T-Mobile Ge 1

I Will Ask Google Before Asking Dumb Questions

Today’s lesson is a look into phonetic spelling, and the ramifications of including those in your posts! You may notice that the title of this post, “T-Mobile Ge 1″ is meant to refer to the HTC T-Mobile G1 (Android) phone, but the “G” is spelled phonetically. I decided to do this upon a discovery using my G1 after I received the RC-33 update adding the functionality to perform a Google web search by utilizing voice-to-text. When I attempted to search “T-Mobile G1″ it came out as “t mobile g 1,”which gave me pretty much the same results as if I had searched “T-Mobile G1.” This led me to perform searches based off of variations of “T-Mobile G1.” While I searched, Google provided suggestions, one of them being “T-Mobile Ge 1.”  Google suggests queries based of off similar terms with relative popularity. I figured if “T-Mobile Ge 1″ appeared in the suggestions, then enough people must be searching it. Plus, once I executed the search, nothing immediately obvious appeared, though, a few blog postings returned based off the occurance of “T-Mobile” and the official site was listed second. So, this post will serve as an experiment to see if people will come here after searching for “T-Mobile Ge 1.” Though, I suspect once the search results are returned, he or she will immediately realize it was spelled incorrectly. But… I shall see!

Zune 30GB Frozen at Midnight, December 31, 2008

So, I go to work tonight and I get the hankerin’ to listen to “The Device Had Been Modified v2.”  I get out my trusty black 30GB Zune, and my little portable speakers,  fire up the Zune and….

Boot screen…
Bar charges across the screen… stops.
Stuck. Nothing. Frozen. Dead. Crap.

I perform the ol’ back button + up button reset trick and even the back button + down button (reportedly works when the other doesn’t) and it fails to thaw my Zune. I leave the Zune alone for a couple hours, and after returning to my office, I find the screen black and the battery drained.

But, apparently, I am not alone.

Owners of the original 30gb Zune from around the world are reporting that when they tried turning on their Zune after midnight on December 31, 2008, the device rebooted, then hung on reboot. The only workaround discovered thus far is detaching the battery, effectively resetting the internal clock which is being pointed to as the culprit.

Looks like MS is aware of the problem.

It would seem that if something like this was going to occur, it would occur at midnight of the new year. One astute reader at Engadget noted that 2008 was a leap year, with one day more than other years. Whatever the reason is for the strange behavior, this could be the reason why our Zunes didn’t die as the new year came to be. Or perhaps there’s a conflict of certain processes thinking it’s 2008, but the others, 2009 depending on if the process takes the leap year into account. Then again, Microsoft could just be telling us to go buy a new gen2 Zune.

Welcome to the Zunicide.

Update: I’d just like take a second and note all the whiny, bitchy, complaining people who’ve been without some media player for a few hours; those who are crying foul and whining all over the Internet as if their mother just died and Microsoft called in the hit. I know its just a minority, a vocal minority. But geez people, GET A GRIP.

microsoft zune 30gb midnight die dead broken frozen fix

Gas – Cash + Receipt = Less Hungry

Jack in the Box is giving you two free tacos on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 when you bring in any gas receipt.

The fine print says “2 Free Tacos with valid gas receipt.” Not much to say what’s valid, though. Does it have to be a receipt dated June 26? Dunno.

Go get a gallon and go get some free grub. (And yes, it’s “free grub” because you’d have to buy that gallon anyway. And no, I’m not about to discuss the “gas wasted” in driving to the nearest Jack in the Box! Yeesh.)

SPAM Clogs the Tubes [Akismet Stats]

There’s a lot of controversy going on all over the Internet and the real world over the massive use of peer-to-peer technology (P2P), and it’s legitimate and illegitimate implications. Namely, the massive amount of bandwidth P2P communications consume. Frankly, I believe the ISPs are blaming P2P users for using the available bandwidth on the network (regardless of the fact that those users have paid for a certain level of service) and threatening to charge for overages on ridiculously low monthly bandwidth caps instead of upgrading their networks as they should be doing just as any other company would have to who needs to keep up with demand in order to remain a viable competitor!

I’m sorry, I digress. That discussion is a whole ‘nother week of blog postings dedicated to the topic.

However, my topic today is related. Akismet (a WordPress bloggers best friend against SPAM) keeps detailed stats on the comments it filters. Every comment that is submitted to a blog with Akismet installed gets passed through Akismet and is checked to see if it looks like SPAM. If it passes the test, the comment is allowed to post on the blog. If for some reason a comment is caught that isn’t SPAM or a comment it let through that is SPAM, I can mark it manually, and Akismet will “learn” from its mistake.

Anyway, back to the stats. Listed here, you can see a basic graph outlining the number of HAM comments (legitimate comments) in blue, and the number of SPAM comments in orange. That is a outrageous HAM to SPAM ratio! And that’s only on blogs that Akismet tracks!

My point is… there’s A LOT OF SPAM. I’m sure the bandwidth it takes to transmit all that crap is fairly substantial. There have been studies that try to pinpoint the number, but they all differ. They do, however, agree that it is certainly more taxing than legitimate communications.

The solution? These ISPs should spend more of their resources locking down something that NOBODY likes (SPAM) and less time alienating their customers over crap like DNS-based behavioral tracking and bandwidth caps.

P.S. Akismet is the reason you don’t have sign-up or enter in some CAPTCHA or other human-verification code in order to comment here! So yeah! Give it up for Akismet!

Flickr Will Soon Host Videos

I’m not sure how this caught my eye, but somehow I ended up on the Flickr blog on a post announcing that Flickr will be adding a video hosting service to their arsenal. Immediately, I thought “Well, there goes the neighborhood,” as Flickr would only join the ranks of every other video sharing service out there with imbeciles on skateboards and babies dancing for their parent’s Internet fame. However, as I continued to read, I found that Flickr wasn’t trying to just be another video web site. Their idea surrounds the use of video to portray “long photos.” Just as photographs can capture a single moment of life, video can capture a single moment, too, just a longer moment. Flickr is trying to keep this ideal by allowing video clips no longer than 90 seconds.

No doubt this will be popular, but will it “dirty” the Flickr many of us have grown to love?

I Must Give Credit Where It’s Due [Hat Tip]

I’d like to tell you that idea for the domain name and title of this blog was entirely the result of my own creativity and brain power, but, as I’m sure you’ve assumed from the title of this post, it was not.

Actually, to confess, I’m not very creative. This isn’t to say that I steal all my ideas, but I do often need to observe the work of others in order to “spring” off of into my own ideas.

The “spring” for this blog came from a combination of my own desire to give back to the Internet community and most notably from French blogger Jean-François and his blog 365Questions.org.

I first discovered 365Questions.org October 17th, 2006 (The comment I posted on that day; the only way I knew the date). I’m not sure what I was searching for, all I know is that I ended up on 365Question’s popular compilation of creative 404 pages. I read some of his other entries and decided I liked what I saw. This is also about the same time I discovered the magic of RSS, so I added his blog to my reader.

I don’t know where Jean-François got the idea for his domain name, but I liked the name, and since I already had some “philosophy” for this blog regarding discovery before I had constructed it i thought a “365-site” would work well with the philosophy.

So, consider giving 365Questions.org a read if you’re interested in discovering oddities from different corners of the Interwebs from a different perspective!

The Meaning of Serendipity [And Discovery]

The best thing about my discovery of the meaning of the word “Serendipity” is that is was serendipitous in nature. While looking for the full dictionary / encyclopedic meaning of “discovery” to provide more description for this site, I found that discovery is very similar to serendipity but their meanings differ in how the thing is found. Discovery is detecting and learning something willfully while serendipity is accidental discovery that turns out to be fortunate.

Previously, I thought serendipity had something to do fate… well, I guess it does depending on what you believe. But, I’m glad I found the full meaning of the word because it’ll help describe some of the discoveries I’ve made that you’ll find here. Instead of you thinking I’m a blundering idiot by saying it was “accidental,” I can elegantly say it was “serendipity.” Doesn’t that sound so much better?