New Lunchbox on Wheels

Something to keep you entertained.I created this imagine while playing in Gimp. The original image is from http://www.scionconnection.com/index.htm

The new Google Docs

Google recently added new features to their Google Docs, they also gave it a visual overhaul.As you can see the layout is different. It appears to be much easier to follow, there are new icons, and they renamed the famed "labels" to "folders".

Making a folder:
Making a folder is a rather simple process, that almost anyone can follow.
Step one: Click on the "New" button on the top, and click on "Folder".

Step two: Notice the large writing area that now appeared, that is where you write the folders name.

Step three: Add an optional description or status to the folder. This will show up when you click on the folder. Though I just prefer a descriptive name.
Just a quick note, you can not make sub-folders.

Managing your documents:
You can sort your documents into folders in two ways, either by dragging the document to the appropriate folder, very similar to how you would on any modern desktop, or by manually assigning the document to a folder, just like you did when things were called "labels" rather than "folders".

Dragging your document:

This is by far the easiest way for a novice user to file their documents, it is quick, has great visual feedback, and allows you to move a document from one folder to anther with great ease. If I have a document that only belongs in one folder, than this is how I would handle it.
One of the great features of Google Docs, is the ability to have a document with two different labels (now called folders), but that is not possible when you are dragging and dropping a document into folders. When you drag a document to a different folder, it will remove any associations it had with other folders. For example, say I had the document "Kama Sutra for Dummies" in both my "Personal" folder and in the "Recreation" folder; but I wanted to add it to my "Woohoo" folder, if I dragged the document to the "Woohoo" folder, than it would no longer be in my other two folders. You can avoid this by:

Manually assigning the document to a folder:


As you can see, by checking the document, then clicking on the "Add to folder" button, I can assign a document to two or more folders. This is exactly how the previous version of Google Docs functioned with labels.


This is much more powerful way to sort your documents. This allows for a document to be in two different places at once. Take my "Kama Sutra for Dummies" example from above, if I add the document to the "Woohoo" folder in this manner, than I can access it from any of those three folders. Hopefully Google will get the point where you can search for documents that reside in multiple folders, to help narrow down your results.

Google Desktop on Linux

Well, the day that some people have been waiting for has arrived, Google Desktop is now available for Linux. It isn't the Google Desktop that you see for Windows, you don't get the Google Gadgets, but you do get an indexed search of your computer.
Some people are not impressed with this. And you can see why when you think that Linux has Beagle and Srigi, both of which do the same basic thing (though they don't index you gmail account).
I for one am happy to see this. I don't care about getting Google Desktop on my computer, though I am testing it out. One thing that is different about this, versus some of Google's other Linux offerings, is that it does not require Wine to run. I see this as a good thing, hopefully other companies will see this as an example, and try to follow with some other products.

Cash and food

Well, I'm unemployed (have been for the last month). Which means I have no cash coming in. This means that my previous eating habits are not something I can indulge in.

Previous eating habits:
Okay, here is a quick breakdown of my previous eating habits, this is when I had a job and cash coming in. Often times when Jana and I wanted something to eat we would run out and grab it, either from a restaurant, or a fast food joint; it was just plain easier. I have noticed a few things since I haven't been able to do that. When eating out, you get larger portions, and you paid for the food so you are damn well going to eat it - after all there are children starving in Antarctica; plus it is costly. None of that is good, it's not healthy (for your body or your pocket book).

Current eating habits:
Now that I'm not having any cash coming in, Jana and I have to watch our eating habits carefully, that means no running out for fast food. No running out for fast food means that we have to cook at home (I'm fairly sure that is what we got the oven for). Cooking at home has many advantages over eating out, you're eating food that is better for you (no high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient), you eat smaller portions (smaller plate, but that is more of a personal thing), and don't forget that it's cheaper. Eating at home dose have it's share of difficulties (extra time, dishes), but I'm finding that those difficulties are not as bad as they would seem, and become less of an issue the more you cook at home.

This change in eating habits has some great results. I'm feeling better, less stressed (though that could be due to meditating everyday and not working), my bowel has settled down, plus the knowledge that I can eat at home and be happy about it.

Linux fun

I've had a bug up my butt for a while, so I finally took the plunge, and reinstalled Kubuntu. I put on Gutsy Tribe 1. Before a did any of that, I backed up my information to an external hard drive - that took about an hour. All in all, the install was rather painless, it took about an hour from the time I put the CD in, to reboot, for everything to install - but then again I did take a small break in there for a sandwich.
After the install I had to go through, and reconfigure X though - it doesn't like to work with my display the first time (I had the same problem with Feisty, so I knew what to do this time). I got NDISwrapper to work for the first time with this system, never been able to get it to work before; so now I can use the internal wireless. I did have a strange problem though, this morning when I went to use my wireless, I just could not get it to work, so I pulled out my trusty 50' CAT5, plugged it in, pulled down kwifimanager, then suddenly knetworkmanager started working. All my settings copied over fine. Oh, and OpenOffice works now - maybe I can work on my resume again.
One of the problems I was having with Feisty, was that sometimes the computer would overheat, hasn't happened with Gutsy yet. Or maybe that is because I removed Vista from the HDD as well.

DAMN

DAMN is the only word that describes how I'm feeling right now. J and I just got back from a Hy-Vee where we used a Coin Star machine to cash in some extra change that we have lying around. I did not realize that we had so much damn change. Before taking it to Hy-Vee, I decided to weight it here at home - it came it at 40lbs (~18kg), try carrying that in your pocket. The Coin Star machine keeps count of how many coins you put in, broken down by type. Here is how it broke down for us.

3942 pennies - $39.42
778 nickels - $38.90
1389 dimes - $138.90

For a total of $197.89 (Coin Star charges a 8.9 cents fee per dollar). It took about 15 minutes to get all done.

You should have seen the look on the cashiers face when I went to get the cash.

Facebook - MySpace and a Class Divide

Today a ran across an interesting paper about Facebook and MySpace, and signs of a possible class divide between the two. Here is a couple paragraphs from the paper:

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

I'm not even going to pretend that I understand all of the paper, or many of the factors that it is talking about, but I do know what I see. I also know that for some odd reason it seems to be human nature to want to fit into groups. People will often times go with the group that makes them feel the most comfortable - and regrettably, many times, not always, that involves going with people of the same social class as your family (kids with rich parents feel comfortable with other kids who have rich parents, people of the same faith, etc.). One thing that I have yet to understand is why social classes seem to have different preferences, is it due to the class, or is it more of a personality thing (that's a topic for another time).

I have used, and viewed MySpace often, but Facebook I have only started to explore. There are differences between the two, Facebook is cleaner, easier to follow, but much more limited on what changes you can make to it, overall the same display for everyone. MySpace on the paw is endlessly changeable, you just have to know how, but things get difficult to follow, it's difficult to wade through all the "bling" on the site, and often times will make it ugly. So which one do you use, I guess it depends on who you know on either site, and what your tastes are - which I guess can depend on what social class you happen to fall into.

http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.myspace.com

The great flood

That is a picture of the street in front of my house. You may not be able to tell from the pic, there is a small river running down the street, and the sidewalk. I took this pic about 10 minutes after the first bit of rain. Today was a nice day, except for about an hour when the skies opened up and dumped the Pacific Ocean onto the world.

Food

I'm currently unemployed - it has been rather relaxing actually. Since I'm not working, and I don't have the money coming in that I had before, Jana and I have been very careful about what we eat; I have also been watching my portions much more closely. In the time that I have not been working, I have started to eat smaller portions; with the exception of the first week, I haven't had a problem with feeling hungry all the time. Now I can eat a piece of chicken, and some rice, and feel satisfied for hours. Tonight, after the rain storm, Jana and I went to Target to get some groceries, on the way we stopped at Burger King for a quick bite to eat. I had a larger meal at BK that I have been having for the last couple of weeks - and for some odd reason, I feel like I'm starving. I'm not sure if it is due to me eating a larger meal, or if it is because of where I ate. I hope this feeling doesn't persist, I don't want to go through another week of feeling hungry.

Summer Solstice

Happy Summer Solstice!

Why I'd sooner vote for a seven year old

What can you say, he's right. We have lost our fire, society as a whole. Take a look, it will make you think.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-id-sooner-vote-for-seven-year-old.html

How ironic

Today I was cleaning out the folders from my Yahoo Mail, I removed about 0.5 gigs of emails - I'm on a cleaning streak lately. Once I get done, I happen to see a cute little animation that shows I now have unlimited storage. I thought it was rather ironic.

Jediism, impact of books, kind of wondering post

Jediism

A few days ago Jana and I had a Star Wars marathon (over a three day period we watched each episode in order 1-6), that was rather fun. One thing I have always wondered about the Star Wars universe is how the Jedis' got their start. What was their beginning? After the marathon I decided to search the internet for the answer. I haven't found the answer to that question, though if someone knows where I can find the answer let me know in the comments, but I did find something a little closer to home that is just as interesting.

As everyone knows, the internet is home to many things, it is a giant meeting place for people with similar interests. On my searches, I found a movement of people who wish to be Jedi.

If you are not familiar with Jedi, then I suggest you stop reading this right now, go rent Star Wars, and do some research into the subject - don't worry, we'll still be here when you get done. Okay, everyone familiar with the Jedi religion, as told by the Star Wars films? Good. Now imagine people on good ol' Earth who wanted to be a part of that (hey, they are cool). You will end up with a community of people who are trying to live up to standards of the film (and book) Jedi.

I'm not here to say if that is good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. Though I will go out on a limb and say that from what I have seen, it is rather harmless (they don't have light sabers, nor can they throw you across a room with their mind), it seems to be more about living up to the values that the Jedi embody (which happens to mirror certain eastern religions).

Okay, there is the background, on to the next part.

Books, Movies, Games, etc.

I'm sitting here looking at the Jedi phenomenon, wondering something. Is it possible for a book, movie, or game to be realistic enough that people will start to believe in it, even try to duplicate it?

Let us take Dracula for example, did anyone truly believe that a person could turn into a lizard, suck blood, and was supper strong as night, *before* the book came out? How many after the book came out? How about Harry Potter, how many people looked into witchcraft as a result of reading the books, or seeing the films? I don't have the exact answer to those questions, but I'm willing to bet that we would all be surprised by the answers.

No matter how you look at it, stories, either told to us, shown to us (books), or acted out for us (movies) have a big influence on how we see the world. Sometimes they expand our world view (the people who decided to learn about the Wiccan religion due to Harry Potter), sometimes they make our world seem more frightening than it really is (Dracula).

What does any of my above rambling have to do with anything? Well let me ask you a question - what kind of impact did the best selling book of all time* have on people (and society) - did it expand our view of the world, or did it make life seem more frightening that it really is? Did it result in people trying to duplicate parts of it?

If the Jediism movement catches on, what kind of impact will it have on the future? Will it be the next big religion?**

I think I lost my train of thought somewhere in there...

* The Holy Bible is the best selling book of all time. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

** Please note that I'm not picking on people of the Jediism movement, but rather using it as a way to help people understand my thinking.

Cleaning

Today I did something very strange - I cleaned. I know, where did the real Duane go? Feel free to have a heart attack now - I'll wait.

...

...

Done?

It took me about four hours - including the 1/2 hour for lunch. I cleaned out the computer room - mostly - the desk is still a mess, but you can now walk in the room without trying to walk on the ceiling. Next I cleaned the library, let's just say that once I got done with that room I could not help but yell "I CAN SEE THE FLOOR", enough said. I found more than enough cardboard to fill the tinny recycle bin that we have - I may need to make a trip to the recycling plant soon.

I'm tired now - too bad I have to go to the gym tonight. :-)

I would post some pics, but I didn't take any before shots.

Bookmarks

Hi, my name is Duane, and I'm a bookmarkaholic. I can't stop bookmarking sites that I find interesting - even if I'm not likely to return to the site. I finally took the time to get my bookmarks organized.
Here is a picture of my bookmark toolbar before I started (>200 unfiled bookmarks before):
To get everything organized I did the following:

• I moved all my bookmarks into one master folder called Sort.
• From that point, I worked through all the unfiled bookmarks; I either deleted them, or moved them into an appropriate folder.
• Next, I worked my way through all of the existing folders that I had; also deleting the bookmarks that I didn't need.
• Once a folder was cleaned out, it was then moved to another called Done (for rather obvious reasons).

I now have about 1/16 the bookmarks that I started with - much cleaner.

• Next I moved the bookmarks that I use the most frequently into the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder.
• The rest the bookmarks got moved into a folder called Others.
• To finish the job, I created a folder called Note Pad (named after Netscape 9's extension).

As a plus I use two extensions

1. Sort Bookmarks (which I can't find the current link to)
2. 2 Pane Bookmarks

All of this gives me a rather cleaner look, and much less clutter:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1928

Creation Museum Field-Trip

Really I'm just reposting a link to an article. Here is a quick excerpt from the article:

Presumably to avoid labels of anti-Semitism, the museum takes it easy on Judaism. So far, no surprises. But then we get to its handling of the science and truly step through the looking glass.

The Flickr slide show is an interesting look at the museum. All in all, worth a quick look.

Looking through the images, I can see how this would be a fundamentalist's wet-dream. You have to love how facts can be twisted to fit any agenda you may have.

Links from the post above:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/ars-takes-a-field-trip-the-creation-museum.ars
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drjonboyg/sets/72157600301874014/show/

Critical Thinking

Everyone knows them, those people who just can't seem to think for themselves. You have to hold their hand and lead them to the answer, often times having to give it to them. These people are an example of what I consider to be an epidemic in the US, a lack of *critical thinking* skills.

For those of you who do not know, I have worked in hotels for the last nine years. In that time, I have trained a lot of people on the various computer systems (called PMS - Property Management Systems in hotels) that hotels run. Thinking back, I have found that I employed two different kinds of training; the first kind I used was what I call the "What do you think" system, and the second being the "Let me walk you through" system. The "What do you think" system was where I would show someone how to do something, then the next day I would expect them to do it; often times in this system people would not know the answer, so I would ask the questions that should be going through their head (how, what, where, and why) "How do I get to my desired result?", "What will get me to my desired result?", etc. The "Let me walk you through" system was where I would continuously walk someone through the situation and show them the answer. The two systems gave different results, the second one resulted in more phone calls from staff that ran into a situation that I trained them for, but came at them in a different way; the first system resulted in fewer calls, and a more competent set of staff.

I'm sure you are asking how this all relates to the US as a whole. Simply put, people are not *taught* how to think critically, they are not taught to question. This means that many people in the world are just waiting for someone to give them the answers.

The current war, taking any old example. People were led by the hand into wanting the war. We were shown images, we were fed lies - the thing is, most people did not think about the information critically. Would critical thinking have stopped the war, no one can say for sure, but people would not have been so eager.

Religion; from the ripe old age of 14 days many people are introduced to religion. From that age people are taught to respect and fear religion, but never taught to truly think about it. Maybe if people were taught to critically think about religion, then there might be more atheists in the world.

The problem: Critical Thinking is not taught.
My solution: Teach critical thinking in every grade level. Teach the teachers how to alter their teaching methods to integrate it into the existing curriculum.

Critical thinking, the anti-drug.