Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
Archive for August, 2006
08.28.2006 | boredom, stupidity, & craziness
…all wrapped up in one neat little package: me.
So - if you noticed the downtime, it’s because I’m an incredible idiot with a knack for not realizing the obvious. All of this talk about this site’s fourth anniversary, August 22nd, yada yada yada. WELL….after ALL of that, I didn’t connect the dots that “anniversary means that it’s been a year since you last renewed the domain.” Therefore, it expired for a little bit. I realized soon enough though and snatched it right back. All is well and good now.
I’m back at school now. It seems like it’s been a whirlwind of either craziness or boredom. It’s like my schedule is bipolar. I have days of extreme busy-ness followed by a weekend of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO. I would have been here blogging, but yeah… I’m an idiot and didn’t renew the domain. My new room is great. I really like it. It feels so collegiate. It’s an old gothic building surrounded by even more gothic buildings. There’s enough space between each one that I have a pretty nice view outside of my window. Nothing like last year’s sunsets, but there’s a nice little quad and another building with a pretty archway. I’m not complaining. Well, I will complain about one little thing. THE SLOPE. That hill will be the death of me. I hate it with every molecule of me being. I’m sure I have a photo of it around here somewhere. If not, check out my flickr Cornell album and you’ll get the idea.
There’s a lot I have to blog about since arriving here, but I don’t really have much time right now. Once I collect my thoughts I’ll get another one of these posted. Just wanted to let you know I’m still alive, the site is still alive, and a new layout is coming soon!
*EDIT* Because I can’t sit still for more than 2 minutes, I decided to put up the new layout. I’m not sure how I feel about it at the moment. There may be some tweaking of colors that I don’t like (mainly the background), but this is the general idea. It’s kind of dark… and a little premature… but it’ll do for now. I’m sure I’ll end up making a new one soon anyway.
*/EDIT*
until next time…
08.15.2006 | The Last Hurrah
Hey all. Well, I’m down to my last week of summer. I’ve been back and forth here hoping for some inspiration for a blog topic, but no luck. I was going to do a “What is RSS?” article, but I decided that sending you to wikipedia would probably do a far better job at explaining it that I could ever do. If you just want the quick summary though, RSS is basically a way of distributing and collecting information. All you need is an aggregator (reader) of some sort and you’re good to go. I use Google Reader, but I’m on the prowl for a better one. Just type in the URL, search for content, and subscribe. Tada! It’s a great way to stay on top of site updates and things.
In other news, something rather out of the ordinary happened this week - I went 3 days without going on the computer! How ’bout that! My mom and I finished up the 5th season of Gilmore Girls (we’re addicted), and we rented a little boat and went crabbing one day (I wasn’t too thrilled considering I hate seafood, but I do love being on a boat, so I guess it was OK). I’ve also been going for daily bike rides. I’m bringing my bike to school with me this year. I have NO CLUE how I’m going to make it up that slope, but I plan to try! I need to do something to keep myself in at least decent shape. It was a pain in the ass (literally) getting used to riding it again, but I’m good to go now. I’ve been riding around trying to find some decent hills around here, but it’s a pretty flat area unfortunately.
I’m moving back to school on Monday. Then it’s back to the grind. Already I’ve gotten emails for my TA positions, work, and Class Council. Yeppp… let the games begin. I don’t know why I’m so…blah about going back to school this year! It’s definitely not me! I normally love school, well…at least everything that goes along with school. I could live without the classes.
That’s about it really. Pretty boring blog this time, sorry. Nothing really exciting lately. I’m sure there will be lots to talk about next week once I head back to the ‘nell. Thanks for visiting and thanks for commenting! Speaking of - Brandy has been added to my friends list over on the sidebar –>. Thanks for keeping up with my blogs, Brandy!!
Until next time…
08.03.2006 | Redundancy in the Blogosphere
If you’ve been browsing around here/reading my blogs lately, you probably know that I’m a big fan of RSS. I’m subscribed to tons of feeds, the majority of those being tech-related (find some here). RSS is my saving grace. It allows me to keep abreast of what’s going on in the technology world, thanks to those who laboriously blog about it before I even hear about it.
With RSS comes a HUGE drawback however. Since most of my feeds are tech-related, I end up reading the SAME STORY over and over again because in the tight-knit, interconntected blogosphere, everyone posts about everyone else’s newest content. Take this week for example. There were three pretty dominant stories on the RSS circuit (at least the circuit of feeds that I’m subscribed to) that just kept popping up on feed after feed.
(Note: I know that by blogging about this myself I’m just perpetuating that which I’m arguing against, but it has to be done to prove my point.)
Take the release of Yodel Anecdotal. I originally heard about it from Paul Stamatiou’s blog, and rightly so considering he’s an intern at Yahoo! and one of the major contributors to the project. His blog about its release was really well done and interesting. It was nice to get the information from a primary source for once. Then, however, came the onslaught. The release was, of course, dugg. Paul’s blog was also quoted. TechCrunch even put in their two cents. And those are only the pages I noted once I realized the trend. Great press for Yahoo!, but the repetitive-ness is really defeating the purpose of having RSS. So much for streamlining.
Then there was the release of the study that apparently “Chicks Dig Tech”. Well, duh. While the study itself was pretty interesting, it seemed like every “major” and even most not-so-major sites felt compelled to use the study in an article or two. The poor study was beat to death. Wired had their say, twice. Slashdot, the obvious source for all things geek, released a quick blurb about it. Note the link in the Slashdot article…it’s the same one that was dugg. And to think that’s the end. Nope…there’s still Engadget, LifeHacker who linked to the above Yahoo! article in their “Daily News Roundup”, and the million other sites that are interlinked between those listed and those I haven’t even found. Talk about inbreeding.
There was also the release and subsequent reviews and hacks of the Apple Mighty Mouse, the sudden obsession with time tracking, Sony’s new GPS for cameras, and that’s not even the start. I get that the “blogosphere” is what it is because of the interlinking between the top sites, but really, do they all have to have such similar, if not exactly the same content? Once in a while I come across a diamond in the rough, but unfortunately, they can be few and far between, and I’m sure that, given enough time, they too will be dugg and blogged to death.
With such a wealth of information available to us at any given moment, it’s nice to have the opportunity to have all of these bits and bytes of the latest news at my disposal, but really, some variety would be nice.