strange – Technobabbles

Archive by category "strange"

You Gave the Wine List to Me?

dgw 2009-03-02 - 21:00 2009-10-31society, strange 6

I told myself I probably wouldn’t blog about New York, but I decided this would be a worthwhile story. (Not to mention the fact that I promised a certain person I’d publish this; you know who you are.) Of all the things that happened in New York City, this is possibly the funniest, and the most unlikely to happen back here in MN. Aside from Broadway shows, that is. Image via WikipediaPicture this: Times Square, a moderately upscale Asian restaurant, and a party of five. Two mothers, three “children” (though none of us were under 14). The age spread for…

Parked In: A Yom Kippur Story

dgw 2008-12-18 - 17:00 2009-10-31holidays, strange, theater 5

I wrote this way back in October, but never got around to polishing it and posting it until now. Finally I found time and motivation to post! I hope you all enjoy this story; even now, I am still uncovering all its hidden meanings. This year’s Yom Kippur was interesting. After school, I went straight to dinner, and then to services. Specifically, we (my mother and I) were interested in Kol Nidre, a beautiful piece of music that is part of the evening service erev Yom Kippur. The service started at 16:45, and I had what was basically a tech…

Portable Computing

dgw 2008-04-16 - 13:15 2009-11-02Firefox, freeware, ideas, MySQL, opinion, PHP, strange, technology 0

I really have no right to talk about this subject, as I have never actually done it. I thought it might make for a good hypothetical post, though, especially since I don’t have any other good ideas right now. What can I say, it’s on my mind. That’s because of where I was when I wrote this. I’m thinking about portable computing right now because I keep everything on my hard drive. Well, stuff that isn’t email or associated with a Web service. Applications and stuff all live on my computer. When I go somewhere else, I can’t get at…

Strange Bug Reports on Blogger Post Scheduling

dgw 2008-04-06 - 10:42 2015-10-29Blogger, errors, Google, internet, strange, tools 0

Thought I’d continue talking about Blogger this morning. 🙂 Lately, there have been several comments to the Scheduled Posts announcement on the Blogger in Draft blog that indicate it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I haven’t had any problems. I often write my posts the night before they publish, just in case I get a last-minute idea, or am away from the computer in the morning (which is indeed possible). Other comments indicate agreement with my statement. I wonder if the Blogger servers are being a bit wonky… There were ( ) with the scheduling feature back when it was…

Musical in the Food Court!

dgw 2008-03-10 - 08:07 2015-10-31humor, music, strange, videos 0

This post digresses from my usual technobabble, but it’s just too funny and creative (not to mention awesome!) to pass up. Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based group of people started in 2001. What they do is usually totally off-the-wall and almost always funny. Their blog’s tagline: “We Cause Scenes”. The mission I’m featuring today, though, was done in Los Angeles, CA. (There is now a global Improv Everywhere site on Ning as well, but this mission was performed before that was launched.) I like the idea of Improv Everywhere because I am also into improvisational performance. I don’t…

Official Gmail Blog Posts Internal Screenshot?

dgw 2008-02-27 - 00:55 2009-11-03Gmail, Google, internet, strange 1

I just looked over the post about at the Official Gmail Blog, and noticed that their screenshot is a bit funky. Compare the two images below: The first image is mine; the second is what the Gmail Blog posted. Now, there isn’t much different there, but they aren’t posting screenshots of the interface the rest of us see. Makes me wonder what enhancements Google is hiding in the internal Gmail interface, waiting to be released to the masses. I hope there’s some good stuff there… I want box controls! 😀 [Second image credit: Official Gmail Blog, under a claim of…

The Sharper Image Files for Bankruptcy Protection

dgw 2008-02-23 - 13:13 2009-11-03strange, technology 1

Yipe! I knew The Sharper Image’s products were niche stuff, but I didn’t think sales were this bad. The company filed for bankruptcy protection (as reported by the New York Times) due to slipping sales, stiffer competition, and image problems with its line of Ionic Breeze air purifiers. They’ll also be closing approximately half of their stores, if I read the article correctly. I have a pretty good idea as to why they’re not doing very well. The problem with The Sharper Image is that their prices for things are a good chunk more than identical (but differently-branded) items elsewhere.…

Evidence of Gmail Task List

dgw 2008-02-17 - 16:09 2015-10-29Gmail, Google, internet, strange, tools 0

Following about the rumored Gmail task list feature that “turned out to be” RTM, I saw a comment from Garett at Google Operating System and revisited the Groups thread pertaining to his original post. Users on Groups have posted evidence that Google is internally testing a task list feature. The evidence comes in the form of CSS rules. One particularly interesting one references corp.google.com, which is (as far as I know) an internal network address accessible only within Google. Take a look at this rule (I’ve added line breaks and indents for clarity and space): .gtasks-sprite { background-image: url(http://www.corp.google.com↵ /~bolinfest/gtasks/sprites.png)…

Gmail Task List Feature?

dgw 2008-02-16 - 21:00 2015-10-29email, Gmail, Google, internet, strange, tools 0

Garett Rogers posted something very strange this afternoon. It seems someone wrote in with a screenshot of a task list feature in Gmail and a (to me, rather dubious) explanation of how it got there. He thinks it’s likely to be “similar to the ‘Remember The Milk’ addon” (he says uses Greasemonkey, which I don’t believe is correct). The screenshot he posted, which I won’t duplicate for fear of copyright infringement (see the original post), looks very, very similar to the RTM pane I have in my Gmail account right now, down to the icons and styling. I’m excited if…

Some Users Could Be Experiencing Gmail Outages

dgw 2008-01-11 - 17:38 2009-11-09email, Gmail, Google, internet, strange 0

My site stats are telling me I have a spike in traffic from searches relating to Gmail outages today. All the keywords are similar to “gmail down january 11”, with some minor variations, most leading to my post from last January. To me, that’s a good sign that Google’s having some problems. My account is unaffected thus far, though it might be (you never know). Maybe this is some sort of rolling outage having to do with a major network upgrade. Or maybe there are brownouts (short power outages) at one of Google’s datacenters (unlikely; they must have enormous backup…

Category: strange