Happy new everything…

You know, as much attention as the recreational pot in Colorado story is getting, you would think it was mandatory, and that by this time tomorrow, the only other surviving industry in the state will be pizza delivery.

It’s been much too long since I’ve cleaned out my bookmarks folder: here is the result:

Cosmologist claims (suggests) Universe may not be expanding

Cosmologist claims Universe may not be expanding : Nature News & Comment.

I see lots of facebook friends “liking” science, but here’s the real deal:

Somebody says, “What if one of our fundamental assumptions is wrong?”

And science says: “Huh, cool. Let’s explore that! Maybe we can learn more!”

You never see that from religion. Just sayin’.

Also, a correction for the writer of this article: He (Jon Cartwright) says “… it can’t be tested.” You left off the word “yet” at the end of the sentence. There is a whole new generation of smart, inventive folks — more than ever before — willing to take years to discover subtle ways to test any theory. We may end up with a cat in a box with a cesium atom yet! I also take umbrage with the word “claims” in the title. Perhaps a better, less suggestive word would have been “suggests”, but hey, it got my attention, right?

Catchup blogging lite

It’s been an insanely busy month; I’ve not bookmarked much this time. Hell, I might even be able to categorize them for you this time around…

G bought a rocket, and with the rains we’ve had recently, we MIGHT be able to use it soon:

And since we’re going to a wedding in Houston next weekend…

I’ve made it through the 4th season, and am giving it a second go…

And to riff on that; “There’s always sysadmin bookmarks in J’s catchup blogging…”

And just a few more things:

Texas parents of students taking STAAR tests, you can track the entire history of their scores here (and I learned G’s science score before it arrived int he mail!):

A game recommented by a new work colleague, probably friend…

And G want to cook up some flan:

Remarkably few bookmarks, now with annotations! Hope you enjoy…

Want to celebrate “Quit Facebook Day” without quitting facebook?

As I just saw:

Viral clickjacking ‘Like’ worm hits Facebook users | Graham Cluley’s blog

And recently:

Facebook sez, “Don’t mind us, we’re just whoring out your photos”

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook – Facebook – Gizmodo

Some quitting Facebook as privacy concerns escalate – CNN.com

Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won’t Help Facebook’s Privacy Problems

Facebook Privacy: Secrets Unveiled – PCWorld

ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner

A sneak peek at Facebook’s dra…

It’s Quit Facebook Day, Are You Leaving? – PC World

How to Return Facebook’s Privacy Settings to What You Signed Up For [Privacy]

Not that it’s much better, but I’m tied into Google pretty well, even using reader to aggregate all my RSS feeds. You can use that, or any other RSS aggregator you choose — just follow the guide that jwz provided many, many months ago. You’re halfway there, as now you can read all your friend’s updates without ever logging in to facebook directly.

Best bonus so far?  You’ll never, ever see another app update (think farmville, mafia wars, fishville, voleville, crapopolis…)

Now, you know that twitter account you signed up for but never use?  Tie that in to facebook.  There are many ways to do this. Myself, I’m using my wordpress blog as the base of everything, with the “Twitter Tools” plugin syncing my blog with my twitter account, and twitter pointing everything on to everything else. My photo uploads to picasa point to friendfeed (which is still actually facebook, but I’m logging out of that one as well…)

Before you log out for what may very well be the last time, you’ll want to fix your privacy settings as strictly as possible. Salt to taste how much email facebook will send you alerting you to comments people make to your posts (though you will not be able to obviously “like” or comment on their posts within facebook itself).

Since I’m doing this myself, I’m going to log in one last time, pointing people to this post.

Be sure you log out; otherwise you’ll still see that cnn (among many other sites) still tell facebook about your visits.

Catchup blogging…

These are all things that are either too specific or too small to deserve a post of their own.

A huge change in my life…

After carrying a palm pilot for over 12 years, I am almost ready to stop.

Most folks who see this won’t care for any data beyond this.  You might if you currently hate AT&T or the iphone, however…

Twelve years of data have almost completely transitioned to the new android phone.  Twelve years of contacts, migrated.  Twelve years of calendar, migrated.  To-do list, migrated.  Notes, migrated.  Outlines, migrated.  Bookmarks, migrated.  Autographs (yes, autographs), migrated.  Music, migrated (see why you use mp3s and not whatever-apple-calls-theirs?)  Photos, migrated.

Applications?  Only one silly one is missing: a falling timer, where you click when something starts falling, click when it stops, and it tells you how long and how far it fell.  (This one is something simple enough that I think it will make me become a part-time android devloper!)

There are several games that I had on my palm that currently have no equivalent on android:

  • Bridge
  • Craps
  • Monopoly
  • Mille Bournes
  • Scrabble
  • 8-off solitaire

Again, any of these could make me become a part-time android developer.

Some folks are going to ask, “Why android?”

Because it is open.  You don’t have to use their app store.  Anyone can develop for it, and the underlying OS source code is available for anyone to look at.  Unlike the iphone, it can run more than one application at a time.  Unlike the new palm, anyone can develop for it.

Right now, there are 2 phones in the US that run android, but many more are on the way.  The camera on the mytouch is better than the iphone, but even better ones will be here soon.

I can now do all the things that matter that I could do before, and only carry one device.

New things I can do:

  • sync contacts automatically, I don’t have to wait to hook up to my computer
  • import contacts from linkedin, facebook (with photos and phone numbers!) and more
  • GPS-tag photos (actually, anything GPS-related, like google latitude)
  • share photos and videos while still out and about with my gallery2 installation, picasa, facebook and SMS
  • google voice
  • podcasts with google listen

Things that need work:

  • Rotation.  I don’t have a hard keyboard, let me rotate in any direction.
  • We need more bluetooth support, especially for objects
  • We need a good, full-featured solitaire that knows all variants
  • I’m chomping at the bit for ereader.com to get an android app out, but fbreader is okay in the meantime.
  • Support for both personal and work google accounts would be fantastic
  • More processor power and more battery, or at least give programs in the foreground more priority

Some things I have discovered:

  • Openhome locked my phone; I’m going to stick with freshface.
  • Since I had all my apps backed up with astro, restoring from the locked phone took less than 30 minutes.
  • Restored apps from astro do not update automatically until you reinstall them from the market.
  • Get a task killer
  • Visual voicemail needs to not have wifi enabled when it starts the first time
  • Bluetooth file transfer  is the best bluetooth app so far
  • Astro is currently the best file manager.
  • Spare parts is currently the best additional settings tweak tool.
  • Lock2 makes it feel more like the iphone on startup
  • A page of shortcuts to people beats speed-dial – especially if those shortcuts have photos!
  • androlib.com with a qr-code scanning program (I use barcode scanner) makes finding and installing new software a breeze!
  • The donut firmware upgrade sped things up considerably, and added VPN
  • My online shopping list works just fine in any webkit browser

The worst news?  I cannot find my list of birthdays.  I’m going to have to get those from everyone again.  (Update between writing and posting this:  Between ebobirthday and syncmypix, almost all the birthdays are back, and more — I’m only really missing birthdays for children too young to be on facebook.  That’s manageable!)

Another month of catchup blogging:

Nearing the end of the month, unsorted bookmarks

I’ve now started using the firefox “Unsorted bookmarks” folder; if anyone knows how to make the ^d keyboard shortcut default to that folder, I would love to know!

Catchup blogging

It’s the first of the month; time to clear out that folder (though I’m now using the “unsorted bookmarks” folder in foxmarks…

Also, the job has been keeping me rather busy, so expect a shorter list:

This month, there are even several decent things overheard:

And now, the rest of the bookmarks are unsorted:

Guess which folder is filling up now…

Again, in no particular order: