Tag / Web Links

by Greg

Joining The PIPA/SOPA Cause

OK, so I’m a bit late (publicly) to this cause, but I have been following along (actually for quite a while now, when there were just “whispers in the wind” on such legislation mentioned on This Week In Tech and other TWIT shows…

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America = Not really the “good guys”) and the US Congress (again, not necessarily currently the “good guys”) are teaming up to put a halt to internet piracy. No more peer-to-peer downloading of movies and music and other things that you haven’t paid for! And, while I completely agree (especially as a content creator) that this is not a fair, honest, just, commendable practice, the answer is most definitely not granting the RIAA via the federal government the power to shut down any website they deem a potential piracy threat.

Please do read more. I’m going to post several links here below. It’s pretty easy to add your name to some existing petitions asking Congress to vote these bills down. But you can do more.

For this reason, GregsHead.net is joining the internet-wide strike against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)/PIPA (Protect IP Act of 2011).

The internet, for better or worse, is definitely a tool for the people—every person—to protect freedom. And it should remain that way.

So, enjoy the day off. Stop by here again January 19th, and we’ll pick up where we left off.

For now, please do visit these links. Let congress know that you want to keep the internet as free of federal regulation as possible.

SOPA/PIPA Info Links

by Greg

November 2nd, 2010 Elections: VoteSmart.org

2010 Elections - Vote!It’s election time (or nearly so) and that means we American citizens of voting age get to head out and browse a sheet full of names and parties—many of which we’ve never heard of until stepping into the voting booth—and then flip some switches and pull a big lever in order to fulfill our duties as the electorate. Problem is, what good does it do to vote for people whom you do not know? How can they represent you? And even worse (in my opinion) what good does it do to vote for a particular candidate just because they slapped a party name on their name tag?

That’s not how it should be. It’s our responsibility to know whom we are voting for, and why we are voting for them, and how they will represent us on local, state, and national levels.

It really is up to us.

So I’ve been thinking, I really need to set up a website where I can post information on all our local candidates, so that we all can read up on every candidate and, after knowing the facts, we can make a fair and impartial assessment and choose the candidate that best represents what we would want our government to look like and to do. That’s how it should work, anyway. But I’m just one guy… how could I have the time to look up all the candidates even just in the elections I can vote for, let alone the rest of the country?

So maybe a wiki of some sort? But… that’s still a bunch of work. (I am having this idea way too late, I suppose…)

Enter Google. After a quick search for “learn about candidates” I discovered VoteSmart.org. I don’t know much about them yet, but they do go out of their way on the About Us page to say they are independent, impartial, non-partisan, and they have good and equal representation from conservative and liberal viewpoints.

Cool. That’s just what I was looking for!

So I’ll see what else I can find, but for now, have a look at VoteSmart. (And maybe see if you can help them out. They are all volunteer and at a quick glance it looked like they are always grateful for help)

They also have a fun tool called “Vote Easy“. An interactive, Flash site that makes the learning more fun. You put in what you think about a dozen or so key issues (and how important they are to you) and then it helps match you with candidates, based on what is publicly know about them.

Please educate yourself. And, do so directly from the sources, not from political ads, talk shows, magazines, cable news channels, or other such secondary sources. I can’t emphasize that enough. We have, in general, gotten very lazy about this. Take the time to be a responsible, voting citizen. The resources are available to us, and you can vote with a bit more of an easy conscience when you know you’ve had your say—and you actually know what you said.

Voting day is just two weeks away. So get to work! 🙂

by Greg

Amazon.com: Subscribe & Save

Amazon.com's Subscribe & Save

My wife recently discovered a great program that Amazon.com offers it’s users called Subscribe & Save. It not only offers a decent discount on the regular Amazon.com price (which is already usually discounted from retail price), it also allows you to have items you regularly purchase automatically delivered to you at that reduced price. (And somehow Jen arranged for a 3-month trial of their shipping upgrade service, Amazon Prime, so everything is shipped for free!)

Not every item at Amazon is eligible for this Subscribe & Save service, but I happened to noticed on Monday that it does apply to Big Train Chai, of which I happen to be a very big fan.

I did the math on what I usually order, and what was offered for the Subscribe & Save service, and it was rather shocking: for $16.47 (the current Subscribe & Save price), I got about twice the amount of chai that I would usually get from Amazon for $18! Crazy!

Big Train Vanilla Chai - 1.9lb containerThen I did a bit more of the math…

  • (2) 1.9 lb cans of Big Train Vanilla Chai = (25) 16oz drinks = $16.47
  • (3) 12 oz bags of Big Train Vanilla Chai = (15) 16oz drinks = $18
  • (1) 12 oz bag of Big Train Vanilla Chai (from any retail store) = (5) 16oz drinks = $10
  • (1) 16 oz cup of Big Train Vanilla Chai (prepared, at a coffee shop) = $4.25

So, with Subscribe & Save I end up saving 86% on what it would cost me to buy 25 cups of chai at my favorite coffee shop.

I guess their service is quite appropriately named!

We Campbells highly recommend checking into it for the stuff you buy regularly. We are now “Subscribe(d) and Sav(ing)” on chai, and diapers! Have a look and see if you can find a great deal for yourself!

Subscribe & Save

by Greg

Steve Jobs Keynote at WWDC 2010 – 10am PT, June 7th

Steve Jobs Keynote

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is set to give another keynote address today, where most expect that the 4th generation iPhone will be announced (if not made available today) among the many other traditional rumors and speculations. (Personally, I’d like to see some sort of “cloud” music service, speculated to be “iTunes.com” or something similar to that…)

If you’d like to follow it live, there are a couple sites that I usually pull up in my browser tabs on such days:

MacRumors Live
Engadget’s live coverage

by Greg

PopTarts Rewards

PopTarts Rewards

Ahh, PopTarts… the great American breakfast treat! 🙂

Jen purchased a box of Apple Strudel PopTarts for me last night, and this morning when we looked at the box, we noticed a little promotion they have going currently called PopTarts Rewards. Apparently they are wanting (needing?) people to try all of their flavors. The incentive towards this end is a little code on each box. When you collect five codes, you get one prize. You can do that up to five times. (But you can only get one code per flavor…)

The prizes you can choose from include 5 music downloads, a free movie ticket… AND… 2 FREE BOXES of POPTARTS! Who doesn’t want free PopTarts!?? 🙂

So head on over to their PopTarts Rewards site and check it out. Then head to your grocer and try out some new flavors.

(And no, I was not paid to write this… I’m just a fan.) 😉

by Greg

StumbleUpon: Discover Great Stuff

stumbleupon.com toolbar

I have a recommendation for you today. A long while ago, I was introduced to a website/technology called StumbleUpon. You may have noticed the little icon down in the “Share this post” bar below… StumbleUpon icon. Well, that’s for StumbleUpon.

How it works is, you set up your free account with them, and then bring up their site in your browser, and click on that “Stumble” button in the toolbar above. (The toolbar will automatically show up under your normal browser toolbars.) As you start visiting sites that other StumbleUpon users have recommended, you can click the “like” or “don’t like” buttons, or just “stumble” to the next site.

As you click on the like or don’t like options, you start to build a list of “favorites.” These are also grouped by category, which will help you fine tune your “stumbling,” focusing on a particular type of website.

It really does work quite well. Head on over and give it a spin today. You’ll discover some really great and probably very useful websites. (I know I have. Check out some of the ones I have liked in the past at my stumbleupon page.)

And, if you’re so inclined, you can bump up GregsHead.net in the StumbleUpon rankings by just “liking” it, or you can even leave a review if you’re feeling wordy!

by Greg

Where Do You Get Your News?

NewsIn the olden days, Grandpa would read the newspaper every morning to catch up on the latest local, national, and world news. Our parents’ generation tuned their TV sets to the national news from their favorite of the three broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, or NBC. (And of course, just before bed there was the local TV news at Eleven.)

But that’s changing. Or more accurately, has changed.

Cable news networks (starting with CNN) changed how news was delivered. Still using the old medium of the television, the difference was that news was now available 24-hours a day. We were beginning to have access to breaking news as it happened. (I am neglecting radio here. Radio was another medium that was perhaps “closer” to the news prior to cable news. But as this is not an “exhaustive report”, you’ll allow me some wiggle room, I’m sure…)

Once news was available like this, it sort of conditioned us for what the internet would bring us. Dubbed the “information superhighway”—and for a good reason—news is now available not just 24/7, but often directly from the source of the news. And from many sources.

Even better than that, the internet is open to everyone. Anyone can have a website, and now multimedia-rich websites (podcasts) so with so many sources, there can be very specific subject matter. (Like one show on a network, I suppose… but far more “networks” and “time slots”.)

Even better than that is the advent of RSS, a technology that delivers electronic news (article by article, media item by media item) almost like the paper boy brought the newspaper to our Grandpa’s step. It’s fantastic!

This means we can get exactly the news we want to read or hear. For example, I enjoy following the latest tech trends, specifically from Apple, Inc. So I do. As well as my favorite sports teams. And a few other things I like to follow.

As great as this is, the downside to this way of getting the news is that you miss the stories that the news editors would find and “rank” for us by their position in the news paper. While the obvious flaw of this method of distributing news is the influence of the editors biases, there still was at least a broader swath of news available this way.

And so sites like the Drudge Report arose, with links to the latest headlines. But since Matt Drudge (the guy who runs the site) is one person, he obviously is susceptible to the same biases that an editor of a newspaper or media station would have. Perhaps a team of writers like the Huffington Post would limit the influence of biases? Not in that case, as the person who assembled the team of writers has very clear biases. Even a site like Newsvine offers news written by you (with a splash of articles pulled from the Associated Press) but there are biases evident there as well.

So then there are sources like Google News and Yahoo News and other search engines that theoretically pull news from every source, robotically. Even culling “news” from the “blogs” (which are typically more like “opinion columns”) and mixing that in with results from more established, traditional news agencies.

I found a website today, NewsandJava.com, that pulls in the top headlines from just about every source—with every bias—that I know of (including all I have mentioned above, and more.) That seems like a pretty good place to read the morning’s news. It’s always good to hear from every side. The truth is usually—but not always—somewhere in the middle.

And I haven’t even mentioned the social networks. Now Twitter and Facebook (and a smattering of others) are just as likely a source of news (even the exclusive source) for many folks.

Where do you get your news? What sources do you trust? Is anyone still watching TV news for their main source of the daily news? Do you not even care at all?

I would really like to hear from you readers on this one, so leave your comments below!

by Greg

Related Posts Plug-In

You may have noticed the new look around here. GregsHead.net is now a WordPress blog, and is sporting a new customized template, and a couple neat, new plug-ins.

Jen and I spent probably most of an hour tonight making use of the related posts plug-in. It was so fun! We were looking up an old story about Alex (titled, “Our Son, Jake”) and then at the bottom of that post, we decided to click on one of the related posts titles.

Well, about 20 related posts later we decided it was probably time to stop. (But we already plan to do that again!!) 🙂

There are some pretty fun stories from our kiddos through the years. You can also try just browsing the Family category.

Also, another fun part of the new design is the new featured product that loads each time you load a page. Four of our CDs and all three of my books can be purchased from this website now, thanks to another plug-in.

So have some fun poking through the past six years of posts, and some of the new features of the 2010 version of GregsHead.net. And, lemme know what you think (and any suggestions you may have for more cool plug-ins!)

by Greg

Stealth Mode

I am attempting to get back to my normal routine today, following about two weeks of semi-vaction. I’ve never done such a thing before (that I can recall) so I am still trying to figure out if it was good or bad. 🙂

It was good in that for two weeks I got to be with my family a lot more than I usually do. We played lots of games, read books, watched movies (especially the movie Up, which we bought from iTunes for a family Christmas present!) and just enjoyed each other’s company.

It was not as good in that I don’t quite feel like I had a vacation.

There were only a few days where I worked blocks of hours. Mostly I would just fit in answering emails or phone calls, and perhaps work a few hours after all were in bed. And, there were also a couple days completely free of any work (like Christmas and New Year’s Day … it’s a fun time of year!)

So instead of vacation, I dubbed the past two weeks “stealth mode.” Was I on vacation, or wasn’t I? Was I available to my clients, or wasn’t I?

Overall, it worked. I do feel more ready for to tackle the large workload ahead. Of course, that will also be much easier once I have all my files back on a working computer.

Ahhh, the joys of life with computers. 🙂

On a totally unrelated note, I wrote this post using a fun application called OMMWriter (Mac only). It’s pretty neat. Creates a full-screen writing environment, completel with ambient sounds (of your choosing) and tools that only appear when needed. Pretty neat.

Alright. Time to decloak. No more stealth mode. Game on.