One in 10 Europeans is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed

Here are 100 things we didn’t know this time of last year, courtesy of the BBC.

Another favorite was that the Queen has never been on a computer, she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

Sisterly Love

This week has been nice since Eva and Ernie were visiting. It has been kind of a chill visit since Eva’s baby is due in a month and Ernie was sick. But this means I got to play tons of board games with both of them–we played Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan, the Works, and alas, we never got around to Illuminati, but that was on our list, in any event.

Notes on del.icio.us

While we’re on the topic of blogging, I’d like to talk a bit about why I like del.icio.us so much. This is probably a rather dated subject for a blogger to choose, but I’m going to anyway since it’s my blog and I imagine not that many people who read this blog know about this kind of technology (save Sean and possibly Lynn). I guess this is also a strange rant to make on Christmas day, but hey, maybe whoever is reading this might just get some Christmas cheer with this new tool.

This semester I’ve been readily taken with del.icio.us and have been browsing del.icio.us/popular most this summer, and I must say, it’s one of those technologies that is simple yet very effective. The link to del.icio.us’s homepage is simply http://del.icio.us/, and the link to mine (or any user) is always in the format http://del.icio.us/ProfLupin (or http://del.icio.us/username, what have you). So there’s a simple plug for you to browse my bookmarks.

What is del.icio.us? It is simply a social bookmarking tool, which means that rather than have your bookmarks saved somewhere on your computer, you upload it to their server instead, and then you can access your bookmarks anywhere that has Internet connection. The brilliance behind this technology is not only for practical matters–say you need your bookmarks across two computers you use, such as office/home or laptop/desktop–but it’s also useful for its social aspect as well, such as finding interesting links. Here are a few useful features I like about del.icio.us:

Make use of tags. Do you know what labels are on gmail? If not, you should use them! Some labels I have are “Family” (emails from family), “Scripps” (email forwarded from my scrippscollege account), “Things to Do”, and “Work”, but there are others too. Anyway, what labels does is, it’s just a fancy name for a more common technology called “tags.” So what you do is, say you want to post on del.icio.us. Well, you “tag” the item (in this case, url since it’s a bookmark)–and don’t hold back on tag names here, since it helps for referencing–and this helps for retrieving the url quickly since you’ve labeled it accordingly. I also subscribe to the RSS on my del.icio.us tags on the different computers I use so that I can access my bookmarks quickly. How does one use RSS, you say? Well, on Firefox, it’s quite easy, and it’s the same deal with Safari. I’m not going to talk about other browsers, especially Internet Exploder :shudders: but you get the idea.

Search your own bookmarks and other user’s bookmarks. Sometimes I don’t tag/post something to del.icio.us but I know I spotted it there, so this feature comes in handy all the time :)

Subscribe to your own RSS. Aside from subscribing to my own tags, I also subscribe to a tag called “daily”–websites I view every day–in my bookmarks toolbar folder on Firefox. I also like del.icio.us/popular (you don’t even need to be a member of del.icio.us to use this one!), and I also put this on my web clips for gmail, just for fun.

Use Firefox extensions to post to del.icio.us. If you’re not a Firefox user, here’s another reason you should download it (by the way, they updated to 1.5 recently, so now’s a great time to start)! Posting on del.icio.us through the website is, as you can see, quite annoying. But if you use Firefox, there are several extensions for posting to del.icio.us. The one I like is available here, since you can post with a simple keyboard command (being the keyboard person I am, I like that aspect) and it also uses a better technology to suggest tags, but since this extension doesn’t work on my iBook, a more popular extension is this one here.

Post your del.icio.us bookmarks live on your blog. If you look on the right column of my blog, you’ll see it says my del.icio.us, with about 10 links below. As I post to del.icio.us, these links constantly update themselves. That’s called a linkroll, which I find nifty.

Why del.icio.us is useful for bloggers. Bloggers are always looking for things to write about–new technologies, cool links, news, reference, good articles, etc. By subscribing to del.icio.us/popular, it’s useful for getting new links and ideas for blogging. But del.icio.us is also useful because you now have a database of stuff you blog, ideas for blogging, etc. Even cooler–if you want to blog something instantaneously without navigating away from that page, and you are a blogger user, you can use Google’s new blogger extension to see what bloggers are saying about a page you use, and to post to your own blog instantly! Radical! (note: the other extension on that article is very good too). Even if you’re not a blogger user, you can check out linkbacks to del.icio.us (see who posted to del.icio.us on a page, and their comments with it too) by bookmarking del.icio.us linkbacks.

The only downside to del.icio.us. Recently Yahoo! bought del.icio.us, which is never good because you know Yahoo! might just wreck it, same they did with other technologies. So it might be a good idea to see where Yahoo! takes del.icio.us before using it religiously, like I’ve been doing (clearly). However, there are other social bookmark services available, such as digg, which arguably isn’t quite as good as del.icio.us but might become better if you watch it. I subscribe to the RSS of diggdot.us, which is a technology that posts the best of del.icio.us/popular, digg, and slashdot.

So, that’s del.icio.us. My recommendation would be, subscribe to the RSS of del.icio.us/popular, check out how I use del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us/ProfLupin, and if you like what you see, give it a try yourself! If you would like to read more about del.icio.us, here is an article on getting started.

Anyway, this post shows that I clearly had too much coffee/adreneline this morning, so I think I better wander off and do something else. I hope that was helpful! And Merry Christmas!

Why YOU should blog

For those of you who still don’t blog, here is a motivational article spotted on del.icio.us earlier. The only thing that was not completely correct was when the author mentioned that what you put on your blog can always be taken down. Well, keep in mind that thanks to The Internet Archive, everything you blog is indeed perminant. But I think so few people have heard about the Internet Archive that to a degree, most of what the author asserts is more or less true, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of his points. So, what are you waiting for? Go out there and start a blog!

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Today was a fun day. I played Ultimate Frisbee with John, Joey, and Scott and then after work went out with the gang. And I got a new (real-life) diary at Barnes and Noble. I can’t believe I’ve filled my green one; that diary took four years to fill!

I saw the Steven Colbert show earlier today and thought it was kind of…weird. I didn’t pay much attention to the show because I was multi-tasking (yay multi-tasking), but my overall impression was that it’s just not going to go over. I think the popularity with Colbert was his chemistry with John Stewart, but now that that’s gone, a big chunk of the humor is missing. I think Colbert is a great talent, but somehow he doesn’t belong on his own talk show. In any event, I don’t see myself catching another episode sometime soon.

Everyone I have talked to in the past two days hated King Kong. So I don’t think I’ll be seeing that one soon.

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Home in Tucson! It was nice to see the family again. The house looks pretty different since while I was gone, we have acquired a lot of my grandma’s furniture and Sherman has grown a lot, so he’s like a walking piece of furniture. I think it’s a big improvement though–our house looked a little cluttered before, but with the books stowed away in my room and a piano to replace it, the house looks rather nice. Since Sherman chews things, all the gifts are in my room, so I feel very Christmasy indeed in here. I also got a Christmas present early–Murray!!! That’s my main thesis source, and it’ll come in handy a lot, since I’m writing my math thesis this break and got so sick of ordering from LINK+ three or four times this semester.

To Claremont people, I miss you all very much! To Tucson people, I’m looking forward to seeing you :)

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Ooh, new activity for us! Take the first sentence from the first post of each month of 2005. That’s your year in review.

January: New Years was good stuff…I heart friends!
February: spent this evening not only working on PDEs but finally getting to putting songs on Norman the iPod.
March: Phew, made it out alive!
April: ick, that’s the second time this evening since I’ve been back that someone in our hall burned popcorn.
May: Wow, classes are _over_
June: d’oh…
July: yaay June is over….anyone else ready for July monsoons?
August: I don’t think the storms have been doing much for my allergies/headaches, but I don’t mind either if it means a nice bout of rain.
September: yeah, so I guess it’s been awhile for me with the updatingness, but things are fine here, if a little on the busy side.
October: Go see Serenity!
November: Ack, it’s going to be a busy couple of weeks.
December: I just realized I haven’t properly given my review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!

Hmm…it seemed to sum up a few things pretty accurately but like Cypress’s post, missed a lot of important events. Still, that was neat.

I’m going home to Tucson tomorrow…I can’t believe the semester is over!

Animated Singing Santa Hack

This is great–someone hacked into those 5 ft tall santa clause’s found at WalMart and programmed it to say smart-ass things.

http://members.cox.net/jmccorm/santa.html

“santa claus is drinking tonight.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHHA.

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Talya: I’ll do a dance for you if you like :)
Jeremy: If you feel like dancing, feel free, but I’d hate to put you at an inconvenience.
Talya: no, I’ll dance!
Jeremy: Alright, make sure to let me know if it’s a good one.
Talya: :does an irish jig:
Talya: Hmmm, it’s missing something….I know!
Talya: :pulls out a jug:
Jeremy: A jig with a jug! Now you jut need to drive off in a jag…or, if money is tight, you could just jog.

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Last night I saw Chronicles of Narnia and really enjoyed it. The set-up in the beginning was really well-done; someone did a lot of research about the WWII era. All the actors did a great job–especially the kids. I’m surprised they got such a great performance out of them; there was some really good chemistry going on. The White Witch was perfect–she was very creepy but incredibly beautiful and powerful at the same time. Her winter dresses were really awesome, and her hair was fun. That chainmail gown she wore in battle was pretty crazy though. I bet Erin would have had a field day designing her costumes. I still can’t believe Edmund bought into her Turkish delight gimmick though.

My main problem with the movie was that it tried to be too much like Lord of the Rings, and I don’t think the movie would have been made had it not been the year after the release of Return of the King. Also, the animal characters looked kind of cartoony to me. But overall it was a great epic, and I found myself getting caught up in it.

On Friday we went to Pasadena to celebrate Chris’s birthday, which was pretty fun. We were in good company, and it was nice to see everyone. Today I got ahold of an old friend–crazy how one can do that on the Internet. In other news, my thesis consists of scratchings of Chapter 1 and most the figures are complete.