A waste of bits and bandwidth

I have no idea what that means. Sorry about that…

arstechnica had a cool article on how to [tag]‘hack’ Google[/tag] in order to see their new interface. I have shamelessly pasted the following figuring that the link back to them, cancels it out. I’ll do a re-write when their lawyers start to call… Please note that I changed the tld to ‘.ca’ as I am [tag]Canadian ‘eh[/tag].

The steps are as follows. First, navigate to google.ca. Second, paste this string into your address bar, and hit enter. It’s going to respond with a dialog box; just accept it and move on…

Note: the string must be a continuous, single-line entry, so you’ll need to open a text editor and paste the sting, formatting it to be on one line. In reality, this is the first step but you’ll sort it out… Hey, no one said this was gonna be easy.

Additionally, the portion “domain=.google.ca” should be modified to whatever Google search server you are using (just do it all on google.ca; it’ll be easier for you). Now you are looking at the same Google page that you started out on.

Thinking mentally with your mind, come up with a word to enter into the search box. After typing your word, hit enter and voilà; the new interface

Wasn’t that fun? So I was playing around with this new interface and discovered something… [tag]Yahoo[/tag] Travel was displaying images from my Asian trip pages! Hey asshats, I didn’t post those to your site and I don’t want them up there… Luckily I had done some [tag].htaccess[/tag] magic with the new host which prevents image theft but the thumbnails were still cached…

Well, I’m done. Good day.

Yes, there is a downside to all this [tag]Web 2.0[/tag] goodness. First off, was it just me or was [tag]GMail[/tag] unavailable for most of the day today? This comes as I find myself relying on GMail for more and more for my primary email usage. Frustrating… More frustrating than all the spam I’m suddenly seeing in my [tag]Sevenapril[/tag] account.

Secondly, [tag]30Boxes[/tag] is completely offline. This too after I have started to use it for more than just tracking work stuff. I’m onto my second account after the first one got killed by an ugly import bug…

It’s all good having your stuff online; no matter where you go as long as you have a connection your stuff is there waiting for you. The obvious downside is that someone else is holding your data. If they decide to pull the plug you’re done. I’m not sure that this is the case with 30Boxes but it’s cause for concern.

No one seems to think that we are in another web [tag]bubble[/tag] but I have to wonder. [tag]Yahoo[/tag] is apparently questioning their purchase of [tag]Flickr[/tag]. It’s expensive as hell to run and provides very little oppourtunity to generate revenue from it. I don’t have a Pro account and I sure as hell won’t be ordering any prints. Seems like many are of the same mind.

What is the point of all this blathering? Just a reminder that things are looking a little 2000ish to me. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the lights go out on some of these free, [tag]beta[/tag] services. Seek out the Export feature of your favourite [tag]web service[/tag], back up your GMail to Thunderbird. Sometimes it’s good to remember that you get what you pay for…

Update: I just came across this article on Blogcritics which appears to agree with me Even Caterina Fake concurs but she’s already her money, so I doubt she cares very much…

Keeping on with my [tag]list[/tag] theme, I now present another installment of [tag]My 5[/tag]. This week, my top sites for desktop [tag]wallpaper[/tag], from the standpoint of [tag]interestingness[/tag].

Mac Desktops ~ As the name says, a [tag]Mac[/tag]-centric site. The name is a bit misleading as htere are more than strictly Apple The downside is that they require you to register in order to download. I created an account and haven’t gotten any spam so it seems that they’re ok.

Wallpaper Stock ~ I like this one as it allows you to filter by category and resolution which saves you from a lot of mindless clicking. Mostly decent images abound…

Skeedz ~ Nice selection of pictures but you’re forced to load page after page until you stumble across something cool. Wait until you’re at work before you tackle this one. They have some gems but you’ll need to do some serious clicking before you come across them.

InterfaceLIFT ~ Another nice site where a great deal of thought was given to the navigation. Content is really good too.

I had a couple others in mind but to my dismay, they were either gone completely, or last updated sometime in 2004… So, that leaves del.icio.us to come to the rescue. If you can’t find a good site using [tag]del.icio.us[/tag], you really aren’t trying very hard.

Hope you find something to spruce up your desktop.

My uncle Lowell passed away yesterday morning. Apparently he hadn’t been well this past month but I didn’t know so the news came as quite a shock to me. Truthfully, it’s not something I even want to write about.

I imagine you’d probably slap me if you knew that I was. Monday night Mom mentioned to me that you weren’t feeling well. I didn’t realize how poorly you were doing. I certainly didn’t expect this…

I remember all those fishing trips with you and Neal when Brian and I were kids. You guys would let us steer the truck once we got onto the logging roads. God how we loved that. I think we might have been bad luck because we never came back with much to show for our efforts. It didn’t matter to us; to us it was just a lot of fun to be out with our uncles.

I remember when you guys gave us each a knife when we were camping. I also remember cutting you with it not more than ten seconds after you gave it to me. I hadn’t even noticed but then I saw the blood running out of your hand. “Did I do that?” I asked. You chuckled like you always did and said yes but told me it was no big deal. Dumb-ass kid…

I’m glad that I got to see you last month. I wish I would have known it would be the last time but then again maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to know. I do know that I wish it was me that found you. Maybe that would have been easier for you. I know it would have been easier on Ardie but I guess it had to be someone.

I hope things are better for you now. Take care…

Well, it’s the first day of spring and you know what that means; Spanky ain’t wearing socks… “Summer’s here!” he proclaimed and he flashed a suspicious grin. Nice. Well, I guess November isn’t that far off…

It’s been just over two weeks since [tag]MiHwa[/tag] left and I guess it seems normal around here again. Oddly enough, the biggest thing is that when I’m getting groceries, I see the [tag]Korean[/tag] papers and always think that I should grab one for her…

I am happy to report that my cooking skills have indeed improved. Mihwa managed to pass down a few good recipies and while generally not as good as hers, I’m doing alright. In fact I’ll go so far as to say my stirfry is superior. That’s easy to say with her 8200 kilometers away in [tag]Seoul[/tag]…

Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do except to wait for the fallout…