JW

I recently popped yet another button off a coat. Maybe I should sew it back on with Kevlar Thread
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I should preface this post with the fact that many years ago I attended a ‘Jilted Lovers’ valentines day party as Menelaus, King of Sparta. And if you get that one, then what follows will be of interest.

Partially laid up with a hurt foot, I decided to explore what amazon streaming had. I settled on ‘In Search of the Trojan War’ a 6 part series digging into the existence of Troy and the Trojan War featuring Michael Wood circa 1985. It was really quite good. I like the work of Michael Wood I’ve seen, the Story of India being my favorite to date. So aside from goofy dated music, if you’re looking to kill 6 hours over a weekend while you rest your foot, you can do a lot worse. I’m planning to check out the rest of his programs.

He does give you his opinion but by no means is it a conclusion, but after 6 hours of watching (and based on the 1985 evidence) I’m completely beguiled with Hisarlik the alleged site of Troy. The highlight for me was when he went down a cistern at Mycenae. I visited the ruin in 2000 and sat for a long time with a small flashlight a few steps down into the cistern waiting for my eyes to adjust from the blinding Peloponnesian sun to the pitch black. I had hoped to descend a bit further into it, but wasn’t patient enough to wait my eyes out.

It’s worth checking out even if you don’t have an Amazon Prime.

BUSINESS DAY

I have been checkin out Alfred for Mac and so far I really like it . I wondered if I could get it to search rdio.com. I hear about or think of a band and would really like to see if rdio.com has it. This greatly reduces the amount of steps.

You can click this link to get auto setup: Rdio.com Alfred Custom Search

OR follow the instructions below. The result will be the same.

1. Open Alfred Preferences
2. Click ‘Custom Searches’ on the left side
3. Click the ‘+’ button
4. Enter the following values:
   • Search URL: http://www.rdio.com/#/search/{query}
   • Keyword: rdio
     (or whatever make sense to you)
   • Display text: Search RDIO for

You can find some more samples form Alfred on their site.

Been cleaning up and reorganizing a lot lately and today that meant leaving Friendster behind. Remember Friendster, the original social network? It was their’s too lose. Sadly my favorite feature, ‘degrees of separation’, didn’t make it once the the site mahir’d (verb: to mahir – explosive overnight world wide website growth in honor of Mahir Çağrı arguably the world’s first internet celebrity).

‘Degrees of separation’ (my name for it) would show you how you were connected to someone and very often expose multiple routes to the same person from very different parts of your life. While pretty computationally intensive at scale for a parlor trick, it remains a good one.

So, how do you take yourself down from a social media site? Truth is in today’s world of replicated data and versioning you probably can’t. So the next best thing is to put in noise. So if you still login to Friendster and I unfriended you today, it’s not you it’s me. I’m leaving and you don’t want to be connected to the nameless farce that my profile has become. Peace out, I’ll see you on MySpace for a while longer, Facebook both times a year I login, and where ever the next thing is.

My sister Dessie has gotten her book published. I have a copy on the way from Amazon (Keisha on the Case)

LifeHacker has a post about how Amazon launched lending books via Kindle.  Finally.  Now if only I could get my act together and read a book in 14 days.

You Can Now Lend Your Kindle Books to Friends for 14 Days.

… as long as the person has a Kindle, is running Windows/Mac, or has an iOS/Android/BlackBerry/Windows Phone 7 device, they can access your lended book.

I saw this as an honorable mention over at LifeHacker.com: Be the Star of Your New Year’s Party with These Four Mobile Apps. The post was meh, but the Ikea App for iPhone that is a product promotion + social app + bump is pretty cute.

This is difficult to watch but its memory will certainly keep you from risking your life or those of others by using your phone when you drive.