Remembering Your Milk

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My sister was attempting to convert so-many-cups to so-many-milliliters for her class gingerbread house assignment. As I do to most questions in life, I advised her to ‘Google it’, she said she knew and I went back to wating spoonfuls of Nutella. Half an hour later, she asked me for some help with this conversion website she found, I felt ashamed that so many useful features (unit conversion in this case) were strickly of Nerd knowledge.

Like Google and Twitter, Remember the Milk is a website which fools the users with its deceptively simple interface as to how damn useful this bugger is.

As was exposed on my MacBook post, I got one, as as a nerd I just had to try every little thing out. This information tidbit applies only once in this article, so fret not John Hodgman. Since, and most definately not because, I got my Mac, Google has done some really great things with their GMail serivce — and I use the Graffiti theme.

And for the sake of laziness and for the fact that the list I half wrote was nothing but a crappy version of the official one, these are the applications I use for Remembering my Milk.

	Remember The Milk for Gmail Now you can manage your Remember The Milk tasks alongside your emails. Available as a gadget (with Gmail Labs) or Firefox extension (connect your tasks with your mail, contacts, and events in Gmail).
	Offline with Google Gears Use Remember The Milk offline (requires Google Gears browser plugin).
	Remember The Milk for Twitter Add new tasks to Remember The Milk, interact with existing tasks, and receive reminders — all via Twitter.
	Remember The Milk for Google Calendar Use Google Calendar? Now you can manage your Remember The Milk tasks from within Google Calendar.
	iGoogle Gadget Manage your tasks from iGoogle. Review upcoming tasks and add, edit, complete and postpone your tasks with this handy gadget.
	Netvibes module Manage your tasks from Netvibes, with handy features such as searching your tasks with Netvibes in-page search.

	Dashboard Widget for OS X by Yoel Inbar Yoel Inbar created a cool widget that displays your Remember The Milk tasks on your Dashboard. Mark tasks as complete with one click.
	Deskbar module by Sebastian Pölsterl Sebastian Pölsterl developed a cool Deskbar Module for GNOME users that lets you add and manage your tasks.
	IMified The folks over at IMified have made it possible to manage your Remember The Milk tasks via instant messenger. Review your lists and add tasks via IM.
	Mind Like A Sieve Yahoo! Widget by Graeme McCormack Graeme McCormack developed a great widget that allows you to view your tasks in a flexible display, and complete and postpone tasks with a context menu.
	Quicksilver plug-in by Brian Moore Brian Moore created a handy Quicksilver plug-in that allows you to quickly add tasks to Remember The Milk.
	Tasque by Boyd Timothy and Calvin Gaisford Tasque is a very cool simple-yet-powerful task management tool for GNOME that integrates with Remember The Milk.
	Twit2RTM Dashboard Widget for OS X by Takashi Nomura Takashi Nomura created a handy widget for sending direct Twitter messages to RTM from your Dashboard.

Now, for what I know of, this step is only for the Mac, or at least anything with iCalendar (so the Mac). Although I am sure there is a myriad of Calendar programs that sync with atom feeds, your iPod does not sync with any of those. If you cant find the sync menu for your iCalendar, I borrowed this link from, again, the Remember the Milk website;

iCalendar

From the iPod > Contacts > Calendars section you can select to sync your iCal with your iPod, which then gives your iPod Calendar section an actual amount of use.

This post took way too long to write and re-write, so I wont bother with an ending, bye.

Tags: gadget, gmail, osx, remember the milk, rtm, widget

The Modern Blogosphere and the Specialization of Media

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In ways that traditional print media was never able to, new media has used blogging and online communication to encourage journalists and other independent writers. This international digital phenomenon has given the reader choice as to what information they flood their minds with, as barriers have been torn down between nations. And besides being told news from an international basis, communication has become a most necessary aspect of modern independent journalism, giving both sides of the conversation insight on audiences interests, while also keeping journalistic motive with less a hindrance on creativity.

At the turn of the century, the newspaper was created in attempt to combat an informational ‘space bias’. When British colonies first found home in Canadian provinces (western especially) the entire extent of information, the world of those settlers did literally exist within a few dozen acres. In the late 18th and early 19th century, with the industrial revolution, worlds grew exponentially. Cities were situated around the, then new, Canadian Railway system, wherein the industries were within a convenient distance of its workers homes.

With the Railway, came communication between the workers that travelled, first vocally and then in written prose. That being said, the type of communication differed municipally and federally and paper was just that much easier to ship. With availability constraints such as these, there was never much choice and back then, there was never much knowledge of choice; worlds had expanded dramatically, but in comparison to the modern day information, it was still extremely limited. Receiving outdated updates on provinces on either side of you was, in retrospect, nothing but a glimpse of the upcoming global neighborhood soon to be catapulted a vast by technological advancements.

The year between the creation of the World Wide Web (circa December 25, 1990) by Time Berners-Lee and the Internet-age of lately has been often likened to the years the CPR was developed (1881-1885). With information in such an expanding and transportable form and especially with technologies like that of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) the collection has become even simpler. Opinions are made and sold internationally, wherein Journalistic integrity would writers against a code of conduct designed not to offend anyone, and that is where technology shows its most poignant, yet controversial affect on the world of independent journalism. There are legions of intelligent, rebellious and respectively entrenched writers all around the world.

In August 23, 2005, the United States of America was hit, especially New Orleans, with the record breaking and tragic assault by hurricane Katrina, reaping an excess of $80 billion US dollars in damages. One of the most criticized and a controversial subject about Katrina was the infamously horrible governmental response, taking at least 1-2 days to help anyone.

Three years later, China was hit by the nineteenth deadliest earthquake in human history; the Wenchuan Earthquake. Before Katrina received any help, there was a myriad of ‘on-site’ reporters covering the story. Likewise, Wenchuan had even more passionate coverage, but not from representatives of some major news conglomerations; homes that had Internet connection sent the world’s largest assembly of independent journalists of all time.

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I really do like this MacBook…

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Go ahead and ask me wh I enjoy my school. My answer will be as positive as it is biased. I went in a while ago, asking about my classes and the like.

“So, how is your laptop?” the disability assistant asked.
“Its falling apart” I answered.
“Want a new one?”

I would write my response, but decided to spend more time explaining that doing so would be an ironic waste of time, as the answer would be horribly obvious.

Okay, fine, I said yes. After much delaying, I did finally get my not-as-alluminum-as-thought MacBook. Aluminum looks better than plastic, but plastic looks better than nothing at all.

When I first accidentally (I had my Twitter account synced with my Facebook status at the time) told me FB friends that I was getting a MacBook, I was greeted with less than gratious greetings. But screw that.

I am a nerd, I am a geek and I am a loser, everyone knows this. I spend a lot of time on my computer, more than I spend not on my computer. I know what I want and I know how to do it. In my past few years on my HP Pavillion dv1000 with Windows XP SP2 on it, I came to realize that of the things I use my computer for, I have not seen any particular exclusivity on the PC. Namely; I don’t play PC games, and of the ones I am looking forward to (StarCraft II and Diablo III) they are all going to be on the Mac. That was when I chose to articulate and ponder the option of a Mac I was given on that fateful day after class.

Over the past while, I have become more interested in Micro-blogging services, and on one (Pownce) I met a friend, referred to as either !leahbasskitten, @leahbasskitten or just plain Leah. She is a Mac fanatic, and it was from her that I got a closer look at OSX.

So I have decided to compare the programs I use on Windows and their Mac countperparts, hopefully convincing my friends that this was not just a blind choice.

Skitch – this is a great little program, letting you take snapshots of a desktp or even the included webcam, caption it and upload to a Skitch server. This program intruiged me because for the initial same reason I was using the clunky imageshack.us progam on Windows. Imageshack let me upload either a desktop or a program window. Skitch lets me clip any portion of anything I want, and then caption it and then upload it.

Adrium – after giving up on the, although useful Digsby social-network-IM-service-micro-blogging program, I reverted back to Pidgin, something I also used when in Linux. Neither are as nice as Disbgy, but niehter take 500mb of RAM. Adrium is 90% Pidgin, or rather, Pidgin is 90% Adrim. They even have the same icon. Adrium just does what the plugins I installed wer supposed to, but didn’t do well. Ie: Facebook IM.

Quicksilver – when I showeod my friend the program I still adore, Colibri, she noted it was exactly like Quicksilver. Up until the day I installed it, Quicksilver was never anything more than the bastard child of Magneto and the bastard brother of the Scarlet Witch. It runs just like Colibri, but admittedly (which] is odd in the case of a MACOSX comparison) doesn’t look at good as the Windows one.

I am also at a bus stop right now and an old Chinaman just sat down, he is about 55+ and is wearing a toque with a skull and crossbones made out of glitter.

Finder – this would be the Mac version of Windows Explorer. It is actually less a Mac thing, and more just a standard UNIX thing. For thosoe using Vista, UNIX is whats different between Explorer in XP and Vista. I just like it, I got used to it with Linux, but still cant admit favour in either direction.

Widgets – Mac did em, then Google did em, then Yahoo and Vista did em. In noo particular order. Much as with the MP3 player, I am not sure if Mac invented the idea of Widgets (or its various names), but they did it best. Now, the iPod is a strange case, because the popularity of the system has squeezed out any sellability from any other companies variation thereof. But I digress, Widgets are just better done, and this is entirely due to the fact they are put straight into the OS, and not outside of it.

ecto - Be it well or not, I have been blogging for a while, and in doing so, have tried a few (dozen^pi). Windows Live Writer was seen by most tech-heads as the flat out best blogging software out there, as well by I. After a bit of research, I fell upon etco, a blogging program that has even more supported platforms, a nicer layout.

This is what I was trying to say on this posts intro; I really dont do much more than (not doing my) homework, blogging, Internetz, stealing music and stealing movies that aren’t even in theaters yet. There are many, but particularly emeek77 on YouTube, are convinced the apparent vast superiority of the Apple computers, even in gaming, apparently. I admit this, and I really don’t give a crap. The aforementioned are a list of programs I use every day, both in XP and on OSX, and that is generally all that I use it for. Its cleaner, its neater, the keyboard feels great. On of the smallest but favorite features is the MagSafe connector; it holds the power cord with a magnet (thus the Mag part of the name) so it will pop out if someone steps on it. But really, the main reason I love this thing is that, without spending much time on OSX prior, the GUI is layed out the way I would anyways. It is just damn pretty.

The wake of Oblivion’s Fallout…

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I have only spent about 5ish hours on my Fallout 3 copy, a combination of school and my brother playing it as well have encumbered my playingability. But shit-damn, its amazing, and it looks fantastic.

Now, by no means am I saying this is the most attractive and graphically insane game ever, Gears of War would be a good comparison as it shares the same gritty theme as Fallout. But Gears is no where as utterly massive as Fallout 3, it has been heralded as being thrice the size of the already-way-too-big game Oblivion. Part of the beauty of this game is, as was the case with their previous blockbuster Oblivion, how damn big it is. You can spend hours and hours just… traveling around this post-Apocalyptic USA, offing Ghouls and retarded Fire Ants and never find an invisible wall. And this is why the Fast Run feature (also from Oblivion; takes you to any city you have been to before). I know this because I am currently lost.

I find that non-linear games, in too many a case, turn very linear when you start playing. I mean, wasn’t that a huge selling point of the GTA games? For whatever reason, my friends and I ended up doing the same stuff. What I really like about Fallout is that although my brother and I are at the same level, our games are entirely different. However as reviews have said, its missing a lot of the gritty stuff from Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, and I haven’t seen any Molotov’s yet, wtf@that.

The V.A.T.S. system (aiming at specific parts of a target) is awesome, when I first saw the video on IGN, I thought it was a really cheap way to do FPS, but they didnt mention the AP in that video. It is kinda how I feel about, in Tales of Vesperia, where you can skip the post-battle dance or setting your entire team to AI - its a fast and simple way to take out the random flying bugs or dogs that chase you around without feeling ‘cheaty’

Its Oblivion II with pretty good FPS to it, just-as-bad jumping and some really annoying glitches and, most of all, a great long-range system. When I played Oblivion as someone other than a Mage, my brother was surprised, and as was Oblivion just had a horrible FPS system. Especially for an RPG/ Adventure type game, the FPS system is spot-on.

Sometimes my right stick wont work, or my right buttons wont work, or I cant get out of 3rd person. Be that as it may, as glitchy as I do find it, the saving works around that pretty well. I am not saying it is perfect, and I am not saying a save-anywhere save system should be used in the stead of glitches, but considering the grandiose world this game presents, and how much of it works flawlessly, and how much damn fun it is, I shall excuse these glitches. For the most part, they do not interfere with the actual experience, and so far they have all shown up after Auto-saves. But can you imagine the elephantine task of debugging a world that would take the better half of your wifes entire pregnancy to walk through? And I mean straight, no pee breaks no nothin’.

And there are far too many good games coming out now, I have yet to get far in ToV, then Fable II is being gotten soon, and THEN the new Portal game (XBA) and Web of Shadows.  My 360 is becoming a strain on my attention receptacles, it is not fair.

In my closing, this is a damn solid video game. I recommend you getting it ASAP.

Tags: 360, bethseda, fallout, oblivion, Xbox