Chawlk

1. Drawar
2. Fenxy
3. Decaflon
4. Two Credits
5. Wriging
6. Loose Suits
7. Chixe
8. Dud3s
9. Wing Colors

 

I'm a New Zealander that has set up camp in Australia, who tends to speak his mind (as Tyme can attest). ;)

I tend to blog about technology and geeky stuff as am a Systems Administrator by day. I'm (secretly) a Mac user trapped in a Windows user's body and am occasionally confused as a result.

Lately I have become entirely obsessed with Valve's Team Fortress 2. Team based virtual combat at it's absolute comic best.

I could describe myself, or what I do a good deal more, but death-from-verbosity is sure to follow in return.

Advertising isn't evil. Without it we'd have no clue wtf we wanted for dinner that night, or what colour shirt was a bad call for work the next day.

Advertising got you here (including word-of-month).

Callous idiotic placement of advertising, messing up navigation by inserting a click-through-page advert and generally defacing content by trying to rip your readers off, is.

Those suggesting all advertising is evil and as such will ignore people who use it (even sensibly) is quite a narrow minded view, in my humble opinion. It begs the question, why are you here?

9rules advertise. Isn't that breaking one's own rule?

Advertising does not have to be flashing neon signs and poorly chosen oversized google adword placements.

Smart use of screen real-estate without an in-your-face-bitch mentality is actually something that should be promoted. If more people did as such this would become an entirely moot point.

Twitter and Gmail.

Very occasionally MSN - however I find Instant Message clients tend to be a massive distraction and IRC can be a very unhealthy environment to exist in.

> A friend who's a doctor theorized that aluminum in deodorant might've done it.

Unless it has a ferris element (i.e. an alloy) aluminium (or aloominum for you Americian types) typically doesn't react to magnetic fields unless there is a lot of energy involved.

An MRI might well have the power to do 'odd' things to aluminium, however the trace amounts used in deodorants is extremely small. I can't imagine a few parts-per-thousand is enough to move several pounds of limbs. ;)

The last one I had they strapped me down (no, really, real leather straps 'n shi.. stuff) so even if I wanted to twitch, I couldn't. ;)

Technically any ferris metal (iron) will react to a magnetic field, so whilst trace amounts of iron probably wouldn't be affected, we're still dealing with extremly potent electro-magnetic fields.

It could well be be a form of random 'noise' generated in the nervous system due to the magnetic waves interacting with existing nervous impulses (which are, essentially, an electrical signal).

I've moved much of my mail handling over to google apps. And gmail makes light work of lots of varying email.

I host one of my domains via apps and am pondering moving everything else there.

Their apps are pretty solid and having things like docs and spreadsheet work flawlessly via gmail is cool.

It's interesting, but I don't actually use an email client now... gmail and google reader have replaced it.

Which rocks as now no matter what device or computer I use, I can tap into "my stuff" anywhere, at any time. And that, imho, is pretty massive.

Now, if there was only a mobile version of 9rules notes.. ;)

However many happen to be relevant for any one post.

..for me, that can vary from one, to ten or more - if one sticks to relevant topics or information, then people tend to follow those links naturally.

Some links will always attract more attention, but from the occasional time spent going through google analytics click-through metrics - relevancy seems to be the top motivator.

jackosh,

The shadow really stands out - very cool.

This whole thing sorta reminds me of those old-skool pin boards that you could press an object down on and all the pins would adjust to render the shape..

I dotified out quite well, really.

"One lesson I learned was to blog/write because you want to, not because you feel obligated to."

I think, at some point, everyone learns that fundamental basic. If one no longer writes because they want to, but because they fell an obligation or pressure to, then the writing will likely suffer and it's more humane, in a way, to pull-the-plug and start again, or simply walk away.

I've done both in the past (including purging a site [well 2, if you count my old podcast] and 2 years worth of entries) - so I hear ya. ;)

Tyme's ToDo Tasks - is it me, or does that have a real web 2.0 feel to it?

.. and I really dig the honest responses. Thank you (to all who have responded).

"If anything I think you will find that because of these things you will see us on 9rules even more, which to me is a very, very good thing." - Scrivs

Indeed it is. And I certainly "get" why changing clothes on occasion can be a healthy thing.

You've put a lot of work in, hell you all expend insane amounts of time for the community you've built.. and it shows (imho) - it really does.

"It makes sense wanting a change and no matter what URL Mike, Scrivs and Tyme hang their hats on, they will still be around as they are a big part of 9rules." - seanrox

Agreed. The effort put in shows as Notes seems to be exploding both in the rate of Notes being created and all the new voices..

Bring on 2010 - 9rules style.

"I just spent £70 on a dictionary. Am I insane?"

No. Just.. dedicated. ;)

And the volume will likely increase in value over time (as books tend to do). Consider it an investment, with a twist.

There is often a "negative" reaction to being called a nerd.. someone who is "square" or socially awkward - yet I don't think there is the social stigma to it as it once was..

The idea of the "geek" in some respects has it's roots in nerdship - the function of being massively into something and getting pretty clued up about it. That has a nerd aspect to it..

Geek actually originated in circus circles, to describe those who bite off the heads of chickens (perhaps that is why the "rubber chicken" has often often been considered and in some ways is the defacto geek mascot).

Given geeks the world over regularly bite the heads off people asking for support (*grin*) there's possibly some truth to that. ;)

I am a geek and in some respects a nerd and I have my occasional socially awkward moments (some would call that simply being "shy" in other circles).

And the terms don't worry me in the slightest - indeed to be "geek" is to embrace technology and cool toys.. kinda failing to see the negativity in that. ;)

And really, the who idea behind "nerd" has become partially blended with geek as it is.

Words (or rather, "names") only have power and meaning if you allow them to.

Depends entirely on taste and what one is doing.

Vista is intensive and needs horsepower. Yes, it's pretty, yes there are some nice bells and whistles. And yes, it can be very slow doing some of the most basic tasks.

Vendor support for Vista is poor and will remain so for some time, as there is quite a jump between the two driver model wise and vendors are struggling to find stability.

One of the few reasons to run windows is the great device support - that's rendered a bit hit and miss with Vista.

Personally, after using Vista, then rolling back to a mixture of Ubuntu and XP I can honestly say Vista isn't actually ready for general use. It's still very rough around the edges and has a way to go yet.

It's still buggy, it still has performance issues, over time the boot process turns to molasses (and you thought XP gets slow) and in general the polish is missing in a lot of places.

This is supposed to be Microsoft's best desktop OS ever - and it's just not.

Stay put until Vista matures.. you may feel a bit envious when friends upgrade but you'll have less consternation when you find out they are regressing and you don't have to. ;)

They have gone to the same place as the left socks that never return from the laundry. Those that make it back.. well, you'd be disorientated too, no?

Guess where the little girl got the idea from - you can hear a certain amount of inflection that reflects the lady's voice in the video.

.. the sincerity is brilliant - not to mention the whole 'don't mess with me' stance. ;)

A reminder that children are *always* listening, sometimes despite appearances. ;)

Actually - you know you have a genuine web 2.0 product when the nice men from Google send you a honking great big cheque (check) with a *large* number of zero's on it. ;)

"Ah good 'ol free speech in America."

There's free speech, then there is shooting yourself, in the foot, with a howitzer, just to feel better. ;)

You have zero way of knowing if any future employers, be they a fleeting contract, or a longer proposition will read what you write. And bad mouthing a (shit, or otherwise) previous employer is a sure way to, err, be "less interesting" to the next.

Despite the inevitable ineptitude of middle management when it comes to "that thar interweb thang" - some have a nasty habit of actually knowing how to drive it.

If they know the word google comes before dot and com - then you're in even more trouble.

If you're going to post anyway - really wise to not name names (people or companies) - if nothing else, if some prospective employer comes along, they can see whilst you don't take shit from anyone, you won't burn bridges in the process.

Lot's of javascript dohickies that don't do a lot, cause most browsers to exhaust all available resources (ram, cpu, users patience) but *look* really cool. It must also be fluro coloured..

.. and you need a catch-phrase that doesn't actually mean anything.

You also have to ensure this all new "idea" runs on systems not designed for it, so it performs more slowly than glacial ice movement - ensure you have insufficient resources right when it matters most.

Beryl runs quite well on AIGLX, but not perfectly.. but then, ATI has never put any real focus into Linux, so this is what we end up with..

Erm.. I use a combination of Songbird and RhythmBox.

I'm afraid I'm an (mt) junkie. So my thoughts are obviously warped in their direction.

But they do the job with a minimum of fuss.

Locked drawer eh? There is one solution to open that baby up..

There is nothing that cannot be opened without suitable application of explosives. ;)

"Oh my! You're from England?! Say something British!"

Try being a kiwi (New Zealander) living in Australia.

I get people asking me to say "fish and chips" more frequently than most people get felt up going through US airport terminals.

It's insane.

And, to be honest, I think I *like* being a my.9ruler - and it isn't really "just" either.

Notes allows everyone, from all walks of life, both 9rule member and notes junkie alike to just, simply, talk.

There is no *just* a my.9ruler. We are all Notes users here. It doesn't matter if one is a 9rules member or not.

Were else can you read about someone's sex life one moment, watch squeaky people do stupid things with cats the next, then walk straight into a deep philosophical debate.

That's tight, in'it?

"I blog to make connections."

Sounds familiar. ;)

At least we know why he's got a high pitched voice - he's done it before and kitty rebelled.

Sundays tend to be 'net free' day - it's become a sort of defacto "me" day where I kick back and do all the stuff I like doing that doesn't require an Internet or wireless connection.

Highly recommend it.

Looks like a half decent alternative to the usual crop of MS fones.

It does handle the 90 degree screen rotate depending on function quite well.

I must admit I am a bit of an attention junkie.. and as I'm forever curious as to why people do or say, what they do or say, I find myself at the keyboard more often than not, as much involved in discussion as I am blogging.

.. he say's as he adds a space in the title. ;)

The weird thing is, that I have come across all manner of (English) punctuation recommendations and none seem to mention the whole space, or no-space thing.

Personally? I've always found the space between the sentence-and-question-mark made reading more difficult.

Beer leaking out of ears would be bad.. real bad.. why?

Who wants to chat with someone sucking amber nectar out of their ears?

*ba-da-boom-tish*

I'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress..

I'll take what's in bag number two.. one is just, well, wrong.

Other than an atrocious inability to speak english, oh and that Iraq thing, he's actually been pretty boring.

No Monica's... no Watergate.. just nooculer this and that.

It looks remarkably similar to Segoe UI (default Vista font).

But then it could be Lucida Sans Typewriter Regular as well.. that's half the problem with half of Microsoft's typefaces - they all look the same. ;)