Type that!
Somehow, somewhere, today I ran across the longest domain name on the internet:
wiemenschlichmenschensindzeigtihrumgangmitdermuttersprachefrsch.de
And that’s with the “http://www” taken out! Anyone who can pronounce, spell, or even read that: you deserve a medal.
Naturally, it’s in German. Everything is longer in German.
THIS IS NOT A BLOG
Stop the insanity!
Blogs are hotter than heat right now, so apparently every new web venture is a blog. Like this one.
Now, I like cars, and I even like some of the articles on that site, but that is not a blog. What is a blog?
- Mantra:
An online Journal - Feed for all:
Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. - Toby Simkin:
A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.
What do most of these definitions have in common? They use the word journal, which implies it’s personal … something from one or a small group of people.
I checked out the blog entry on Wikipedia, and found some support for this position, but not enough to make me happy.
I guess the type of “blog” that I feel is not a blog is the over-commercialized advertising-ridden big-company-supported part–of-a-ring type of blog like Autoblog.
It’s not a blog. It’s a business.
Free iPod with Mac: Apple Canada Needs to Join the Party
It’s been well-reported that Apple is offering a free iPod Mini with every new Mac purchased by students before September 24th.
But only in the States.
Ouch, that hurts. I’m a university student in Canada (taking a Masters program in Educational Technology) and qualify for the educational discounts. And, I’m planning to buy an iMac G5. I’d really, really like a free iPod mini with it.
So the only question is: Apple Canada, are you going to join in on this promotion?
It’s a brilliant promotion. iPods are hotter than plasma, and Apple needs to spread that halo to its computers. Joining this promotion can only help Apple Canada make some significant market share inroads … and would give me a free iPod.
Otherwise, I’ll have to seriously consider buying it in the States, and seeing how much it would cost me to bring it back to Canada.
Update (June 30)
Please see comment below - Apple Canada IS participating in this program. Excellent!
Steve Jobs: Valley Girl
It’s sad but true: Steve Jobs is a valley girl.
Jobs, chief executive officer of both Apple Computer and Pixar Entertainment, used the ultimate valleyism “you know” not less than 19 times in his recent podcast with ABC news (transcript).
Valley girl-ese is a well-known sub-dialect of teen girls in California’s San Fernando valley that features extensive use of the phrases “you know, “like,” and “way.”
Like, it’s a girl, you know, who totally goes to a Valley School, okay? And, like, they talk like this, okay? And, like, they’ve been stereotyped in films, okay? They’re, like, so dumb in those films!
Or, it’s like, a guy, you know, who runs like a company that makes computers, you know, and they’re really cool, okay?
Yup. Really cool.
Dr Seuss blogs too …
Dr. Seuss blogs too … as I just found out as Teresa was reading to our son, Aidan.
He just spells it a little differently - but then again, Dr. Seuss does everything a little differently.
This is in the book The Shape of Me and Other Stuff.
Uncle Cor
It’s not everyone who sees an uncle on a tomato.
My uncle Cor - Cornelius Houweling - came from Holland in the 50’s with not much besides a knowledge of flowers and growing. He started a greenhouse operation, it grew, and his sons took over when he, perhaps 20 years ago or so, started to slow down. He died something like 7 or 8 years ago.
I was reminded of him a couple of weeks ago when we picked up BC Hothouse tomatoes … each and every bunch bears his likeness. Houweling Nurseries still grows flowers, and now cucumbers and tomotoes, and who knows what else.
Bittersweet!
Camping in Times Square
OK, this is pretty cool.
More people should do stuff just to do stuff. It’s better than zoning on teevee.
Serendipitous meet-up
Had the cool experience a couple of days ago of meeting Alexandra Samuel on a flight back from Minneapolis to Vancouver.
She’s a freelance writer/academic/and more, and a fellow Mac user. I saw her pecking diligently away at her 12″ iBook on an early trip back to the lower-class WCs in the back of the plane early in the flight, and was so surprised to see her still working away 2 hours later on a stretch-the-legs perambulation that I mentioned the fact to her.
Turns out her iBook battery is good for easily 4 hours or more - to my PowerBook’s 2 hours on a good day with nothing to do but type slowly in BBedit.
The nice thing about meeting another Mac user is that there’s an immediate connection, and we started chatting about all kinds of geeky things like tagging, folksonomies, iBook hacks to get around Apple’s artificial differentiation of not allowing iBooks to connect to external monitors, and more. Very cool.
I took a look at Alexandra’s blog tonight, and while I’m devastated to not make her top 10, it is seriously worth a look.
A careful analysis of her blogroll, however, has convinced me that Alexandra is MUCH more interested in politics than I am. Perhaps I should introduce her to my sister. (Yes, I’m aware that’s a ghost site right now … be patient!)
Santa Maria replica
As I was wandering around downtown Columbus, Ohio last week, I ran across this life-size replica of the Christopher’s ship, the Santa Maria.
Notice how bluff the bow is … this ship would have had a lot of fun (NOT) sailing dead-on into seas of any significant size at all. I wonder if it would have made forward progress at all!
Not to be outdone by the bow, the stern is also extremely vertical and flat.
The amazing thing is that people sailed a boat this size (it’s almost too small to be dignified with the honorific ship) halfway around the world, especially in tempestuous waters such as the Atlantic Ocean.
For Immediate Release: Gabrielle Koetsier Wins Major National Writing Award
sparkplug9.com and Sparkplug 9 would like to congratulate Gabrielle Renee Koetsier, age 8, on winning the prestigious Scholastic Canada Lucky’s Magic Treehouse Be An Author Contest!
One of only 10 recipients in Canada, Gabrielle (who recently turned 9) received a Magic Tree House Bookshelf Collection—complete with 28 books from this favourite series and a treehouse bookshelf to store them in, pictured below:
Unfortunately, Scholastic has prematurely deleted the contest page from its website, but a Google cache is still available here.
Asked about her future prospects, Ms. Koetsier says she expects to win the Booker Prize next year, the Newbery medal after that, and, as an encore - sort of like the cherry on top of the most perfect desert imaginable, a Nobel Prize for literature.
Read on to see one of Gabrielle’s seminal achievements in literature.
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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