Thing #10

I've seen people with avatar images of themselves all the time on blogs, so I finally did one for myself. I used the manga image generator that chuckatmain was so kind to link to, <http://www.faceyourmanga.com/homepage.php?lang=eng>. You can see the results in the picture now attached to my profile! I tried to find other generators, but most of the ones I was coming up with were meme-type "plug in information and get a generic phrase back!" Those are not interesting. I like the result of my manga-face, though.
I'm so pretty.
-Brian

Thing #9: Oh yeah, I did this too

In settin gup my reader, I subscribed to a few different things. Google reader has neat little subscription boxes that automatically sign you up for a few different feeds. Their News sign-up includes Google News (which I stopped reading some time ago 'cause I didn't like the setup), BBC, NPR, Christain Scienc Monitor (don't ask me), ESPN, and maybe something else. I kept BBC, NPR, and Google. I also added National Geographic. I set up a local news folder for Columbus Business first and Dispatch, and a Library folder for L&P, Tame the Web, and any of y'all participant type people that I might start reading. (I'm fairly certain none of you are reading this, so I don't feel too bad about not having any right now.)
Refer to my prior post if that seems cranky.
I'm tired.
Brian

RSS: Ridiculous, Stupid Syndications!

I might've had even more trouble with this item than I did with the Flickr mashups. I went to create my Bloglines accout and went to verify my e-mail, but the verification e-mail wasn't there. So I couldn't do that until the next time that I was in. I started playing around with setting up various feeds, but quickly came across a circular loop when trying to add something that I couldn't break out of, so I quit working on it. I finally went back and re-watched some of the tutorials provided in the Learn and Play blog, and decided to try a different reader. Google's reader worked out much better for me. I like the layout better, I like the way that you add new feeds better, I like the folder setup that I never even found in Bloglines (granted, I wasn't looking for such a thing, but Google's are just right there). So, I've filled the requirements of the "thing" by setting up my Bloglines accout which I'll probably never look at again, but I may actually start using my Google reader. And here's a supercool link to my shared items page: <http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05618599012420363008?hl=en> !!
(Don't bother, I'll be really surprised if I ever end up sharing anything.)
It might actually make my morning online rituals faster!
I'd like to go sleep now but I've four more hours of work, so I'll go eat my lunch instead.
Mmm, lunch.
Brian

music technology!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7617177.stm
Back info: when you play a real musical instrument, you will rarely re-create a sound even if repeating a specific note/pattern. Therefore, in order to digitally create the sound of an 18th century harpsichord, Dr. Kenny McAlpine created sound bytes for lots and lots of different possible sounds for each note he wanted, and created a program to randomly select the bytes for the correct notes of a newly-discovered piece of music. This is an important step for digital musical performances.
That's all for now!
Brian

Flickr Montage

So, I had a heck of a time trying to get the mashups under my belt. I first tried to get to the letters, but it was broken. Then, I tried something else (can't remember what anymore) but it was broken, too. Then, I tried to make a librarian card, but that wouldn't load. So I let it go for a week or two (or three, or four). Upon taking up the task again, I found the Montager. This is really kind of fun; it searches the Flickr database of photos based on a given tag, and assembles all of the pictures into a montage shaded to produce an approximation of the first photo found. (Okay, I'm sure I'm mistaken on the technical aspects, but that's sort of what it does.) The best one I got from the various tags I tried was this one, <http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php?image=210371029> from "lute. Check it out!