a life less interesting

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : The vanishing personal site

Our personal sites, once our primary points of online presence, are becoming sock drawers for displaced first-person content. We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments. Did I say we are witnessing the traditional personal site's disappearance? That is inaccurate. We are the ones making our own sites disappear.

Now that's pretty darn insightful. Zeldman mentions Jody Ferry's site specifically, and it's a great example: a home page, and then links that take viewers OFF the site.

I've been posting more photos to Flickr than I have to my family galleries. I spend more time on FaceBook - mindless distraction that it is - than I do posting on my own site. And I just joined Twitter, for reasons that I don't know that I fully understand. To what end? I'm not sure.

I see his point - websites used to be all about capturing eyeballs and keeping them on your site. Then people started selling adverts, and it was even more important to keep those visitors coming in and staying in - or leaving through your adverts. Now, with the advent of all these more interesting services, and the ease with which they can be used, more people are just taking advantage of that ease and moving their content elsewhere. Why try to build your own photo gallery - or install someone else's - when you can just point people to your Flickr collection? Why post regularly when you can Twitter? Well, that's not quite the same, but it's similar.

I myself discovered del.icio.us and have all but stopped using the bookmark feature in my web browserS. Why? Part of it is the ease of having my bookmarks so easily available - especially from the multiple platforms and browsers. It's also a lot easier to find bookmarks when I need them - I tag everything going into del.icio.us, sometimes over-tagging them, but it's really easy to find stuff now - rather than spending 20 minutes trying to remember the name of a site, I go to the page for the tag that I believe is the right, and I usually have the link right there.

What does this all mean? I myself have been farming work out to others - and didn't think too much about doing it. Due to the nature of the internet, and the way my account is setup, my photos are public, my Twitters are public, and most of my bookmarks are public. Do I care? Well, sometimes I wonder if I'm sharing too much. But at the same time, I haven't done anything to lock down my family photo gallery - although it would be trivial to do so. I make an effort to keep my bookmarks private when it's not something I want shared with the public. I can do the same thing with my Flickr photos - and have done so in the past. Twitters, well, I guess that's more than a bit like this blog - I can, and do, self-censor. If I didn't, life might be more than a little awkward.

But where does it all lead?

Driver of James Bond's Aston Martin cheated death - Telegraph

So, I've noticed that there hasn't been any comment spam on the site for a while - like since I made the change to MT 4.1. Upon trying to comment on something myself, I realized that there is a problem: you can't comment.

I'm trying to figure it out, and when it's working, then, well, you'll be able to comment.

Joy.

There is a style contest going on at "Design to Inspire", sponsored by HP and TypePad/Vox/LiveJournal (aka SixApart). And I entered some designs:

Swimming Pool
Grater
Internets

If you have a minute - and you like them - would you mind terribly going and voting on them? Even if you don't like them, maybe stick around and vote on someone elses. There are some rather nice ones out there.

Have you seen the trailer for "Star Trek" yet? Go watch it. Now. I'll wait.

Watched it? Good. It doesn't tell you much, sure. But it leaves so very much to the imagination. And it also makes you want to see it - right? I mean, there's people in that movie you've heard of, but you can't really imagine them as, for example, a young Kirk, right? And who could ever be Scotty? Oh, wait - that's right, it's Simon Pegg. You might know him from Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. If you haven't seen them, go check them out - "Shaun of the Dead" is a great sendup of zombie type movies, and "Hot Fuzz" is a brilliant homage of just about every single police movie ever made. And then some.

And, in case you forgot about where "Star Trek" started (a young man named William Shatner... ah, memories!), you can check all of the series and movies on DVD.

I was stopped at a stop light - 2nd in line. The car in front of me put their car into reverse - I didn't do anything. A second later, they were still in reverse - so I got ready to honk the horn in case they started to move backwards. Then they did start to reverse - so I laid into the horn. The woman driving started to look around - left, right - but still kept coming. The results are above.

She got out and apologized, explaining that she's lost and trying to get to the hospital to get her mother or something. Not really my concern, but whatever. I told her to turn the corner and pull over, since we were blocking the lane we were in. I got her info, and she was very emphatic about going to get her mother and dealing with this later. I told her we would talk later, and as she drove off, I called the police. A few minutes later, they were there, listened to my tale of woe, and took my and her info.

Since we had exchanged phone numbers, she called me twice - once to make sure she hadn't erased it, and the second time to find out why I had "lied" to her - by calling the police, I apparently broke some sort of promise between us. I don't remember that - I remember telling her that we would talk later. She was very upset and doing lots of yelling, so I didn't really understand what she was saying - except that she was apparently coming back to the scene.

When she did arrive, she came from down the road, and I didn't recall seeing her pull up. She glared at me as she walked by, and then went to the police officers. After a minute or two, the responding officer brought my paperwork and notes back, gave me my case number, and told me that she hadn't wanted to hang around because she was..... driving with a suspended license. At this point, I drove off - cranky, but able to move still, so happy for that - the last accident I had resulted in a car that I didn't really feel safe driving in.

Fast forward to today - four days later. After making a few calls, getting the insurance company's estimate, getting my own estimate, and making more calls, I got a voicemail this afternoon from my insurance agent. Their auto-accident person was calling me back - I had asked for help figuring out which of the many companies with the same name she was actually using for her insurance. It turns out she doesn't have insurance. Of course.

Now, look, I'm not saying that she didn't have to go get her mother or whatever. But if you're license is suspended, and you don't have insurance, DON'T DRIVE YOUR CAR. Simple, straightforward, and easy. With my last incident, I'm waiting for the insurance company to "subrogate" the claim - meaning that if they ever manage to get money from him, and we all know it will take more than a couple of weeks - then I'll eventually get my deductible back. Maybe.

AWESOME.

io9.com reports...
Arthur C. Clarke, Futurist and Scifi Legend, Dies
Arthur C. Clarke, author of scifi classics Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, died today at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka. Not only did Clarke create a legend with 2001 (he worked on the film with Stanley Kubrick too), but he also predicted many of the scientific inventions of the twentieth century such as telecom satellites. He was even knighted in recognition of his many mind-bending contributions to the worlds of literature and science speculation. [LATimes]

What's most disturbing to me is that I was browsing some Wikipedia articles about his novels: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, 3001: The Final Odyssey) at about the time that io9 posted the story. Weird.

And did you know that he was among the first to posit the idea of a geostationary communications satellite?

Noah and I took a trip down to Bridgeport to watch the Sound Tigers take a 4-2 lead over the Philadelphia Phantoms. We went as part of our Tiger Scout program - we had to go to a sporting event as a group for one of our goals. One of the fathers in our group works for a company that co-sponsors the team, so he managed to score tickets for all of us - free.

We had a very nice view of the ice - about five rows back from the boards, and right by the visitors "dugout" (or whatever it's called - I'm clearly not a follower of hockey). Most of the action at the boards was right in front of us - violent as it can be, it's nice to be able to see what's going on.

So, lately Ethan has this habit of staying up late. Really late. Like 11:00 one night. So tonight, when I finally convinced him to try to turn in, he decided to fall asleep on me. I'm not a fan of it, but if it helps the boy, what can I do, right? So he was talking to me while I did some work, and cuddling, until finally, he stopped talking. It took a minute to really "take" (he has played possum before, only to all but jump on me when I tried to put him in his own bed.

In case you're wondering, the photo is a la my laptop, and the "flash"/glow you see is the display - when the photo is taken via the "Photo Booth" software, it flashes the screen when it takes a photo. I don't know if that's part of the countdown it gives or if it's intentional for a flash, but it's there. Anyway, there the fat guy is, sleeping.

Meme, taken from Rudi who took it from Sprite who.... well, you get the idea:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. Looking them up is cheating, please don't.

1. "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."
2. "Look. This... is all a mistake. I'm just a compound interest program. I work at a savings and loan! I can't play these video games!"
3. "Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to."
4. "The chain in those handcuffs is high-tensile steel. It'd take you ten minutes to hack through it with this. Now, if you're lucky, you could hack through your ankle in five minutes. Go."
5. "Mr. Brady, it is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
6. "So that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads."
7. "I hope no one minds but I have no intention of facing this sober."
8. "Your Commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own."
9. "Come on, boys! The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them picks and them shovels, you'd think it was a hundert an' twenty degree. Can't be more than a hundert an' fourteen."
10. "Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I've got news for you pal, you ain't leadin' but two things: Jack and shit... and Jack just left town."

Post your responses in the comments...