Category Archives: geekspeak

site-related techspeak, computer crap, other technical garble not of interest to the general populace.

geekspeak 1 Comment

…But Do I NEED One?

I bought Aaron an iPhone for Christmas 2008. I bought one for myself shortly thereafter.

We used to have ridiculously cheap Nokia cellphones, with Tracfone pay-as-you-go plans. Our friends used to joke with us that it was so bizarre how we were cell phone luddites, while still having the latest and greatest in other techie gadgetry and entertainment technology. (Truth be told, we aren’t early adopters, and neither do we have the fanciest and newest stuff. We just have a really big HDTV.)

Our iPhones vaulted us into the 21st century, mobilely speaking. Not only do we text each other (and, on occasion, our friends), but we read the news, check Twitter, search on Google and Wikipedia, and get ourselves unlost in the car (and in foreign countries) with our iPhones.

Did we need our iPhones? Hell, no. But they sure make life easier.

Now, there’s this iPad. In its current state, it basically looks like a really big iPod Touch, or maybe like a Kindle and an iPhone had a baby. This fills in a gap that Apple seems to have invented, or at least exploited:

cellphone > smartphone > tablet > netbook > notebook > laptop > desktop

Aaron and I bought an old Dell laptop at a garage sale a couple of summers ago. We bought a new power supply and battery, got a network card and a DVD player, some more memory, and now we’re golden. The last time our laptop got any use was when Aaron was using it as a portable DVD player while doing some indoor stationary biking. Before that, we took it on vacation with us, to blog and surf from our hotel room.

For me to be interested in purchasing the iPad in its next iteration (because, really, only Mac fanboys buy 1st gen Apple products), Apple is going to have to convince me that there is a need in my life for this product. With the iPhone, the basic need it served was that of communication. Instant, and in multiple mediums. Phone, text, e-mail, web. And it fits in my pocket or purse. But this? I don’t think I’m their target audience. I’m not a Mac fangirl, or a student, or a young executive who prides herself on having the latest and greatest.

That’s not to say that I won’t play with the iPad when I see it in the next Apple Store I happen across. But I’m as likely to buy an iPad as I am to buy a MacBook Air, despite the major price difference between the two.

Prove me wrong, Apple…

otaku 2 Comments

Lain Figurine

Lain Figurine
[Taken on 14 Jan 2010 | 1/60sec @ f/6.3 | ISO 800 | 200mm | off-camera flash, bounced]

Serial Experiments Lain was one of the first anime series Aaron got me to watch, over ten years ago now. If you’re into anime or sci-fi, especially thought-provoking (or even mind-fucking) plots and universes, you owe it to yourself to watch it through. It’s only 13 episodes, so it’s not a huge time investment, but the experience is worth it.

site-related 1 Comment

A Narrow Writing Window

It’s funny: I have, let’s see, no less than fifteen ideas for blog entries written in my faux-Moleskine notebook, yet I can’t make myself sit down and write.

Part of the problem, at least for today, is that I let myself get sucked into video games during my tiny bit of productive, brain-is-working time. Part of the problem is that my body has reacted unusually strongly to the time change this year, and demands to be put to bed an hour earlier.

If I want to write a coherent blog entry that’s worth reading, I need to get my ass in my desk chair shortly after dinner, without any TV or gaming. If I want to watch TV or play games, I need to resign myself to that being the only thing that gets done that evening.

Tomorrow is Photo Thursday. That I can do.

site-related 1 Comment

Temporarily B0rked

Somehow, between Thursday and Friday evenings, my Movable Type installation got slightly hosed. The permissions on all my cgi scripts were wrong — not sure how or when that happened, since my hosting provider claims they haven’t made any changes — but setting those back didn’t fix everything. At least now I can post from my iPhone again, even though the normal New Entry screen is still hosed.

So, although I have several posts in the mental queue (new scanner, weekend with Amy, various photos), entries may be scarce while I’m having to tickety-tap them out on my iPhone keyboard.

Here’s hoping the nice people on the MT forums will be able to help…

site-related

Referrers

Usually, when I’m curious about who finds my blog and what they’re looking for, I check my Google Analytics. It rarely shows me anything I didn’t already know, honestly; for instance, most people find my blog by searching for either CC’s Archibald Barasol joke, t-shirt surgery, or the lyrics for “What the Fuck Chuck” by the Phunk Junkeez.

One thing I’d forgotten, though, is that Google Analytics only works for pages on which I’ve stuck its code; that is, only on my blog proper. This evening, I checked my server’s AWStats page to see usage/hit stats on everything in the dianaschnuth.com domain, including all my archived websites of old. What I found was intriguing.

My top referrer so far this year? A Wikipedia article on the RCA tape cartridge (1958-1964). Back in college, I had a brief fascination with audio recording media, including various cassette media. I created a small sub-site on my personal homepage (circa 1998) that housed all the research I’d done, including a page on this oversized early cassette tape by RCA.

It’s a damn shame I didn’t notice earlier that the Back link was broken. This was an archive of a page I hadn’t touched in YEARS, but wanted to keep for posterity (and because I’d done a decent amount of research). I’m going in right now and fixing broken internal links — but that fantastic late-90s design is staying the same. Again, for posterity, despite the fact that the damn background with that tiny font makes my eyes bleed.

Another surprise was that my review of Fujiyama / Domo on Urbanspoon is generating a decent amount of traffic for me, too. When I look up this stat on Google Analytics and drill through for more detailed info, it seems that people usually only stay on my site for about a minute after clicking through to read my full review, unfortunately.

Sometimes I consider looking into some sort of banner ads for the pages that get the most traffic. But then I realize that a single page getting 100 hits a month is peanuts.

I think I’ll stick with blogging for the sake of blogging. Monetizing this motherfucker would be too much work.