Momalies

11 05 2007

On NPR on the ride to work this morning, I heard a great segment on a book about “Momalies,” (as in things your mother used to tell you when you were younger). Everyone’s got them, and some of the ones from the callers were excellent. The best one I heard, (which the lady said was from her grandmother, so technically a “Gramaly!” :) ) is just perfect for any teenager in the midst of standard teen angst, (and/or some eldens, as well):

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think if you knew how often they did it.”

Took me several runs through and more than a moment to think about / digest, but what a truly _excellent_ statement of wisdom!

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Note: Would love to toss a link over to the author of Momalies and her book, (not to mention pick up a copy myself) but can’t seem to find it anywhere, not on Google, not on Amazon, not in the show’s program notes, not at the URL that I could have sworn I heard - www.momalies.net, (and tried several spelling variations). If anyone knows the right stuff, let me know.

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UPDATE (2007-10-20): Many thanks to Patti Londre for helping with the correct spelling / link. It’s actually “Momilies“. And makes sense she’d know - looks like Patti’s running a mighty cool place - Camp Get Away - “Weekend Retreats for Mothers and Others.” Check it out! :)



Site of the Day: Pledgie

23 03 2007

Simple, nicely designed, and most importantly, right motivation - trying to do their own little part to try to make the world better. And even if they help only a little, they’ve still helped, (not to mention couldn’t possibly agree more with what they said about becoming fathers. :) )

From their About page:

“….people passionate about a cause can do little more than directly give money. What is lacking is the technological means for an online volunteerism to flourish, where individuals can raise money on behalf of others in a highly personal way. This is why we created Pledgie.com

“Pledgie.com was created by an artist Mark and a programmer Garry…..Garry and Mark are both new fathers and as such the words “discretionary income” are no longer in our vocabularies. Yet, becoming fathers actually increased our desire to make the world better.

“It is in this spirit that we hope Pledgie as an idea directly or indirectly makes the world a better place. “



Mac Switch Parody

26 07 2006

Now, I’ll admit, I’ve been salivating about the potential of picking up a Powerbook/MacBook Pro for quite some time, but it’s good to see that with the exception of some rounded corners, my life won’t actually change that much! :) Major kudos to Hunter Kressall!

WARNING: Not suitable for the kidlings!



Ingredients for Web 2.0 Success

12 06 2006

I knew I should have gone to this session from Alexis @ Reddit, (hey, he definitely earned the linklove on that one!) - but I think he stole my material! ;)



Minjas & Viral Marketing

13 04 2006

Ok, was in the mood for a good chuckle, so decided to poke around on YouTube a bit, came across the AskaNinja videos, and couldn’t stop laughing! :)

Ask A Ninja Question 18 "Minjas"

Then go check out AskaNinja.com for more - they’re awesome! :)

BTW - putting back on the marketing hat - I can’t stress enough how valuable it is to make some part of your product portable away from your site as YouTube’s done above.*1* Give folks the ability to modify / color / flavor / select just what they like, so that they have ownership of some portion of what you’ve done, and they’ll be more than thrilled to take and pass along to friends, family, etc., as I’ve done above, (and loved to do! :) ).

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*1* Unfortunately, the bit of code that YouTube put out to embed the above screws up the stock Wordpress XHTML Transitional validation, (which could screw up search engines). Luckily, in the case of embedding Flash, since there really isn’t a good way to do without breaking validation or inserting javascript, I’m sure the SE’s simply ignore anything in <object> tags, so think you should still be good.



MS Repacks iPod

27 02 2006

What more can I say - Absolute Genius!



Kids refuse to sell candy after completing health unit

10 02 2006

Hear, Hear! Good for our kids to help remind us of how to conduct ourselves, (they do that a lot! :) )!

Kids at a Florida elementary school refused to sell candy to raise money for a field trip, having just completed an educational unit on health and well-being. The widow of Dr Atkins was so moved by their commonsense that she donated $16,000 to their school so they could afford the trip without selling junk-food.

More

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BTW - for anyone else wondering about the etymology of "Hear, Hear!" it’s here, here, (ok, so I’m a linguistics geek, too - not terribly surprising, is it? ;) ).



Web 2.0 interface design checklist

2 02 2006

A very cute tongue-in-cheek look at interface design for all of us who are hopefully building out sites to make us all ludicrously wealthy, (or, in my case, still digesting the stupid Ruby books - nice language, Rails looks to be an excellent framework, but still would prefer that magic code wand! :) ).



Incontrovertible Proof that the English Language will be just fine.

23 11 2005

Overheard from one teenager to another on her way out from Panera:

Teen 1: “You going to the game tomorrow?”

Teen 2: “Duh!”

(Teen 1 nods, turns and heads off…)

Makes me feel all warm and cozy inside….



A truly marvelous site for dry humor

23 11 2005

Came across this site while working on a revised company name, (a nice, mindless activity for the day before Thanksgiving! :) ) have been laughing solidly for the better part of a half an hour, and the scroller is still only about 10% down the page! :)



Younger Daughter developing Icelandic Accent!

20 10 2005

For those of you who know me, you know how much my wife and children mean to me - how much joy they bring into my heart every day, (yes, even when my wife is driving me nuts! :) ) how much I truly feel honored to have them with me in my life, (was funny, yesterday when I stopped in at the grocery store for something quick at lunchtime, the checkout girl said “I’m not used to seeing you without your girls - you don’t look right…” - she made me smile - and yes, she was right, I don’t look right without them! :) ).

My most recent bit of amusement came this morning while I was driving my younger daughter, Erin, (3 1/2) to her school. While waiting for my elder daughter, Katie’s, (5 1/2) bus this morning, the kids were on Nick Jr watching LazyTown videos - if you haven’t watched, you really should - it’s an excellent show, with really good messages on nutrition and exercise, (he says from sitting in a cushy chair by the fire inside a Panera - a highly recommended work environment, btw - free Wifi, all the coffee you can drink, made fresh for you, and some mighty tasty goodies! :) ). And, of course, as almost always happens, the songs got stuck in our heads, so we were singing “La-C-Scouts,” (the show comes from Iceland, so both Sportacus - who really is stunning with his flips, pushups, standing on one hand on a soccer ball, etc - I couldn’t do _any_ of that, even when I was in tip-top shape! - and Robbie Rotten have Icelandic accents - a “z” becomes an “s,” a “u” becomes an “o,” etc. - I love listening to accents, and having worked for a Norwegian company for 2 yrs, this kind of feels like “old home!” :) ). And when Erin was singing “sluggish,” she sang it as “sloggish,” which gave me quite a good laugh - my elder daughter has gotten a bit of a Dominican accent when she speaks Spanish, since her teacher was from the Dominican Republic, and my younger is definitely starting to have a bit of an Icelandic one on some of her words! :) Good for them - I’ve always loved languages and accents, am glad that they’re developing, as well, (’course, the elder one won’t take corrections, so horse is “cabaejo,” rather than “cabaeyo,” so soon, if Erin follows suit, I may have to start referring to her as “Helga!” ;) ).

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BTW, for the Nick Jr folks, (pitched to the woman in charge of in March / April, but can’t remember her name, and didn’t put her in my Contacts folder) - very simple enhancement to your site if you don’t want people pirating your content - if you’re dying to remove content from the main area where it’s accessed, (in this case, the video player, and, come on, it’s time to broaden out to include Firefox!) please make sure to provide an accessible archive somewhere - the kids love to watch videos on Nick Jr,* and it breaks their heart, and thus ours, to have to say “I know you liked watching Stephanie singing “Bing Bang,” or Robbie Rotten doing “You are a Pirate,” (thank you for bringing back this morning!) but I’m afraid we can’t anymore, it’s not there…. And you make a tech-savvy parent have to say “no” to their child for something that stupid, look for downloads of VirtualDub to start to rise to take make _your_ ability to disappoint _our_ children go away, (trust me, the _last_ thing good parents need is additional assistance in saying “no” to our children!) - hence the problem with many of these stupid DRM systems - when DRM is combined with poor choices, especially when young children are involved, you’re just _begging_ to turn folks into pirates, (”Yar Har, Fiddle-dee-dee”). And the pressure for this to happen didn’t need to be there - foolish choice, with fairly well-foreseeable negative consequences, (to both the site and the brands).

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* Even with those crap forced ads that you can’t skip by after 5 videos in the last couple of weeks - bogus, just bogus - I know you’re comped only on rev from the site, rather than the effect the site has as a branding tool to keep getting us all to purchase more Dora Live tickets, or Maya & Miguel Backpacks, etc., and that’s a bit of big-company foolishness, but come on, if you’re going to do a forced interrupt ad, you should at least be able to skip by, if you want to - there’ll _still_ be plenty of ads shown, you’ll still have facilitated an additional series of nags to us parents to buy this or that, etc. - online is supposed to be Interactive, which means User-Controlled, but back to our above story….)