Alex's id funnel

They Might Be Giants: Damn Good Times

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:32:00 +0000

They Might Be Giants: Damn Good Times

This is my favorite song on The Spine after Experimental Film.

Apple TV iOS portable remote

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:28:00 +0000

The rumors and speculations regarding the Apple TV before it was announced on Wednesday, these I found to be wild guesses. People were talking about it being renamed the iTV as if this were "exciting". It was pretty certain, and confirmed, that the Apple TV runs iOS. I expected this to just be handy on the back-end, so Apple programmers could use one programming architecture for all of their non-computer devices. Others guessed, hoped, dreamed, that apps would be available for Apple TV, which I found bizarre. I can't think of many apps that I would want to use with a five button remote, looking at a screen across the room. One suggestion was that portable iOS devices could work as screens for individual users for games, like tile racks for Scrabble; the iPad Scrabble app supports using an iPhone/iPod touch as a tile rack. I think this is possible, but only really useful for board games. Some people imagined that the Apple TV could act as a game console rivaling the Wii; I don't expect the latency between an iOS controller and Apple TV to be fast enough to use as a game controller, nor do I think that a $99 set-top box could be powerful enough to play modern games.

I also noticed that Apple is offering an app to use iOS portables as a remote for the Apple TV, and this is probably the best use for Apple TV/iOS portable integration. I'm surprised that this has earned minimal press coverage, except for at iThinkDiff and Wireless and Mobile News, and their treatment of this feature is about one or two sentences long. There was wild speculation about iOS portable integration with Apple TV before the Apple TV was announced, but little coverage, now, of what this integration can actually do. The remote app hasn't been released yet, so reviews of it can't be written; even so, the noise leading up to the Apple TV has dwarfed the actual coverage of facts regarding what the Apple TV can do with iOS portables. I have a pet peeve about Apple tech news coverage mostly being wild guessing and punditry, with much heat and little light; Daring Fireball is the main exception.

The Joking Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:15:00 +0000

The Joking Computer:
Computer generated jokes than your third-grade brother would tell. For example:

Q. how is a nude stream different from a reserve legal document?
A. one is a bare spill, the other is a spare bill.

One that made no sense to me until the computer explained the joke:
Q. what do you get when you cross a banquet with a geographical area?
A. a feast africa.
Its reasoning: "east africa is a kind of geographical area". This site lives in the uncanny valley of puns.

Three times a day

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:58:00 +0000

Three times a day, on average, I remember that I have bipolar disorder and that I'm getting treatment and that my life is so much better, happier, more pleasant, than it was before I got treatment.

Just now, I was going through some files on my computer, and found "Tea Optimization.numbers", a spreadsheet I used to track how long and at what temperature tea ought to be brewed at. I'm a fastidious person, and always have been, and I do think it's important to brew good tea. I brew loose tea, and I use a timer to make sure I don't stew it. When I saw the spreadsheet file, though, I felt a little silly.

I had distrust in the idea that boiling water should be used to brew tea. This was something that I liked to talk about at parties, I would talk about how the tannins were released if you brewed the tea at above 180 Fahrenheit. (I don't actually know what tannins are.) So, I was brewing my tea very meticulously, measuring time and temperature, trying to get it perfect. I made a spreadsheet to record how I brewed tea because I didn't trust anyone else to have properly experimented with brewing tea.

Before I started treatment, I felt guilty and anxious a lot of the time, even if nothing was wrong. I feel at ease now, not all the time, but most of the time, enough that normal feels normal. I'm not filled with distrust anymore about ultimate truth or tea.

So, that was one of my three or so things for today that remind me that life is better now.

Triceratops and Torosaurus become a thorny issue

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:12:00 +0000

I was nervous when I saw the title, Triceratops and Torosaurus become a thorny issue - chicagotribune.com: "Triceratops: Beyond extinct". Triceratops has always been my favorite dinosaur. Triceratops and Torosaurus are likely the same species, at different maturity levels. This quote made me less nervous:

"Triceratops: Beyond extinct"; "You'll get a lot more hits on Google if you type in Triceratops instead of Torosaurus, and if you don't understand why that matters, you're, well, a dinosaur. So let's agree: A Triceratops isn't a baby Torosaurus — a Torosaurus is a grown-up Triceratops."

I got an email thanking me for signing a petition that I didn't sign, regarding bear farming.

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:35:00 +0000

I just got the below email in my inbox from the World Society for the Protection of Animals. (Ricky Gervais is on the front page of their webpage. Also, they stopped bullfighting in Catalonia, so I guess that's good. I've never heard of the WSPA before today, and I certainly didn't sign the petition mentioned below.

Thank you for signing the petition against bear farming in South Korea. Your signature will help us show the government that people around the world are calling for an end to this brutal cruelty.

Right now, thousands of bears are suffering in desperately cruel conditions bear farms across Asia. Most are held in cages the size of a telephone booth, in which they are unable to stand and can hardly turn around.

These bears are confined so bile can be extracted from their gall bladders and sold for use in some Traditional Asian Medicines, even though research has proven that herbal and synthetic alternatives are just as effective for treating ailments.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) believes that bear farming is cruel, unnecessary and must come to an end. Increasing numbers of Traditional Asian Medicine practitioners agree and are turning to herbal and synthetic alternatives to bear bile.

If you agree that no animal deserves this horrible treatment, support WSPA with a donation today. WSPA is working to end bear farming by: working in partnership with Asian governments — using research, education and diplomacy to work for an end to bear farming; calling for an end to the illegal trade in bear products; and, working with practitioners and consumers of Traditional Asian Medicine to promote alternatives to bear bile.

You can make an online donation, securely through this website: [redacted]

Thank you,
Silia Smith, Regional Director
WSPA Canada

Wild variety of things hit by car en route to pool

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:31:00 +0000

A teenager fell asleep, and drove through:

all terrain vehicles
go-carts
garage
grape arbor
swing set
dog run
deck

before landing in a:

swimming pool (above-ground).

It's like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but with a car instead of a caterpillar, and a swimming pool instead of a beautiful butterfly.

I have catalogued other car in pool things.

The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:30:00 +0000

The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance by Patrick Sharkey in PNAS

Violence makes it tough for kids in a community to read, even a week after the event, and even if the kids don't witness it themselves. Living in inner city Baltimore, I am exposed to other things that make it difficult to learn. I don't have air conditioning, and city heat is stifling. The only real grocery store within walking distance closed in January. People fight and yell in front of my house.

Suburbanites talk about the city as a dangerous place. Sure, we have higher incidences of theft. Violence is more frequent, but it mostly happens between people with grudges, "don't start none, won't be none." Living in the city is hard, but mostly not from big things, like a car getting jacked; what affects me, drains me, is the environment, and what most affects urban kids is probably that plus lack of access to resources that are normal for me: healthy food, good books, safe, clean spaces to play in.

Flathead The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:41:00 +0000

From Flathead: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman by Matt Taibbi:

Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:

I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins.

Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.

CoffeeGeek - Why I like Bodum

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:08:00 +0000

CoffeeGeek - Why I like Bodum:

After work, one or two of them would come over, we'd set up on the back elevated sun deck of my home (actually, the roof of the car garage, with a fence around it). I'd boil the water, I'd bring the grinder right outside (there was a convenient plug), I'd grind up the coffee, and we would enjoy the aromas. I would carefully measure out the grinds, pour in the boiling water, stir just a bit, and set the plunger for a 3 to 4 minute 'steep'. We'd take turns each day on who would push it down, and dole out the goods, in the matching cups. Then we'd talk, reminisce, or watch the world go by (my house was on one of those streets that combine small shops and restaurants and cafes with homes). We'd play a variety of those intellectual-type board games, share experiences, and... become closer friends.

Bodum was a big part of this. The ritual, the subculture was one appreciated by myself and my friends, and I think this was (and is today) the company's intent - a culture of simple sophistication and the production of a quality beverage to go along with it.

It's hip to not like branding because it's manipulative. I like it when a brand is associated with an idea, and promotes that idea in an important way. I got my coffee press from Ikea, though.

Links regarding Facebook being crummy

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:10:00 +0000

I blogged some about Facebook recently. Here are some articles that I've seen in that vein: the problem with Facebook isn't that it's doing dishonest things to us (but it is), it's that Facebook is closed and makes it difficult to quit.

Merlin Mann's WebVisions talk. He talks about how Facebook munges up our expectations for how information will be shared.
Openbook is a way to search Facebook status updates for key phrases. I like "I'm pregnant". Oops.
The quest for frisson by Roger Ebert, who has a consistently worth-reading-every-word blog. In it, he talks about how easy it is to get obsessed with the Internet. He says: "Facebook has no charms for me. It looks inward. Twitter looks outward, and I've found remarkable people to follow." That's why your note you wrote on Facebook will never be seen by more than a couple of hundred people, no matter how earth-shattering it is.
Anil Dash on Facebook usernames when they were first released. "None of these posts mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook."

Allow me to recommend Perfecto Coffeehouse, Grilled Cheese and Co; also, allow me to re-recommend Catonsville Engine and Transmission.

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:42:00 +0000

I have had a very stressful past two days, what with the death of my car. Yesterday, as a self-care activity, I went to Perfecto Coffeehouse, which is within easy walking distance of my house in Mount Clare, Baltimore. It's a new place, and I think they're still working out the kinks. I had ordered an iced mocha and a waffle. The waffle was a stunning deal at $3; it wasn't a huge Belgian waffle, but it had a delicious batter. I got mine with fruit (strawberries and mango) and whipped cream. I also got an iced mocha, but it wasn't very mocha-ey; the mocha syrup pump had gotten clogged. As an iced latte, it was fine; the mocha syrup pump was the same Ghirardelli syrup that I'd seen elsewhere. Seating was limited; there were only six tables: four inside, one on the patio, and one on the sidewalk. There wasn't any competition for my seat at 7 PM; I don't know what it would be like at other times of day. I had a great time reading while bohemians from Gallery 788 (warning: tacky MySpace site) bohem'ed through. I stopped by Gallery 788 on my way home; they have an opening the first Thursday of each month. I thought the art was pretty boring.

Warning: Do not go to Wilkens Service Center at the corner of Wilkens and Monroe. They completely misdiagnosed my engine problem; I hereby cast aspersions on their professionalism and insight.

I wanted a pleasant break while waiting for a diagnosis from my trusted mechanic. A mere block away is Grilled Cheese and Co, which opened a mere three months ago. It's a grilled-cheese-centric sandwich shop. I got The Fresco and I was delighted. I have had to have my car towed twice, my schedule had been completely ruined, I am out of fruit, and I had left my MacBook in the lab, so I couldn't work on my research. The sandwich helped me forget the suffering. I also had shoestring fries, which were pleasant. Grilled Cheese and Co was founded by Vic Corbi and Matt Lancelotta; Vic Corbi is related to Joe Corbi of Joe Corbi's pizza, so I guess it's a cheese thing. Jazz music is played; I was delighted to hear "Baby, It's Cold Outside" on a July afternoon.

I would like to remind you of my recommendation of Catonsville Engine and Transmission, an excellent, trustworthy mechanic. They confirmed that my car is dead, but have been great sports about helping me make burial arrangements.

Bleg: buying a car

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:16:00 +0000

My car broke down yesterday, and it's at the point where I should just get a new one. Well, new to me. I would like tips on getting a car. Here is my rule for advice:

Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.

Every car has some problems, and every model has some lemons. I hear that most lemons are made on Mondays and Fridays. Anyway, I want to consider overall statistics about reliability and total cost of ownership.

I'm thinking of getting a car that's 2-3 years old. I hear that buying a brand new car is a bad deal. I also don't want to buy a car that's cheap, but so old it's about to die. Do you have any ideas about the sweet spot in terms of the age of a car?

I'm re-watching Fargo as I write this: are there any scams that I have to watch out for like Trucoat?

I'm interested in a few features, so if you have experience with these, let me know: * An aux-in plug for my iPod. I don't want a special iPod docking port, just a regular 3.5 mm jack. Also, it's really important that there's a 12 V adaptor for my iPod and GPS chargers. * The seats in the back seat should fold down so that the trunk can hold a bunch of stuff.

My family has had great experiences with Maven Motors. It's run by an Orthodox Jew who is honest and offers deals so good that he doesn't let you haggle. He has these cars on hand. I'm thinking especially about the Ford Focus and the Ford Taurus, and I'm leaning toward the Focus. Are there any other cars listed that catch your eye? Do you know of any reasons I should have trepidation about the Focus or Taurus?

I've also heard good things about CarMax. Any ideas?

Again, I'm not looking for one-off experiences, but overall insight that's evidence based. Thanks!

Allow me to recommend Markdown

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

John Gruber and Aaron Swartz's Markdown is a plain and open tool for making blogging and other webby things easy and fun. It lets you represent the most common HTML tags that would be used in day-to-day web writing as intuitive punctuation. For example, instead of linking to Markdown by writing

<a href="http://daringfireball.net/
         projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>

I write

[Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/
           projects/markdown/)

I think the simplest way to use it on a Mac is to copy Markdown text to the clipboard, then run the following script:

#!/bin/bash
pbpaste|~/handyscripts/Markdown.pl|pbcopy

A marked-down copy of your text will then be on the clipboard. I pop up Launchbar to call the script in a jiffy, and using a clipboard with history helps manage the whole mess.

Use RSS

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I first used the Internet when I was 10 or so. I made a webpage when I was 12; it was 1997 and I was using the Maryland library system's free text-only Internet service through a terminal emulator. It was a big deal when we found out about NetZero. When I was 14, I made a blog-before-there-were-blogs. Somehow, my friends kept up with what I was doing, and I kept up with what they were doing, without clicking a Friend button. We emailed a lot. Rather than writing notes to everyone, we emailed each other, having long, detailed conversations about spirituality, video games, politics, books, and magic.

Since I started using the Internet in 1995, a lot of things have changed, sure, but the biggest change in how I use the Internet is RSS. It used to be that websites were like textbooks: they were solid, you'd put them on a shelf, you'd refer to them when you wanted information. When a friend sent you a link to his website, you'd poke around on it for a while finding what he's made that you find interesting, and then you'd let it sit. Like textbooks, webpages got updated sporadically, and it wasn't clear what was new, or when you should go back and check a webpage. I would email my friends when I'd updated my webpage.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) changed this. RSS made the Internet feel, to me, more like a newspaper delivery than a textbook. For example, I'm currently kind of obsessed with Daring Fireball (thoughtful Mac journalism). Rather than going to DF several times a day, like I would have back in the 90's, I see new articles pop up in my RSS feed when they're written. I also read webcomics this way, blogs, some Twitter feeds, The Onion, and scientific journals.

Rather than explain how RSS works or how to use it, I would recommend trying Google Reader; it's pretty self-explanatory. There are oodles of other good RSS readers that are worth checking out, too, some are web services, like Bloglines, some are programs you run on your machine. I've had good experiences with NewsFire for the Mac. I think that Facebook is ubiquitous and Twitter is popular because most people don't use RSS readers. Twitter equals a blog limited to 140 characters plus the Follow feature, which is like subscribing to an RSS feed, except easier. Facebook's news feed is sort of RSSey, but also easier to use, but with much less control for the user. Facebook messages are to email as the Facebook news feed is to RSS. A Gmail user can email a Hotmail user who can email someone with an email address that they got from their job. It's impossible to send a Facebook message to someone without a Facebook account.

I use a custom Yahoo pipe to combine all of my feeds for my blogs into one feed, making it easier to keep up with all the stuff I do (see my website. FriendFeed and Buzz also allow you to export an aggregated RSS feed.

I like seeing what my friends are doing on the Internet. I also like Facebook for what it's good at: conversations about imported stuff, sharing contact information, handling guest lists for parties.

The harder it is for people to keep up with their friends without Facebook, the more Facebook is going to treat its users poorly. It's a little work to learn to use RSS, but it was a little bit of work to learn to use email in the 90's. I believe that we would see fewer cases of Facebook misusing personal information if everyone used open alternatives to as many bits of Facebook as possible.

A bit on photos

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:00:00 +0000

My screed against Facebook wasn't about privacy, but I have thoughts on that, too. Sure, Facebook, the company, has a bad track record, but most of the breaches are things like releasing information about who you're a Friend with. I think that we're sensitive to stories about breaches in privacy on Facebook because using Facebook feels eerie just to start with.

I went to Turkey during winter break of last year, and it was one of those figure-out-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life-by-seeing-the-world kind of trips. (I blogged about the trip, and took [pictures][tkpic]). On Pi Day of last year, I had a party at my house. It was kind of an open-house joint, with people coming and going at will. There was kind of a lull in the evening, when a couple of great friends came over; I'd been meaning to show them my pictures and tell them about my trip and what it meant to me. We sat and ate pie and chatted. Then, about a dozen people showed up, and we shared pie and sat around the living room and my friends endured the vacation picture slideshow storytelling. Some of these friends were super-close to me, some were acquaintances, and some I'd just met that day, but the atmosphere was cozy and cheerful. I have two guesses about why sharing pictures on Facebook feels strange. 1. Although I don't mind any one of my 306 Facebook friends seeing my photos, it feels weird to think of all of them seeing them. 2. When someone comes over to your house, they might flip through a photo album if it's sitting on the coffee table. They won't flip through a photo album that's sitting on a bookshelf without asking permission first, though.

Facebook doesn't make it easy for friends to politely ask permission to see pictures. Instead, permissions to see things are managed through lists. The problem is that the list of a dozen people sitting in my living room on Pi Day doesn't match any of my social groupings. It was spontaneous. Privacy settings should be about the content first, rather than what categories Facebook friends fit into. Most of my photo albums are fine for anyone to see, they're pictures of trash cans and fire hydrants and plants. Some of my albums have pictures of my siblings, and I want to protect them. I would like it if anyone could see that I'd made an album of pictures of my siblings unwrapping presents on Christmas, click one button to ask my permission to see the pictures, I would click one button if I wanted to show them, and they'd get a notification of this. Then, I would know who's looking at my pictures and we could have a chat about them.

BAAM-UMBC: So Uhhhh What's the Situation on the French Toast Makin...SItuation?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:36:00 +0000

BAAM-UMBC: So Uhhhh What's the Situation on the French Toast Makin...SItuation?:

"Maybe I'll just sit here and blog about his crazy movements as they happen like that English assignment that everyone gets. You know, the one where you're supposed to sit in a place like a cafe and write down everything that happens around you. Only mine will be the Mike German experience. Here he comes again. His Achilles tendon has been hurting him. He's hobbling around like an old bear man. Here he comes with a sleeping bag, who wants to bet that he's going outside? Oh no... the dining room.... oh! and the surprise by the balcony door decision. I did not see that one coming. He grabs a pillow and an extra blanket and he is outta here."

Again with the phrase, "The Mike German Experience". It's a thing.

More excellent coverage of the Biking Across AMerica adventure, mostly covered by Shelly Kessler, Blogger Extraordinaire, at the BAAM blog

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:59:00 +0000

Good Intentions Are Not Enough is moving. It's such a good blog about misguided aid and social justice work, and how to do better at caring for people.

Facebook is a content abyss

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:57:00 +0000

Summary: This is basically an endorsement of FriendFeed and Google Buzz, and an unusual condemnation of Facebook: I'm more bothered by its stinginess with my media than I am by its promiscuity with my data. If you don't want to bother with my griping: 1. Go to FriendFeed and sign up and befriend me, AlexSzatmary. If you already have a Facebook, Google, or Twitter account, it will take you literally two mouse clicks. 2. If you have Gmail, you already have Buzz. Auto-import your blog, Flickr albums, Twitter. Think about what in your feed you want to share publicly. It's super easy to set up. 3. Give friends links to public feeds of your FriendFeed or Buzz. Put it in your email signature. Put it on your Facebook profile. 4. If you feel like it, go to my Buzz feed and subscribe by RSS, or follow me in Gmail. Or you can go to my website, and subscribe by RSS to whatever you please. 5. Use RSS to keep up with things people make. You'll need an RSS reader for this; I like Google Reader, but there are other good options.

Granted, Facebook has done a terrible job with everyone's personal data:

Their Privacy Policy is longer than the Constitution
The maze of menus one needs to maintain their privacy settings would befuddle as gifted a reckoner of hierarchically sorted information as a medieval scholastic.
One needs to navigate a maze of menus to maintain their privacy settings because Facebook changes all of its rules a couple of times a year.
Facebook gives away data about you to strangers without your permission.

These are all bad, but, really, I'm not bothered. I have 306 Facebook friends, and I'm strange in that I periodically de-friend any people that I don't have an actual relationship with of some sort; I might have far fewer "friends" than a lot of my friends. Sharing things with 306 friends isn't private.

I'm griping because Facebook is a content abyss. Most of the really cool stuff that I see pop up on my feed came from somewhere else, it's a link to a news site or it's a picture someone took or a YouTube video. The only new content that I'm seeing generated on Facebook is notes, which are really blog posts that are locked into Facebook. Facebook isn't where I make stuff, I write stuff on my blogs (see my web site), I put my pictures on Picasa, I put my videos on YouTube, I toot on Twitter, and I post my bookmarks on Delicious. I don't need Facebook as a publisher. Facebook is a hole that I throw things into.

I went to http://www.facebook.com/alexszatmary, logged-out, to see what a stranger would see. I have all of my privacy protection settings cranked low, I only guard my contact information. When a stranger looks at my facebook page, they see this:

All that a stranger can make of this is:

Alex has sat on a stone bench and made funny faces
Alex has some Facebook friends
Alex likes Napoleon Dynamite, Carl Sagan, and soup

What I find most offensive about Facebook is that it won't share any of my content with strangers unless they get a Facebook account. The evil thing, as far as I'm concerned, with Facebook, isn't that it's promiscuous with my personal information, but that it's stingy with my media that I made that I want to share with 306 people plus my mom who isn't on Facebook. Facebook gets more money out of locking people into using Facebook than it does by doing skeezy things with your Likes or 25 Things. My mom doesn't have a Facebook account, so sharing anything, not just pictures, with my mom by way of Facebook is irritating or impossible.

Facebook got to be really cool when it acquired FriendFeed, that's when everything got comment-on-able. People discussed clever links, we joked over old pictures, and walls became places where people could chat. This is the reason why I have a Facebook tab always open: Facebook is good at making conversations.

FriendFeed still exists on its own. I set up my own feed, where it's easy for anyone to see what I've been up to lately and have a chat about it. I figure that almost anything that I can share with 306 people, I want to be able to share easily with the whole world. FriendFeed lets me do that. It also has privacy settings:

Here's what my public FriendFeed looks like:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

FriendFeed doesn't do much on its own, it just grabs things that I make and puts them in one big pipe. It publishes the stuff I make, link to, like, whatever, and lets people see it. If you want to comment on something on FriendFeed, you need to log in, but it's free to look. You can also follow people individually on FriendFeed.

Buzz also doesn't make you join to see my stuff. A stranger coming across my profile sees this:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

A stranger looking at my Google profile can see some pictures I took, links to my websites, and my Buzz feed. Facebook makes people join first, then gives them content; FriendFeed and Buzz both let their users open their profiles as much as they like.

To put stuff on the Internet, I use

They each do a better job of the one thing they do than Facebook does. They each have privacy settings, and they're typically sensible and easy to use. I can quit any one of them at any time and switch to a different service easily. I'm thinking about using Vimeo for the occasional video that I make.

We allow Facebook to be a bully because it has high barriers to exit. Once you put stuff into Facebook, pictures, notes, video, whatever, it's not easy to export it again. Delicious, Picasa, and Blogger have built-in tools that make it easy to export all of your stuff from them. Also, for people to see the stuff I make on Facebook, they have to have Facebook accounts, too.

Facebook is closed in two important ways: 1. If I decide one day that I don't like, say, Delicious, I can check out, pick a new social bookmarking site, and import my old bookmarks; it might not be seamless, but it's something. You can't do anything like that with Facebook. If I quit Facebook, all of the information I've put into it is gone forever. 2. If all of my friends use Friendfeed or Tumblr or Twitter or whatever, and I don't, I can still see their pages or subscribe to their RSS feeds without signing up for an account. It's expensive to quit Facebook, so we let Facebook behave poorly. We can make it cheaper to quit Facebook by diversifying how we put content on the Internet. It's good etiquette to not make your friends use a service just because you do.

If this is allowed in the future

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Ads shown by third party applications
Facebook does not give third party applications or ad networks the right to use your name or picture in ads. If this is allowed in the future, this setting will govern the usage of your information.

Emphasis mine. #facebookisevil

Fixed newspaper comics

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:21:00 +0000

Here are my favorite fixes of newspaper comics.

Garfield minus Garfield

Marmaduke Explained

Scott Meets Family Circus

The Nietzsche Family Circus

Lower case Scrabble set

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:07:00 +0000

Be careful what you ask for. A couple of days ago, I tweeted,

I just invented the lower-case Scrabble set. You can use b's as q's, n's as u's, m's as w's, and l's as -'s.less than a minute ago via txtAlex Szatmary
AlexSzatmary

Today, Paul dropped by my lab to give me,

From Alex's id funnel

Thanks, Paul! Anyone want to play lower-case Scrabble?

11 ways to simplify your Facebook life

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:15:00 +0000

Don't be friends with someone that you're not friends with in real life.
If you didn't have Facebook, and wouldn't call someone to invite them to an event, don't invite them to that event on Facebook.
If you didn't have Facebook, and wouldn't email someone a message, don't tag them in a note on Facebook.
If you can email someone, don't send a Facebook Message instead.
Don't leave ambiguous status updates that make everyone think you just went through a break-up.
Don't enter into "a relationship" with someone of the same gender unless you are sexually attracted to people of that gender.
Quit every group that you aren't a member of in real life.
Don't use applications.
Don't take quizzes.
Don't write 25 things about yourself just because your friends are. You probably can only write six interesting things about yourself, anyway.
Don't put information on Facebook that you wouldn't put on a completely public website.

Wrong turn

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:18:00 +0000

Today, I was driving home from Alexandria to Baltimore; I decided to try taking I-295 north, rather than cutting through DC. I wound up taking I-95 south for 25 miles. I didn't feel bad. I felt a little sad over the loss of time, I could have been having more fun, but I didn't feel guilty.

That was new for me. One time, I got lost by a similar amount, and wrote a pages-long blog post analyzing each of my mistakes, I was obsessed. Today, I thought, "Huh, I went the wrong way. I'll turn around. No big deal." I started thinking about what that lost 50 minutes meant to me, this would come to mind several times as I drove home, but I wasn't self-accusatory today.

It was very rainy today. I left Alexandria at 3 and got home at 7; even with having made the wrong turn, the rainy traffic made it so my trip would have taken three times what it normally would have. Roughly.

I have a cold today, I have a headache, I feel drowsy, my throat is sore. I would have gotten home sooner if I hadn't stopped at Wendy's for a Frosty for my sore throat. I would have probably gotten home at 6:30 if not for the Wendy's trip, which was actually pretty long, because the line moved very slowly, and it took them 10 minutes to give me my fries, and I had to go to the bathroom. There were two cops from the DC metro police there and they had very cool uniforms, the shirts had a lot of pockets and they had neat walkie-talkies with earpieces, like the secret service officers. Most little kids, at one point or another, want to grow up to be police officers; I know that I did. When I was five, I stood at the side of the road with one hand up, indicating that the cars should stop. The drivers just waved and drove past. I don't think that that's something I totally grew out of.

Anyway, the cold helped me feel better about having made the wrong turn; I made the wrong turn because I was inattentive because I was sick. I didn't give up 50 of my best minutes, I gave up 50 pretty low quality minutes that would have probably been spent napping or reading Cracked.

The rain helped me feel better about my mistake. The rain and a bunch of other people in cars cost me twice as much time as my own mistake did today. I suppose it would have been nice if I had no traffic and would have gotten home by 5. I try to optimize my use of my time, and I think that I would deal with my time in a healthier way if I were to realize how much of it is taken up with things that are ordinary and uneventful. If I were to compare the amount of time I spend on mistakes with the amount of time I spend commuting and going to the bathroom and waiting for a latte to be made and going for a walk to clear my head and watching a movie for enjoyment and sleeping, all of these things that take up time but don't seem productive, I think I would feel better about my mistakes, I would regret them less. Life takes a lot of time, and I have trouble remembering that.

I haven't been blaming myself very much lately, and I'm glad for that. I used to blame myself a lot. This summer, I took Lexapro for anxiety and that was unpleasant. All of my feelings were thrown around, even my feelings about right and wrong, and I think that when I saw that my feelings about right and wrong didn't have to be one way, they could be another way, or any of a dozen different ways, that helped me see that my feelings about right and wrong are quite different from any sort of absolute morality. I trust my feelings about what is right and wrong much less now; I mostly call them feelings rather than rules.

It turns out that I had the bad reaction to Lexapro because I have bipolar disorder; antidepressants can do bad things to people with my condition. I often feel guilty, with no connection to things that I've actually done. When I got my diagnosis in September, I realized that my feelings of guilt were probably more due to my disorder than my actual failings. If you felt guilty most of the time, you migh become meticulous about noticing every wrong thing you do. I did.

On the day I got my diagnosis, I went to the library and checked out Bipolar Disorder for Dummies which has been a helpful manual in dealing with the disease, but the title should probably be something more like, Bipolar Disorder for People who have Troublesome Mood Swings, but it's not their Fault that they have the Disorder. I got a large iced mocha and sat by the pond and read the book for a while. I called my mom, and told her the news. She said something like, "Oh, no." or "I'm sorry." when I told her, and I told her that I thought that was a funny reaction.

I'm not happy to have bipolar disorder, I'd rather not have it, but I'd rather know that I have it than not. The diagnosis was symptomatic; I already knew that I was suffering. If I took a test and was told that I have cancer and am going to die soon, I would say "Oh, no!" When I was told that I have bipolar disorder, I was excited. The diagnosis wasn't news to me, it was a new word for the problems I had already been feeling. When I got the diagnosis, that meant that I could get better. I'll probably need medicine and psychotherapy for the rest of my life, but that's a lot better than ennui, anhedonia, and delusions. Before I got the diagnosis, before I even tried Lexapro, I dwelt a lot on the idea that I'm going to die. Mom and I talked a while, a bit about my problems and a bit about how my family is doing, and I was glad that the whole conversation wasn't about my disorder; it's good to talk to Mom.

I figured that a lot of stuff that I thought was my fault, feeling sad and guilty a lot, those feelings aren't my fault a lot of the time, those came from a real disorder, real genes tweaked real funny in the real nuclei of some of my real neurons. I spent that afternoon sitting in the sun, drinking a mocha, and reading Bipolar Disorder for Dummies, not so much for the information as to make myself feel like I was doing something to help myself get better. Even though I was glad to get a decisive diagnosis that day, it took me a while to accept it, to apply the diagnosis to myself. I sat on that bench for a couple of hours that afternoon, when I could have been in the lab getting work done. I think I used my time wisely.

The cold (disease, not temperature) and the rain made it easier for me to accept my wrong turn today. I would like it if I didn't need things like that, rationalizations, to help me not put blame and guild on myself when I make petty mistakes. I would like to become good enough at accepting mistakes that I could just move on as soon as I had gained the relevant insights, but I'm not that good at accepting mistakes yet. I think that it's okay that I'm not that good at accepting mistakes.

Overheard

noreply@blogger.com (Alex) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:36:00 +0000

In a thrift store, I saw an old man with light hair, cut short on the sides. He was wearing jeans which had colorful embroidery on the pockets. I think he thought he was a cowboy.

I also saw a man wearing one of those bandannas that seem to be worn in support of Palestine. He was carrying a cat toy.

Driving home, I saw a man wearing an orange jacket and a green hat, carrying a big black garbage bag. He looked like an urban pumpkin hobo.

I walked past some neighbors, a mom yelled at her son, 'Do you know what happens on four days?' I didn't hear the answer, but I wonder what happened then.

I walked past two other neighbors, on said to another, 'I've got a fifth of Ever...'