In keeping with the theme, the Geoblogging site is another terrific example of what you can do with two of my favorite technologies: Google Maps and Flickr. Put’em together and you get GeoTagging. See where photos were taken and find out who else have been a shutterbug near you.
Got Flickr? Join the GeoTagging group and look here for super-simple instructions for adding geotags to your photos…if you use Firefox.
Paul Rademacher has done a good thing. He’s combined Craig’s List with Google Maps to create an outrageously cool tool that lets you search for houses (or rooms, etc.) on a map. Brilliant!
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Continue reading The Hollow Men – T.S. Eliot
Can you ever have too much bandwidth?
For many years, the small rural town that I live in had no broadband internet options. I had at one point even created a website where fellow residents could voice their desire for someone–anyone–to come in with a broadband service.
After many painful years of dial-up access, Verizon finally came through with DSL. This was a huge improvement over dial-up access. About 18 months later, our cable company Adelphia started rolling out their broadband internet service, and I switched and got even more bandwidth. I get download speeds up to 3Mbps and occasionally a bit higher.
Finally, Murrieta hit the bandwidth motherlode. We are one of a handful of communities in California that Verizon selected for their initial roll-out of fiber-optic internet service. Last year they began tearing up streets and sidewalks, laying the fiber-optic cable throughout the entire city (all utilitiy lines are underground). And yesterday I finally got a card in the mail saying that the service is ready to order.
Needless to say, I picked up the phone and ordered right away.
Verizon calls their fiber-optic service FIOS: Fiber-Optic Internet Service. So what’s the big deal?
Fiber-optic broadband will give me 15 Mbps downstream speed. This is at least 5 times faster than my cable internet. It means that video chat performance will be even smoother. Downloads will be faster. VoIP service won’t choke my son’s important Everquest play. It means Jeff will be wearing a big smile.
The installation is scheduled for Tuesday, May 17th. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
And to think that when I first got online, I was connecting with a 300 bps modem…
May 18 Update
The installer showed up a few minutes past 3 PM, and left precisely two hours later. All I can say is that fiber optic broadband is amazing.
I ran a couple of before-and-after bandwidth speed tests at .
With Adelphia cable Internet, I had a download speed of 1.1 Mbps.
With fiber optic, my download speed jumped to 14.8 Mbps — over 10x faster!
Of course, having a big, fat pipe doesn’t mean that everything loads faster. There are still many other variables in the equation — many other choke points in any path on the Internet. But it does make a difference, especially in a household with several PCs and lot of heavy Internet usage.
How does the hardest working man in the Empire cool his jets? By journaling in his blog, of course. My favorite entry was Parenting 101, in which Lord Vader bemoans the difficulties of being a good parent. Oh yeah, and he cut off Luke’s hand.
The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster is billed as the “journal of Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith and servant to his Supreme Excellence the Emperor Palpatine.” Good stuff, for the softer side of Darth. And like most bloggers, he’s pressed for time. A recent entry begins, “Been a while since my last entry. Lots of catching up to do…” Uh huh.
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington recently was faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom.
That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers, and then there are educators…
Thanks to Jokes.com
Yeah, I know it’s corny. But funny. Star Wars Episode III comes out on May 19th. I’m not a fanboy, but yes, I did see the original Star Wars at least four times when it first came out in theaters before many of you were even born. And I’ve held onto the hope that maybe this time, the movie will recapture some of the magic of the Episode IV.
The darker storyline will help, as long as Lucas didn’t try to hard to further commercialize the story with opportunities for new plush toys. Although a Jar-Jar Binks dart board might do quite well.
Oh yeah, and if you’re going to see Episode III, you might as well click over to the dark side of MessengerMods, where I’ve put together a few EIII goodies for your IM pleasure. The avatars and chat backgrounds work well with MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ.
And thanks to Sarahtowny for the corny title!
