Journal entries - January 2009
Thoughts to be read worldwide
A question that nagged at my mind a few times these past months was what makes people use Twitter, WordPress and other such services.
Why blog? Why tweet? Why change status every day on Facebook?
My analysis is biased, as I favour blogs over Twitter pages and Facebook activity, but I might as well post my thoughts. Who knows, they might some day be read worldwide.
A little icon order
A few days ago, MacThemes user spiralstairs released a set of Finder background images, entitled Shelves. Tell you what, it turns out it was just what I needed to change the look of my Leopard.
What’s the purpose of Shelves? It makes your Finder look as ordered as a nice, clean shelf of documents. And with a few tricks, you can apply that look to all your folders.
On American patriotism
As a good non-American, I watched Obama’s speech today, much like a good portion of the world, no doubt.
While it was by far the best English I’ve heard in politics in a few years (I felt like smiling every time he used “upon/with which” instead of sending the preposition to the end of a sentence as most people do nowadays), I feel sorry that patriotism still has such a massive role to play in American politics.
Exams finished; Lemmings too!
On this day, the sixteenth of January of the year 2009, I bear great news for the unwashed few: the Lemmings have been vanquished. It took me well over a decade, but I finally mastered the art of construction and forward-thinking well enough to beat them.
And finally, the exam period has come to a full stop. At least, temporarily. Though that’s hardly news compared to beating Lemmings!
Clueless spam
Every now and again, I take the time to glance at spam messages. And once in a while, there’s a jewel of ignorance that shines forth.
Case in point: “we have been authorised by the newly appointed UN Secretary General [...] to officially inform you that your pending inheritance sum of $3.6M [...] ready to be sent to you as to avoid all the omplications you may be passing your attempt to claim your funds from the African banks [...]“.
The omitted “c” in “…omplications” and the lack of sense “omplications you may be passing your attempt to claim” aside, I have to say I love the idea.
The UN Secretary General deals with inheritance (UNO = “ur nan OD’ed”, i.e. your grandma overdosed).
And there is such a thing as “the African banks” (yes, Africa is one single united country).
I love spam.
A few statistics
I was looking at my website’s statistics, and thought I might share some of them here. It’s nothing phenomenal, given that this is still very much a “low-profile” website, but it might be interesting tidbits of knowledge for some.
I must admit I’ve been somewhat startled by some of these statistics.
Google’s new favicon, again
Well, here we are, folks: Google have decided to update their favicon, again.
Last time they did that, back in May ’08, it spurred a whole lot of reactions all over the web, and if you take a look at the poll results in that older post, you’ll see lots of the reactions were negative.
With time, however, I’m sure everyone got used to it, whether they initially liked it or not.
So, now that the new one has come, I’m starting to regret the previous one. Despite the fact that it wasn’t as good as the one before, I still prefer it to this current one.
Out with the old, in with the new…
We Mac users who iWork
On Tuesday (the 6th), Philip Schiller set out to deliver the last Apple keynote at MacWorld. Internet coverage was more than ample, from AppleInsider to Gizmodo, though some problems occurred (the live feed by MacRumors was hijacked by 4chan hackers, for example).
I had an exam the following day, and a power cut right when Phil Schiller was on stage, so I was unable to follow it immediately. However, when I did read up about it, I was surprised by the reaction of some of those large websites who covered the event.
Comics and bandes dessinées
Called the “9th Art”, the comic art is something everyone is bound to have encountered at least once in their lives, especially in a country like Belgium, which is considered to be the home of the comic strip.
I grew up with the Belgian “Bande Dessinée” and with a few British comic strips, so I thought I might as well compile a list of those comic strips which shaped my youth… and will probably continue to shape my adulthood.
Belgian politics and the New Year
The New Year has come, and fortunately, a new government for Belgium preceded it slightly. Yes, you heard me. Yet another government. Just when the “Community crisis” seemed to have been forgotten, the economic crisis came along and eventually led to the resignation of our Prime Minister.
It’s probably the last we’ll see for a while of a man who insulted French-speakers but got a record 800.000 votes during the 2007 Federal elections. And this resignation comes just months after he was starting to seem like a capable Prime Minister.