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Showing posts from September, 2013

#119 - Google Fiber, Television is terrible, GoPro, Column

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Motto: The Column - Now with Content! I got Google Fiber. For those of you who don't know what those numbers mean - the nationwide average internet speed is often quoted as 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. With Google Fiber, I'm sitting at 12,545% and 62,011% those figures. I uploaded 22GB worth of Music and Videos to the cloud yesterday. It took about an hour. At 1Mbps, it would have taken 2 days and an hour. I know this because I just mathed a little. I'd like to say "it's completely changed everything about how I view the web!" But, it hasn't really done that. The connection has been somewhat inconsistent. It varies from "absolutely fantastic" to "just good". 1080p YouTube videos either never stutter at all, or they stop to buffer every 7 or 8 seconds. I haven't yet figured out any rhyme or reason why the inconsistency exists. SEAMLESS TRANSITION FROM GOOGLE FIBER TO MY DISCUSSION OF CABLE-CUTTING With Google Fi

#118 - Tough Mudder (record shortest post yet)

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Motto: Get to It My friend Josh did this. Not that one. That's not his video. But he described to me something that sounded very similar to what that video shows. With that spirit in mind, I'm going to go workout. If I don't, I'll look like this: Top 5: Steps to My Workout 5. Headphones -> This American Life 4. Run 1/2 Mile 3. Squats 2. Bench 1. Rows Quote: “Your quote's hard to read” - Melissa correctly pointed out the light green text I was using doesn't work well with the new white background -

#117 - Minor Changes

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Motto: I Hate Writing about Writing. This Motto is Writing about Writing about Writing. Metametawriting. So, those of you who come here often will notice it looks different... again. This is slightly more in-line with what I had in mind. It's still not perfect, but it's closer. What I envision is less a "Blog" and more a multifaceted website, complete with many different sections (one of which would be a Blog). Up above you'll find the Title of the page has been changed from "The Column" to "WVZ7X7". This is likely temporary. I am experimenting with the notion of "The Column" just being a portion of a larger entity, "WVZ7X7", which would also be home to videos, pictures, files, special articles, and other things of the sort. As you can see, I have already arranged spaces for Videos and Projects. The Videos page is built out, the Projects page is basically just a picture right now. MetametametametaCommunitymet

#116 - Nexus 7 (2013) and Column Aspirations

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Motto: Moving on Up I am in the process of swapping out Nexus 7's. For those of you who don't know (e.g. most of you reading this) Google recently released an updated version of their seriously awesome Nexus 7 seven inch Android tablet from last year. As soon as I heard about the new version of the tablet, I went on Amazon.com* to list my old one for sale. Long story short, it sold and I immediately bought the new one. Then the buyer cancelled his purchase. So I temporarily have two. *I like to sell things using Amazon, as opposed to eBay or Craigslist because Amazon makes me feel less likely to get screwed over or murdered in the selling process. This puts me in a unique position to do a real product review, like the tech bloggers I read every day. They always talk about "white balance" and "true white". None of it really meant anything to me until I put the two Nexuseses next to each other and pulled up a white webpage. The 2012 model look

#115 - An Internet Video & Picture

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Motto: dnekeeW sdrawkcaB A I don't have much to say today.  If you enjoy things that are funny, you should watch this video: I was the top post on Reddit's "r/tall" sub a few days back. I posted this picture: That picture has been viewed over 25 thousand times, according to the hosting service. I've been taking a break from Life Tracking lately. I'm not sure where the motivation went, but it's certainly gone somewhere. I do have 14 full weeks tracked, but I've been supposedly doing this since 21 weeks ago.  My original goal was to do it for a year... or half a year at least. That's going to take a while when I keep taking weeks off. I've turned Melissa into a fellow Dominion player. She beat be today... two times... out of two games. In order to keep with what I normally write about, I should probably just say this: Apple iPhone 5S. Samsung Smartwatch. GoPro action camera. Fitness. Fitness. Android. Fitness.

#114 - Test Redesign & The Future of the Column

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Motto: Change is Necessary for Growth I got tired of white text on a black background. What you see now is what I'm going to go with for the time being. It's not perfect. It's not what I had envisioned; but what I had envisioned is either not possible in Blogger or possible but really really difficult to pull off. All the old posts I've ever written are on the left. I have a link to my YouTube channel up above. This change is only somewhat halfway done. I wanted to take the blog and make it a little more multi-faceted. Give a page for drawings. A page for poetry and prose. I don't actually know what "prose" constitutes. I wouldn't know what prose was if I read it. I wouldn't stop and say "oh, this must be prose". It's one of those words you use that you only know via its context. Just Googled the definition of "prose". Turns out I've been writing prose all along... so I guess it wouldn't get it&#

#113 - Even shorter post, mostly about GIFs

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Motto: Graphics Interchange Format Here's a GIF. Google's Autoawesome feature on Google+ stitched together several photos I took to make that animated GIF. Autoawesome is awesome. Speaking of GIFs, there was a weird resurgence of my JIF GIF again three days ago.  I woke up and read the column I posted on Wednesday. I clicked the "JIF GIF" link from the Top 5 and scrolled down. I found this: That's an Australian kid that looks like a scrawnier, more braces-having version of me doing a cover GIF using a cleaning product they have down there called "JIF". Later that same day, the very popular and well-established site "Imgur.com" created a community on Google+ called "Best of GIFs". Their inaugural post made my day. I know I wrote about the JIF GIF a couple of posts back. I don't want to keep writing about it. So I'm going to stop. This weekend was great. Productive. Fun. The works. 2 Danielle&

#112 - KitKat & Dominion (short post)

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Motto: CANDY SOVEREIGN TERRITORY Two days ago the words "KitKat" and "Dominion" conjured up no real response in my brain. In the past 48 hours, KitKat and Dominion have SKYROCKETED in importance in my life. Android has been named in alphabetical order after deserts since the debut of 3rd generation of Android, which was named"Cupcake". This is what followed: > Cupcake (1.5) > Donut (1.6) > Eclair (2.0-2.1, my first Android phone ran this, I've used every OS since) > Froyo (2.2 > Gingerbread (2.3) > Honeycomb (3.0-3.2) > Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0, the moment Android quality surpassed iOS) > Jelly Bean (4.1-4.3) Out of the blue Google announced Android 4.4 was going to be named " KitKat ". Nobody was predicting an announcement and nobody predicted the name was going to be "KitKat" - the rumors pointed to "Key Lime Pie" (which sucks). KitKat and Google worked this deal out last ye

#111 - WVZ7X7 (and more)

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Motto: WVZ7X7 The motto is my new thing - my unique identifier in the space of 6 character strings. You can Google "WVZ7X7" and find this page without (much) clutter. For now, I won't make any grandiose changes to the column to accommodate the string. I'm just going to add it in a little text box above my picture at the top-right of the page (or the top of the very bottom of the mobile page). If you have a hard time remembering "WVZ7X7", it may help to notice how the whole string can be drawn without picking up your pencil - like so: I used Microsoft Paint to make that. You could probably tell by its fanciness. I also made a few other variations of the same thing: (and/or) Then I started getting fancy with coloration: (and/or) Then I graduated from Paint and started getting really fancy: (and/or) Anyway, that's not the only thing I wanted to share it today's column. It's not the only thing I'v