Mark Trapp
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Digg
Michelle Marie Miller dugg a story on Digg
3 hours ago - Link
pretty good until around 50 - RAPatton
Bogart never says "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca. - James Ferguson
"You played it for her, you can play it for me! If she can stand it, I can! Play it!" - Mark Trapp
There are some good ones into the 60s. But the #47 Ferris Bueller is not the best from that movie by far. Princess Bride needs to be in there, very quotable. - Logical Extremes
FriendFeed
Mark Trapp posted a link
It took 90 minutes for Daily News to 'steal' the Empire State Building
3 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From the Daily News: "In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building. And it wasn't that hard. The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property. Some of the information was laughable: Original "King Kong" star Fay Wray is listed as a witness and the notary shared a name with bank robber Willie Sutton. The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions. The loophole: The system - run by the office of the city register - doesn't require clerks to verify the information." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
I heard this story on NPR this morning. It's full of lulz. - ha3rvey
see, india is not the only third world country where this stuff happens ... (non-existent person got full id, ration card, passport, drivers license, etc) .. yay for the third world - Gregory Lent
FriendFeed
Mark Trapp posted a link
happy_face.jpg
3 hours ago - Link
From the Los Angeles Times: "They say misery loves company, but the same may be even more true of happiness. In a study published online today by the British Medical Journal, scientists from Harvard University and UC San Diego showed that happiness spreads readily through social networks of family members, friends and neighbors. Knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself, the study found. A happy friend of a friend increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor's sister's friend can give you a 5.6% boost." - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed
Mark Trapp posted a link
Dark Knight to get US re-release
3 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From BBC News: "Batman film The Dark Knight is to be re-released in US cinemas in January, upping its chances of its box-office takings crossing the $1 billion mark. According to the tracking website Box Office Mojo, its current worldwide takings stand at $996m (£678m). Meanwhile, the British star of the film has been commenting on its chances of winning Academy Awards next year. According to Christian Bale, the late Heath Ledger and director Christopher Nolan should be in contention." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
FriendFeed
PownceExiles: Alan Houser posted a message
“Hi Pownce Exiles. Trying to remember how Friend Feed works. Been a while.”
20 hours ago - Link
its confuzerizing - Georgia Otto
Hey Alan welcome aboard - Wolfman-K
Takes a little getting used too. I'm still figuring some things out, but I do like some of the features. - Daryl
hey Georgia, have you tried the "real time" view? it drawl little bubbles around comments, like you were complaining about not having in the other thread. :) - Wolfman-K
Wolfman-K - yeah, but in the real time thing, the comments arent threaded below each message. so you have to remember what peopel are talking about. kinda like twitter. which is also a confusing app, as we all know. lol - Georgia Otto
I am just so damn picky, how can people stand me!? lol - Georgia Otto
Nah it's why we love you Georgia ;) and I knew you were going to say that. :P - Wolfman-K
It's not passive, but you can view the context of items in the real time feed by clicking on them. The thread will appear so you can see what that person was replying to. - Mark Trapp
Mark - clicking is obviously insane amounts of effort for my lazy bum. Didn't you know? lol. - Georgia Otto
FriendFeed
RAPatton posted a link
Pg-08-drink-2-jasso-_95334a[1].jpg
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Show all
17 hours ago - Link
"Its peaty flavour and pipe-and-slippers image put many people off single malt whisky before they've taken a sip. But train your tastebuds and you could soon learn to love it." - RAPatton
"Single malt whiskies have always held a treasured place in my heart. Ever since illicitly cracking open my father's musty wooden drinks cabinet, at an age when I shouldn't have been drinking anything stronger than a weak shandy, to decanter some of his prized Scotch, I've been fascinated by their smoky aromas and fierce taste. As an adult, my first experience of single malts came at university, when some friends and I acquired a bottle of Laphroaig, one of the peatiest and strongest Scotch whiskies." - RAPatton
I doubt I could learn to love whisky frankly. - Nation Hahn
Laphroaig FTW - Glen Campbell
"When nosing a single malt, make sure not to dive in too far because you will just get a hit from the alcohol rather than the whisky's delicate aromas. Spinning the glass will help release its aroma." While good advice, sniffing it with your nose will still deaden your senses due to the alcohol. You need to hold your nose up to the glass, and breathe in through your mouth, not your nose. You'll get the scent and you won't deaden your schnoz. Also, Bourbon4Life. - Mark Trapp
No way, Jose. Taste like cold medicine. But I do love hearing whisky drinkers talk about whisky. They make it sound so sexy. - Anika Malone
Now, I am lusting for some, and stupid backward South Carolina's liquor stores close at 7pm and it's almost 8.... - Ian May
wow..those bottles are just so beautiful :) I'm thirsty now..oh..making irish coffee for the walk tonight... - Anna Lynn M.
+1 @anika... i'll stick to being a tequila and craft beer snob. ftw! - .LAG
FriendFeed
PownceExiles: Wolfman-K posted a message
“I think friendfeed needs themes, or a somehow skinable/customizable interface. and in other news... damn this pork roll is good.”
17 hours ago - Link
You can customize the interface, with great success, using Stylish/user styles. UserStyles.org has several examples: http://userstyles.org/styles/s... - Mark Trapp
mark - thanks that was helpful! now there's boxes around each message & its comments, that is a bit clearer :) - Georgia Otto
I can't wait until I can use stylish on Chrome. - Mattie Kenny
Twitter
Rob Diana posted a message on Twitter
Twitter
Hutch Carpenter posted a message on Twitter
Twitter
Mark Trapp posted a message on Twitter
Blog
21 hours ago - Link
And thanks to GetSatisfaction, there's an answer for why this happens. Turns out special characters "count" as more than one character. I used the > character, which is stored as more than 1 character by Twitter. Updated the blog post for this information. - Hutch Carpenter
Ahhhh! Now that answers a question I've had for quite some time. Nice catch! - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Thanks Brian. Yeah, this was really bugging me. - Hutch Carpenter
So what determines when a service such as Twitter stores the actual character, and when it stores an alternative such as ampersand-g-t instead? Or should I just assume that only numeric digits and English-language letters are stored as single characters? - Ontario Emperor
Ooooh...good question. Any HTML/ASCII/database experts in the house? - Hutch Carpenter
Ontario: it shouldn't be this complicated, but a good reference is: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/co... I'd put money on quotation marks, ampersands, and greater than/less than signs counting, and I'd hedge on the other special characters listed on this page. - Mark Trapp
Ontario - saw the sallyfield URL as a traffic referral to the blog. Love your List. - Hutch Carpenter
This bug is bad. The HTML encoding shouldn't count against the user's 140 characters. Thanks for the heads up. - Alan Le
Mark's right. Any characters that are reserved chars in HTML or scripting languages are likely escaped. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Honestly, and this is the backseat programmer in me, the fact that it counts towards your total is pretty amazing. Most developers take any input and only escape during output, not the other way around, precisely because of situations like this; their database should accept UTF-8. I wonder why they thought this way was better. - Mark Trapp
Isn't the 140 char limit driven by SMS -- whatever it allows/dictates should be what Twitter uses - Brian Sullivan
Brian: characters like < count as one character in SMS messages. The more-than-one-character thing is specifically a function of HTML escaping. - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed
Bid On Battlestar Galactica's Life Size Raider Or The Cylon Resurrection Hot Tub
19 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From io9: "We knew January's auction of Battlestar Galactica stuff was going to be huge, but we didn't realize quite how big. They're auctioning bloody outfits from late night Cylon torture sessions, President Roslin's crazy pills, just about everything that ever sat on Adama's desk, Cylon resurrection tubs and life-size Cylon raiders, priced at a mere $30,000 to $40,000. We've collected a gallery of the most amazing and bizarre set items." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
wow. out of all those, I'd be most interested in the nuclear warhead, resurrection tank, and the raider. the biggest "do not want" is the ellen tigh seduction outfit ;) - Jason Kaneshiro
Two fitty!! - Bwana
FriendFeed
Mark Trapp posted a link
Square is the new round.
20 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From the Official Google Reader Blog: "On the Reader team, we know that the old adage "change is good" isn't always true. Sometimes, change is just change. In this case, we hope that these decisions both improve your Reader experience today, and pave the way for additional improvements down the line. So...what's changing, you ask? Google is all about speed, both under the hood as well as in the user experience. So, in order to make Reader act and feel more speedy and responsive, we've removed some visual clutter, simplified some features and given everything a bit more breathing room. Out with the old rounded corners, drop shadows and heavily saturated colors -- in with a softer palette, faster components and a fresh new look." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
I don't like it. Bring back my rounded corners. I feel like I'm going to bump my head. - James Ferguson
Don't worry, you can download a soft helmet via Google Gears. - Mark Trapp
Google Reader
Mark Trapp shared an item on Google Reader
21 hours ago - Link
WhatTheFont has gotten us out of a few scrapes before. - Mark Trapp
Twitter
Wolfman-K posted a message on Twitter
FriendFeed
Ross Miller posted a message
“When did this happen?”
youTubeSearch.jpg
yesterday at 8:11 am - Link
I just noticed it yesterday. - Shannon Jiménez
I just fixed it - Casey Muller
I don't know what this is, but it's been rolled out to nearly every embedded YouTube clip I've found; it must be some new default option on the embedded player. It's really ugly. - Mark Trapp
no uglier than the ads that popup at the bottom...those are new to me - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
FriendFeed
Mark Trapp posted a link
It Could be Possible to Stop Hurricanes with Supersonic Jets
22 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From Gizmodo: "Hurricanes, as we've seen, can wreak serious havoc when they strike populated areas. We've never had control over them before, but one researcher thinks they could be broken up with F-4 fighter jets. In theory, sending in a pair of the jets to do loops around the eye of the hurricane while it's still out over the ocean, creating sonic booms, would break it up before it hits the shore." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
Off we go into the wild blue yonder ... Nothing'll stop the U.S. Air Force! - RAPatton
Even if it doesn't stop the hurricane...that would be an AWESOME video - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
i get alarm bells "messing with things we dont understand" - probably end up with a bigger hurricane :S - Joelle Nebbe
I have a little bell with HOAX written on it and it's Christmas so let's ring it a bit: HOAX HOAX, HOAX :D sonic booms have nowhere near the power to control that huge swirl of warm and cold air - Thomas Chisler
Well, I don't know how you want to define a hoax, but the guy who came up with the idea did apply for a patent: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/w... Now of course, like most patent applications, this could be dismissed as having no merit. Edit: I'm terrible at reading patents, but I think it's actually been awarded. - Mark Trapp
Looked like a sex-ed graphic at first - Josh Haley
a patent? i wonder what kind of commercial applications he thinks he is protecting? - Joelle Nebbe
Wait, was this in Superman 1, 2 or 3? - Mark VandenBerg
...And Mark steals my joke. - tehKenny
Or ... on the cheap, stir the ocean with 10,000 spoons (Some claim all you need is a knife, but that would be a false sense of irony) - Micah Wittman
Backtype
Mark Trapp commented on a blog post on Backtype
21 hours ago - Link
"Hutch, I think it’s a trade-off: with any way you interpret a loosely interpreted list, it’s not going to conform to some people’s intuitions. If your instructions say “use a comma separated list,” it’s correct to assume that the comma is the only thing that separates the terms, not “a comma and a space.” If you say “a comma and a space,” what about no spaces? What about two spaces? Then you start getting into long disclaimers and instructions that nobody’s going to write and nobody’s going to read. With no feedback, in most cases, on whether or not you did it right until you submit the tags, giving simple instructions that are hard to misinterpret wind up being the most usable, even if they are limiting. This could be changed if there were instantaneous feedback: Apple does it well, where it adds a bubble around tags when it hits its delimiter, letting you know right away that there’s no question the tag’s ended, but you still have to deal with the other potential usability issues..." - Mark Trapp
Backtype
Mark Trapp commented on a blog post on Backtype
21 hours ago - Link
"I believe a lot of the push-back against the use of spaces in tags comes from the technical difficulties involved in using them that aren’t apparent to the end user. Firstly, you can’t use spaces in URLs: they’re considered an end delimiter, so they have to be escaped to %20. Which means you get poor-looking tags that are hard to type or read like http://example.com/tags/three%... or ambiguous tags like http://example.com/tags/three-..., which seems fine, but what if my tag actually was “three-word-tags” without spaces? Beyond the URL, you have issues that are similar to why white space is largely ignored in coding syntax: is “three word tag” (one space between words) the same as “two word tag” (two spaces between words)? What about a tag list like “foo, bar”? Should the second tag be “bar” or should it be ” bar”? If it’s the former, what if I wanted to start my tag with a space? Why is that not acceptable, but a space in after is? It quickly gets into “how do we do..." - Mark Trapp
Google Reader
Hutch Carpenter shared an item on Google Reader
22 hours ago - Link
"The answer is not "Do what you did in the pilot, only bigger." Company-wide deployments are very different from departmental ones. It's like campaigning for the U.S. presidency: you're not really running one national campaign, you're running 50 state campaigns...or 5,000 regional campaigns. Each of those campaigns has its own local leadership, demographic profile, issues, and economics." - Hutch Carpenter
And IT is always the Palm Beach County, FL of the adoption campaign. They really should know better, but they always wind up spoiling it for everyone else. - Mark Trapp
Mark - LOL...the Palm Beach County of the adoption campaign. That's a good one. - Hutch Carpenter
FriendFeed
PownceExiles: Andy DeSoto posted a message
“One of the things I can't stand about FriendFeed is how annoyingly self-referential the community is. Maybe sticking to a PownceExiles room won't be so full of smarmy bullshit.”
Wednesday at 10:20 am - Link
I haven't really left this "room" to explore the rest of FF... - Nick Dawson
When you do, you'll notice it's very cliquish and memey and that your whole user experience is dictated by the people you follow. (Wait, that's true of all social media, but it seems less benign on FriendFeed somehow.) - Andy DeSoto
I'm trying to keep reminding myself that there will not be another pownce - nothing is going to fill space exactly like Pownce did...so I'm trying to get my head around some of the other sites to see if they call my name... in the end, I might just spend less time on social networks :) - Nick Dawson
You know there are a lot of people on FF who have been trying to welcome you and show you around the website and this is what they get in return. Being called smarmy. Go and explore FF. It's a great community with awesome conversations, just as Pownce was. But if you insist on insulting everyone because you miss your old social network than OF COURSE they're going to respond in kind. What do you expect? - Mattie Kenny
I have been using freindfeed since long before pownce was killed, but not for much more than a feed aggregation service. Since then I have been working a bit deeper with it, and I have to say I have NOT noticed the same things. The rooms I have been invited too are full of reasonable people and intelligent conversations, people commenting on my own feed have been polite and thoughtful. I'm sure it depends on where you go, assholes lurk everywhere on the interwebs but... for my experience, it's fine - Wolfman-K
The outrage that's exhibited in this room seems to indicate there was a secret Pownce that a lot of people apparently missed. Why wouldn't your user experience be dictated by the people you follow? How else would it be dictated? - Mark Trapp
Andy, like any place it depends on who you follow and what rooms you join. I've had some good coversations in the social media rooms. I think the difference is that those are topical and in some cases they do have some defacto leaders. This Pownce exile room can be whatever we make it. And if you create a Pownce friend list you can follow the people you like. - Heidi Cool
Mark, I think in some ways there were many secret Pownces. I always felt like my group was this lucky club of really nice people who were very polite. We had atheists and born-agains, republicans and democrats, all different races and cultures and the common thread was that we all played nicely in the sandbox...we sought out what we had in common rather than poking at our differences. There were probably other Pownce groups that had entirely different make-ups and reasons for sticking together. - Heidi Cool
I just bumped against the character limit, but my final thought is that a lot of us were very loyal to Pownce. We were also here and on Facebook, Twitter, etc. but that was homebase. So now I think tensions are high just because we'll miss it so. - Heidi Cool
Andy's just making an observation a lot of people made before. I even made it. A lot of posts on Friendfeed....are about Friendfeed. The great part about Friendfeed though, is we can turn that noise off and focus it just like we had on Pownce, as close as possible anyways. - Mike L
Hey, I've spent a lot of time with FriendFeed, enough to know what killed the experience for me (and several times, at that). I love the features and the functionality, but it was strange to see everything disintegrate from intelligence to least common denominator here. - Andy DeSoto
You could easily avoid that, especially given another community coming in. Yeah, it's not the same type of people that were around in February or March (or earlier), but it's not FriendFeed, the product, that's causing it. Because the user experience is dictated by who you subscribe to, you can limit who comes into your stream with people who are not, to use your term, smarmy. What's to stop a few dozen Powncers from subscribing to each other and utilizing FriendFeed outside the Meme-sphere? - Mark Trapp
Since what you see on Friendfeed is the posts, comments and likes of the people to whom you subscribe by choice, Andy, how is it, exactly, that you are not 100% responsible for what you see? - Mark VandenBerg
FriendFeed
Drupal: Mark Trapp posted a link
Drupal.org redesign - why is it so? Some insights into our design strategies.
23 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link
From Disambiguity: "Over the past few days I’ve been posting a lot in the Drupal Groups at Drupal.org about the rationale for some of the design decisions we have taken on the Drupal.org redesign. I thought you might find them interesting, so I’ll copy them over here as well. In particular we’re talking about why the header is so big, the global navigation is so small, search is so prominent, the ‘dashboard’ tabs are more prominent than the global header and why there is no ‘download now’ link on the homepage. I can’t guarantee that the rationale is entirely holeproof, however it has definitely been based on paying close attention to what a broad range of people want to do on Drupal.org, making some decisions around how to best prioritise these needs, designing to suit these prioritised needs and then testing to check that the new design does actually support key user tasks." - Mark Trapp via Bookmarklet
Google Reader
Mark Trapp shared an item on Google Reader
23 hours ago - Link
FactCheck.org Analysis: "The Congressional Budget Office publishes data on the federal government's budget - that's revenues and expenditures, deficits and debt. The Treasury Dept. is the best source for daily debt figures." - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed
ha3rvey posted a message
“This is crazy. I need a new cellphone. Believe it or not, I need a phone with no camera. I keep getting jobs in locations where I can't take a camera of any kind. This means leaving my work blackberry, personal blackberry, and my little Canon P&S in a zip-top bag at some guard station.”
yesterday at 9:01 am - Link
Do they even make phones without cameras? :) - ha3rvey
You could always have the camera removed from your mobile phones so you can keep all the other functionality. - Andrew Trinh
There are a few out there. Just have to look a little harder. - Yolanda
What carrier? I've dealt with similar situations, I bet I can find you one. - Mark Trapp
Most of the carriers make phones speifically without cameras. It will be the same phone as it's camera filled counterpart. Typical for government related positions. - Eric @ CS Techcast
Nokia 6310i.... It is, SERIOUSLY, one of the best phones ever. No camera, but it's got bluetooth, it's tough, got a HUGE standby time....... - Iain Baker
Who's your carrier, Harvey? - Mona N.
I'm with T-Mobile, but I'm seriously considering changing. - ha3rvey
Twitter
Robert DeBord posted a message on Twitter
delicious
Mark Trapp bookmarked a page on delicious
yesterday at 7:59 am - Link
This tool shows you how popular a Google search query is in each U.S. state, giving a ranking like the one you see in the left column. It then compares this ranking with other ways of ranking states, like average income or population density, using Spearman's rank correlation. - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed
PownceExiles: Mark Trapp posted a message
“Powncers: how can I help you?”
Wednesday at 12:14 pm - Link
There are a lot of posts and comments here saying FriendFeed doesn't do what Pownce does, or that FriendFeed sucks. I want to help you get used to FriendFeed. Leave a comment here, email me at mark@itafroma.com, or IM me at mark@itafroma.com with what you used to be able to do in Pownce, and I'll try my best to get you to the FriendFeed equivalent or explain why FriendFeed does it differently. - Mark Trapp
The fact that Pownce is closing is frustrating enough, I'm sure, but there's no reason getting used to FriendFeed has to be equally as frustrating. - Mark Trapp
Thanks Mark. I've always thought of FF as more of an aggregator, but it has evolved quite nicely over the year. What is the character limit here? Obviously it is more than 140, but I think I recall hitting some limit in the past. If we could have lots of room to type and ramble that would be superb. (We Powncers are sometimes verbose!) - Heidi Cool
Hi Heidi, for a post title, it's 300 characters. For a comment, it's 512 characters if you just type it in FriendFeed, but you can override that to 1023 characters if you write your comment somewhere else and copy and paste. The discrepency for comments comes from a Javascript check in FriendFeed that only fires when you type, not when you copy and paste. I'm pretty verbose myself, and generally if you're going to hit the limit, it's perfectly acceptable to break it up into multiple comments. - Mark Trapp
Thanks, Mark. Friendfeed was a bit of an adjustment, but after some time I was able to figure out how to make the site work for me. It's just going to take time. Maybe there's a screencast on basics about dividing up friends and how to reduce the noise? - Mike L
Hi Mike, Louis Gray had an excellent post on the use of hide, the main way to cut down on noise in FriendFeed: http://louisgray.com/live/2008... Ross Miller, a former FriendFeed temp, created a screencast for it as well: http://blog.friendfeed.com/200... His other screencasts are here: http://vimeo.com/rossmiller/vi... - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed also answers a bunch of questions here: http://friendfeed.com/about/he... and Louis Gray talks about how to use lists, essentially a FriendFeed version of a group of people, to organize noise: http://louisgray.com/live/2008... - Mark Trapp
Blog
Mark Trapp posted an entry on Mark Trapp. Blog.
Media RSS Test
Wednesday at 11:12 pm - Link
Haha, sweet. Now if only I had legitimate blog posts to use this with. - Mark Trapp
Is that the dude from Goo Goo Dolls? Oh...nah...nevermind.... - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★
I have no idea who it is. The powers of Flickr searches! - Mark Trapp
By the way, this is Media RSS implemented on a Drupal site, which I haven't seen yet on FriendFeed. Module I'm using is: http://drupal.org/project/medi... - Mark Trapp
FriendFeed
Phil Glockner posted a message
“Err.. where is VentureBeat? Did I miss something? http://venturebeat.com
Wednesday at 10:02 pm - Link
Yikes. Name servers returning no records. - Mark Trapp
It's there. Top story: Adobe laying off 600. - Louis Gray
Yep, it came back. Must not have been a long outage. - Phil Glockner
it's there - AJ Batac (ninJA)
delicious
Mark Trapp bookmarked a page on delicious
Wednesday at 9:48 pm - Link
This guide to Portland - by Portland photographer Andrew Hall - offers subjective, real advice about the Portland area from someone who lives there, to help you figure out the differences between the various areas of Portland and where you might want to live in Portland. The goal is not to explore every square mile of the city, but, rather, to highlight the most interesting areas and give you a feel for Portland. You may well find other areas adjacent to the ones mentioned here where you might enjoy living. - Mark Trapp
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