Categories
technology

Google’s Own Messenger

I know you’re thinking it. If you’re not well you can start now. When is Google going to come out with their own instant message program? They’re obviously working on it. Think about it — they started out with creating the world’s best search engine, then they bought out my favourite blogging service: Blogger, they own a pretty nifty networking service: Orkut and they’ve stated they want to infringe upon Microsoft’s turf. They clearly need to enter the messenger market in order to really pull the mass market of users from Hotmail to Gmail. I’m aware of Hello the IM that Blogger is pushing for the purpose of photoblogging, though I haven’t tried it. But I’m looking for something that can interact with my webmail – a true blue google product. It’s only a matter of time until we see “The Google Messenger”, and I, for one, cannot wait.

Update: Turns out Google doesn’t own Orkut, they are just affiliated. From Orkut’s help page:

Why is it called orkut?

Category: General
Updated: 2/9/2004
Answer
orkut.com is a new social networking service named for the Google engineer who developed it, Orkut Buyukkokten. (Orkut is easier to spell and pronounce than Buyukkokten.) This was created as an independent project and is not part of the Google product portfolio.

Update August 2005: Google Talk has just been released.

Categories
war

The War in Iraq – A Soldiers Viewpoint

I received a forwarded email this morning quoting a blog posting of a letter from a soldier in Iraq.

The gist of what this guy says is that while he is grateful for people “supporting the troops” he is disappointed that they don’t support the war.

My quick response to that is: the people don’t support the war because the reasons used to justify it were lies, it’s a waste of money and people, and it’s not going to make a long term difference.

Of course he supports the war, he’s a gun toting, warmongering soldier who loves kicking ass over there, and he just wishes the American people could understand how fun that is.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Fighting Tickets in Alberta

On the day of my last exam in the spring semester, I raced home from the university so happy to finally be done for summer. I raced home at 105 km per hour according to the photo-radar bastards, exactly 15 km an hour over the posted limit. Now they want me to pay a cool $90 but I’m thinking of asking for a reduction. Gary shares his ticket fighting strategies and unless I’ll lose more money from not working that day, I’ll probably take his advice.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Canadian Election

The “pre-election” spending spree can now become the “election” spending spree, as Prime Minister Paul Martin visited Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and asked her to dissolve the 37th Parliament. Thus setting off a 36 day federal election campaign, ending with the vote on June 28th. This is the first general election for all three of the main party leaders. Slumping Liberal support in polls and a more regional vote should make this interesting. I’m predicating a minority government with the Liberals being the party with the most seats while the NDP and Alliance being on opposite ends of the spectrum fill in the rest of the seats and make sure that nothing is passed.

Categories
backmasking

Backmasking

I’ve decided to add a little something to my backmasking page. So for now I’m working on adding Britney Spears — Hit Me Baby One More Time, Queen — Another One Bites the Dust, and The Beatles — I’m So Tired. I might be tempted to add more after these ones are completed and online. This post would be a good place to comment on other songs you’d like to hear backward samples from (of songs that are known for backmasking).

Update May 23rd, 2004: The new backmasking additions are up.

Update: June 9th, 2004: I just added Pink Floyd’s “Empty Spaces” to the backmasking page.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Anna-Maria’s New Job

Anna got the job at the University that she had applied for. It seems like a pretty great job and she is very excited about it. She will be in charge of the Summer Programs for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. It’s similar to something she did working for the college three years ago only this time she is in charge of the whole program. It will be interesting having us both work at the University – I start my New Media Movie Making Camp in July and she started work today.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Andy’s Evidence is in

As disappointing as this is, I still don’t know whether or not Andy is back. Pictures posted from the Bunny Ranch seem to indicate that Tony Clifton, not Andy Kaufman showed up last night.

Andy Kaufman’s new blog claims however that he was there and that he is the real deal. Yahoo news has stated that they believe him, but who can believe anything Yahoo posts — after being fooled by Andrew Carlssin the time-traveler I won’t trust them anymore. Not that I believed he was a time-traveler but I at least thought the story about someone claiming to be from the future was true. I never noticed the part about the Weekly World News covering the story.

Anyway Google News about Andy is coming in fast, and though I wanted so badly to be right, it looks like he’s really gone.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Dokaka Hums

He hums your favorite tunes. I downloaded Teen Spirit and yeah, Dokaka is pretty good.

As a five-year-old child, Dokaka hummed along with melodies on television, but one day plugged headphones into the TV, discovering that the sounds in his head matched those piping through the headphones. He quickly realized that songs consist of many parts like bass, drums, etc. Within a year, he began to record himself humming.

At 18, Dokaka started drumming in bands, and four years later stumbled upon his childhood recordings, reigniting his interest in humming. He was first heard humming by others when his band’s bassist missed practice, so he hummed the bassline. The band’s singer found the humming catchy and recommended professional recording. Dokaka financed and produced his own recordings and uploaded them to the internet, dubbing himself with the onomatopoeic name “Dokaka” from his drum-derived humming sounds!

Categories
Miscellaneous

90 Days of Nasa’s Martian Rovers in 90 Seconds

NASA has provided 90 second videos of the first 90 sols (martian days) of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers [both are 5MB .mov].

Categories
Miscellaneous

Andy Kaufman Just Emailed Me!

I don’t believe this. Someone with the email address “Andy Kaufman” (andykaufmanreturns@hotmail.com) just emailed me the following this morning at 9:10AM with the subject “i’m back”:

Greetings from planet earth.

Just thought I’d let you know that I’m back.

I’m broadcasting my pirate signal from:

http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com

Take care,

Andy

On the blog the writer claims he has proof he is Andy and that he is going to make a public appearance at the Bunny Ranch tomorrow night between 8pm and midnight.