This is pretty cute although it would’ve worked at least as well with a less violent theme. It would be interesting to see something like this with some of the more recent popular programs like Firefox. Not too hard to guess who would win. Anyone know of such a creation?
I recently received and opened an MS Word file that had an annoying setting:
I don’t know how to get rid of this “feature”. But I really really would like to turn it off as I find it distracting and see absolutely no point to it. Any suggestions? Or any ideas as to what it may be called or where I would likely find people who may be able to help? Thanks!
UPDATE: Thanks to David Mackinder’s comment, I was able to resolve this issue within a couple of hours of posting about it. Thank you, David!
Following Jim‘s example, I have installed the Sociable WordPress plugin and so now each blog entry has little icons below it making it easy to bookmark a post. I don’t anticipate people wanting to bookmark too many of these posts, but it’s easy enough to implement the feature, and I like how the little icons look.:)
McAffee SiteAdvisor offers quizzes to test users’ skills about sites that might lead to spam and spyware. I found them interesting. It’s not always possible to tell what site may lead to spam simply based on the site’s looks. And in some cases you have to do a reasonably careful reading of the site’s privacy policy to figure out whether use of the service may result in hundreds of spam messages within a few days of signing up.
This is an interesting idea, a potentially neat way to educate users about spam and spyware problems. The tool is lacking significanty in one domain though. I think it would be MUCH more useful if the results page included an analysis of the privacy policies to point out to users what it is exactly that should serve as a red flag in the various policy statements.
The survey I administered last Winter to a sample of 1,300+ college students about their Internet uses included a question about how often, if ever, students read a site’s privacy policy. It turns out that 37% of respondents never do so and an additional 41% only do so rarely. No wonder people are still struggling with spam problems.
Unfortunately, at some level it doesn’t matter what you do if your friends are not careful with your address. I have a very private address I had only given out to a few dozen people emphasizing several times that they should never enter it on any Web sites (e.g. ecards or whatnot) and should only use it for one-on-one communication (so also requesting that they avoid its inclusion on cc lines). Some of my friends couldn’t follow these requests and now the address receives about 40 spam messages/day. I realize that’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the point is that none of that was due to anything I had done with the address given that I had never entered it on any Web sites and had only ever used it to send one-on-one emails to a few dozen people.
I just upgraded WordPress to 2.0.something. Unfortunately, this wiped out my customized theme. I’m going to have to fiddle with that sometime soon. Oh how I hoped it would all stay intact. It did on the test case.
UPDATE a few minutes later: Phew. That was not nearly as painful as I feared. I think it’s all changed now except for a few tiny details here and there perhaps. The tag links don’t work at all, but they didn’t work before either. I keep adding tags, because the tag cloud representation does seem to work and I think it is funky. The links don’t work there either, obviously, since they’re the same links.
The NYTimes decided to report on the extent to which Hungarians are better than Americans at recalling store prices. Given that most blogging I do about Hungary seems to result in a discussion of the Hungarian language and given that the authors explain the findings based on language differences, I thought I’d take this opportunity to address the issue head on.
Let’s start with the findings:
Hungarians are far better than Americans at recalling long prices; on average, they can recall 19 to 24 syllables with decent accuracy, while Americans can recall only 13. The authors suggested that this was because Hungarians speak 41 percent faster, both out loud and when repeating sounds to themselves “subvocally.â€
The NYTimes piece ends right there. That’s not fair, the author left out the most interesting part: how do we know how fast Hungarians speak in comparison to Americans?
Behind the hustle and bustle of the book exhibit at the recent annual meetings of the American Sociological Association was an exhibit of various data sources. That area of the room is usually very quiet. As a break from everything else, I decided to take a little tour. The posters and flyers are actually quite informative. It seems to me that this is an underappreciated part of the meetings and could be especially helpful for graduate students. Of course, it should hold value to many others as well.
In addition to data sources, there are pointers to various tools and also reports that may be of interest. Much of the material on these Web sites is presented in a way that it should be accessible and interesting to many non-specialists as well. The teaching potential of some of these sources is considerable as well.
I’m not about to cut chocolate out of my diet, but it would be nice to reduce calory intake somehow. A while back I decided to give up drinking sodas. I haven’t succeeded 100%, but I have gotten pretty good over time. I used to consume a can of Coke several times a week with an occasional Sprite thrown in there as well. Now I only have such a drink once or twice a month.
When I first mentioned this to a friend, he said this should add up to considerable weight loss. I found that interesting and intriguins since it’s not a particularly painful way to keep extra pounds off. This week’s Time magazine Numbers feature has some concrete information about this:
I certainly have not lost 15 pounds by not drinking soda, but I wasn’t drinking it daily and I haven’t cut it out 100%. Still, it’s a helpful figure to contemplate.
I have gotten better about drinking water, but I have also discovered a nice alternative. (And I’m hopeful no one on this blog will point out to me the downsides of said alternative, but go ahead, enlighten me.) To add a bit of taste to my beverage, I add a tiny bit of lemon juice to the water. No sugar or anything else, just a bit of lemon juice. It works well, I recommend it.
Perfect day to travel internationally.. not. It was interesting to watch the myriad of items accumulating in the bins scattered alongside the security line. There seemed to be some interesting perfumes in there (well, at least the containers looked interesting), otherwise, just a bunch of half-empty water bottles, toothpaste, shaving cream and lotion. I wondered whether they would let you take an empty water bottle in, but I decided not to test the system. The wait was longer than usual, but still not impossible (this in the Premier check-in area though). I was also curious to see whether the hotel would be ready for the numerous people showing up without toothpaste. Having forgotten French for toothpaste, I mumbled something about brushing teeth, but before I could finish the sentence, the concierge handed me a small tube. Good for them. (Yes, of course I could’ve asked in English, but what’s the fun in that?)
As for getting through passport control, I continue to be unimpressed by Canadian immigration officials. After greeting the guy with a friendly Bonsoir I was asked why I was visiting. I mentioned the sociology meetings, which was only so obvious given that even the official greeting signs at the airport had the ASA written on them and at least half my flight was sociologists. (When I assumed about the couple standing next to me a minute earlier that they were here for the ASA they asked if it was that obvious. Isn’t it?) Anyway, the passport control guy got on the offensive to push me on “what about the sociology meetings”? What about them? I’m giving some talks. I wonder if he was that combative with the Americans. (Don’t bother getting on my case about how this doesn’t sound combative. It was, perhaps you had to be there.)
In any case, the city looks neat from my 23rd floor room. I look forward to exploring it this weekend.