Month: January 2009

New Google Favicon

January 9, 2009

Computer/ Tech Related

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So Google changed their favicon again (the little icon you see by the URL in your browser, and if you don’t see it, stop using Internet Explorer 6). This is something I found interesting because their first one was a skinny blue upper case G which was decent. Last year it was changed to a lowercase purple g. This was supposed to be more modern, but got a lot of complaints for not using Google’s colors. So as of this morning when I woke up (and by morning I mean late afternoon) it has been changed yet again. Now it looks like a complete rainbow and is rather odd. At least it uses Google’s colors, but it’ll take some getting used to. Oh it’s the little things on the internet I point out. Have a look-sy (or just go to google):

Google's New Favicon

Addressing New 2009 Blog Changes and Features

January 8, 2009

Website Related

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I didn’t exactly post about the updates to this blog for 2009, but I’d like to address two new features that have been added. Before I get to them, to clarify, portfolioso.com and the blog are not the same. The blog contains all my posts, and the latest blog post gets fed to my homepage. The website is the same (black layout). The changes being discussed are with the blog. Anyway, On the backend, the blog was updated to WordPress 2.7, which is absolutely ballin’. But that doesn’t matter because it doesn’t affect users, only me with my uber admin posting panel. Things that do affect you:

  • New Layout – The other one was ugly, purple and hard to navigate. This one is sleek and cool. It’s also better at CSS and XHTML. Awesome.
  • Paginator – What the hell is that? Well if you scroll to the bottom of the blog, it dynamically generates links to the next few pages of posts rather than an “older posts” link. This lets you skip ahead more easily. You can also go back. It’s intelligent, so if you’re on page 8, it will generate links to the pages surrounding it. So if you’re on page 5 of my posts, you’ll see: [First]…[Previous] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [Next]…[Last].
  • Collapsing Archives – The blog goes back to 2003 and it listed every month. That’s way too much and you had to scroll 3 miles to get to the bottom. So I now have a collapsing archive menu on the side which is sweet and has everything, but it’s animated, collapses and saves space. Woo.
  • Search – I think I had a search but it stunk. This one’s integrated nicely on the top right
  • Captcha – Sorry about this one. I was getting a lot of random registrations and added this to prevent spam. Now you need to read an image and type it into a box to register and post comments. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard
  • Tag Cloud – I’m trying to turn this into more of a credible (haha, well technologically advanced) blog, so I added a tag cloud with specific topics and things I discuss frequently. Check it on the right menu. The bigger words have more posts. It’s neat.

I think that’s about it. I like the new features so much I might actually blog more, and be more serious and professional about it. Have fun!

OMG Severe Weather Alert

January 5, 2009

Rants

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This is where I get enraged. I hate over-exaggeration and utter stupidity. The Weather Channel has a habit of doing that: “zomgz guys, blizzard warning (aka one inch of snow). Stockpile food, buy blankets, buy shovels, get generators. Prepare for the end of the world.” Chill, it’s an inch of snow, it’ll melt tomorrow. That was two years ago. The exaggeration has gotten much worse, I am not even making this up, but this was a severe alert I clicked from their Google weather gadget. I’ll tell you what’s severe: the amount of work that needs to be done to prevent this stupidity:

 

They put out a severe weather alert for light rain and above freezing temperatures. It’s not even a downpour or icy roads. Of course the road will get wet, it’s rain – morons. Coming next year: “Severe weather alert: Partly cloudy. Hey you never know…” You lost all your credibility, go away I’ll do my own weather from now on.

Happy New Year

January 1, 2009

Rants, Useless Update

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Happy New Year! So the earth’s rotation slowed so another second was added to 2008 to adjust for this. Ew. We don’t want another second added to 2008. 2008 sucked.

The Good: Giants Superbowl victory, The Dark Knight, New music (Metallica & AC/DC), Firefox 3, I’m still alive and doing okay since it could always be worse. Otherwise, I got nothing else for ya.

The bad: Stock indexes posted the worst yearly losses since 1931, a failing economy, George Carlin died, The Yankees sucked and missed the playoffs for the first time since 1994, a reporter dude had bad aim and missed Bush’s head with a shoe and other personal failures of my own which I will not mention here (because I’m not really open in general, but I especially won’t post it online). But that can be easily solved in a new year, so it’s insignificant.

So in the words of me “2008 can go take a crap” (Jon gets a kick out of that). Here’s to 2009! Fresh start and time to do some exiting new things, for the better. Sidenote: things won’t instantaneously get better – it’s not like a magic switch was thrown and the shit veil lifted, but hopefully things can start rolling and I won’t actually complain at this time next year.