at m...@exstatica.net or leave a comment with the author you’d like to see. It doesn’t have to be a new one, or an old one, it could be any author.

If you have any other ideas for additional screensavers or backgrounds feel free to let me know, I’d be happy to throw some together.

Thanks.

Not sure what to make of this…

but really? hmmm, I think I’ll pick the more expensive less data one.

I thought it would be a good idea to post a review of the first few days of using the Nook, that way I not only have a history of what bugs me and got fixed, but also things that I got used to.

I’m a new e-reader. I’ve never owned one, I used to read on a cell phone 4 or 5 years ago, and then just went to plain books.

I’m reading,  Makers by Cory Doctorow.

I describe as, “An industrial view of the broken culture that hackers and geeks alike rebuild from the ashes of a collapsed technology paradise.”.

I’m sure there are plenty of summaries out there, but to put it simply its about the new age dotcom bust, and the culture of hackers and gadget geeks making it on their own, taking old technology and reinventing it.

So far I’m about halfway through it. The book is seperated into parts. I’m in the middle of Part 2. Its a little weird starting part two as it has some of the same characters, and the its continuing on, but it leaves you with this sense of waiting for some characters to return.

So far though I’ve had trouble putting it down, and find it interesting to say the least. I downloaded it off his site as its free, If he had only charged for it, the book would have been sort of ironic with the content and then the commercialization. Either way I think more and more authors should do this. Not that I wouldn’t buy a book, but if he charged a few bucks for it. I’d have no problem buying it in a heart beat.

Onto the Nook, since this is the only book I’ve read so far, I’ve broken down a few issues I have with it.

Annoyances:

1. Jump to page

There is currently no way to jump to a page number, only chapters, some books do not have the chapters broken out, but there are page numbers (nook page numbers) that you can see, yet there is no way to jump to a specific page number.

2. Page turning buttons.

This whole bottom set to go right, and top set to go left is kind of stupid if you ask me. When I first held the device I thought to go back I’d just hit the other side on the bottom. Apparently I was wrong since it takes you forward a page, Its going to be the first hack I write for this thing. Just doesn’t seem very logical.

3. Cover Flow

Books you buy show up on the tiny display  when you hit Show Covers, but not books you loaded yourself, even if they have thumbnails and covers and all that.

4. Page Refresh

This one is not that bad, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten used to it, or its speading up as I get more and more in the book. But I think it could still use a little faster page refresh.

Likes:

1. Battery life

The battery life seems great, Although I’ve only had it a few days, I charged it over night. I’ve been reading a book pretty much 2-3 hours on the weekends, and during the week about 1 hour in the mornings, and an hour at night before going to bed. Its still at 86%. It hasn’t had a full charge since Saturday. Pretty good.

2. Readability

I was amazed at how easy the screen is to read. The pages are formatted correctly, the text is easy to see. Although I think I’ll need to invest in a reading light. I wish it was backlit.

3. Subscriptions

I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, I can read the paper whenever I want. Go 3g!

4. Customization

Customizing this thing was a little fun. First I named by Nook “Breakfast”. Then I created a background for my favorite book, you can download it below. I’m still working on screensavers and I’ll get to it eventually.

Thats all for now, I’ll be sure to post another as time goes on.

Who doesn’t like presents? OK maybe you don’t, but I’m all about getting random stuff shipped. I’ve tried taking this idea to Think Geek a few years ago, but it apparently fell on def ears. Here is the idea. Hopefully Woot will go for it.

1. User specifies a per month cost. (Say 20 per month).
2. User specifies a frequency (lets say once or twice a month).
3. Woot uses a Magical Random Surprise Detection Algorithm or Mrsda as I like to call it, to send me a package, it can use all or some of the monthly allotment, anything not used rolls over. In a month I may only get 1 item that cost 3 dollars, the next month however I might get something for 35. Users of course could choose to turn this on and off.
4. Woot ships me the package via fedex or unicorns, I prefer unicorns, on a random day of the month
5. Bam surprise!
6. ???
7. Profit

Now of course you should be able to choose some options, like I would enable it for both woot.com and shirts.woot.com and maybe even wine.woot.com (man I really want that Bonsai Tree). You would also be able to select types of things, like nothing USB, or Only computer crap, or only kitchen things. That way the surprise is tailored kind of to you. Plus if it it was built around the Pandora method then you could go online and rate your surprise, but maybe on a scale of one to 10 instead of thumbs up and thumbs down. Even if I hated the gift I could give it to someone else and make it their problem.

So Woot, how about it? I’m sure your amazing groups of item description writers could help with the Mrsda system and then I could start getting presents in the mail. Like Tiger Woods would say… Just Do her it!

I’ve been on the dev version of google chrome since 2.x. I don’t mind a few bugs here and there, and for the most part I get to contribute. Since Chrome has finally released extension support there have been a few great ones that I need, and some that just don’t exist yet. I’m gonna go over a few of them here.

1)  
LastPass; Multi browser, multi platform, and the last pass you’ll ever need. This simple to use extension works on nearly every browser, syncs between them all, cloud based so it works on multiple computers, and best of all is free. There is a subscription model for $1 a day. It includes extra features like, iPhone and Android applications, Ad free, and Yubikey support. I hear a Palm WebOS version is in the making. FYI, you should always build secure passwords.

2)
Xmarks; Now that you’re passwords are sync’d you you probably want your bookmarks sync’d across browsers too. Xmarks is your program. Also based on a cloud platform, it allows you to keep your bookmarks sync’d across computers and browsers. As with Lastpass it has a web interface and sharing with friends.

3)

Web of Trust or WOT; is a great extension for finding those shady sites. Now Chrome is great at detecting phishing sites, but WOT extension adds little colored icons next to each link on your search page and gmail. It gives you a better view of sites to just outright avoid. You can also read what others had to say about it.

4)

Adblock; If you’re a Firefox user then you probably know what Adblock is. If not, then it does exactly what its named. Blocks Ads. I however do not use it. I”m sure its a great extension but I like a more system wide approach. I use Privoxy. Its a small application that is basically a pass through proxy, it listens on local host, and you just point your browsers to it. It then filters out anything that passes through it.

5)

Google Quick Scroll; Have you ever been searching for something and you get to a page, but you can’t seem to find it on the page? Here comes Google Quick Scroll to save the day. Basically the way it works is when you click on a link from a Google search page, if relevant enough it dumps to you the right place on the page and shows you a box. Its a great simple little addon, that in my opinion should just be built into the browser. However since there people who use chrome, but don’t use Google search, I could see how this might be a conflict. Anyway back to this plugin, it uses Google’s Magic to decide when the quick box should be shown.  Somehow it does seem to be there when I’m looking for it, and not when I don’t need it.

Misc Extensions:
There are tons of plugins out there, and more every day, The few others I use are;

• Quick Calendar
• Stumble Upon
• Cooliris
• KeyboardNavigation

Call for Development:

So I’ve been thinking about how I’d use the web more and more, I know Chrome is a baby in the Browser war, but its already its approaching its terrible twos and going to wreak havoc all over your virtual house.  I’m sure there is already a plugin for Firefox, but what I’m looking for is an extension that can be a notepad per sites. I already use Chromepad, but its one pad for everything. I would love to be able to put notes per site I’ve visted.

Its interesting with the current Facebook outage, and the last year or so of various cloud services failing that we learn how much we rely on the internet. Just 5 years ago we didn’t have such a vested interest in communicating online. The shift of information has changed.

Think about just 5 years ago. Facebook was still closed to college students only, it had only been around since feb 2004. No Twitter, No Youtube. Social media as we new it didn’t exist. We relied heavily on email, and instant messaging.  Broadband was still expensive and slow. You were lucky to get 1.5/128 broadband. Things like Google Maps wasn’t even around in 2004. I’m sure 99% of us used Mapquest since it was the only real online map site.

With a sense of disconnect we continue hitting refresh in the hope that we will get a glimpse or a update from someone somewhere telling us that things will be ok, or what shoes you are wearing. Information that seems so silly yet so vital to our daily lives.

We then turn to other online media sites and flood them trying to get the word out to increase the buzz yet we all already know its down just from a twitter search. Which in itself creates a catch 22. If no one reports it, no one knows about it, if tens of thousands of people twitter it then it becomes an epidemic, and more wildly known. Even if the outage only last for a few minutes. The 5 minutes of downtime will circle the blog-o-sphere casting a much needed doubt in the reliability of the information we rely on.

We complain when there is an outage but build cloud based services because some niche needs to be filled on the internet for us to store our content. yet is still prone to failures as is with anything.  Whats the next move? Cloud based computing, lets remove local storage and put it on the cloud and build a computer around it. Don’t get me wrong, I think Chrome OS is great, and for someone who just needs to browse the web, check email, and look at pictures. My parents who are getting better at using the internet as long as I tell them what browsers to use, what services to use, and most of all a virus/spyware program that emails me. Plus I tell them they are not allowed to install anything unless they call me. Usually I have a better idea of what they are looking for than some program they don’t need.

What do I tell them if they are using Google Docs, and Gmail, and Wave and Google breakfast maker and the cloud goes down?

What if its like my father who would use it for work and handle customer tracking. What does he tell his clients when something goes down? What if a service goes out of business. I wonder if someone has built a graph of startups with cloud/remote storage and failures vs success. I don’t Google would fail, because they have some of the most amazing technology, and Microsoft is releasing Office Live which is a cloud based document center. Everything is just moving to the web. I don’t even think I could function without a computer for more than 2 weeks. Not only would my Email get backed up, my work would explode, I wouldn’t even know how to pay bills via snail mail let alone check my account balance without going to an atm. Even then I’d have no idea how to figure out how to get a balance. I mean I’m sure I could figure it out, but the browser and online banking is just so much easier.

I dunno, honestly its going to be very interesting to see where online media and social network takes us next. If the U.S. was the broadband leader and we all had 100mbit wireless internet I think the web would jump a few version numbers from 2.0 to 16.9 in a matter of months. Everyone wants instant content, and they want it now.

Search engines alone are getting crazy accurate. The next logical step for them is to plus directly into our brains and make our memory searchable. How awesome would that be? Google Brain Search.

Yes, If I could have a internet connection planted into my brain with audio and video playback, and just think what I want. I would rob you, get it implanted, go on every knowledge game show and then pay you back with my winnings. Hey I’m just saying…

In recent communications with a consultant doing some work for us, I find myself more and more frustrated every day.

First some base rules.

1. If you have my IM, it means its ok to talk to me. You do not need to preface every start of the conversation with Drew? I know my name, yes, you can call me that.

2. Get to the point, putting a whole back story to it, when all you really have is a single question then just ask that single question, if I don’t understand your question then I’ll ask you the right questions.

3. short sentences = BAD. Do not send me one word at a time. If you have something to say, spend a little time writing in a longer message. I’m not going anywhere, and if I am, my conversation is stored somewhere, I’ll be able to go back and read it. Its not lost forever.

4. If I’m away or you know I’m mobile do not blow up my IM. If I don’t respond its because either I don’t like you, or I’m busy. Either way give me some time to respond to you.

5. If its going to be a really long IM, and you don’t have a question, or you need to explain something in detail. I have email. I know I know its crazy, I mean who has email, its just so expensive and challenging to use. I’ve overcome that feat, I took 8 years of email understanding classes, but I have it down.

6. Do not use IM to send me pictures or songs, or any sort of file transfering. I don’t want your crap in a folder that I’ll probably forget about in 10 minutes anyway. There are services, its called Image hosting. Infact let me google that for you. Or if you are so compelled use mine. img.exstatica.net

7. Pasting huge amounts of text. I’m going to just block you. Stop pasting me huge conversations of crap, I don’t care, use email, hey I even have a paste area.

8. If you know its the middle of the night for me, try to see if I’m around before you start to just spam my IM client with crap. I use my phone alot, I don’t need to wake up to random conversations.

Overall please don’t abuse peoples IM and get right to the point. Thats the biggest gripe. Giving me all this info that I don’t need just to ask me a question that has nothing to do with the previous messages pisses me off.

FYI most of these rules don’t apply to general conversations. If you’re one of my friends, and you want to just chat, its a little different. I have this thing that I really pride myself in. Its called Common sense. I know its rare, and you may not even know what it is.

Common Sense – Washing your hands on a certain basis to avoid illness.

No Common Sense – Walking across the street in the face of oncoming traffic during a green light.