NetVibes

I use this every day now.

I’m absolutely in love with the girl. She is the love and the light of my life. Every day I’m with her I know there is nothing better in this world. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s funny. She’s everything I could ever want, and I’m so lucky to have found her. I hope we’ll be together forever.

–Transcribed by Shannon from the thoughts of Brad

For those that don’t know, RSS (and there’s so many different meanings to that acronym, I’m just going to let it go) is a form of publishing a list of posts or news so that others can subscribe to them. For example, you can subscribe to the CNN RSS feed, and it will let you know each time there’s a new headline posted.

Anyways, i’ve been looking for a nice way to easily scan all the websites I visit daily for new posts and updates, without having to load and and go to each one to check for anything new. And then i discovered Google’s nice new Personalized Home Page. It allows me to “input” (imagine me making the quotes with my fingers) RSS “feeds” (again with the quotes) from my favorite websites, and then view the top 3-5 headlines from each one on my spiffy Google page. Plus I use Google for search so much anyways, so it’s right there along with Weather and other useful things.

No, I don’t work for Google and I’m not trying to get any special attention for hyping their product. But this has worked out so well for me, and seemed so simple, I thought maybe you all woud like it too.

Or maybe it’s stupid and so am I. Huh, who knows?

http://www.nintendo.com/newsimagelarge?articleid=TfyOgnUc7zB-ZlzdQvMhKJOgS5LsR2nK&currentNo=0&page=

How come it’s so hip these days to type everything in big, bold, Arial typeface on a white background? I don’t get it, but I thought I’d try and fit in. Because, you know, that’s what everyone else is doing. Are we all near-sighted now? Is there really a reason for this, or is everyone just copying each other. Oh well, just wondering.

A quick note to announce two new technologies to Breathingfire.com:

• BradBice font by Fontifier.com – My headlines are now in my own (terrible) handwriting! I made this about a year and a half ago. You download their template, print it out, and fill in all the letters of the alphabet (plus different characters), can it, then send them the scanned file and they make a font of your handwriting. Obviously I didn’t take the time to make it look pretty, but I think it fits my ‘paper’ theme well.
• Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) – This allows for special fonts (such as my BradBice font) to be used all over my website without my visitors actually ahving that font on their computers. And I think it’s supposed to be scalable depending on what size you have your font set at, but I don’t think that works right now. Hmm.

So yeah, there’s that.

Well, after seemingly 8 million years Shannon’s coming back home from her trip to Des Moines. And not a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve filled my time well with some stuff I’ve needed to get done, and seeing some friends I don’t see too often, but it will be so nice to see Shan again.

Welcome home, hon!

I’ve become obsessed with paper organizers lately. Well, maybe not obsessed, but I’ve decided to research them more frequently. What is this that I talk of, you ask? What is this…..paper? Well I was first opened up to the idea of using a plain piece of paper as an “organizer” by a post on Kottke.org featuring his Analog Palm Pilot. I thought “Hey, that’s a swell idea. I’m way too poor for a pda, and I’m always wanting to jot down ideas or notes or wishing I had somewhere to write or type something. Maybe I’ll try this!” So I thought about it for a day or so and then forgot about it.

Then a couple of days ago I happened upon this little gem: PocketMod – The Free Disposable Personal Organizer. Much more clean and tidy and, well, organized than a plain piece of paper folded twice, PocketMod is customizable to where I can pick what format I want each page to be in. Lines for notes? A daily, monthly, or yearly calendar? Some graph paper? A bulleted list? A checkbook-like financial page? A page of empty tic-tac-toe grids? Or just blank? It’s great. Plus, after folding it into a little book, it has a little pocket after the first page to stick a business card or something in.

It’s all incredibly geeky at first but I think it’s a genious idea. Maybe it’s overkill though and I’ll have to try out the plain paper folded twice. Either way, I need something to keep track of things because my brain just doesn’t do it sometimes. I’m probably driving Shannon nuts too with all the “Will you help me remember”s that I keep asking of her.

Anyways, it’s just a little bit of info that I thought I’d pass along. Sell that PocketPC and Palm Pilot and get hip to retro-tech: paper.

Labor Day weekend usually symbolizes the end of Summer. That’s fine with me, kind of. I’m ready for some cold weather again, though I have enjoyed the warmth this year. Shannon and I spent a lot of time outside this summer (usually not our first choice, but we made the most of it), I played a lot of outdoor volleyball, had the top off the Jeep a few times (not as often as I wanted, I need some soft doors), and made some trips to some places that involved water and just plain enjoying the weather.

Unfortunately soon that will all be coming to an end and Fall will be upon us. Which is fine by me because I love fall. Autumn, if you will. I love going back to class, checking out a football game or two, seeing the pretty leaves (or leafs, for Emily Z), and being able to wear jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. I’m looking forward to Halloween and Thanksgiving and fall weddings and that’s right, indoor volleyball.

Anyhow, I probably wouldn’t be contemplating the changing seasons this much if not for the fact that Shannon has left me. Well, for a few days at least. She’s gone to see some friends out of state. So I’m here to spend quality alone time thinking about stuff I don’t usually think about, work on stuff I haven’t gotten around to work on, and miss that someone I usually don’t have to spend time missing.

Aside from all of that…

The Hurricane Katrina / New Orleans stuff hit me pretty hard today because I spent some time during lunch watching some news footage and listening to some radio interviews and looking at some photos. I’ve been without TV for about a month, so I’ve been very distanced from the whole thing. But I think the country as a whole just isn’t getting a grip on how catastrophic this is. I mean, I flipped on Rush Limbaugh on the radio today, and his guest host was arguing with a caller about what to do with the land the city is now/was on. And the news is so grim with the looting and the absolute chaos that we will never be able to truly understand. Bodies and blood and fires and water everywhere in a city that holds so much history. And now it will never, ever be the same.

I plan on contributing to the relief effort as soon as I can spare some extra bucks, and everyone else should too, I think. This is on the level of September 11th, and is perhaps more important when it comes to raising funding for relief.

Anywyas, I’m tired now and I think perhaps I should go scope out some gas prices and see how much I’ll need to spend this week. Evryone have a good weekend, ya heard?