Nels Wadycki

Nels W

Writes Code, Fiction

  • Hot Christian Singles?

    Nels W

    Here’s a recent Facebook ad:

    Okay, in truth, that was just an ad on an application in Facebook, which probably means they just show that to everyone who has the app installed. (Just for reference, it’s the Basketball Fan Application)

    But here is something I just can’t understand: (No, not how I could just kill a man – raise your hand if you thought it, though)

    And here’s the point of the post: Facebook has a ton of information about me, and I see this ad? Perhaps WooMe is actually what they say in the text: a new voice and video social network. (But with a name like WooMe, I kind of screams “Singles!”) Maybe WooMe just paid enough to override the whole “married” part of my profile, or perhaps they just didn’t think to check the “don’t target married people” box when placing the ad. I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve seen saying how personalized ads on Facebook are going to be the next big thing, but something tells me that isn’t it.

  • Firefox 3 RC1

    Nels W

    I really, really, really want to run Firefox 3. I’ve tested it out in the Beta versions and it has much better memory management, which, for me, is about the only thing I think really needs improvement in Firefox.

    The problem is that Firefox 3 doesn’t accept (still) self-signed certificates. This is generally a good thing for Grandmas and Grandpas out there who don’t know about security. I don’t want them signing their life away because they click a link that doesn’t really go to their bank, or PayPal, or something else like that. But (!) I do need to be able to accept such “shady” certificates in order to use Firefox as my general web development testing browser. This is only frustrating, of course, because I can certainly keep Firefox 2 on my computer until the end of time, if I have to.

    Or can I…?

    When I uninstalled Firefox 3 RC1, unlike with the Beta versions, it uninstalled Firefox completely. Apparently in my haste to try it out, I didn’t realize that 3RC1 installed right on top of Firefox 2. It only took me about as long as it took to write this post to fix the problem (by re-downloading and re-installing Firefox 2), but it was annoying enough to drive me to my blog to write about it.

    And since I hate it when the people with the complaints are the most vocal, let me say, with the exception of the certificate issue, I think Firefox 3 is great. If you don’t have the same problem as me, then I don’t think there’s any reason why you would not want to upgrade right now. Well, other than it’s still only a Release Candidate, so it’s possible that there are still some minor bugs to work out.

  • What do you want from Twitter?

    Nels W

    Charles Nutter talks about reducing the number of people he’s following on Twitter. Here’s a quote from the post:

    To me, the value of Twitter is both in keeping track of what people I respect are working on or find interesting and as a sort of micro-feed, a little forced 2-second thought break to help me step back from hard problems. Whether you buttered your toast on the bottom or found an unrecognizable lump of once-food in the refrigerator is worthless to me…so if that’s the tweets you’re inflicting on the world, why should I begin or continue to follow you?

    That’s certainly one point of view. And one to which I am diametrically opposed. I mean, sure, if my friends want to tell me about what they are working on or find interesting, that’s all well and good. But really, I enjoy knowing if my friends butter the top or bottom of their toast, or if they found a lump of unrecognizable once-food in the refrigerator. That’s why I want to use Twitter, and that’s the entire reason I use Twitter. In fact, I’m sure if more of my friends realized how easy it was to use, and that they didn’t have to compose entire blog entries to let people know what’s up, I’d be even more happy. I subscribe to the Facebook status update for my friends, and that’s more of the same, but it helps me keep tabs on what’s going on with my peeps.

    If every post from my Twitter friends were “writing a new Cocoa script”, or “Got my Ruby execution time down by 50%”, I’d be bored out of my mind. I want to know where my friends are, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, all of that. Of course, I don’t want to know that about just any random person who decides to follow me on Twitter. But if it’s someone I know, bring on the reviews of the new NIN album, the destruction of bath mats, the TV marathons, the smells on the train, and tha ma’fxckin’ book videos (NSFW).

    Of course, the beauty of the Twitter, is that both Charles Nutter and Nels Wadycki can get what they want from the same application.

  • NelsWadycki.com

    Nels W

    I swung a deal with my hosting provider for GiveMeTheRock.com and got to add some extra domains and databases to my plan… so now I have NelsWadycki.com! Quick get to it before I throw Google Ads all over the place!

  • I missed RSS Awareness Day

    Nels W

    According to ReadWriteWeb, yesterday was RSS Awareness Day. I totally missed it, but it’s funny because yesterday Soup.io did something really weird with my Hulu RSS feed. At first, I thought it was a problem with the feed itself, but the feed itself in my Google Reader has only my most recently viewed items, whereas the Soup feed somehow fetched all the recently added items.

  • Installing Silverlight on Firefox

    Nels W

    I was thinking about Live Blogging this or something, but it’s not like anyone is going to read it in real time. So, I’ll just write my experience here.

    By the way, I am really only installing Silverlight because NBA.com wants me to. I can’t watch their Windows Media videos in Firefox, so I’m hoping that if I install Silverlight and am able to watch those videos, the NBA web admins will see their numbers go up and start putting everything in Silverlight. Then I’ll be able to watch it all in Firefox and not have to go to IE anymore. That’ll be the day.

    So far, I’ve downloaded the executable and that’s it… Note: I’ve got 8 tabs open right now, so if this requires a browser restart, it could be a problem. Moreso if it’s an auto-browser-restart (which I can see Microsoft wanting to do).

    Letting it through the firewall…

    And I will have to restart my browser for these setting to take effect… but I get to do it when I want. So, I’ll use my secret “crash Firefox” session saving technique (in which I end the Firefox process from the Task Manager, thereby saving my tabs).

    Back in a sec…

    Okay! NBA.com says it’s successfully installed, and it looks like the video is there. Playback time!

    Overall, not too bad. A little bit of skipping along the way, but that happens… Rewind was not so kind. Clicking on the playback bar results in the video stalling while the audio rewound and then played. If I used the scrub bar, then it worked okay after about a second. I’ll take that over Windows “Buffering” Media Player, any day, though.

  • Friday Five

    Nels W

    1. Since when does PayPal require that you surrender money to them in order to use their service? I’d thought that honor was reserved only for Premium Members. Evidently it doesn’t cost anything (and can actually be cost effective) to become a premium member. I just found this out when trying accept a $25 payment for Give Me The Rock.

    2. I haven’t even opened Google Reader today. I don’t check it as much on the weekends, but today is only Friday! I hope I’m not missing out on some content I could use for the Friday Five.

    3. NBA Playoffs start tomorrow. In case anyone besides me cares about that. I’m psyched. I’m going to be working outside most of the day, but I’m pretty sure I can at least break away for 2 hours to watch the PHX-SAS game on ABC at 2pm CST.

    4. Friday should be Official Smoque Day. Well, every day should be Official Smoque Day, I suppose.

    5. Blogger’s Autosave keeps failing, and it’s worrying me a little, so I’m going to go ahead and just publish this now. That and I need to hit that publish button so I can get back to writing stories about people who aren’t real. (ed note: Moved back to WordPress. Don’t need to worry about this anymore!)

  • TypePad’s BlogIt Facebook App and Social Media Addiction Rap

    Nels W

    I just tried BlogIt. It couldn’t post to this blog. It said it would try again later, but how is that going to work? Do they have a message queue, and will just keep trying until it goes through? I will be interested to see if it does get posted here.

    In case it doesn’t, here’s the video I was trying to post. And yes, I do know that the title of this post rhymes. If I sounded like Biggie, I’d be all over making my own Web 2.0 raps.

    Keep it Twitterific.

  • Host your own Lifestream

    Nels W

    via [Lifestream Blog (who else?)]

    Nuno Mariz has developed a Lifestream that you can host yourself using Django (a Python Web Framework). How long before someone develops a WordPress plugin that does it all for you me?

    I mean, the Python code doesn’t look too bad (and I don’t even know Python)… but I’ve been working for almost 11 hours today, and I just want someone to make a one-click install hosted Lifestream for me. Is that too much to ask?

    Or I guess I could just make better use of my FriendFeed…

  • Lifestream.fm

    Nels W

    Lifestream Blog has found a new Lifestreaming service aptly titled Lifestream.fm. From the Twitter stream of the founder, it looks like they added 3 new services in the one day since the post on Lifestream Blog. It looks like just one guy developing it, but if that’s true, it’s a very impressive service.

    So far, I believe it’s the only Lifestreaming service to support Xbox Live. I’ve got HeadlessNels’ Halo 3 games in one of my Lifestreams (Jaiku, I think) via plain RSS feed, but with Lifestream.fm, now I can have that + my most recently played game that’s not Halo 3.