It is also worth bearing in mind that facts have shorter and shorter life spans these days ….
- Alvin & Heidi Toffler
Revolutionary Wealth
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Posts in category "Odds & Ends"
Now that’s the way to shut them up
I like the guys at Schiau Studios. I don’t know them and I probably won’t end up using any of their game for the iPhone but man I love their spunk.
I found out about this via Nick Bradbury’s Shared Feed (which if you don’t subscribe to you really should – it’s a great mix of stuff from social media to programming) and laughed my ass off. It is originally a post by Mike Schramm and worth reading for the smile it’ll put on your face.
Here’s the first two paragraphs
I like the way Schiau Studios thinks — when customers complained about the price of their $2.99US App Store game Alchemize, they raised the price up to $39.99. Over on the TouchArcade forums, they make their case: most devs, they say, when faced with complaints about price, will just lower their price even though their software is already cheap. So they wanted to buck the trend, and instead raised it up to almost $40 (which, incidentally, is slightly more than what you might pay for a handheld console game).
Lest you simply complain that they were greedy, they say they were only out to make a point: everyone who purchased the game at the higher price point will have all of their money go to charity, and now that the game’s back at the $2.99 price point, 33% of all the profits to be gained will go to the same charity. Regardless of whether the game’s any good or not, we like their thinking.
All I can say is
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TweetThe Mayo Clinic apparently blocking Shooting at Bubbles
For some reason both the Mayo Clinic and some library thinks this blog is “adult content” and have blocked access to it. I just found out after my earlier post hit Friendfeed and Mohomed left a message letting me know about the blockage.
Serious Mayo Clinic – blocking the site – WTF is up with that?
Hmm .. guess they and the library thinks something here is a little too blunt or ‘racy’ for people to be able to read the site. Way to go.
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TweetSometimes the conversation does need some rules – and respect
As I was reading Thomas Hawk’s post earlier about a real problem he is having with one of the Flickr forums where he is an administrator I found myself relating to what he was having to deal with.
It turns out that there is a forum member who is being nothing short of a real asshole. Not your run of the mill kind of asshole as they are rather easy to deal with but the kind of asshole who thinks it just fine to threaten physical harm to whoever has pissed them off. In this case the asshole is a putz by the name of James Rhodes and he thinks it just fine to suggest to Thomas how easy it would have been to mug him at a recent convention
“Must be the Sicilian in me, just can’t let things go…. still have yet to pay a visit to EA, and TH doesn’t know how close he came at the dream machines event at that airport on the coast…. and TH never really did anything… I just wanted to make an example of him… good thing I realized that he never said or did anything… I would have felt horrible afterwords….”
well to be clear I never threatened you, I just watched you from a distance. You never knew I was there, and you would have never know why someone would have “mugged” you in the parking lot…..it would have all been a strange coincidence…
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TweetAn office I can really say is my own – with help from my wife
When we first moved into the apartment building we currently live in almost eight years ago now we lived on the third but as my wife’s physical problems got worse we knew at some point we would either have to try and get an apartment on the ground floor or move somewhere totally new. Luckily for us about a year and half a ground floor apartment came available with the added bonus of being a two bedroom which meant I could actually have an office.
That was almost seven years ago now and while it was nice to think that I had an office it more often than not felt like a crowed corner as it seem to become a drop zone for ‘crap’ that had no other place to go. Not to mention the fact that it hadn’t been painted in I don’t know how long which when combined with year’s of cigarette smoke made the atmosphere less than conducive for working.
The Old
Here’s a few pictures to give you an idea of what it looked like before Kim said it was time to make it a real office (God bless her 
). Pardon the quality of the pictures but they were taken with my LG phone during the day.
If you feel like punishing yourself you can click on the images for a slightly better view.
The New
One day a couple of months ago I was sitting in my office trying to work when Kim came and sat and had a coffee with me and our discussion turned to how I felt about my ‘office’. Once our coffee’s were done and she went off to watch some television I figured that was the end of the discussion – except it turns out it wasn’t. About an hour later she came back in and told me that is was time to redecorate my office.
So with her help in putting together a kind of an idea of what I would want we went off to start getting all the pieces. It took the better part of two months because I figured this was a kind of luxury so I got the things we needed at the beginning of each month as the spare money allowed. Then we got down to brass tacks and I now call this my office (again apologies for the quality of the pictures – cameras in phones aren’t the best)
We’re still adding stuff to the walls as we fine just the right things but for now I am a happier camper.
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TweetKindle available in over 100 countries
Big news today on the Amazon Kindle front. It seems that they will be selling their e-reader in a 100 new countries.
Except to the one just north of the 49th parallel.
Right. What ever you say Amazon.
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TweetShooting at Bubbles now in the language of your choice
I’m not suggesting that this will fix any spelling errors or shorten any possible rambling posts but thanks to Google’s just released Translate widget you can now select your language of choice to read our content in.
At this point there are 51 languages available to be translated in and when you visit this blog it will detect your language settings (via your browser settings) and offer to translate the page. Hopefully this will encourage more readers to drop by the blog and get caught up with the thoughts and opinions of a cranky old fart.
This is what the blog looks like when translated into French:
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TweetBlogging and the WordPress theme learning curve
As much as blogging is about getting your ideas and opinions out there for other to possibly read it is also about creating an online identity for yourself. Part of that process is making sure that your blog’s look reflects your personality and style. Most bloggers are more than happy to find a good free theme that suites their tastes and let it go at that.
Others are willing to fork over hard earn money on the hope that they’ll be able to get a more unique look. Then there are those that just have to get their hands dirty and write their own theme code – I’m finding myself more in that crowd these days.
For me it’s just just a matter of posting stuff to read. I like to know how the machinery under the hood works. As a result it was pretty well inevitable that I would want to learn more about WordPress and the themes that make it look good.
My first effort was here at Shooting at Bubbles and on the whole I am pretty happy with it (although I’ll be heading back under the hood to tinker a little more with it). Happy enough that I decided to keep hacking away and create a new theme for my WinExtra blog.
After working on it here and there over the last couple of weeks I finally went live with it today and like the one here it is simple in design but I’m satisfied with how it turned out (even if IE7 doesn’t want to play nice – thanks Allen). If you’re interested head over and have a look around – any comments on it are more than welcome after all I’m still learning and more than welcome helpful pointers.
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