I’ve been reading over some of my past writings as well as the entries I’ve made to my hate list. It began to occur to me that I use way too many commas in my writing. At least I think I do.
I don’t even realize I’m overdoing it. I tend to write and hammer out words as though I’m speaking out loud to someone. I find myself inserting commas at random in an effort to invoke a slight pause in the flow of the message. I want to sprinkle commas everywhere! I’m not certain of to what degree of grammatical correctness any of my comma usage actually is. I’ll leave that to the experts and future historians to decide.
I started to wonder if commas at some point in the far future will gradually get weeded out from all written text. At least perhaps that could be possible for all casual writing. Along with the advent of emails and text messages it seems that written language will inevitably get more simplified over time. Perhaps some day it won’t look unnatural to have a whole body of text without any commas. Could you imagine such a world? I wonder if I could ever bring myself to write an entire blog post without using a single comma.
Wait. I just did.
I’ve had a Google Voice account since mid-2009. I’ve leisurely tinkered with it on and off since I first signed up with the service. Just recently, I’ve started using it much more than I ever had before. The reason for my renewed interest is that Apple finally succumbed and allowed the free Google Voice app for the iPhone into the App Store. The new app, officially from Google, is rich and feature-complete.
In August, I wrote about the awesome TextFree iPhone app. I’ve used it for a while now and definitely would recommend it to replace the expensive text plans from the mobile carriers. I even paid $5.99 for a year of ad-free use of the app, which I think is well worth it.
However, last week, the free Google Voice app suddenly appeared in the App Store. I immediately downloaded the app. Calls to my Google Voice number will automatically ring my phone, and all text messages are displayed through a push notification. It’s pretty awesome. I don’t intend to replace my voice calls with my Google number, but I do intend to use it exclusively to replace native texting. Make sure you disable the forwarding of texts to your actual mobile number in the preferences to avoid being charged for texts by your carrier.
With Google Voice, all text messages are saved and can be browsed in a web interface that looks and behaves like GMail. That is an impressive feature that TextFree doesn’t offer. I hate to abandon TextFree, but I find Google Voice to be incredibly slick, and the app to be more responsive overall. It will be my exclusive means of mobile texting from now on.
Of late, I’ve been getting an increased amount of spam comments to my blog. I can’t really complain, as an increase of spam must be a side effect of an increase of traffic to my site. It’s inevitable, I suppose. I thought I’d share a funny spam comment that I received tonight which was submitted to a post I’d written over 18 months ago (an immediate red flag.) I’ve pasted the comment below. I chuckled at the wording of this one.
“Gorgeous Stuff! My spouse and i had been only contemplating that there’s too much wrong important info on this theme and you also just simply updated our judgment. Appreciate your sharing a very effective piece of writing.”
Searching for song lyrics online has always been a major pain in the ass. I’ve never been able to find a good lyrics site that doesn’t bring with it a tremendous amount of ads, flashy things, and pop-ups. They are all completely infuriating to navigate, with or without an ad-blocker.
Even worse is listening to music on the go and using my iPhone to do a Google search in Safari for the lyrics of what I’m listening to. Pages load slowly with the crazy amount of ad content that comes with them. Usually once a page is usable, it’s typical for a pop-up ad to show up about something stupid (like buying ringtones) and I have to zoom the page to click a tiny “X” to close the overlaying window box. Horrible! I wish that everyone would make mobile-friendly sites. As for using apps, lyric-specific apps are a little lacking, as they have their own ads or incomplete catalogs.
I’m not trying to plug the site, but I tend to generally use 1SongLyrics. This site is a little less bloated than the others, but absent a better solution, I’ve chosen to settle for it.
I’ve long been calling for a lyrics site with leaner ads, but perhaps the perfect solution would be if Google would just give me the lyrics right inside the search results. They already do that with the weather and sports results. I don’t know if this would create a copyright issue, but I just want the words to a song without the fluff.
If anyone thinks they have a better solution, then I’m all ears.
It was reported in the Wilmington Star News that a movie theater was demolished across from UNC-W to make room for campus parking. The headline was probably benign to the average reader, but for me, it meant something more.
The demolished theater was the old United Artists theater at 632 South College Road. It hasn’t been in operation for many years now, but in its day, it was the best movie house in town. In fact, United Artists bought the theater from Litchfield, the original owners. I clearly remember the old animated Litchfield logo sequence before the start of every movie. I saw more movies there when I was growing up than I can possibly remember. I have countless memories from within its walls.
Scattered among the memories of being there with my parents and family, I have a strong memory of going there with my brother Chris to see Innerspace when it came to theaters in 1987. That one memory is a drop in the bucket, but for some odd reason, it sticks out in my mind. Beyond that, you can name any popular movie from the 1980s or 90s, and if I saw it at a theater, I most likely saw it there.
The theater had six screens and some of the largest rooms I’ve ever experienced. The lobby had an unusual layout with a large circular concession stand in the center of the room. I vividly remember loving the smell of that lobby. Reaching beyond the usual scent of popcorn and goodies was something more. It was unique. It had class.
My brother got his first job working as a projectionist at this very theater. I know that he was a tremendous asset and dedicated employee during his tenure. I know that building meant as much to him as it did to me; certainly even more so. It will always be a permanent fixture of our childhood and will certainly be missed.
The word “severe” has become completely overused. Situations that are labeled as severe are often hardly that. This is mostly true for describing weather conditions, but it is overused elsewhere as well.
Over the weekend, the local weather dipped below freezing. The overnight low was predicted to be 29 or 30 degrees. When I glanced at the weather forecast on my phone, I was prompted with a red “severe alert” icon. The alert turned out to be a mere frost advisory. Seriously, is a frost advisory actually severe? I think not.
The same is true for drought conditions. Over the summer, I’d often hear news reports that parts of the state were in moderate to severe drought. It was reported that the western part of the state was currently in a severe drought. I seriously doubt it. In my mind, a drought so bad as to be labeled severe means that all trees have died away and the dirt has dried to a bleak desert sand.
Also over the summer, I’d frequently see ozone and air quality alerts mixed in with the weather conditions. The ozone alerts, however insignificant to the average person, were most always labeled as being severe. If conditions outdoors were severe on a daily basis, the population would have long since withered away.
Almost nothing is truly severe. I’ve had enough of this. When something truly severe does come along, I don’t know how it will be described. I suppose the verbiage could jump to “extreme” but that word is just as overused and nearly equally as meaningless.
On the latest This Week in Tech show (episode 271), a lengthy discussion took place surrounding the new Macbook Air and its lack of an optical drive. The new Air looks good. I understand that an ultra-slim product such as the Air wouldn’t include an optical drive. However, I think that “regular” computers should still carry them.
The panel on the show seemed to unanimously agree that optical drives are a relic of the past. Leo Laporte, host of the show, scoffed “When was the last time the anyone used their optical drive?” To which everyone chuckled in agreement. I shrugged at their tone. I had just used my DVD burner the night before I heard the podcast! I use it often and I wouldn’t want a computer that didn’t have the ability to read or write to optical discs.
May I also mention that I also use my optical drive to burn audio CDs? What for, you ask? To play songs with my CD player in my car, that’s why! Scoff if you like, but I still occasionally have to use a compact disc player.
CD and DVD media are not dead. In fact, I prefer to buy software on physical media, especially large programs and games. Giant downloads aren’t the problem. The problem is that in the end I have to store that download somewhere as a backup for the program that I have paid money for. I eventually may need to reinstall that software on my machine at some point. Blank DVDs are cheap. I’m not going to purchase a slew of USB sticks to store each package on.
Everyone that is deep inside the tech industry likes champion a rush of existing technologies to the grave. The problem I have with it is that I, among most people, still rely on those technologies! No one is selling me a computer without a DVD drive any time soon. I promise you that.
I’ve never had a flu shot in my life. I don’t believe that they have any real value whatsoever. I think that everyone who participates is wasting their time. I don’t have any data on which to base this, but it just seems to me that the same people who get the flu shot later still get sick at some point during the season. Fortunately, I almost ever get sick. A mobile health clinic visits my workplace every year, giving shots to those who sign up. I never have and never plan to.
I chose to write this today because a friend of mine at work was out today because she’s home sick from having a flu shot a few days ago. What is the point of this shot if it makes some people sick?
Everyone save your time and money; avoid the flu shot sham.
My favorite to-do list manager is a website called Ta-da List by a company called 37 Signals. I’ve used this site for years, and even wrote about it on this blog four years ago! I still use the service today. The Ta-da List site is about as simplistic and barebones as a website can get. You make lists and check things off. That’s it. Whats more, this site has no ads! I use it more than any other to-do list solution.
I wanted to make this second post about the Ta-da List site primarily to mention the simplistic beauty of the mobile site, which I’ve recently started using. I’ve sampled a few iPhone apps and have tried to maintain a to-do list that way, but I’ve found that the Ta-da List mobile website is the perfect solution. In essence, I can add and check things off on the go or from my desktop, while always managing the same list. It’s all in one place, so no syncing is necessary. I use it to maintain many lists, including holiday gift ideas, hate list ideas, blogging ideas, shopping lists, and beyond.
I doubt anyone reading this has even heard of this service. Go check it out and marvel at its simplicity.
The iPhone needs an easier way to turn Bluetooth on and off. In my experience, Bluetooth puts a noticeable dent in my battery life. When it is enabled, I can barely eke out a full day of use on a charge. If I am not planning on getting involved in lengthy phone conversations in a given day, I have gotten in the habit of disabling Bluetooth.
The problem is that to do so, I have to tap Settings, tap General, drill into Bluetooth, then slide it on or off. This doesn’t sound like a lot of trouble, but it gets cumbersome if you do it every other day.
I propose creating a single icon that toggles Bluetooth on or off. I could add such an icon permanently to the dock and tap it once to enable it, then tap it again to disable it. The icon color will indicate the current state (as well as the usual Bluetooth indicator in the menu bar.) I think this is a brilliant proposal and will help everyone extend their battery life.
This is likely possible if you jailbreak your phone. I don’t wish to do that at this time. This is something that should naturally be included in the operating system. Last week, I actually wrote Steve Jobs an email demanding this very feature be added to the next version of iOS. I have serious doubts that my email will ever be read by anyone. I’m including that email, shown below.
Steve, I’d like an easier way to toggle bluetooth on/off in my iPhone. I hate digging through Settings/General/Bluetooth. I want an independent icon for bluetooth that I can tap like an on/off switch. How about adding this addition in the next iOS update? Later.
