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8 March, 2004
The Pope Plays Guitar
From The Spoof: Pope Learns to Play Guitar in Just 3 Days!
VATICAN
CITY -- In a statement issued by Vatican officials today, Pope John Paul II
expressed his desire to permanently alter his title to "His Most Rockin' Roman
Pontificate."
Sources close to the 83-year old pontiff credit this somewhat uncharacteristic announcement to his recent purchase of 3 Day Guitar, an instructional guitar video that claims to turn absolute beginners into competent guitarists.
"Contrary to what some people might imagine, the Holy Father is actually quite the avid Internet user," says Cardinal Franc� Wloszcyza, one of his chief confidants. "He went to 3dayguitar.com and ordered the next-day delivery option. I've almost never seen him happier than when his DVD got here.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
No Comments For Politics Posts
I've decided to disable comments for all political blog entries. Comments for these items tend to be repetitious, and sometimes even rude. But more importantly, they serve no purpose. Face it people: No matter what you say in a comment, no one is ever going to change their political ideas.
Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy reading the comments to my posts -- except those that are in response to a political post. They are boring and often just plain stupid.
From time to time, I will continue to post politically-oriented items, but you will not be able to post a comment. Call it censorship if you like. I call it bandwidth reduction. But it's my blog and I can do whatever I want with it.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Ice Art
It's been sunny and hot in San Diego. But it's still cold in Alaska. From Fairbanks: the 2004 Ice Art Championships. More photos are posted here.
(Thanks Tom Gordon)
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Kerry: Man Of The People
Moveon.org has lots of anti-Bush videos, and now Citizens United has an anti-Kerry video, titled "Man of the People."
Their server is very slow right now, so I snagged a copy, which you can download.
(via Electric Venom)
Posted on 8 March, 2004
More Cheap Real Estate
Back in September, I posted links to some very inexpensive houses for sale. Amazingly, one of those house is still on the market. The house shown below, in Birmingham, Alabama, can be yours for only $5,000 (the price has not been lowered). Click the pictures to see the listing at realtor.com.
For the same price, you can get this 78-year old house in St. Louis, Missouri. It seems to require a bit less fix-up work.
And if $5,000 is too rich for your blood, here's another house in St. Louis. It's only $3,995.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Spam Glam
Believe it or not, I had this idea about two months ago. But I never followed through with it. Now I see that Spam Glam beat me to it.
Here
is a gallery of images and photos that I liked or thought might be useful one
day to glamorize or demonstrate something on a web page. The image files all
came to me via spam, completely unsolicited and unwanted e-mail messages. Now I
am no legal expert, but I figure if you stick something in my paw, that I didn't
ask for, you mean for me to do with it whatever I want.
So I have started saving image, photo and graphics files here. I have also edited out any text or other stuff relevant to the original spam, to make the images immediately useful and generic
I'm sure that the happy couple shown here are proud of the fact that their photo has been dumped into millions of email boxes throughout the world. There's an excellent chance that the spammer stole the image in the first place.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Fan Mail
Yes, every once in a while I do get fan mail...
My name is also John. Working in a Dubai based multinational company. My knowledge in Excel was of making simple formulas and generating the MIS reports. I never tried for macros as I have little exposure to VB. But I knew the possibilities and greater power of excel with VBA.
Searching for the right book to learn from, my brother only suggested me your book, Excel 2000 Power Programming with VBA. I started learning your book and the result was amazing. With my little exposure to Foxpro programming, I started making small small programs in Excel. Now in my Excel workbook I have a menu item called JohnsMenu where I have linked all my macros.
Our entire work had been made easy. The company is so happy for me. I got a promotion to my higher office. One of the programs I made brought me an award and an appreciation letter from my MD.
Cool, eh?
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Get Paid To Listen To Ads
A company called Adnoodle claims that they will pay you to listen to telemarketers. Just name your price, and wait for the phone to ring.
There are thousands of Advertisers who want to make CASH OFFERS for your Time & Attention. Depending on your Consumer Profile, You can earn hundreds of dollars per month by simply talking on the phone, answering emails and interacting with recordings. You can make cash and learn more about your favorite advertisers while sitting in traffic, at home, at work, (Shhh..don't tell the boss) absolutely anywhere, anytime.
It sounds like a win-win situation. Stupid and gullible people will sign up for the service. And, of course, advertisers just love stupid and gullible people.
Before you sign up, make sure you read their Terms & Conditions, their Terms of Use, and their Privacy Policy.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Sprawl City
Sprawl City is a Web site about...
...consumption growth and population growth, and their roles in the urban sprawl that destroys natural habitat and farmland around U.S. cities.
You'll find a list of 100 cities, ranked by square miles of sprawl between 1970 and 1990. Atlanta tops the list, followed by Houston and New York City.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
TV In 1968
This site contains TV excerpts from two days in 1968: The CBS Evening news (4 April) and the Democratic National Convention (28 August).
And that's the way it was.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Spam Analysis, Part V
This is the fifth in a continuing series in which I analyze my email for a 7-day period. The goal is to get a handle on how much spam I receive.
I do this about every four months. Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Here's a summary chart:
My incoming spam has now surpassed 500 per day. This increase came in spite of the fact that I eliminated all "wildcard" email addresses in January. I found that spammers were using name dictionaries to create email addresses (for example, ann@j-walk.com, ben@j-walk.com, etc.). Now, I use only a few names. Everything else is refused by the server.
Virus-laden messages have nearly doubled since November. These now average of about 146 per day. But it's been much worse than that.
Last November, legitimate email accounted for about 4.8% of my incoming email. Now, it's 11.2%. This increase is caused by the fact that I now get a lot more email (I get a message whenever someone posts a comment to this blog). If I don't count those messages, then my legitimate email declines to 3.4%.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Bathroom Mania
...is
an illustrative new line of sanitary products by Dutch illustrator and designer
Meike van Schijndel.
Shown here is an interesting fixture called the "Good Morning Sunshine" flower pot (also known as a toilet):
Bring the fresh air into your bathroom with the flower pot, a birdie that sings with every flush and a sun that really shines!
(Thanks Betty)
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Patriotic Posters
To balance out Saturday's post, here's a link to patriotic posters.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Mistakes By Writers
From Holt Uncensored: Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do).
I think I make all of these mistakes in my Excel books -- except the one about phony dialog.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
When Planets Align
From NightSky Friday: Planet Panorama: See Five Worlds At Once.
All
five planets that can be visible to the naked eye will appear together in the
evening sky later this month in a viewing opportunity that won't be matched for
32 years.
Going in order from West to East, the cast of planetary characters will be Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. All but Mercury are already visible. The winged messenger is the most elusive of the five, being so close to the Sun that it never gets very far above the horizon, and always only near dawn or dusk.
By late March, Mercury will be about as high as possible at dusk for viewers at mid-northern latitudes, setting the stage for a memorable few weeks of easy-to-do backyard skywatching.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Petco Park Photos
The San Diego Padres will be playing in a brand new ballpark this year: Petco Park. Yesterday, they had an open house. We checked it out, and took some photos.
It's a very nice place to watch a ballgame.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Rain Songs
Here's a huge listing of songs about rain.
Take a long stroll down memory lane, no matter what your era or your preferred style of music, browsing almost 800 song titles relating to rain and rainy things, including over 50 named just 'Rain.' You will probably be surprised how many of these songs from American popular culture you know.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Build An Igloo
Building an igloo is easy and fun. And the igloo is a great place to spend the night on a small 'expedition' in the mountains. Much warmer than a tent, and can be built just about anywhere. Building an igloo will take somewhere between 3 and 6 hours, depending on your previous experience and level of ambition...
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Dasani Water
News item: Coca-Cola Admits That Dasani is Nothing But Tap Water.
It
made for great headlines, but the fact that the UK version of Coca-Cola's Dasani
brand bottled water comes out of the London public supply should hardly have
come as a surprise.
Not surprising at all.
Figures from independent beverage research company Canadean show that at least two out of every five bottles of water sold around the world are, like Dasani, "purified" waters, rather than "source" waters which originate from a spring.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Tattoo Clothes
Sleeves: clothes that make you look like you have tattoos.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Download Some Ukulele Songs
A plethora of downloadable (or streamable) uke songs from Brook Adams. These are covers of some popular songs -- songs that you probably don't associate with a ukulele.
Here is a great diversity of ukulele songs. I just put 'em here 'cause I can. I don't expect anybody to marvel at my great technique or anything. I just really like the fact that you can play anything on a uke. The chords are so clean and simple that you can imply a lot of the stuff that happens in full band arrangements.
I think I'll be burning a CD later on...
(via Metafilter)
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Passion Cartoons
From Slate: A large collection of editorial cartoons about that Mel Gibson movie.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
A Woman Hat
The Woman Hat is made of photos of women from a calendar.
Functional, yet fashionable.
Posted on 8 March, 2004
Microsoft Type
Did you know that Microsoft has a site devoted to type and fonts? They do. It's called Microsoft Typography. Lots of interesting and useful information.
(via Unofficial Microsoft Office Stuff)
Posted on 8 March, 2004