Monthly Archives: March 2008

I’m looking for Detroit Local Tweeters (Twitters)

Can you suggest some Detroit-area people to follow on Twitter? I’m looking for something that has a local geographic flavor, like Dearborn (or Detroit) Michigan.

I’m always looking for more people to follow, but today I’m soliciting suggestions for the Detroit area just to get a slightly less global feel for this Twittery goodness/chaos. I’ve got a lot of great people that I follow, but I’d love to see some tweets about local restaurants, bars and music.

So send me a message @GaryLaPointe with suggestions or tell someone you know to follow me and I’ll find them or just leave a comment. Thanks!

PhotoShop Express On-Line Edition – Inital testing

So I’m using some Costa Rica photos to test the new free on-line edition of PhotoShop. It’s very cool, does more than what most desktop packages do, but while limited, I don’t need much more. They give you 2 GB of free storage. It’s got cool slideshows (full-scren if you like) but I’m sure it breaks some browsers…


Costa Rica Dec 2007

These photos are from when I was in Costa Rica in December 2007 and left Montezuma and took the ferry from the Lower Nicoya Peninsula (Paquera?) to Puntarenaas.

Looks like you can even download your photos in their original size. They’re still in beta so who knows what they’ll charge for more storage (or features?).

They do give you a way to put thumbnails and links to photos with having to use their viewer. Although it seems to be a 2 step process (thumbnail then link) for each photo. But it’s cheap, high-res and the flash interface is great.

If you love PhotoShop, I’m sure you’ll hate it. It’s pretty as spplications, but since I don’t use any features past version 1, it’s very nice and easy to use. Here’s a link to the palette with all the main options on it. It’s even easier to use than I need it to be (and it has more features to use too). It e-mails a really nice graphical html link to your friends too.

Working from home

I could work from home all the time, except for when broken stuff needs repair. We’ve got construction at work (and it’s a skeleton holiday staff) so there are carpeting (glue) and painting (paint) so many of us are working from home.

I could really handle this all the time. But I think I’d need something to track what I’m doing so at the end of the week I know if I’m working too much or not enough (I think it’d be the former). Obviously meeting rooms would need to be setup for video conferencing and a day a two a week would definitely be on site.

Pros (for my imaginary job):

  • I don’t have a specific time to be there, just times to be available. Similar to college professors, but more hours (and I’d actually be there).
  • It’d make others plan ahead and be more self-sufficient. No last minute stuff since I wouldn’t be there to swoop in and set up (what I probably shouldn’t be spending time on anyways).
  • When I’ve got a block on something, I can do something else (like laundry). Or solve some personal concern that might actually be distracting me from working efficiently.
  • I’d save gas and time on the road. If I just stayed home 3 days a week, I’d probably save 2 hours on the road and 4 gallons of gas. And less gas/money on going out to lunch.

    Cons:

  • I might not get out of the house at all. Unless I found some good restaurants/cafes/bars with decent internet access (and good lighting).
  • Not enough human interaction.
  • I’d need to buy more pajamas.
  • Ummm….
  • Biorhythms

    Biorhythm April 8 2008I wish I really believed in this stuff. Because in two weeks, on April 8th, I’d be having an awesome day!

    03 25 2008Although if you look at the second chart, it might explain why I’ve been so sluggish this last week.

    Actually, now that I think of it, on April 8th I should be having an awesome day!!! But you’ll have to wait until then to find out for sure.

    Being Nice

    So my philosophy in life is pretty much just to “be nice”.

    Maybe ‘karma’ and ‘what comes around, goes around’ and ‘do unto others as you want to them to do unto you’ want you to do the same thing (“be nice”) but they try to make you fear what might happen if you don’t. Really, they’re just slightly nicer versions of ‘an eye for an eye’ (the way most people interpret it).

    Douglas Adams pointed this out in in the beginning of two of his books,
    “nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree
    for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change”

    So maybe the above is an appropriate quote for this weekend, but it’s stuck with me for the last 20 years since I read it. It’s a pretty simple concept, be nice. all that confusing dying for our sins and betrayal really can confuse the whole simple concept.

    I’m not pushing religion or any deep philosophies. I’m not even trying to figure out why we decorate and eat hard boiled chicken embryos or chocolate shaped in their image. I’m just trying to get people to think about being a little nicer, if for no reason other than they can.

    A character of Neil Gaiman (another British author) one said something like ‘It’s not any harder to be nice than it is to be mean and it’s not nearly as fun.’

    This is why I love the Internet

    Over the last 24 hours:

    • I’ve been watching live video from DeLoach winery (in Napa Valley?) watching Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk (wine guy) and Tim Ferris ( The 4 hour work week ). And typing questions and getting answers from the live video! Plus we all got an invite to a wine party tonight, but I didn’t get on a plane and go, I really really should have. I think they’ve gone to several vineyards actually.
    • I’ve also sent comments to Alison Sudol of A Fine Frenzy and gotten responses.
    • I’ve also provided some tech support to a MySpace musician in Kentucky, I’m not yet sure if that solved her problem.
    • Ordered some Blu-Ray DVDs for only $7.99 each: Stargate, Terminator 2 and Total Recall. Now I need a Blu-Ray player…
    • Ordered a (probably mismarked) outdoor George Foreman grill that I probably don’t need for $45 shipped. Deal appears dead or I’d link it.

    And that’s just the out-of-the-ordinary stuff.

    I didn’t know Robert Scoble could sing!

    This is a great parody of “Rock Band” sung to the tune of “Roxanne”.

    Found at nehatiwari.com after catching her segment on PopSiren. A Revision3.com production.

    Understanding Twitter

    So I’ve really been trying to use Twitter more. I read and tweet more at my computer than when I’m out. When I’m out I tweet some but don’t generally read. I do have it set to get a text message on my phone automagically if someone tweets my name. If you don’t know what Twitter is:

  • You can see what I tweet. All my personal blog posts get tweeted automatically.
  • You can see who I follow with twitter.
  • You can “follow me” (but you have to set up a free account with them) and get all my tweets sent to your cell phone so you can see what I’m thinking about an blogging about.
  • There is a nice mobile interface and you can even subscribe via RSS.

    I really got on the blogging boat late because I didn’t get it, but once I started I was hooked immediately. This isn’t working for me yet, but I’m still trying. On GeekBrief I saw the folks at CommonCraft created a video called Twitter in Plain English and it’s a pretty good explanation with interesting animation.

    But it still feels like Instant Messenger (IM) to me, but only 140 characters. It’s definitely more than IM, but it really just feels like the next step in its evolution. The clients feel like IM, and using the web interface at Twitter fells more and more like a web chat client.

    The biggest difference is that you direct your message to everyone in your group, not to a specific person. So occasionally you see a comment directed to someone else that you never saw the preceding comment, so then you can go see what they said and see if it’s someone else that interests you. You can send direct messages, but I don’t think that’s very common and I can never remember the command (it’s “D TwitterUserName TheText“).