WWIII Propaganda

More WWIII Propaganda Posters

Here goes:

A noteworthy twitter update (or, “tweet”) should be structured in a way that you could start a decent (however short or long) conversation based on that message.

Examples of good:

• Who the fuck asks for their papers in 10pt Arial? My 5-page 12pt Times New Roman paper instantly becomes 3 1/2 because of this craziness.
• Just purchased $100 in European travel books.
• Ben & Jerry’s creates “Yes Pecan!” Flavor for Obama. For Bush? “Cluster Fudge.” “Impeach Cobbler.” “Iraqi Road.” “Anchovy Fuckup Surprise.”

Examples of bad:

• Beer FTW!
• I walked up those stairs, yes I did!
• I ate a pancake.

Not to say there aren’t exceptions, that I don’t tweet badly (I constantly share mindless, stupid information that nobody cares about), or that the bad tweets wouldn’t be good in some contexts (imagining a lengthy discussion about steep stairs), but this might be a good starting point.

Disclaimer: I absolutely hate it when people say “FTW,” “win!,” “fail,” or “epic!” I’m just a curmudgeon, I know.

Sometimes you’re up late, browsing around on the web, and something hits you. You get immediate inspiration– you’re not sure how you can achieve what you’ve just thought of, it might be impossible, and it might not be worth your time, but it’s too late: you’re going to spend the next 6 hours trying to figure it out.

This is what happened to me last night, after I read a very simple and straightforward tweet from my good friend Clint:

Shit. There goes my time.

Kopp’s Frozen Custard is, if you don’t know already, a frozen custard & burger place whose home resides in Wisconsin. Their food is pretty incredible albeit probably pretty terrible for you, but hey– it’s Wisconsin. I love it so much that I made an extremely dorky YouTube video about it.

Anyway, it was time to create a twitter account for the frozen custard restaurant.

Continue reading I Has A Flavor… Feed: Bringing Kopps’ Flavor of the Day onto Twitter »

This post was supposed to be about the omnichord I want to get so badly, but instead it’s going to be about a plugin I tried quite hard to find.

It all started when I decided to update Wordpress. I backed up my theme and upgraded– thank god I backed up. Everything I had got deleted, so when I uploaded my theme back up, the plugins I had installed were missing. A quick Google search reinstated my twitter plugin, but the WP Audioscrobbler plugin wasn’t so easy. This one came up with the message from the original coder’s (Marc Hodges) website:

“You’re probabaly looking for a WP plugin or some other code.
Please note that all development and support of any code no longer happens. In other words it isn’t here.
The reason being that I’d written the code for myself and decided it to be nice enough to share but people kept asking for help or whatever and it was too much bother than it was worth.
Sorry to disappoint you.”

So, it then proved near impossible to find the plugin.

I’m not sure what I think of Marc’s decision to wipe it off the internets due to the questions he was getting about the plugin. I understand that it probably was quite annoying to get endless questions about something he just wanted to make and let go, but it seems a little mean to just remove it altogether with no ability to download it again.

Anyway, I found the plugin and I’ve uploaded it to my website for downloading. Of course, all credit goes to the amazing Marc Hodges for writing it– I don’t have such abilities (hence the downloading and installation of said plugin). If anybody (see: Marc) has any issue with this, let me know and I will take it down.

I have a feeling, however, that he won’t mind it being offered somewhere else.

Download WP Audioscrobbler (6 KB)
To install: Just drag into your /wp-content/plugins folder. Activate and customize as needed.

Thanks, Marc. Where ever you are.

I’ve been interviewed about ten times from all sorts of different media outlets, including local Boston television, radio, and newspaper media, The New York Post, and a few others (which haven’t gotten anywhere).

However, none of them really seem to paint the exact picture I made. So, I thought, since the media can’t really get a full grasp as to what happened, I thought I’d explain a little. So, here goes.

In response to…

…the situation on the bus.
The way this whole thing got started was when I posted the very same e-mail I sent Peter Pan about my experience. What I said in there I believed to have happened and included my feelings about the situation. I never felt physically threatened but instead just felt annoyed and cheated out of an early ride home. He was punishing an entire busload of passengers because of one of them who happened to complain about his driving. While this is very immature, it wasn’t some sort of act of kidnapping or terrorism or any shit like that, in my opinion. A lot of what he’s said in the media he didn’t inform us (I.E. the stop he could’ve made and didn’t). The driver in question was actually relatively nice to me as he suggested I get on his bus which was leaving a good half an hour earlier than my original bus.

…the swing of the media.
In all of the interviews I’ve given, I’ve told all that I can remember from the event. Of course, they ask me what I think about the situation, and I think they’re disappointed when they find that I didn’t feel physically threatened. When they take the things I’ve told them, they take only the parts that interest them out. For example, today I was interviewed by Channel 7 WHDH Boston, and they asked me a series of questions. Repeated three times was the question “how did you feel about the situation?” as though the answer I had given wasn’t interesting enough. They asked me what I felt should happen to the driver, and I basically said what I’ve said here a few times: He was being silly and immature, but I didn’t feel threatened really. They (or whomever) can interpret that as they may and do what they think is necessary.

…the possibility of the bus driver being fired.
This is one of the top things people either question or tell me their opinion about. “What do you think should happen to the driver?” In response to this question, I leave it completely up to the bus company. I feel what he did was wrong, but I personally don’t believe this is something to lose his job on. In The Boston Globe recently, they stated that “Bryant said the story of the bus ride, which has been reported by other media outlets, has unfairly characterized him as a ‘monster.’ ” I really couldn’t agree more. Again, was he in the wrong? Yes. Was he being immature? Yes. Should he be fired? It’s up to Peter Pan.

…the picture in the Boston Globe.

Let’s not talk about that.

After getting request upon request upon request to add Facebook applications, I finally found one that has proved to be interesting. It’s called the Compare People app, and it does just that: compares people. Basically, anytime you go to the application, you get 50 matches of two of your friends on Facebook, and you tell them which one is, for example:

• more likely to win in a fight
• has a better taste in music
• more fashionable
• hotter
• someone you’d rather kiss

And the list goes on and on. The ratings all get tallied up, and in the end, you are awarded certain placement within your group of friends (and, privately, with your entire networks).

I just discovered this interesting application, so I had yet to see where my fellows on Facebook had placed me. When I looked, I was understanding, surprised, startled, and humbled. Here are some of the best:

The ones I assumed/hoped I could win

I spent a good deal of time perfecting profile pictures. It’s a hobby, right?

The ones I assumed I would lose

Yes. They’re all 0%— for a reason!

The ones I was greatly flattered by

I was actually told this first one the other day, and I don’t really get it, but I’m flattered nonetheless. However, some of these make absolutely no sense. Am I friends with four deaf people? Four odd-taste people? And who in their right mind called me cuddly? Have you seen how bony I am?

Finally, the ones that were out of the blue

The first one is just kind of odd. As far as the second one is concerned, I didn’t think that pre-schoolers could join Facebook, add this application, and get compared as such to me. And the last two– how the hell didn’t I win those? Huh?

This application really makes you think. Hard. About why you’d be such a great father, and how you can become crazier to clench the award.

I leave you with the following. Clearly I am the best father figure in all of Apple, Inc:

I just don’t get it…

If you were to peer into my brain during normal working hours, this is probably what you’d see:

Alternatively, this is why I would like to visit London.

Passive Aggressive Notes is a site that posts just that: passive aggressive notes “from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.” It’s a great idea for a website… so much that it required its own post on here instead of on the helpful little links list on the right side bar.

You should check out the site also because I submitted my own passive aggressive note. I made it back at the University of Puget Sound after countless discoveries of pee on the toilet seats. I was always told as a youngin’ to lift up the seat and then do my business, but clearly someone else was told otherwise. “I have good aim,” they’d all assure me.

Bullshit.

Note: the f8 features are actually online already, but you have to visit http://f8.facebook.com to see it.

While I might have thought that Facebook Gifts were going to be the end of the ‘book as we know it, something new and more threatening is on the horizon for the site famous for stalking. Actually, for most of you reading this, it’s probably too late.

In about 6 hours from the time I’ve posted this, Facebook will have released something they call “f8.” I was invited to the keynote in San Francisco where they announced it only a couple hours ago, but due to the circumstances (I don’t care that much), I didn’t attend.

But really, the question is, what is f8? Well, in a nutshell, f8 is a platform in which developers can make “widgets” of sorts for Facebook users’ profiles. This can include audio, video, images, and basically whatever else. Remind you of anything?

Well, I guess it’s not that bad. Unlike MySpace, developers for these products on Facebook have to go through their development process to output applications. So far, lots of companies have been jumping on board, and some of them seem pretty good and/or cool.

(Check out some captures: One, Two, Three, Four)

But, again, this could easily mean infiltration by extremely annoying sources (music players, video players embedded in users’ profiles just like Murdoch’s devilish lovechild). I can’t say yet whether or not this means Facebook is on its way out, but I sure hope they’ve made this development process clean for those not wanting much to do with it, because I very well might be one of those people.

For those interested, Facebook has already released a website for f8 development. Photos courtesy of Matt McNamara.