15 Aug 08 Bigfoot shot and killed in Georgia with beef jerky in his hand.
Two Bigfoot hunters claim to have bagged the body of a creature they say is the great hairy one and plan to present their evidence today at noon a hotel in Palo Alto, according to news reports. Rick Dyer, who also offers Bigfoot tours, and Matthew Whitton say they made the find in northern Georgia.
01 Aug 08 Google Talk in Linux? No problem
A while back I wrote an article about setting up pidgin or gaim to use google chat, and at the time that was probably the best solution. But now I’ve found an even better, more efficient way.
I run ubuntu linux a good portion of the time, especially at work. I find it to be a very fast and even user friendly linux, and it’s popularity helps development. I recently discovered mozilla prism in the add/remove programs area, and googled it to see what it was all about.
By installing prism, and pointing it to this url, you can run google talk in a stripped down version of firefox,right on your desktop. It looks feels and performs just like the google talk program in windows (sans the voice chat and file transfer). I recommend checking it out, if you dont want to use the clunky web version of google chat.
Click on image to see a larger version.
Good luck!!
23 Jun 08 What am I up to these days?
I’ve been a pretty busy guy, and haven’t been updating this, or even my main site lately. What have I been up to?
Well, I’m still working full time, and running my SEO/Development business on the side.I’ve started a few new projects, including
Which right now, is just a set of forums, but it’s building up great. I want to finish the backend on it, it will be yet another myspace-wannabee social site for mustang owners.
I’m also working on Zend Certification, and my CIW. It’s mostly a matter of time I can allot to it (very little), the material isn’t tough, there’s just so much of it.
I’ll also be starting a few other projects this year, and see what takes off. I’ll keep everyone posted.
11 Feb 08 Put a period on it.
Certain phrases in the American vernacular are simply too wasteful. Grammar Nazis and other OCD types will tell you conversational speech in general society is not only mechanically incorrect, but loaded with fat.
Part of the art of writing is making it more concise. You take a rough draft and slim it down to 20-30% of its original size. Trimming the fat is the brunt of the work for most writers. By nature I’m a bit of a minimalist, so I’ve learned to spit out rough drafts that are small in the first place. One has to ask: why don’t people do this with speech? Why all the extra words?
My brother and I have discussed this at length, some of the useless phrases often tacked on to sentences.
and what not. (the most annoying, due to the rising popularity of this phrase)
and so forth.
and such.
You can even prepend your sentences with things like “essentially….”. Such implicit phrases are not really essential to the sentence, so why add it on? Are you padding it up to sound smart, or disguising the fact that you have very little to say?
Here are some other examples of ways to trim up a sentence.
He’s not on time very often.
He’s often late.
Or how about this? The word “literally”. It’s used often, and usually incorrectly.
She’s literally as big as a house.
She’s as big as a house.
Or other stuff that’s often used as padding:
She’s a sweet gal, of friendly nature.
She’s a friendly girl.
There are thousands of examples. Don’t do it! In writing and speech, don’t pad up your words. Usually when people make a deliberate effort to sound as if they use an exemplary vocabulary in casual conversation, they sound like a moron. (See what I did there?). Often times these people are mocked on their departure from the room. I’m having too much fun with this. Good night!
