Monthly Archives: July 2011

 

Google+ App Compatibility Fail

Posted on by in The Daily Post

Hi humans.

It was brought to my attention today that Google came out with the iPhone app for Google+ not long ago.

Shortly afterwards, it was brought to my attention that the app is only for iPhone and not for iPod Touch.

Laaame.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #208: What’s a food you’ve always wanted to try? But have chickened out on trying?

There really isn’t any food that I really want to try that I haven’t tried yet. I’m not really a big fan of putting a lot of effort into finding unique and special foods to eat, and if I haven’t eaten something yet, it’s because it either sounds horrible to eat or it’s not really worth the effort to eat.

 

Facebook App Epic Fail

Posted on by in General / Uncategorized

Hi humans.

I opened my Facebook app on my iPod Touch for the first time in a very long time to check on something. After I was done using it, I noticed that I had a badge notification on the Facbeook app for 22 new items.

I remembered turning off all notifications for Facebook a long time ago, but just in case, I went back to my settings to check and make sure they weren’t changed for some reason.

As you can see in the image above, the notification settings weren’t changed. Yet, there are still badge notifications on my Facebook app.

A lot of you probably know how much I don’t like Facebook, and I don’t want a notification badge on my Facebook app. If anyone knows why Facebook is not adhering to the Apple iOS settings, or knows how to get rid of the notification, please let me know. Otherwise, I’m probably just going to delete the app because I just about never use Facebook and use the Facebook app even less than that.

 

The Equilibrium of Good and Evil

Posted on by in The Daily Post

Hi humans.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #203: Why is there evil in the world?

This is a pretty obvious topic. There’s evil in the world to form balance with good. If there was only good, the equilibrium would be broken and the system would crash on itself.

Even if all the evil were to be taken away from the world and only good left, too much good would lead to laziness, which would ultimately lead to more evil being formed.

And, a world without evil wouldn’t be very interesting.

 

3D Movies are Pointless

Posted on by in The Daily Post

Hi humans.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #202: Here in the U.S. it can sometimes be harder to find a theater playing a new movie in plain old 2D than in 3D. Do you think the trend for releasing movies in 3D will continue, or is it on the way out? Why or Why not?

I don’t think that 3D movies are going to continue on with such popularity in the future. I’ve never seen a 3D movie in a theater before, but I’ve heard that it doesn’t really add that much to the movie. When we watch 2D movies, we automatically add a third dimension into the picture. For example, when we see a tiny man slowly getting bigger, we assume that he is walking towards us, not rapidly expanding in size and mass. The added dimension really isn’t needed to help us out with that.

I also heard that watching movies in 3D will give you headaches. I remember my dad telling me a long time ago that he read in a newspaper that if you watch a movie in 3D, it takes your brain twice as long as the movie after it’s over to go back to its normal state. It didn’t mention any damage occurring, but I’d rather avoid a headache and watch a 2D movie, adding the third dimension in by myself.

 

The Point of a Todo List

Posted on by in The Daily Post

Hi humans.

 

Tip of the Day

If you see something on your todo list that you have a faint memory of adding, it probably means that it was important enough at that time that it had to be done. Not seeing the reason behind it and ignoring it will most likely have negative consequences later when you finally remember why you added it onto your list in the first place.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #201: What would it take to get you to move? If someone you trusted offered you $1000 to move to a different city, would that be enough? More? Or would you need other things (the promise of friends or better weather?) What would they need to offer you before you’d instantly say yes? Or if you already want to move, what would it take to get you to stay?

If I was paid $1000 to move to a different city, I would probably do it if it actually really is a city and the location of my home would be convenient. I would also most likely accept the offer if my destination was California (although, I might put the offer on hold until I finish my undergraduate university studies in Madison, Wisconsin). It would be helpful if I got more than $1000, though, because I would still want to have some money left over after the moving costs.

I don’t think the promise of friends in my area is that important of a factor of me deciding if I want to move or not, seeing as I usually don’t spend a lot of time in person with friends in the first place. The weather is important, though, because I’ve lived in cold and snowy areas all my life, and I’d rather live in a place where it doesn’t snow at all and rains infrequently. The trade-off is that I would have to live through more hot weather, but as long as I have an air conditioner, I would be fine.

 

Done Transferring Photos to Picasa

Posted on by in The Daily Post

Hi humans.

A few days back, I finished transferring all my Facebook photo albums to Picasa Web so they appear in my Google+ profile.

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you may or may not have noticed that I stopped using Facebook about a year and a half ago, and made my entire profile private so people couldn’t contact me or see anything I uploaded unless I initiate the conversation.

This also meant that the photos and videos I uploaded were hidden too. About a year or so ago, I uploaded all the videos I had on my Facebook account to my YouTube account, and now I’m finally done transferring all the photos as well so all my old content is public again.

https://plus.google.com/photos/101330767311420885425/albums

Not all the photos might make sense because I didn’t transfer over any of the captions, and it seems like a tedious waste of time to do so. But, I’ll be sure to include relevant captions for all future photos that I upload.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Literary Tattoos: Do you have a literary tattoo? Or, if you got one, what would it be of?

I don’t have any literary tattoos and I’m most likely never going to get one, but if I were forced to get one, I would probably get one of a book in the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, or The Lost Symbol).

Topic #200: In honor of reaching topic #200, what in your life would want to have 200 more of? Some people say they want to live longer, but would you really want to live for another 200 years? Others claim they want to be smarter, but how would you get along with your friends if you were 200 times smarter than they are (assuming that’s not already the case)? Perhaps you’d like a new car, but would could you possibly do with 200 more of them?

This is easy.

I want 200 more millions of dollars.

 

Paper Topics and Behind the Scenes

Posted on by in General / Uncategorized

Hi humans.

I am still in need of some good abnormal psychology paper topics. I know I asked this a few days ago, but the response I got wasn’t really that impressive. Most of the suggestions I got were along the lines of “write about retarded people” or “write about gay people.” The problems with those suggestions are that, first, writing about retarded people is too general and broad of a topic, and second, unfortunately, homosexuality is no longer classified as an abnormal disorder.

Some of the good suggestions I got were to write about the insanity defense and how Jared Lee Loughner was forced to take anti-psychotic medication so he was able to go on trial, and to write about Salvia divinorum and its dissociative effects and if I think it should be made an illegal or restricted substance. I also got some other good suggestions, but they weren’t sufficiently closely tied with abnormal psychology to be used.

I did reply to all the emails I got with suggestions, though, so if you sent me a suggestion and didn’t receive a response, then send it to me again because that probably means I didn’t get it. Unless you made it really spammy and I deleted it because I thought it was spam, which in that case, clean up your email before sending it to me again.

 

In other news, I’ve been doing a little bit of behind-the-scenes work on my website to optimize loading times and to have my back-end content better organized. I am also in the process of organizing the photos I use for Parkzer.com that are on Picasa Web Albums so people would be able to use the actual album as a navigation system as well.

The main thing that encouraged me to do this is that Google+ uses Picasa Web as its main photo sharing extension, and this is an easy way for my Google+ connections to find an interesting picture, click on a link in the description or caption, and be taken to my blog where they can learn more about the picture and I can get more traffic.

 

Quote of the Day

“Did you know that the average human can survive their entire life without eating a pistacho?” —Ed Lam

 

The Power of Social Influence

Posted on by in General / Uncategorized

Hi humans.

While I was reading today, I came across this interesting diagram in a book about the psychology of influence.

Here’s what’s happening in the picture in case you can’t tell.

In the first frame, one man is staring up into the sky. In the second frame, two more people join him, wondering what’s up in the sky. In the third frame, even more people join the man, and someone is looking down from a window. In the fourth frame, even the person on the second-floor window is looking up along with even more people on the ground, and they see an angel. In the fifth and final frame, the social influence of the people on the ground is so great that even the angel looks up to see what’s in the sky.

I’ll be having a review of this book in the very near future as soon as I finish reading it.

 

Quote of the Day

Parkzer: brb, heading out for a little bit
Ash: how long will it take?
Parkzer: Not that long, I’m not going far
Ash: how far is not far?
Parkzer: Only a few miles
Ash: are you going to walk?
Parkzer: No, I’m driving
Ash: you should walk instead, it’s healthier
Parkzer: That sort of defeats the purpose of my trip, I’m going to fill up my dad’s car with gas…
Ash: oh -.-

 

Counterproductive Clue

Posted on by in General / Uncategorized

Hi humans.

I’ve been getting a handful of questions about this mysterious extra work that I’ve been doing at least once a week for long periods of time. I decided to take this picture to give you a slight clue, but also to confuse you even more.

No, that is not my house.

On a slightly related note, when I looked through my iPod Touch’s camera roll to upload the photo shown above, I also found the following picture.

This is what happens when you let Ed Lam try to take video with your iPod Touch. He’ll take a picture of your car and the tip of your knee instead.

(If you don’t know who Ed Lam is, he’s in a lot of my vlogs.)

 

Technology and Starbucks

Posted on by in The Daily Post, What I'm Reading

Hi humans.

 

The Daily Post at WordPress.com

Topic #196: People are too dependent on technology: agree or disagree? Explain.

I agree that people are too dependent on technology, but I don’t really see this as that much of a bad thing. Of course, technology can go wrong and we might be left in the dark (figuratively and literally), but it’s not like our entire race is going to die if we don’t have the proper technology. This dependency on technology is helping us live more efficient lives, and if the technology were to ever be taken away from us, we would most likely be able to develop different technologies to get back to normal.

 

What I’m Reading

Following the suggestion of Benjamin Chow, I recently read How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill.

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

This book is a memoir of Michael Gates Gill, a fortunate man who managed to get a job in an advertising company immediately after graduating from Yale University. After working at this company for over 25 years, he was asked to leave because he was getting too old. Unfortunately, he has five children who need to be taken care of, and he is rapidly running out of money.

One random day, he is offered a job at a local Starbucks by a young, African-American woman. After much determination, Mike gets the position and tells the story of how he went from someone who enjoyed the luxury of coffee to someone who cleaned the bathroom of the coffee place.

I thought this was an okay book that was overall worth reading. A good portion of the book involves recollections of past events that sometimes do not have an obvious or apparent connection to the main idea of the book. Otherwise, I think this book teaches a valuable lesson about the importance of family and back-up plans.