Coffee Klatch

Q: How many listserv members does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: 1,343

1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed;

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently;

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs;

27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs;

53 to flame the spell checkers;

41 to correct spelling/grammar flames;

6 to argue over whether it’s “lightbulb” or “light bulb”; another 6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive;

156 to write to the list administrator about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list;

109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to litebulb-l;

203 to demand that cross posting to grammar-l, spelling-l and illuminate-l about changing light bulbs be stopped;

111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts *are* relevant to this mail list;

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty;

27 to post URL’s where one can see examples of different light bulbs;

14 to post that the URL’s were posted incorrectly and to post the corrected URL’s;

3 to post about links they found from the URL’s that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list;

33 to link all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers and then add “Me too”;

12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy;

19 to quote the “Me too”s to say “Me three”;

4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ;

44 to ask what is “FAQ”;

4 to say “didn’t we go through this already a short time ago on that other list?”

143 to ask “what’s ‘the other list’?”

One of my favorite computer games of all time is Castles 2: Siege and Conquest. I first purchased this game in 1994 as a present to myself for finishing my first Master’s degree. It’s a fantastic game (especially for back then) which has similarities to many other games. You build your kingdom by “harvesting” resources, taking territories, using diplomacy, and working through social and political situations that come up. Gotta keep the populace happy so your armies can fight well.

The best part: You can design and build your own castles!! The bigger or more elaborate cost more and take longer, of course, but you can build your own designs and then use them! The armies actually fight on fields and you can guide them as they fight. That includes if you’re attacking or defending a castle. Instead of just having a field of battle, you have the actual castle that you designed, so your design can greatly affect the outcome of the battle. Great features for such an early game (published in 1992).

The original game was CD-ROM based and included video clips of actual (BBC, I think) on-site discussions of castles and their features. It was VERY educational and interesting and all built around the game. And there were also clips from the movie Alexander Nevsky that were used throughout the game when intrigues, plots, and warfare occurred, to illustrate with video what was going on. For 1992, it was simply a great computer game.

Today I found out that this game falls into a category of computer games called “Abandonware” which means the publisher went under and there’s nobody to fight for copyright. It’s not freeware, just abandoned and so pretty much the same thing as freeware.

So now you can download the game for free yourself. This version isn’t the full-featured version and doesn’t have all the neat video stuff, but the basic gameplay is the same and is still fun. You can get it at Abandonia, which also has many other games that are considered Abandonware.

One tip: the way the game was originally designed, you’ll have to answer a question after playing a little while, that has the answer in the original game manual. The questions and their answers have been published here.

Enjoy!

I heard an interesting story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” the other day about some lobstermen (like fishermen, but they catch lobsters) who are using the Internet to sell their lobsters. Instead of selling to dealers or whatever, they’re selling direct to consumers. The guys in the story are college age and are providing unique services along with selling the lobsters. To get the details on this really interesting story, visit the NPR Story.

You may not remember, but a few years ago Microsoft had an “Entertainment Pack” they made available for PC users. This mostly consisted of cheap, fun little games. Things like TriPeaks (a card game), TaiPei (like MahJong), and a silly little Ski game where you went downhill, trying to hit moguls and avoid trees. That Ski game was particularly memorable because when you passed the Finish Line, you could just keep going, skiing and skiing, until finally a monster snowman ran out and ate you.

Probably the most addictive game in this Entertainment Pack was Jezzball. You basically have a grid with a couple of balls bouncing around in it. You click on the grid and lines go out in two directions and you try to box out the balls, giving them smaller and smaller areas to bounce around in. The goal is to clear 75% of the grid. Then you move on to the next level where they add another ball. It’s really hard to get past level 7.

Anyway, you can play the game online now. All it takes is a Java-enabled browser. Go to http://www.jezzball.net/ to give the game a try.

For all those who forward emails about hoaxes, viruses, or free rewards “just in case.” And for their friends. Everyone say it with me…

1. I will NOT get bad luck, lose my friends, or lose my mailing lists if I don’t forward an e-mail.

2. I will NOT hear any music or see a taco dog, if I do forward an e-mail.

3. Bill Gates is NOT going to send me money and Victoria’s Secret doesn’t know anything about a gift certificate they’re supposed to send me.

4. Ford will NOT give me a 50% discount even if I forward my e-mail to more than 50 people.

5. I will NEVER receive gift certificates, coupons, or freebies from Coca Cola, Cracker Barrel, Old Navy, or anyone else if I send an e-mail to 10 people.

6. I will NEVER see a pop-up window if I forward an e-mail … NEVER — EVER!!

7. There is NO SUCH THING as an e-mail tracking program, and I am not STUPID enough to think that someone will send me $100 for forwarding an e-mail to 10 or more people!

8. There is NO kid with cancer through the Make-a-Wish program in England collecting anything! He did when he was 7 years old. He is now cancer free and 35 years old and DOESN’T WANT ANY MORE POSTCARDS, or GET-WELL CARDS.

9. The government does not have a bill in Congress called 901B (or whatever they named it this week) that, if passed, will enable them to charge us 5 cents for every e-mail we send.

10. There will be NO cool dancing, singing, waving, colorful flowers, characters, or program that I will receive immediately after I forward an e-mail. NONE, ZIP, ZERO, NADA!

11. The American Red Cross will NOT donate 50 cents to a certain individual dying of some never-heard-of disease for every e-mail address I send this to. The American Red Cross RECEIVES donations.

12. And finally, I WILL NOT let others guilt me into sending things by telling me I am not their friend or that I don’t believe in Jesus if I don’t forward their message!

Now, repeat this to yourself until you have it memorized and send it along to at least 5 of your friends before the next full moon or you will surely be constipated for the next three months and all of your hair will fall out!

(And if you’re ever unsure about whether or not to forward that email, PLEASE check http://www.snopes.com/ first!)

One of the real benefits of using Firefox is that there are so many “add-ons” or “plug-ins” that people create and share. One that I just found (and that I really like) is called DownloadHelper. It’s compatible with Firefox3 and it detects any videos on the page you’re viewing and allows you to easily download them. This could be YouTube, Google Video, or any number of other sites that share videos. That in itself is handy, but many videos are Flash-based, with a .flv extension and you need to install a special player to play those and they’re not really standard. What you really want is to convert them to .avi or .mp4 files. Fortunately, DownloadHelper has its own add-ons that include conversion tools.

Once you’ve added the DownloadHelper plug-in (and restarted Firefox, of course), you can right-click on the toolbar button and select Preferences. There’s a tab there for Conversion. You click that and check the box to turn it on. Then you can edit the rule to convert to whatever format you like. You WILL need to download an extra Converter program, but there’s a button right there to do that. Follow the instructions. When you’re done, you’ll be able to click and download, converting at the same time, so the end result is the video you want in the format you want.

Pretty cool!

You do have to be patient though. Once the download is done, then the conversion takes place. The only way to find out when it’s done (besides checking for when the file size stops changing) is to view the Converter Queue (right-click on the toolbar button for that also).

Something I thought of this morning while pumping some gas. So many other technologies have cartridge-ized things or developed ways of refilling fuel (or similar liquids or powders) in cleaner, less accident-possible ways. That seems to be the way of technological development. So why hasn’t gasoline done that?

It used to be that copy machines and printers required pouring toner into them when they ran out, but eventually the technology people developed ways of putting the toner into a cartridge, so the end user just replaces a cartridge. No more spills or messes. The same has been true in variety of other media, such as laundry detergent and even coffee. So why not gas?

Gasoline is often touted as bad for the environment. In pollution-sensitive areas, there are stickers on the gas pumps saying “Please do not top off tank” because it’s an environmentally protected area and top-offs can lead to gas spilling out onto the ground. Gas tanks underground are notoriously pollutive and if they leak, all kinds of precautions have to be taken. So for all the dangers of gas spills and for all the millions of people who pump gas and are human, why hasn’t there been a method developed for getting the gas into the vehicle tanks without humans having to actually handle the liquid? I’m not asking why we’re not battery-powered or solar-powered or anything. I’m just saying that some kind of container or even hose that latches on and delivers the gas to the tank would eliminate spills and help protect the environment.

If the foreseeable future involves gasoline-powered vehicles, somebody should develop a cleaner, simpler way of delivering the fuel to the gas tanks.

My $0.02.

Current music: Glassworks, by Philip Glass

You’ve probably heard of Tag Clouds by now. This morning I read on Michael Stephens’ blog about a site called Wordle. It’s a similar idea to that of tag clouds, but instead of collecting the tags that have been applied to something and visually displaying their popularity, Wordle looks at all the words in any text you provide and creates a cloud based on the most commonly used words in the text. It doesn’t look like there’s much of a word limit in this Java-based application. I was able to copy and paste a 15-page paper and generate the cloud from it and Michael’s example was the first two chapters of his dissertation. You can either save your resulting image to their Wordle Gallery or else save the screenshot by hitting Print-Screen and pasting it into Paint, MS Word, Adobe Photoshop or Acrobat or whatever.

One very cool thing about this program (apart from its existence) is that the “cloud” not only has the words in different sizes, but different colors, fonts, and alignments. Some words are vertical and some are horizontal, with the resulting image being a mishmash of words in different directions, sizes, and colors. You can even customize the layout and choose “mostly vertical,” “all horizontal,” or even “every which way.” Pretty cool!

The day has finally arrived. Imagine my disappointment when I got up this morning and couldn’t download the new version of Firefox. After poking around a bit (eventually finding the answers in the FAQ), I found out that “Download Day” starts at 10:00am Pacific Time today. So now I’ve got almost five more hours to wait. Sigh….

To get the latest status, visit their Twitter posts. After 1:00pm Eastern Time today, you can download the new Firefox from their Download Day Headquarters. If you download it from this site, you’ll receive a customized certificate showing your participation in their quest for the Guinness record.

Download Day for Firefox 3 is Tuesday, June 17! Put it on your calendar and be ready to download the new version of Firefox and help them break the world record!