...for the purchase of the ten billionth app through iTunes.
I swear, the one thing about technology is that it gives a whole different concept of magnitude of numbers. Ten BILLION apps. Really? Wow. Of course, my daughter is probably responsible for a goodly chunk of these.
Mind you, there was no discussion on how many of these apps performed some function or otherwise had intrinsic value. How many of these ten billion apps are farting machines, talking characters, bubble makers, lighters, flashlights and other tripe that seem to have a monopoly in the App Store.
Not saying there isn't some great apps there, there really are, but man, sometimes it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Research Heaven
There are a goodly number of my blog entries that diss technology, and in most cases, rightly so.
The real benefit to me personally lately has been the incredible information available at my fingertips. Now, before proceeding, one kind of has to define "information". As I've suggested in previous posts, I think that it's very important to take anything that I read online with a grain of salt, to look for verification and backup and to understand that anyone can put an opinion out there and dress it up as a fact and themselves as a subject matter expert.
All of that having been said, 2010 and 2011 has been a revelation for me in terms of mining the web for information. Without going through too many sordid (and personal, I might add!) details, those who know me, know that I am going through the Ontario court system for some family law matters.
At present, I have been able to navigate through the process and system without legal representation. Before proceeding, I want to be clear that I'm not advocating this. After all, proverbs say:
The experience that I will share is that being self-represented is definitely not for the faint of heart. It's a nasty and intimidating process and system and every step is an adventure.
What has made this a little easier for me has been some guidance from a lawyer who has been fantastic about answering quick questions from me on how to file, what to file, how to word it. Also, my girlfriend has been an amazing help to me too. Although she doesn't have a background in law, she is very intelligent and has been my advisor through it all, and I'm thankful to her more than you can imagine.
The Internet too has been an amazing resource. I was thinking of this fact this morning. Without having this information at my disposal, I don't know that I could have managed to get this far along on my own. I've found amazing resources, including the online database court rulings so that I can review cases to see what the judges ruled, and why they made their ruling.
All of this material has been a god-send to me. It is a great feeling to be able sit down in front of the computer on a Saturday morning with some Motown playing and some coffee beside me as I research what ever needs to be researched or write a brief that needs to be written.
It's been a totally awesome tool for me, and as I mentioned, I don't think I could have gotten this far without it.
Stay tuned and buckle up - much more to come on this saga, I'm sure.
The real benefit to me personally lately has been the incredible information available at my fingertips. Now, before proceeding, one kind of has to define "information". As I've suggested in previous posts, I think that it's very important to take anything that I read online with a grain of salt, to look for verification and backup and to understand that anyone can put an opinion out there and dress it up as a fact and themselves as a subject matter expert.
All of that having been said, 2010 and 2011 has been a revelation for me in terms of mining the web for information. Without going through too many sordid (and personal, I might add!) details, those who know me, know that I am going through the Ontario court system for some family law matters.
At present, I have been able to navigate through the process and system without legal representation. Before proceeding, I want to be clear that I'm not advocating this. After all, proverbs say:
"He who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client."Probably in my case, truer words were never spoken, but at this stage, I'm preferring to fight for the rights of my children and it seems counter-intuitive to me to be trying to protect their future while at the same spending oodles upon poodles on legal fees.
The experience that I will share is that being self-represented is definitely not for the faint of heart. It's a nasty and intimidating process and system and every step is an adventure.
What has made this a little easier for me has been some guidance from a lawyer who has been fantastic about answering quick questions from me on how to file, what to file, how to word it. Also, my girlfriend has been an amazing help to me too. Although she doesn't have a background in law, she is very intelligent and has been my advisor through it all, and I'm thankful to her more than you can imagine.
The Internet too has been an amazing resource. I was thinking of this fact this morning. Without having this information at my disposal, I don't know that I could have managed to get this far along on my own. I've found amazing resources, including the online database court rulings so that I can review cases to see what the judges ruled, and why they made their ruling.
All of this material has been a god-send to me. It is a great feeling to be able sit down in front of the computer on a Saturday morning with some Motown playing and some coffee beside me as I research what ever needs to be researched or write a brief that needs to be written.
It's been a totally awesome tool for me, and as I mentioned, I don't think I could have gotten this far without it.
Stay tuned and buckle up - much more to come on this saga, I'm sure.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Hello, World!
Okay, for those of you that are not programming-related, this is a phrase that us developers use. The context is that when learning a brand new programming language, the easiest task is to to write a program to display one line of text. That defacto standard in the code-head society is to write a program that displays "Hello, World".
Anywho, my context for Hello, World is that I haven't forgotten about my TecHumanity community. It's probably about a month since my last post, but Holy Cannoli, it's been a whacky few weeks for me. Not only did I have Christmas to attend to, but I've had some biggish "personal issues" to work through over the last few weeks and I've badly neglected the millions of my loyal TecHumanity followers - well at least the 2-3 of them.
Tis a new year, and I've been negligent. My humble apologies. Onto an incredible 2011 in my own personal life and with TecHumanity. Can you give me a "Woot! Woot!"?
Anywho, my context for Hello, World is that I haven't forgotten about my TecHumanity community. It's probably about a month since my last post, but Holy Cannoli, it's been a whacky few weeks for me. Not only did I have Christmas to attend to, but I've had some biggish "personal issues" to work through over the last few weeks and I've badly neglected the millions of my loyal TecHumanity followers - well at least the 2-3 of them.
Tis a new year, and I've been negligent. My humble apologies. Onto an incredible 2011 in my own personal life and with TecHumanity. Can you give me a "Woot! Woot!"?
Friday, December 17, 2010
Putting My Two Cents Worth In...Rather - Taking My Two Cents Worth OUT
However, something is telling me not to give up my day job yet, I'm managing to reap on average a whole 2 cents per month. Scrooge McDuck I ain't!. Based on the fact that they don't pay out until you've accrued $100 in your account, it seems to me that it's highly unlikely that I will see any payout from Google.
Oh well, I certainly can't be accused of doing this for profit reason's only. Let me see, if I average 10 blogs a month @ 10 minutes per blog, that's 1.5 hours (roughly). 2 cents per 1.5 hours work, hmm, I'm thinking that I should not be counting on this as part of my retirement portfolio!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
It Kind of Seemed Like a Good Idea...
As I was blogging last night, I noticed an ad in my editor which caught my interest.
This ad was for a service where you can take your blog and this company will go and produce a book of one's book - very much a vanity-publishing sort of thing.
My first reaction is that this is way-cool. How neato would it be to be able to flip through the pages of TecHumanity?
Then - a little voice popped up in my mind and said "Hmmm, is this such a practical idea? Blogs by nature are dynamic. Granted that the frequency of additions to it depend solely on the author, but geesh, it's going to take all of a week or so for the book to be "out of date".
Where this could be a very good idea is as it relates to eReaders and the such, but only to the extent that it must be automatically update the content. That having been said, what's the difference from just browsing to the link.
Oh well, maybe when I "retire" from TecHumanity and post no more, I can revisit this. Man, when I had them do a preliminary copy of my book, it was in excess of 80 pages. It seems like a lot of blogging to me, but then again, I'm not the most active blogger out there :)
This ad was for a service where you can take your blog and this company will go and produce a book of one's book - very much a vanity-publishing sort of thing.
My first reaction is that this is way-cool. How neato would it be to be able to flip through the pages of TecHumanity?
Then - a little voice popped up in my mind and said "Hmmm, is this such a practical idea? Blogs by nature are dynamic. Granted that the frequency of additions to it depend solely on the author, but geesh, it's going to take all of a week or so for the book to be "out of date".
Where this could be a very good idea is as it relates to eReaders and the such, but only to the extent that it must be automatically update the content. That having been said, what's the difference from just browsing to the link.
Oh well, maybe when I "retire" from TecHumanity and post no more, I can revisit this. Man, when I had them do a preliminary copy of my book, it was in excess of 80 pages. It seems like a lot of blogging to me, but then again, I'm not the most active blogger out there :)
I'm So Excited - Okay - So This Totally Makes Me a Nerd - Not Like There Was Any Question
Recently, I had posted a blog entry about OtherInbox and how it has a nifty feature in conjunction with Yahoo to eliminate SPAM.
I was VERY tickled that my piddly blog entry was actually noticed by the company that wrote OtherInbox. Further, one of their employees tweeted about my article. I didn't realize that all of this happened until I was reviewing my blog visitor stats and noticed a (relative to me anyways!) explosion of 100+ hits on this one blog entry. How totally exciting that my ramblings existed in the Twitterverse for an twitter-eternity (aka 24 hours).
Taking a real long shot, I'm going to blog an open letter to Heather of Indigo saying how much I would love to receive a complimentary Kobo for my 'evaluation' and reading pleasure. I am the all-mighty and powerful TecHumanity and what I say goes from my 'mouth' to the ears of - oh - maybe a dozen readers. Surely that has to count for something!
I was VERY tickled that my piddly blog entry was actually noticed by the company that wrote OtherInbox. Further, one of their employees tweeted about my article. I didn't realize that all of this happened until I was reviewing my blog visitor stats and noticed a (relative to me anyways!) explosion of 100+ hits on this one blog entry. How totally exciting that my ramblings existed in the Twitterverse for an twitter-eternity (aka 24 hours).
Taking a real long shot, I'm going to blog an open letter to Heather of Indigo saying how much I would love to receive a complimentary Kobo for my 'evaluation' and reading pleasure. I am the all-mighty and powerful TecHumanity and what I say goes from my 'mouth' to the ears of - oh - maybe a dozen readers. Surely that has to count for something!
I Yam What I Yam
As I was listening to the radio tonight, this Popeye quote came to my mind almost immediately. There was a news story on how one of the growth industries in the school picture industry (and I would imagine by extension, the "professional head shot industry") is how one can pay extra money to photoshop out one's little imperfections such as acne, braces, pimples etc.
The commenator went on to quote a psychologist who claims (rightly to, I think) that this might not be the best idea. The story went on to hypothesize that this ability to so easily crop out one's imperfections sends the wrong message in society, that one's worth is based on how "perfect" one's hair/skin/teeth/etc.. are. Spot right on, on that one, he is absolutely right.
What on earth are we doing and encouraging? Indeed, what kind of message does this send to our children. I'll tell you the message. The message is this "I'm so sorry, darling son/daughter that you're upset that you have this 'glitch' in your class picture. Don't worry, your concerns are legitimate, let's use technology to 'repair' you, to make you into a more acceptable person". That is EXACTLY the message that we are sending and frankly, this concerns me very much.
Great Caesar's Ghost! Do we really want to be part of a society where one needs to be electronically fixed/manipulated/revised? I don't know - maybe I'm too out of touch with the whole "I need to be accepted by my peers" thing.
Oh, by the way, could someone please photoshop my picture at work and (a) remove the wrinkles (b) darken the hair and (c) give me an electronic lipsuction?
Good gravy - the madness never ends.
The commenator went on to quote a psychologist who claims (rightly to, I think) that this might not be the best idea. The story went on to hypothesize that this ability to so easily crop out one's imperfections sends the wrong message in society, that one's worth is based on how "perfect" one's hair/skin/teeth/etc.. are. Spot right on, on that one, he is absolutely right.
What on earth are we doing and encouraging? Indeed, what kind of message does this send to our children. I'll tell you the message. The message is this "I'm so sorry, darling son/daughter that you're upset that you have this 'glitch' in your class picture. Don't worry, your concerns are legitimate, let's use technology to 'repair' you, to make you into a more acceptable person". That is EXACTLY the message that we are sending and frankly, this concerns me very much.
Great Caesar's Ghost! Do we really want to be part of a society where one needs to be electronically fixed/manipulated/revised? I don't know - maybe I'm too out of touch with the whole "I need to be accepted by my peers" thing.
Oh, by the way, could someone please photoshop my picture at work and (a) remove the wrinkles (b) darken the hair and (c) give me an electronic lipsuction?
Good gravy - the madness never ends.
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