We're trying to get things ready at the house for the BBQ next Saturday (if you haven't RSVP'ed yet, you're almost too late. If you know me and you didn't get an invitation, I must not have your email or it got caught as spam, because I invited everyone, so RSVP anyway.), and although Berta is doing a great job of spiffing things up, we still have the perennial issue with the garage entry area. Between the powder room with the diapers and the litter box for the cats, that area is expectedly a little bit more smelly than I'd like.
Combined with an interest to obtain the usual supplies to take care of that, I also noticed that I was running low on deodorant. Nothing like making the house smell nice and then not smelling very fresh myself. So I decided it was prudent to make a quick grocery run at lunch time to pick up some of these items.
While standing in the deodorant aisle looking for my usual brand, I saw the Axe brand body sprays. I had bought one of these once just to see what they were all about, and it turns out that they're just really, really strong deodorant-smelling perfume sprays. Not really a surprise, given the commercials. But a lack of another product on the shelf led me to recall the following character-building story from my jaded youth....
more
I've been doing a lot of things lately. Getting out of the house is becoming more common for me. And as I look forward to presentations at the PHP meetup at the end of April and PodCamp Ohio at the end of June, I've been attending little gatherings here and there as time allows. There are a couple trips in particular that require more elucidation than what effort I want to put into this seating, but I did want to write about something simple that strikes me every time I venture into the city for an event or meeting or whatever.
As I've observed in the past, you always take something with you when you visit somewhere like a major city, even if you're mostly retracing your steps. I've gotten in the habit of taking the R5 from Malvern to Market East on the instructions of folks whose company I enjoy but much less frequently these days than I like. On that route, I manage to walk through a good chunk of the Gallery, a kind of "train station meets three story mall". It is in this place that I've encountered one of my favorite Philly oddities.
It's just a matter of so many odd things being in one place at one time that strikes me, not that any one of these things in particular is odd. First off, I think that mall-on-station is probably a great idea commercially, but is still a tad strange. But then you add the fish and meat market. I think this is the only shopping center I've ever been in with a regular old Radio Shack, a bookstore, a CVS, a Game Stop, a standard food court, and... A fish market. Ok, maybe that's not weird, maybe it's just me. But then......
more
I've registered for PodCamp Ohio on June 28th, which takes place in Columbus. Podcamp is all about podcasting - having some kind of beyond-written blog with syndication. I think PodCamps aren't going to be my best venue -- I'd like to try more of a barcamp. It would be ideal if there was another BlogPhiladelphia, alas I've heard nothing and the people who I might have expected to be involved aren't talking about it. Oh, well.
I've been thinking about presenting something at the PodCamp to accumulate more for item 30 on my 43things. I'll be adding to this count shortly with another Philly PHP meetup presentation at the end of April, this time on PHP testing. For the PodCamp presentation (which is really more of a group-leading, since it's an "unconference"), I was thinking about talking about software tools for podcasters. more
There has been a good deal of tumult over a recent TechCrunch post that Mullenweg characterizes as a "hatchet job". There are some crazy folks trolling the comments over there, and although there are many points there I find on either side of the validity line both in the comments and the post itself, I do have my own perspective.
Changing Way brings up an interesting point about anyone being able to improve WordPress' spam prevention. After all, WordPress is GPL-licensed, and so anyone can take the source and improve it and re-release it. Skippy has offered a good argument for why a fork of WordPress would have difficulty materializing. But people seem convinced that anyone can submit code changes to the core software to have them included. While this may be generally possible, I think it's more difficult for the common person than you would imagine, and I think it is an unrealistic belief for this specific feature.
Consider that Automattic runs Akismet, a hosted spam prevention service. Packaged with WordPress is a plugin that uses Akismet, which also requires a WordPress.com API key. If you are a pro blogger (which is one reason why most people don't lend some credence to this) then the service that prevents spam is a commercial service, from which Automattic profits. You can also choose not to use the plugin if you aren't worried about spam or have chosen some other route or protection. Where's the bad here? more
In the recent 941/942 double-issue of Entertainment Weekly, they've listed 32 things (page 110) that they hate about Entertainment these days. They've not gone far enough. I've revised their list to make more sense. Observe:
1. EW: "Paris Hilton on CNN"
Me: "Paris Hilton"
You may be able to tell how this is going to go...
2. EW: "The overuse of that damn KT Tunstall song 'Suddenly I see'"
Me: The overuse of any song that might otherwise be a catchy pop tune that one could easily put into their MP3 rotation. Additionally, the changing of words to "good" (read: recognizable) songs to be used as advertising jingles. Also, the word "damn" as an adjective. (Editor dude, it's a verb.)
3. EW: "TV shows that end at 10:02pm. Our DVRs don't know to wait up."
Me: TV networks that haven't figured out how to cater to DVR users. Tivo for patenting the process and TV Networks for scaring other DVR makers into not providing the handy time-shifting features that would record those extra two minutes. (Hey, mine does it. EW, does your equipment suck?)
Oh yes, there are 32 of these... more
