I remember back in 2001 I was working at military contract firm with Josh Mondragon. Back then, I got all my news and did all my web searches from my.yahoo.com. One day, looking over Josh’s shoulder I saw Google.com for the first time.

What value could that site possibly be? There’s nothing on it! There’s no information, no news, no weather, no cute customizable layout. Just a dorky logo and a search form. How worthless is that?!

Then, I started using Google when my searches on Yahoo didn’t find what I was looking for. Then I noticed how remarkablly fast Google was. Within a week, “google” had become a new verb in my lexicon. Within a month, Google was my new default home page.

There’s more to Google than fast searches. There’s something that draws people to simple design. I found an article a while back that compared Yahoo and Google over time, as Google moved from a garage company to the internet powerhouse. There’s a great image of the screen shot progression over the years. (Click here to see it.)

Now, given that simple, boring layout, and given the fact that Google’s profits are now bigger than the GNP of most 3rd world countries, which layout would you prefer on your web site?

Yeah, me too. (But blogs don’t count. I’m sticking with the silly 50’s theme, thank you very much.)

Read the complete article here.

I find myself once again in Microsoft trainging all week… or as I like to call it Gates Brain Washing. This week I’m learning why only a total waste of human plasma would dare use anything other than Microsoft SQL server. In fact, even if you don’t need a database server, you should probably mortgage your children so that you can buy Microsoft SQL server just in case you might someday need an Enterprise Level Relational Data Base Server to store your Christmas card mailing list.

Oh, and Oracle is the spawn of Satan.

I ran across this on Annika’s Journal. I’m Kip.

I know, I know. Why can’t we all be Kip? Well, sorry. You’re just jealous ‘cuz I’ve been chatting with hot babes on line all day.

Discover your inner Dynamite. Brought to you by Quizilla.

Sweet!

No this time, I really mean it. In the last few days I have run across some new technologies that just plain rock (or RAWK or r0XX0r or whatever linguistic mutilation you prefer).

For starters, you know how bloggers (like me) are always posting links to news stories or funny pictures or whatever and the URLs that they post are often three miles long and don’t come out right when you try to copy and paste them into an email to every friggin’ person in your address book (usually with a subject like “check out this funny link”) that people like me delete without even opening because we think it’s spam or some virus from that distant relative that we never talk to but that still sends us stupid forwards of funny pictures that we saw back in 1998 but they just found for the first time and they think it’s some new hilarity that they must share with the world? (Whew. Got carried away there.)

Well, there’s a web site out called TinyURL.com. You can go there and copy an above described URL into a form. TinyURL will turn that big behemoth of slashes and ampersands into a tiny URL… literally. Then all you have to put in your soon to be ignored email or blog post is something like http://tinyurl.com/7aods instead of its equivalent…
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2005018313812.gif

Is that cool or what?!

Second… I’m a late to catch on to this (as usual), so if you’ve already heard about out, just smile and nod the same way you do when your dad tells you a joke you’ve already heard him tell three times.

You’ve probably heard of flickr, an image hosting web site that makes it easy for the huddled masses (who don’t have their own web site) to share images with family and friends. Well, flickr has a feature called “Tags”. When you upload your picture to your flickr account, you can give it multiple “tags” which are basically key words associated with the image. Then, you can search for tags on the site, and find all sorts of pictures that have the same tag. It’s a pretty simple concept, but a powerful way to find content that you would not normally be able to find. It’s also a great way to waste the morning! (Such as trying to think of weird words and see what pictures are thus tagged, like “spork” for example.)

Finally, you have most likely heard of “widgets” (and I’m not talking about the abstract economics term). If not, let’s just say that they’re cool little programs that run on your computer and inform or entertain you while you work. If you are a Mac junky, you’ve lived with widgets for some time now.

Widgets have made the jump to the PC mainstream and with a quick download from Konfabulator.com you can get all sorts of cool widgets running on your machine. My current favorite is called Scribbler. It saves your last twenty copies (as in copy and paste) and allows you to paste things that you may have copied a while back. There are also widgets for tracking the weather, stocks, news, etc., or even silly ones like a little bug that wanders around your screen while you work.

I loves me some cool tech!

One of the first blogs that I read regularly was I Awoke In Britannia!, where Ghosty kept me up to date on all the latest Ultima Online dirt. Sadly, Ghosty is closing shop on I Awoke and (no doubt) moving on to bigger and better things. He says he’ll continue to post on UO Screenshots and UO On The Web, but I will really miss his insight and great writing on I Awoke.

See you around, Ghosty, and please send us a link when you start your next enterprise.

My buddy Randy Peterman (aka Randy-pants) has been “pord-casting” for a little while now. For the uninitiated, pod-casting is the geek term for putting sound files (such as music or recordings of your cat passing a hair ball) on to the internet for all to enjoy. The technology was originally engineered for folks to download music libraries on to their iPod MP3 players, but has grown into a huge waste of time for millions of people… kind of like blogging.

To be honest it’s a dad-blamed miracle I haven’t started this myself considering that my favorite toy growing up was a fisher price tape recorder which I would use to record and then listen to myself doing, well, just about anything. Still, I just can’t think that I would have much to share that the world would be interested in hearing. Then again, I felt the same way about blogging at one point. My other excuse is that I don’t have the equipment to produce a pod-cast, meaning a microphone.

So anywhoo, I know that pod-casting is the next big thing and it’s probably just a matter of time before I take up the mike. As a sign of the impending pod-splosion, my favorite web-comic, PvP, as started a story arc about pod-casting which you can see here.

Resistance is futile! Cast thy pod upon the net!

The story I posted yesterday extolling the virtues of a proper geek-mate may have some of my faithful readers scouring chess club and Star Wars fan fictions web sites looking for Mr. Right. But I feel it is my duty to temper your enthusiasm somewhat.

While there is no doubt that a Geek makes the best lover (case in point… me *wink*), Geekdom does not come without a price. Allow me to share with you an article by an experienced, Geek-loving, young lady.

“Emily”, as she calls herself, has offered a guild to “Dating an Apple Developer”. While her guide is specifically tailored to the Steve Jobs set, most of her observations also translate readily into the realms of Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. (If you don’t know who those people are, you’d better do more homework before throwing yourself at a prospective Geek. On second thought, if you’re really hot, it won’t matter that much.)

Thanks, Emily, for your inspired work. (She has a funny picture of her geek installing a memory upgrade. See. A REAL geek’s eyes literally light up when he gets to install an upgrade!)

On a side note, you may have noticed the unusual verbosity of this post. For that, I apologize. My brain is stuck in high-speech as I spent the morning reading 16th-century religious texts and Orthodoxy vs. Dispensationalism debates. I think I may have pulled something in my cerebellum. (I should have stretched first.)

An article in the New York Daily News sheds light on what I (and many of my friends and colleagues) have known for years. The title of the article is “Nerds make better lovers”. Heya beeeautiful!

How many times have I said this?! People, I’m not lying here. Geek is sheik! Get used to it!

My history with the Hitchhiker’s Guide (hereafter referred to as the HHGttG) began when I was sixteen. My folks tasked me with delivering a car to my sister who was at Texas A&M. It was a twelve hour drive and my first road trip alone. I went to the library looking for some books on tape to keep me awake. And there it was. The complete thirteen hour BBC radio series, the HHGttG. Perfect! The only think I knew about it at that tender age was that it was supposed to be very funny. Thirteen hours later, I was a bona fide fan.

You can learn more about Douglas Adams, the creator of HHGttG, and the evolution of his work at DouglasAdams.com. There you will learn that the radio series came first (1978), then the books, and the rest followed. He was working on the screen play for the film in May of 2001 when he died of a sudden heart attack.

Now, on to the review!! Anytime I go into a movie based on some other material that I’ve already enjoyed, I adjust my expectations. If you go in expecting something less than the original but still entertaining, you’ll usually come out pleased. In this case I was much more than pleased.

HHGttG the movie did surprise me by encompassing only the first book, which was only the first few episodes of the radio series. But this is a good thing. By selecting less subject matter, the movie was able to get lots of good material in without feeling rushed.

The script did contain a fair amount of “expected” material all of which was done very well. Purists will argue, but I was very pleased. The thing that really made this movie for me was the physical humor. They added a good amount of yuks to make up for the things that just don’t translate from book (or even radio) to screen. A couple of these physical humor scenes had me stomping my feet I was laughing so hard… seriously. Tammy was very embarrassed.

The most important thing about this movie, whether you are a HHGttG virgin or a life-long fan, is that it captures the Douglas Adams spirit; the utterly bizarre, off-the-wall, and very Brittish style that makes any incarnation of the HHGttG so enjoyable. If you don’t “get it” then the author’s goal was achieved. If you laugh because (or even though) you don’t get it, then you have experienced the joy that was Douglas Adams.

On less ethereal terms, the movie is superb. Well written, well cast, well played. I love the special effects, especially the yarn vomit scene. And it was such a wonderful treat to see creatures created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. I was washed over with nostalgic memories of “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth”.

There’s not much more I can say about this film. It’s one of those that you really have to see to understand. So, let me put my grins where my mouth is… umm… right… and just say that I’m giving it four out of five.

Tammy’s out of town this weekend and I decided to treat myself to a big movie weekend. I logged on to the internet movie database and picked several off of my wish list. Then I headed to the video store. When I walked in, the clerk smiled and said, “Hi, Trint.” Is it just me or is it weird that he knows my name. He doesn’t even ask for my phone number when I check out anymore. It’s not like I watch movies every weekend. Gosh!

One of the DVDs I picked was Napoleon Dynamite. I’ve been hearing so much about it and it seems so divisive (either you hate it or think it’s “friggin’ awesome”), I’ve been dying to see what all the hype is about.

I’m not sure I can fit this film into my normal “grins” rating system. It’s just too unconventional. Certainly it is a comedy, but it’s not a ha-ha laugh out loud comedy (although I did a few times). It doesn’t follow any Hollywood norms (which I usually praise movies for) and even the nerdy clichés have some inventiveness to them.

I’d have to say I enjoyed the show, but it did leave me… contemplative. While I occasionally laughed and often snickered at the plight of the socially handicapped cast, deep down inside me a 14-year-old kid with uncontrollable, spiky hair, poorly fitting clothes, and braces cried.

After watching the movie, I sat down at my computer. I wanted to see if any of my multitude of on-line friends were on. Neither of them were. I checked to see what was going on on my on-line role playing game, but all was quiet. I looked up at my mint condition theatrical release Lord of the Rings movie poster, then to might right, at my complete collection of LotR figurines from Burger King (that actually talk… awesome). I began to think, “Jeez… Maybe I am a nerd. Maybe I am Napoleon Dynamite.”

When I returned the DVD to the video store, the weekend clerk was there. He doesn’t know my name or my phone number. As he was retrieving my next set of movies, all comic book inspired, he asked me if I liked Napoleon. “Eh, it was pretty good.” Then he asked me if I had ever seen “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”… as he was handing me the DVD for “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. “Umm. No. That’s why I’m renting it.”

“It’s really cool… if you’re into comic books and stuff. It’s kinda weird, but if you ever read the comic book then it’s really cool. Have you seen…”

Then he went into a long list of similarly nerdy flicks which I had not seen, some not even heard of. Suddenly, all was right with the world again. God had reminded me just in time that the difference between geek and nerd is like the difference between pi and 22/7. Not even close… after the first few digits.

Don’t forget, boys and girls, “Geek is sheik.” Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a +30% damage crossbow that’s crying out for orc blood. Friggin’ awesome!