More Photos

I have nothing to say. So, here are a couple of photos I uploaded tonight. Enjoy!

Nintendo is Officially Dying

It had to happen someday, folks. Following in the grand tradition of innumerable companies nobody cares about anymore, Nintendo has decided to change the name of its upcoming game console to something completely and utterly retarded. The new name is... wait for it... are you ready? The Nintendo Wii. Are you as underwhelmed as I am?

I really wish I was joking. "Wii" is supposed to be a clever way of spelling "we," apparently. Here's some marketing drivel to show their line of thinking (if you can call it thinking):

Introducing Wii.

As in “we.”
While the code-name “Revolution” expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer.
Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else.
Wii will put people more in touch with their games … and each other.

Et cetera ad nauseum. I'm sorry, Nintendo, but moronic re-spellings of existing words simply are not cool. This is not trendy, and your customers aren't going to like a product name that they have to explain and spell to people - especially their parents! "Mom, can I have a Wii for Christmas?" "A what?"

This kind of thing is a sure sign of management ineptitude, marketing idiocy, and a descent into irrelevance. We saw it with the good ol' boys at Borland, who changed their name to the buzzword-friendly "Inprise." They managed to confuse and alienate their entire user base, and now nobody gives a damn about them. Also witness Palm, with its ridiculous name change to "pa1m0ne." Nobody cares about p41|v| ... err, I mean... Palm anymore, either.

It was nice knowing you, Nintendo. "Wii" probably sounds really clever in Japan. But here in America, I'm sure most people will end up pronouncing it "why" instead of "we." As in... Wii, Nintendo, wii?! Wii would you do this to your fans?! Maybe Sony can change the PS3's name to "Hau." Hau stupid Nintendo looks now!

Ziki.com - Actually USEFUL Social Networking

Even before the "Web 2.0" craze that has struck us recently, there's been a problem with the web. It's a problem that has annoyed me greatly and that has lacked a decent solution - until now.

Here's my problem: I have content all over the web. I bookmark cool sites I want to share on Ma.gnolia, have my blog here, post my photos on Zooomr, etc. These individual sites are awesome, but it's hard to pull them all together into one place. I'm not interested in having a sprawling hochmann.org anymore, but I would like all of my published content accessible to people without having to give them a half dozen different internet addresses.

This is where Ziki.com comes in. Ziki is a social networking site, somewhat like MySpace, but without the hideous design, bad color schemes, and millions of high school weirdos who think that blinking pink text on an animated yellow background is cool. Social networking is nothing new, but Ziki addresses my big problem and adds a few cool things.

First off, Ziki doesn't give you publishing tools. There's no blogging, no photo albums, no video sharing, and no messaging. What it does do is pull together all that stuff you have on other sites - like Flickr, Blogger, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, 43 Things, etc. You add the RSS feeds from those sites, categorize them, and bam - you've got a nice central profile on the web. It'll show thumbnails of your latest photos, blog posts, bookmarks, etc. from all of the sources you've told it about. Extremely handy, and ridiculously simple.

Ziki does other cool stuff as well. Like other Web 2.0 sites, it's big on tagging. You can tag yourself (geek, photographer, whatever...) to make it easier for people to find you. You can also add links to the online organizations/groups you're a part of, and tag those as well. The number of people/groups on Ziki is still fairly small (and mostly ugly geeks like myself), but I'm sure that'll change with time. Even without the social networking stuff, just having it aggregate all my online junk into one nice page is worth its weight in gold.

Go check out my Ziki profile, and then set up one of your own. At the very least, you can satisfy your narcissistic tendencies and plaster your photo and bio all over the web yet again.

Pointless Post

You can't have ze duck.

Cough Drops

Here's a short time-waster for you, a video of a Chinese guy who coughs his head off. Literally. I'm going to have to learn how to do that when I visit China this summer.

Summer Trips to China

Since only like 2 people read my blog, I doubt anybody from my area who is interested will see this, but... My trip to China this summer is being made possible through the gracious efforts of the American-Chinese Civic Exchange (ACCE). Anyone else who is interested in going to China in July, either for sightseeing or for teaching opportunities, should contact the ACCE and check out the available programs.

Also, ACCE is hosting an open house this week for people interested in visiting China. It will be this Thursday, April 27th, at 6:30pm. Location is the University of New Mexico SUB, 3rd floor, Siesta Room. All us super cool Chinese addicts will be there, and they're going to have free drinks and such. Make sure to come if you're in the area and interested in going this summer!

Chinese Proverb

du chu cheng mei
A fine beginning is a beautiful thing.

From The "Too Much Free Time" Chronicles

Damn, somebody beat me to it. They created a Tetris game on the side of a building. That was the final piece of the puzzle (heh heh) for my plans to conquer the world. Blast!

Happy Birthday, Appleturkey

Yep, this weekend is the "300th Birthday Bash" for Albuquerque. I'll probably miss out on all the Tricentennial stuff since I'm working, but kinda cool anyway.

Albuquerque - the most boring city in America for three centuries and counting!

Jungle Pug

I'm bored again, so have a nice picture to gawk at:

Death Robots, Ho!

I'm bored, it's a kind of depressing day, and I just took this silly quiz.


Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

So, apparently I'm an ABC Warrior... Whatever that is! Here's the description they gave me:

In bars frequented by colossal death robots, you're always the quiet guy at the back who no-one ever bothers. And for good reason. You've fought in several nuclear wars, could beat the sun in a staring match, and have a chin larger than many articles of furniture. Morals are not a concept you understand, but strangely enough, nobody ever questions your judgement. Usually because they're dead. Even Judge Dredd wets himself when you turn up. Grrrr.

Sounds like fun! Crush. Kill. Destroy!

Serving Your Shipping Needs

You probably already know that I work with UPS, and that we can ship really big packages. But I bet you didn't realize things can go the other way, as well...

Number 40,000 - Yeehaw

I just uploaded the 40,000th photo on Zooomr.com this evening. Sadly it's only #411 in my own collection, but that's still pretty sweet for the site as a whole. The picture is my little pug with his favorite toy. Those of you who do not think highly of the current USA administration will no doubt like the toy and what I named it. ;-)

Spring Photos

In the last couple of days, I've uploaded a ton of photos on Zooomr. Most of them are from around campus, where all the apple and cherry blossoms are blooming like crazy. Some of the more recent ones are from my back yard, where we have two big apple trees. Be sure to head on over to my photograph gallery and check 'em out. Here's a few of my favorites so far:

Ask.com

I've recently been playing with the Ask.com search engine, and it's pretty nice. I was able to find some things that Google just completely did not know about (especially reference images that I needed for a project I was working on). The site is not quite as snappy as Google, in terms of load speed... But they've got some nice tools, and at the very least it's a good place to try if the Big G can't find what you're looking for.

On a side note, Ask.com has incredibly intrusive "sponsored results" advertisements. If you're using Firefox, you can install the Greasemonkey extension and then install this user script I wrote. The script filters out the Ask.com advertisements (which is not at all easy to do with the Adblock extension, if it's even possible). Much more pleasant that way. Enjoy!

Religion and Chain Letters

Being one of the many unfortunate individuals to use MySpace.com, I certainly get my share of lame chain letter "bulletins" of various sorts. Occasionally I get the kind that goes something like this:

NOW THAT U OPENED THIS BULLETIN U HAVE 2 REPOST THIS BULLETIN WITH THE TITLE "I BELIEVE" IN THE NEXT 30 SECONDS OR YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN JESUS AND WILL GO TO HELL AND NOBODY LIKES YOU BECAUSE YOU SMELL

Okay, they're not all quite that bad, but most of them are. Setting aside the fact that I'm not a Christian, these kinds of things have bothered me a lot. I'm not fond of chain letters, and I'm not fond of people (especially my friends, who don't necessarily target their bulletins at me specifically) evangelizing about their beliefs all the time. However, some more fundamental thing bugged me about these messages, and I could not put my finger on it until I randomly came across a blog post by a Catholic student at UNM on this very subject:

I am fed up with all of these bulletins I keep getting that say "if you are not ashamed to believe in God repost this" or, "if youre not ashamed to believe in God put your name on this list." It perpetuates my frustration with people who use their belief and faith in God to make them superior to other people.

Good for you, Lilly! Nothing aggravates me more than people who use religion and spirituality in a divisive way, as some blunt object to smack people over the head with. I'm not Christian and I do not believe in God per se – I have no problem saying so, but I don't belittle people who do believe in God (or whatever/whoever else they believe in). I probably will belittle such people if they try to guilt myself or others with their beliefs, however.

More goodness from Lilly's blog post:

Standing out doesn't make you a better Christian, or better follower of God. It just makes you look pompous and even more so, ignorant. It is the WORK that you do that makes you a good follower of God. Then, if such works make you stand out, then great. Good for you, lead by example. But proclamations of one's belief in God don't feed the hungry, or house the homeless. It doesn't spread compassion, understanding, or forgiveness. It spreads negative criticism, alienation, and condemnation. These are hardly Christian values, right?

The importance of religion should not be conformity of the masses. It should be about being an accepting, understanding, and loving person.

It is so refreshing to see these ideas so eloquently expressed, and from someone who shares the religious tradition of these supposed "believers".

To quote the late great Shepherd Book, "I don't care what you believe. Just believe it." Let's leave it at that, and put our beliefs to good use for ourselves and others, whatever those beliefs may be.

How The Tables Have Turned!

You know the very cliché old excuse, “the dog ate my homework”? Well, I've discovered a semi-amusing correlative from the other side. No... My dog did not eat my homework, but apparently one or more dogs belonging to an instructor of mine did. That's right: an assignment I turned in was destroyed in one way or another by an instructor's dog, and hence did not get graded.

I should probably be upset about it, but the instructor is a nice guy, and after almost 7 years of college I'm not particularly shocked or disturbed by anything. Most of the assignment can be reprinted, and it will take me very little time to re-do the parts that must be done by hand on physical paper. All's well that ends well, whatever grade I end up getting on it...

And The Peasants Rejoice

Yeehaw. I couldn't stay away forever! Yes, the fantastic world of blogfoolery has sucked me in once more. Insomniacs of the world rejoice! I am here to bore you once more with my rantings.

To get the ball rolling with this post, I'm going to blatantly steal the idea behind The Daily Buzz's "News By The Numbers" ... So here's some numbers for you:

• Thirty-one: That's how many days are left in this semester. Woohoo!
• Twenty-one: The number of credit hours I need after this semester to graduate. Double woohoo!
• Ninety-four: The number of pounds of tortillas from The Frontier restaurant we shipped today. No, I'm not kidding. We sent 50 dozen tortillas to one person today. Overnight shipping. For $315. Plus the cost of the tortillas.
• Ninety: That's the temperature our store was today while I was working. Yes, 90 degrees fahrenheit. Our cooler was not working, so we got to sweat like pigs while slaving away. Yay!
• Three: The number of ridiculous research projects I have to do in the next couple of weeks. One for my Chaucer class, one for Editing, and another for Arthurian Legend.
• Zero: My energy level lately, especially when it comes to classes.
  

That's about it for now. Be sure to wander over to my photograph gallery and check out my latest shots. I took a few nice pictures of the purty clouds at sunset this evening, so definitely go have a look.

"The wise will realize that many things in life are beyond their control. They do not want to trade their freedom and peace of mind for the life of anxiety that accompanies wealth and renown."
- Eva Wong, Lieh-Tzu