Quickly Notify Your Readers of Blog Posts Using dlvr.it

Through my daily blog perusal / morning procrastination, I came across this awesome new service called dlvr.it which is in public beta as of today.  Its goal is to solve the problem posed on RSS feeds by real-time services such Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin (does anyone actually know the official way to write linked in's name?).

Generally, RSS is the easiest way to get your posts to your readers.  If they like what you write, they follow you by subscribing to your RSS feed.  I currently use Google Reader for this.  But with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (I know you're wondering who actually uses linked in as a social network, but people do), RSS feeds are not fast enough.  This is why services like twitterfeed and a feature of Google's FeedBurner have succeeded: they make it easier to spread the word about your posts to Twitter.  Some have added support to publish your feed to Facebook also, but from what I've seen, it doesn't work too well.

This is why I'm checking out dlvr.it.  It's currently in beta, but it hopes to solve the problems of publishing to your real-time social networks in real time.  Currently it sees to be working well, I just haven't gotten my custom Bit.ly Pro url's working yet.  Hopefully that will work on this post.

I also wish they had better ways to make links posted to facebook look more like items I posted with picture support.  We'll see if that works on this post since I am going to add a picture to it.

P.S.  This is my second post published using dlvr.it!

Moving Into the Dorms Today!

Hey everyone, so my plan is to be much better about updating my blog while I'm abroad then I do while I'm at school.  Here's a quick update on what's happened so far:

1)  Took off from O'Hare saturday night!
2)  Landed in Turkey
3)  Went out to dinner in Turkey (pics will come soon)
4)  Flew to Israel
5)  Slept till morning and did some errands
6)  Went to the Namal in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv Port) and had dinner with my Aunt
7)  Hung out with Viva at the Mall in Tel Aviv: Azrieli (sp?) to be exact. (FYI, this was tuesday)
Update:  Jess would like me to remind you that I went to the mall with her and Milan.

Now it is 7:21 am on Wednesday morning and I should be asleep (but obviously I am not).  We move into the dorms in Jerusalem in a few hours!

Where Did My Posts Go?

So let me start this post by saying that I really wanted to title it something along the lines of "What Happens When d/dx(my postings) -> 0" but I realized that might be just a bit too nerdy for some of my readers.  You can just pretend that's the real title, because it's totally awesome.


But anyways, on to more pressing matters.  My few passionate followers (aka My sister, Jessica, Jesika (did I get it spelled right this time?), my old co-blogger Sylvia, and some more I may not know about (please comment if I forgot you)) may notice that I tend to post very infrequently during the academic year.  (Yes Sylvia, all of those parenthesis are really there just for you.)  This is because sadly hours_spent_on(school + work + social life + my nerdy activities + gym + sleep) is approximately equal to 24. This means I have very little time to devote to my loyal readers in new postings.


However, anyone who talks to me, or follows me on buzz, or on google reader, knows that I do keep up with all my blogs, and do share posts when they're interesting.  I tend to do it the Daring Fireball way: share a post with a short commentary if applicable.  I've promised myself that I would do this often with my blog.  Unfortunately though, I really get lazy / I say I'll do it later and never do.  What I tend to do is share an item with a short comment, and later make a full post about it when I get the chance.  Problem is, this is often way to late.


So I figured I would share with all my readers how to find my Google Buzz and Google Reader shares (and the corresponding RSS feed).  The Google Reader feed is everything I share from different RSS feeds (mostly blogs) I subscribe to.  The Google Buzz feed also includes random things I find on the web that I like, some of my tweets, and my blog (it's automatically imported in).  I am not 100% sure if everything I comment on also gets pulled in as I don't know all the small features of Google Buzz and it keeps being updated non-stop right now.  


You can find my feeds here (you can subscribe by RSS feed as well):
Google Buzz
Google Reader

To shamelessly promote myself, check me out my twitter. Most other services I am a member of I use fairly infrequently, so I'll leave those off for now.

Update:  It turns out that sharing and commenting on items as I had been doing in the past really isn't the way to go with the shares from Google Reader.  Therefore, I will do my best to share with a note in the future so that everyone can see my commentary.

Parisian Oops: the True Story

So earlier this week I wrote a post about Parisian Love, Google's Super Bowl Ad that aired with huge success.  Within a couple days, the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater created a response to Parisian Love with the real story.  They titled it Parisian Oops.

Check it out below and respond in the comments.

Parisian Love: The Google Story

So I saw this video a really long time ago (like 3 months actually) online somewhere.

After it aired during the super bowl this past sunday, it's become a classic (IMHO).  Therefore, for those of you who do not watch the super bowl, I present Parisian Love!

P.S.  It will make you go awww at the end.

Update:  Check out UCB's response to this video, Parisian Oops!

Elephant Checks Luggage

For those of you who thought consumer reports was the best way to find out the quality of various brands and products, I bring you Consumer Elephant Ponya.  Ponya was given five luggage bags filled with food.  Checkout the video below.





It's quite clear, price was not a deciding factor in the success of preventing the elephant.

How would you protect your luggage?

[via CBS]

11-Year-Old Causes Bomb Scare with Gatorade Bottle Based Science Project

Well the title pretty much says it all.

An un-named, fairly genius 11-year-old built a motion detector using gatorade bottles and some electronics.  Unfortunately, some idiotic VP flipped a shit and called the bomb squad to investigate the science project.  The bomb squad searched the entire school (and evacuated it), the kid's home, and x-rayed the science project.

In the end, when everyone calmed down and realized this really was only a genius science project, the principle didn't apologize.  He simply suggested the child and his family seek counseling.

Lesson of the day: If you're smarter than your principle and he's a jerk, you're fucked.

[via Gizmodo]

"Texting While Walking": The New Epidemic

So we've all heard of all the dangers associated with talking and texting on phones while driving.  Recently, they realized that banning texting while driving hasn't come close to solving the root of the problem: most people can't multi-task to save their life.

Even simple tasks such as walking without serious injury have proven too  complex when paired with the important task of texting someone on your phone.

In 2008, over 1000 people in the US went to the ER for injuries resulting from texting while walking.  This is double the rate of 2007, and 4 times as much many people as 2006.  While 1,000 people in a country of over $3 million may sound insignificant, it's increasing at an astronomical rate (doubling every year).

One must also realize that these 1000 people are a small subset of those injured or embarrassed for mishaps from texting while walking: all those people who walked into poles or parked cars, but were not injured enough to go to the ER.  All of this came from an Ohio State study (yes, they are now studying it) which found the injuries to include concussions, broken appendages, and sprained ankles.

Gizmodo adds that this is part of an increasing problem of multi-tasking and information overload in today's society.  Scientists are studying the effects of this "grey matter" on our activities.  Their current results are bad: talking or texting on cell phones takes up so much of our attention we lose our survival instincts.

It's sad that texting or talking to a friend is more important to us then staying alive.

Blog Changes Completed

Hey,

Just wanted to let you all know that the changes to my blog are now complete.  Sylvia and I decided that since she had barely been posting, and she wanted a separate blog for her trip to Greece, it was time to part our ways.

I also realized that www.lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.com was not the ideal home for my blog.  In fact, I didn't even come up with this title.  Jessica stole it from Rohan.  Therefore I have moved my blog to a new, more appropriate home: http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/  All of the old links will continue to work through November of 2010, when my old domain expires.  I will likely let it expire, although I may choose to renew it later.

One might ask why I chose "blog" instead of "www" as my subdomain.  I realized that I really need to look to the future.  I began my blog on a whim one night with Sylvia and Jessica.  I guess you could say we broke up because of artistic differences: Jessica felt we were censoring her by telling her she can't write that all UChicago students are alcoholics, while Sylvia and I disagreed.  Our blog was located at http://lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.blogspot.com/ at the time.

Ultimately I realized we needed a better home for our blog: one without "blogspot" in the url.  Thus, http://www.lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.com/ was born.  This was both a triumph and a mistake: while it was great to have a new, stronger home for out blog, this name, and the "our" aspect of the blog was quickly losing meaning.  This blog had really become "my" blog, I was just still insisting that it was our blog.

This week, Sylvia and I really decided that we should finally part ways.  I now had my own blog.  The problem was, the blog's name really didn't make any sense: it was long, it wasn't mine, and I didn't really feel any connection to it.  I really needed to change it.  So I decided to fall back to my classic URL (which Jess actually created): GalbutnotGirl.  This brings us to my new domain: http://galbutnotgirl.com/.

This still leaves one question though: why did I choose the subdomain "blog" rather than continue with "www" as I had in the past?  I realized I really need to look towards the future: I had already made major changes to my blog twice in the past year, and I really didn't want to do it again.  While currently I only have a blog (hosted for free by blogger), it's fairly conceivable, and probable in fact, that I will want an actual website in the future.  By hosting my blog at http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/, I solve this problem.

Until I have a need for an actual wesbite, http://www.galbutnotgirl.com/ will forward you to http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/.  Visiting http://galbutnotgirl.com/ will also forward you to the same site at the moment.

I also want to change the title of my blog.  "Gal but not Girl" just sounds like a kind of stupid title.  As a URL though, it's pretty good.  For the time being, I'm keeping my old title: "Life of the Mind = Death of the Soul."  However, if you have any awesome suggestions for a new title, please post it in the comments or facebook me or whatever.

Hope you like my new blog,

Gal

Changes To Blog

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm gonna be changing some stuff on the blog in the next few days, so if you're having problems accessing the blog during this time, I apologize, and I'll send you a new post when everything is fixed after.

Gal

Loss of Innocence: Porn a Top Search Term for 7 and Under Kids

So personally I find this terrifying.  While most of these results do make sense, and kids definitely have a right to wonder about sex and such, kids this young shouldn't be searching for porn.  See the results below:

While most of the results make sense, and it's perfectly legit for sex to be on that list, it is quite scary that porn is the number 4 search term for seven and under.

Kara's Cupcakes: Not As Good As They Claim

So I went over to the city (SF) with my friend Shannon on Sunday to get cupcakes from That Takes the Cake with the coupons we got from TownHog last week.  Unfortunately, That Takes the Cake is technologically challenged and did not post that they were taking a holiday break on their website or on their answering machine.  So I found myself stranded in the city with Shannon and a cupcake craving.

So I pulled out my standard solution for when I'm craving sweets in San Francisco: get an Espresso Escape Sunday from Ghirardelli Square.  So we drove over and found prime parking just off the corner.  We thought we had it all good, until we got to the restaurant and saw an enormous line: clearly someone wanted to keep us form enjoying our sweets.

We got back in the car, and Shannon suggested we try somewhere else, so we looked up Kara's Cupcakes: the number one cupcake bakery in San Francisco.  I figure if it's number one it must be really good.  Turns out they had a location in Ghirardelli square.  Clearly the stars were aligned.

We got out of the car, walked over and walked into the bakery.  It smelled so good.  I looked at all the options.  Unfortunately they didn't have a Red Velvet cupcake (which I was really craving).  However they had a Java cupcake: a chocolate cupcake with coffee flavored buttercream frosting.  I figured I love coffee flavors, this is the coffee cupcake, must be good.

Boy was a disappointed.  While the cupcake itself was pretty moist and tasty, it really wasn't all that special.  It tasted like the standard Ghirardelli cupcake/cake mix.  Nothing ultra special.  The frosting on the other hand was terrible.  When I get something coffee flavored, I want it to be coffee FLAVORED. This frosting was more like the "essence of coffee" or buttercream with a "hint of coffee flavor."  It was goddamn awful.  Well it didn't taste bad, it just wasn't really good.  I personally think my coffee frosting made with instant coffee, butter, and Kahlua is significantly better.

The chocolate covered coffee bean is a nice touch.  Unfortunately, the ones from Trader Joe's are much better.

Overall, I didn't think the cupcake from Kara's Cupcakes wasn't worth worth the $3.25 I spent on it.  In fact, I would never buy another one of these cupcakes because they're not that good.  I really don't see why anyone would buy a cupcake from Kara's.  I think it's more of of a tourist attraction; there must be much better cupcakes out there.

Hopefully the cupcakes from That Takes the Cake will be significantly better.  They definitely look amazing!

A Shitty Twist ... Make That Just Slow

A really long time ago (like multiple years), I remember reading in Datebook (the entertainment section of the SF Chronicle), this was during the phase between the Datebook being the pink section both times.  Anyways, back to business.  So one Saturday (or Sunday or whatever morning), and I was reading reviews of upcoming movies, or recently released movies, or new to DVD movies or something, and this one review caught my eye.

So anyways, the film is called Twist, it's a modern day version of Oliver Twist set in Toronto with gay hustlers.  It seemed like it could be some fun to watch since the leads: Nick Stahl (Dodge) and Joshua Close (Oliver) are both extremely attractive.  Sadly this was not the case.  Maybe it's just that I didn't click to well with the characters, though I felt like I did, but I honestly didn't think the movie was that great at all.  I felt like it was merely okay and that just doesn't cut it for me.

If you have any plans to watch this film, I recommend against it.  It had great potential, just didn't meet my expectations and hopes.

I change my mind, I liked it a bunch, it was just a tad too slow for my taste.

Lip Dub Competitions: Who Said Lip Dubbing Was Done and Over?

So we all remember those Lip Dub videos that were big a few years back. If you don't, you should cuz they were actually pretty cool. The fad came and the fad went and we saw some pretty good videos.  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, people would generally make a music video of lip-syncing. The catch was a pretty big one: the entire video had to be one shot with no cutting in the middle.

Overall we saw some pretty cool videos come out of this.  However lately the fad has come back, as a competition.  Check out the following two videos and read what I have to say about it afterwards.

Shorecrest High  with Outkast's, "Hey Ya."



Rival school Shorewood High responds with "You Make My Dreams."


Personally I think both videos are pretty damn awesome.  Designing any video this long with choreography that goes through a school and has people lip-syncing is difficult in itself.  Shorewood however definitely wins the prize: teaching everyone how to lip-sync backwards is just OUTRAGEOUS.  Whoever taught them how to dub backwards has talent, that must be really tough.

I wonder what will happen in a few years.

Love and Other Disasters: Quite Fun

So a while back I was looking for a fun movie on Netflix's Watch Instantly, and I found the aforementioned movie: Love and Other Disasters. It was honestly much better than I expected. Staring Brittany Murphy and Matthew Rhys as Emily 'Jacks' Jackson and Peter Simons. Peter's a writer, trying to make his big break. Emily works in fashion, and is still sleeping around with her x-boyfriend James plaid by Elliot Cowan. At work one day she meets Paolo played by Santiago Cabrera, who she mistakenly believes is a gay photographer (he's actually straight).

She decides to set him up with her best friend Peter. She doesn't realize Paolo actually has a thing for her. This movie is surprisingly entertaining, taking place in England (think lots of hot British accents). This movie packs some nice quirky humor, a fun plot, and some very surprising writing. I enjoyed the hour and a half I spent watching it, and I think you will too.