Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/11/hubpages/
So, I have lately been doing more research than usual on interesting startups. One that seems particularly interesting to me is called HubPages.
The Nifty
The idea is to make it easy for people to write up an ever-growing collection of informative articles, and to give them incentive to contribute their knowledge. They provide a nice, dynamic interface that allows authors to very easily mix written content with images. Users then get a chance to vote on what content they like, which should allow for quality control, as well as ego stroking, since authors can then rise in popularity through an online social network.
HubPages then cranks it to eleven by making it trivial to integrate your Google AdSense or Amazon.com Associates accounts with their infrastructure, which allows you the chance to share in the revenue opportunities that HubPages might gain from your writing! I gave it a try, and I found the linking surprisingly easy. This looks like a really easy way for authors to earn a little money by contributing knowledge.
Neato. (more…)
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/11/vonnegut-on-marriage/
Tim! I shall steal this from you, as you stole it from Kurt, verbatim! Because it is good stuff!
Ok, let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
Most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!â€
A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, and they were taking it to meet all its relatives. Everybody was going to hold it, cuddle it, say how pretty or how handsome it was. Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?
I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family, make you an Ibo or a Navaho or a Kennedy.
I hope America, over the long run, finds some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families – a large group of people they could call on for help.
Living in California has caused me to worry, in varying degrees, about the need for family connection. Although the pay wasn’t great, I really enjoyed living in Chicago the last time around, in part because I was near family and because the Office was a close-knit bunch. Two tribes! Right after the marriage I accepted the raise to move to Walnut Creek, and I did worry somewhat that leaving family and friends behind could make the marriage more difficult . . . but that we’d do alright.
Living in San Francisco, though, is much better. Plenty of social activities even for those of us between families, between jobs . . . and you don’t even have to drive to get there! (Parking is horrible, anyway.) But, yeah, next marriage, especially when we get to child-rearing time, we want to be a little more vigilant that we have got some manners of family to back us up!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/06/love-actually/
Today, I was invited to add the crazy naked lady to the Flickr wheelchairs pool. So, I took another look at the photo, with an eye toward the old lady in the wheelchair, and figured I’d play with a crop to see if I could re-balance the scene a bit.
Uhm, there’s a naked lady involved . . . in case you’re at work . . . you should know that . . . (more…)
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/06/in-yer-toobs/
Adapted from a blog comment I just posted:
Regarding Mountain View burrito restaurants, if I recall correctly, La Costena annoyed me because it involved driving and too many choices, so I’ve always been a Los Charros guy. I think we had La Costena the day Tellme had its first round of layoffs. We were in mourning for a fallen comrade and we needed to get AWAY so we got burritos and ate them in the park. Since it was on the company tab, Joe ordered their very largest burrito, which was, as he described it “about the size of a baby.” It took him two days, but as I recall he says he ate every bite.
Citing the ever-awesome Maciej Ceglowski, I then offered a link to his recent write-up of the most impressive burrito-related public works project our nation has ever undertaken:
The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel
A must-read for anyone who digs burritos, tunnels, tubes, advanced physics research, or refried beans.
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/04/holding-pattern/
So, I enjoy travel. Trains are, of course, the very best form of transportation ever, but on a good day you can see some really really beautiful stuff out the window of an airplane. Sometimes, I will even try to snap some pictures, and sometimes, they even come out pretty well.
Cathy Davies, an artist based in Los Angeles, has similar feelings about the relaxing joy of looking out of an airplane window. So much so that she has built a screen saver to simulate the experience. Neater still, last April (when I was really down in the dumps) she contacted me for permission to use one of the pictures I had taken out of the airplane window, and posted to Flickr under a CC license.
Well, last month she wrote to announce that despite some delays induced by carpal tunnels, she was at last shipping her newest creation: Holding Pattern 2.0 . . . I have been behind on e-mail but I should get a chance to try it out myself really soon, as she offered me a complimentary copy in exchange for my picture.
If you visit her download page, you’ll see this photo I took of Mount Diablo in May, 2005. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s Mount Diablo, as seen from about Hayward . . .
. . . Cathy told me she selected that photo because it was “one of the lushest, greenest landscapes I saw” . . . even so, it looks like she had to tweak my saturated image so users will get a better sense of the very green green that one sees in the spring-time hills of Contra Costa county. (They are yellow the rest of the year.)
It is gratifying for me and very neat to see that something pretty I caught with a camera one day be put to further creative use. There may even be a few people out there getting a bit of calm from the relaxing illusion of flight, and I like the thought of having contributed to that.
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/26/resume-thanksgooglecom/
Well, this is kind of neat. Nowadays Google sends you an automated message telling you they’re not interested:
From: resume-thanks@google.com
Subject: Thank you
We received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in
Google. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we
have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strong
match at this time.
Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors
and hope you might consider us again in the future.
Sincerely,
Google Staffing
Just for fun, I had submitted a resume, to see what random stuff Google might come up with. The reason being that any time I had applied in the past, what always happened is I would hear nothing for a month or two, then I would be contacted by a recruiter for a completely different position, and the recruiter would have no idea about the position I had originally applied for.
Last time, though, the position the recruiter proposed was more interesting than the one I had found on my own. My best understanding–and my understanding may be out-of-date–of the Google hiring process is that the managers meet with the recruiters on a weekly basis, so it will typically take two to three weeks for a recruiter to get a candidate into the pipeline: (more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/12/long-beach-ca/
I woke up early to move the car for street cleaning, then I joined my friend for breakfast at a local favorite restaurant of hers. I had no particular agenda for sight-seeing in Long Beach, though Lorah had said nice things about the Queen Mary. It just so happened that my friend has a shop on board the Queen Mary, so we spent the morning poking around the ship, and I discovered that my old-camera-that-had-been-lent-back-to-me-after-I-lost-my-newer-camera was just about completely dead. (Oh darn.)
Next, we visited the Korean Friendship Bell, a bronze bell in a beautifully-painted pagoda overlooking the Pacific, which Korea gave us for the Bicentennial. There is a youth hostel next door, which I would check out next time I may decide to visit Long Beach, if I did not already have accommodation. We drove further along the coast, visiting the Wayfarer’s Chapel, which is a beautiful glass church on the coast, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We arrived during a wedding, as this is a very popular venue for weddings, so we couldn’t enter the chapel, and the lady at the visitor’s center advised that visits are best planned for odd hours–11am, 1pm, 3pm–since weddings are scheduled on even hours.
My original plan had been to take off in the evening and drive about four hours to Las Vegas, and crash at either of two youth hostels I had found online, or perhaps a hotel room, since accommodations are cheaper in Vegas during the week. But I changed my plans to join my friend for a late night of clubbing in Hollywood. Having no particular agenda and an evening to kill, we moseyed further along the coast, and my friend decided to give Santa Monica a shot. We found a parking spot near the beach, and noticed a movie theater. We were just in time to catch “The Namesake” which is a movie we had both wanted to see, and which we both enjoyed.
Afterwards we strolled along the beach, catching the sunset. We then embarked upon several hours of groovy carousing in the Southern California style.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/05/amazons-message-from-god/
So, the Amazon Associates program just opened up a really interesting beta program to the public called “Context Links.” Dave Taylor has a pretty good explanation, but the short of it is you stick a little bit of JavaScript in the bottom of your web site, and that will contact Amazon.com, check their search engine / crawler service, the Amazon.com product catalog, and then select various “key words” in your web site and link them to Amazon.com products. If a user purchases something after clicking on one of those links, as I mentioned earlier, the web site author gets a modest commission.
Just for fun, I thought I would give it a try. If you notice any links with a dashed line underneath, that is the Context Links in action. The first thing I noticed is that Adblock Plus will block the context links from appearing. That is probably just as well, but I wonder if there might be a point to writing say, a WordPress plugin to do the processing on the server. I also can not help but wonder if Amazon would look to create context-links specific to a customer’s tastes, so they would prefer to do the highlighting on the client-side.
Anyway, it is kind of fun to see what choices the algorithm makes for context links. Some seem pretty reasonable, and some are sort of randomly unenlightened. It does okay by linking San Francisco to a Frommer’s Guidebook, but then it links Walnut Creek to an obscure book about Amish Pioneers. That is all somewhat amusing, but today I took a look at the fundamentalist vitriol posted as comments to my mirror of the Muhammad cartoons, and I could not contain a smile at the bizarre: (more…)
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/04/2006-taxes-file-april-17/
So, a few things I have learned today:
- If you are legally separated, but not divorced, it looks like you can choose to file your federal taxes jointly or separately.
- If you are moving from married to single, you might be paying a bit of back taxes. (Saw that coming.)
- But, there’s no penalty for under-withholding if you withheld more money last year than you owed the year before. (Yay wage inflation!)
- And, if you’d rather hold on to your cash until the deadline, the 2006 tax year deadline is April 17, 2007.
- Because this year, April 15 is on a Sunday . . .
- And Monday April 16 happens to be a
Federal District of Columbia Holiday–Emancipation Day. (HA!)
- The IRS is open on April 16, but you can’t have a tax deadline on a
Federal District of Columbia Holiday.
- The State of California set their deadline to April 17, to keep in step with the IRS.
NOTE: I am definitely NOT an accountant. I’m just some reasonably clever guy who would prefer to hold on to his cash a few weeks more. Get your own damn advice from an expert, but let me know if I’m wrong, ya?
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/31/a-crap-page-today/
Hello, it’s me again. This Matthew Malooly feller has some interesting web site. He’s a lab-sitter like me, I think. Someday I’ll do like the old site had and have a list of web pages I like. Good, well-written and informative web sites you know, about people that introduce them to their mind, assuming they have one. If they’re dull they mightn’t bother with a web site in the first place. And if you find me dull, well feel free to go elsewhere, I’m not forcing you to read.
Which is one great thing about the web. You read what you want, you see and listen to what you want, and what is nasty you just avoid.
Actually, the dude has a link to my page. I remember now. It’s like we see eye to eye on this web page stuff.
Well, on through other URLs I have sitting in my mail to go through …
Okay, so it’s been a good haul, and I now have a new page up to deal with the fact. Yay!
So after class today I scanned pictures. Gotta start gettin’ goin’ again you know? Lotsa good ones on the way, but you won’t see ’til I’m done settin’ everythang up. That might be awhile. Sorry. Like fine wine … nothing before it’s time you know?
I wish I could think of a few interesting things to say here? Well, let’s see, I did think yesterday to maybe start and this time stick to carrying a little “idea” book around with me … what have we got?
A procmail “mail filter” CGI “control center” — ‘nuf said! Huh? Well, it’ll be a relatively complex CGI ultimately for EnterAct to implement for it’s users. The idea seemed particularly keen last night after I’d read that Tom was gonna audit IMAP so it was secure enough to run on EnterAct’s systems. Means two things to me – one is that there should be coming about a secure implementation of IMAP (for BSD) and two that people might find the most basic features of procmail to be useful: primarily of simple sorting for multiple INBOXes accessible via IMAP and perhaps SPAM filtering. I’m still working out details in my mind while idly wondering what likelihood of and where I’m gonna find the free time to engage in such a project. Yikes!
Story idea — Alright, point-of-view of a tree as it’s being chopped down … you know, what it feels about humans, what it knows about them. The history of how the humans keep going in number, the lumberjack’s perspective. The trick though is that I know nearly nothing of forestry or what it may be like to be a lumberjack.
Rhet 143 — Gotta write this gay “Narrative of Place” … so why not go to the moon eh? Cold, timeless, sterile, no air, dark and desolate. Avec ma solitude … well, dunno, we’ll see but Seshagiri wants a draft for Wednesday. Grrr!
Well, another crap journal entry muddled through. Go back and enjoy Matt’s site, and that of Brian Lee the rat boy! I go do something else now. I’m tired.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/30/ten-commandments-eating-well/
If you are interested in a healthy diet, but have grown wary of the ever-changing advice of diet fads, and you appreciate an understanding of the food offered by the contemporary American industrial food system, then I heartily recommend a serving of Michael Pollan.
If you can afford a half hour for a healthy intellectual treat, then check out his article, “Unhappy Meals”, in the New York Times Magazine. If you prefer to indulge his prose for a longer, fuller understanding of the special challenges of America’s food culture, then you should definitely check out his novel, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
For the less patient, or for those like me who like a handy reference, I’ll share a stripped-down version of his advice on eating well, adapted from the “Unhappy Meals” article, (more…)
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/27/the-divorce-dividend/
I make a very modest amount of money from this web site. Most revenue comes from Google AdSense. On a few pages I have added links to Amazon.com Associates. Recently, I noticed that I had made a very modest amount of revenue from Associates. Alas, it seems that I found a topic that people very much want to read about:
So, at first I think “gee, I am profiting from the desperate misery of others.” Then, I think a bit more. Education aint free, and my blog shares my own separation and (failed) approach toward marital reconciliation, which for me was a hard-won learning experience. If I may provide (pointers to) some hopefully useful information for the next people who find themselves in dire straights, then I am pleased to know it. Following my recommendation, they go and purchase a book that I have found useful, or they find some other book, and some cash goes back to the authors writing the books that are trying to help people . . . much of it goes to Amazon.com, and then I get a little cut for being a part of the chain.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/02/not-a-bomb/
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/01/craigslist-missed-connection/
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/284107399.html
Dan Howard!! Put in a change of address!! (sunset / parkside)
hey dude, I am tired of having to take all your mail to the post office and doing the whole return to sender thing. you have not lived at this address in the 5 years that we have been here, wtf? who are you running from? we get cards from your relatives even, you could at least tell your family that you moved. we got a package for you the other day, and i am tempted to open it. what is it? i think its a vhs tape of something, is it child pornography? we even received your muni pass once. you paid for it, and had it sent here? what’s up, seriously? there are too many damn dan howards in the city for me to just start calling people, so if you are dan howard and you ever lived on –th ave, put in a change of address already.
sheesh.
In July I moved to San Francisco at xyzz –th Ave. But a few times I told people xxyz –th Ave. Well, for the past several months a neighbor on the next block has been receiving the occasional misdirected mail, and recently she got fed up and posted the above ad.
Within about two hours a friend forwarded the link to me, and I dropped off some address labels in exchange for a box of cherry cordials from my Grandma. :)
Love,
-danny
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/02/16/goodbye-chief-illiniwek/
The University of Illinois has at long last retired its Mascot Honored Symbol.
That’s awesome! My Alma Mater made a significant contribution to the modern Internet, but culturally speaking, we are still dragging ourselves kicking and screaming into the latter half of the twentieth century, when we the civilized world figured out that it was somewhat rude to use other peoples’ cultures to “honor” our sports rituals. Some of our fine White People took great offense when told that they must endure the shackles of political correctness. They responded that it was incorrect to call the Native American Mascot a Mascot, that the preferred nomenclature was that Chief Illiniwek is an Honored Symbol, following an Honorable Tradition, wherein the Illini people from whom our state took its name would be remembered by having a White Guy an Eagle Scout who is 1/8 Native American perform an exaggerated Lakota “war dance” during the half time performance at sports games. What better Honored Tradition could we possibly maintain for these people? (A Native American Studies Program or a Museum? Boring! You liberals love your museums and cultural programs–get down from your ivory towers and get with the team!)
The argument against retiring the Hollow Hallowed Symbol is that a lot of alumni would get freaked out and stop contributing money to the campus. That always struck me as silly . . . but just to be sure, I have been stingily holding back from giving anything until we adopted a new mascot Honored Symbol. Right? If some alumni are going to stop giving when the Chief goes away, then other alumni ought to be waiting for the Chief to go away before they give.
Guess I get to pay up . . .
6 Comments
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