• What I want from a restaurant website

Full website is here: http://robotsandmonsters.org/gallery/

You can also see the complete set of Robots and Monsters on Flickr.

In the past month or two I noticed that my phone was becoming increasingly slow. Eventually I managed to pinpoint the problem down to the location services. The issue cropped up whenever I used an app that wanted to check my location. Because of this issue, I had actually turned off location services for any apps where it wasn’t absolutely necessary. But, the two primary apps I used that needed location services were Maps and Pocket MBTA.

My phone was so slow using these two apps that it was unbearable. I could not even get directions to a location because as soon as I started typing in a destination the phone would freeze completely. Eventually the app would just quit. When I tried to use Pocket MBTA to get buses near my location, the buses would actually arrive before I ever even got the app to tell me which buses were in the area. Even worse, after closing the app, my phone would still be a useless brick for several minutes after the fact. I’ve actually missed several calls because my phone was frozen and no attempt at clicking the accept button would work. Even worse, the Phone and Chat apps would just freeze and then quit when I tried to open them. Eventually after a few minutes the phone would start working again. There’s nothing that makes you feel more silly than holding a $300 phone that works about as well as a brick.

The release notes to a recent update of The Weather Channel app gave me an idea however. The issue for this app was a crash on startup. They suggested reseting your location services database. My weather channel app was fine, but I figured it was worth a shot to try and fix my other problems.

On my phone I went to Settings > General > Reset. Then I chose to “Reset Location Warnings”. A warning pops up and says that this will reset all the location warnings. I clicked Reset Warning. Amazingly, since doing this, my phone has been much more snappy. I can finally use the Maps app again!

Perch costs about $55 per website but sounds intriguing. Mostly just a small customizable solution. It sounds like it might be nice for some basic websites where other CMS solutions would be overkill.

Exporting Your Messages

First off, you need a way to export your text messages from either your phone or your backup. All the messages are backed up on your computer with the normal iPhone sync process, but they aren’t in a format that is readable for humans. There are several different software applications that will do this for you. I’ve tried a few different ones with varying success. Most of them seemed downright kludgy. After trying out several apps, I finally discovered Decipher TextMessage from Decipher Media. It is very modestly priced at $6.99.

Decipher TextMessage is an OS X only app (sorry Windows users) that simply pulls your text messages out of your iPhone data backup file. I like the idea of this because it’s only messing with the backup file, not your actual phone. The great part about Decipher Text Message is that it uses your address book to match up phone numbers with contact names. All texts are sorted into conversations with each contact. You can then easily select a conversation and save it as either a text file or a CSV file. For this method, I just exported the conversation I wanted as a text file.

Make Your Texts Into a Self Contained HTML File

The text file is great, but if it’s a long conversation, it’s going to be hard to read and not terribly useful. This is where a little regular expression kung fu and some HTML and CSS love come in handy.

Once you export your text conversation, you’ll get a text document that looks something like this:

Conversation with: Johnny Appleseed (5555558555)


Wednesday Mar 31 14:56

Me: Do you still have that spare ticket?

Johnny Appleseed: I dont BUT if you want to go I can probably grab another.

Me: What time is it at?

Johnny Appleseed: Doors @ 8 but we'll most likely grab food down there first and get there shortly after 8

Me: Hmm. I think I'll pass. I got into work late today so should prolly stay until at least 8. Have a good time though!

Johnny Appleseed: Mmmkay.   Perhaps next time.


Sunday Apr 04 15:49

Me: I just got home.

Johnny Appleseed: Hey, im @ the field. You should come here

Me: Oh yeah? Who you out with?

Johnny Appleseed: Work peeps. Theyre cool. Come out  

As you can tell, although there is a lot of text, it’s all in a very predictable pattern. One part at the top, dates, texts from your contact, and texts from you.

Make the document into an HTML file

The first thing we need to do to our text file is convert it to HTML. Setting our text into an HTML template is easy. Just surround the whole conversation with a very basic HTML head tag and a body tag. For the purpose of this document, I’m not even worried about getting all the right tags in there, just enough to make it work. Here’s what it looks like now:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Me and Johnny Appleseed Converstaion</title>
</head>

<body>
    Wednesday Mar 31 14:56

    Me: Do you still have that spare ticket?

    Johnny Appleseed: I dont BUT if you want to go I can probably grab another.

    Me: What time is it at?

    Johnny Appleseed: Doors @ 8 but we'll most likely grab food down there first and get there shortly after 8

    Me: Hmm. I think I'll pass. I got into work late today so should prolly stay until at least 8. Have a good time though!

    Johnny Appleseed: Mmmkay.   Perhaps next time.


    Sunday Apr 04 15:49

    Me: I just got home.

    Johnny Appleseed: Hey, im @ the field. You should come here

    Me: Oh yeah? Who you out with?

    Johnny Appleseed: Work peeps. Theyre cool. Come out  
</body>
</html>

As you can see, I deleted the first line from the text file that said “Conversation with: Johnny Appleseed (5555558555)”. I don’t need that for this case. If I had wanted, I could have used that as the title of the document. I’ve also changed the extension of my document from .txt to .html.

TextWrangler is a beast

Next up is putting all of our text into HTML tags. Now, for any conversation that is more than a few texts, doing this by hand is just out of the question. That’s where some regular expression kung fu and my favorite find and replace tool come in handy.

For this job, I use TextWrangler from Bare Bones Software. It’s a great free text editor that includes the best search and find and replace tools I’ve found. In my opinion, it’s much better than the search tool for TextMate, which is the editor I use for pretty much everything else.

Get rid of the pesky extra line breaks

The first thing we’ll do is reduce the length of the file by getting rid of the extra line breaks. The line break pattern will match our line breaks. We just use \r for this. We want to end up with just one line break after each line with text and no empty lines. We do this by searching for two line breaks in a row and replacing them with one.

Doing “Replace All” once on this search will give us a much more manageable file length.

Mark up the dates

Next we want to put all of the date lines in a paragraph tag with a class of “date”. We can use the TextWrangler find and replace and, making sure that the Grep option is checked, search for a regular expression that matches all of the date lines. The following regex does just the trick:

^[a-zA-Z]* [a-zA-Z]{3} \d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}$

The above regex will match the entire line and then we use the ampersand (which just represents the entire match) in our replace string. We just surround the ampersand with our HTML:

<p class="date">&</p>

Here’s what it looks like in TextWrangler:

Mark up each of the conversation bits

Next I’ll search for all of my parts of the conversation. These each start with the label “Me:”. I want to code the classes so that the CSS will be easily to reuse later for different conversations. So in this case, I’ll just use generic ‘me’ and ‘you’ classes. For my parts of the conversation, I want to do the following things:

• Mark up each of my texts in a paragraph
• Give each of the paragraphs two clases: ‘message’ and ‘me’.
• Change the starting label from “Me:” to be my full name instead.
• Enclose my name in a strong tag.

In order to accomplish each of these things in one fell swoop, we can basically just match the text “Me:” at the start of a line and save the match that is everything after it in that line. There parenthesis save the pattern that is matched inside them. Since we’re getting rid of the “Me:” part, we don’t save it. Here’s what the regular expression looks like:

^Me:( .*)$

In the replace string we just surround the entire match that we saved (indicated by \1) with our appropriate HTML and label. Here’s the replace string (Obviously you wouldn’t want to use my name):

<p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong>\1</p>

The step is to match the other person’s texts. Here we’re trying to accomplish a very similar thing:

• Mark up each of the other person’s texts in a paragraph
• Give each of the paragraphs two clases: ‘message’ and ‘you’.
• Enclose the other person’s name in a strong tag.

We’ll use almost exactly the same search pattern as the last time, except this time I’m using Johnny’s name instead of mine. Just substitute the Johnny part for whoever the conversation is with.

Here are screenshots of each of the last two searches in TextWrangler.

And there we have it. Just a small bit of regex kung fu has given us a fully marked up HTML document. This is a great start, but in order to make it actually usable, we have to add some CSS styling to it. Here’s what are document looks like so far.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Me and Johnny Appleseed Converstaion</title>
</head>

<body>

    <p class="date">Wednesday Mar 31 14:56</p>
    <p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong> Do you still have that spare ticket?</p>
    <p class="message you"><strong>Johnny Appleseed:</strong> . I dont BUT if you want to go I can probably grab another.</p>
    <p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong> What time is it at?</p>
    <p class="message you"><strong>Johnny Appleseed:</strong> Doors @ 8 but we'll most likely grab food down there first and get there shortly after 8</p>
    <p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong> Hmm. I think I'll pass. I got into work late today so should prolly stay until at least 8. Have a good time though!</p>
    <p class="message you"><strong>Johnny Appleseed:</strong> Mmmkay.   Perhaps next time.</p>

    <p class="date">Sunday Apr 04 15:49</p>
    <p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong> I just got home.</p>
    <p class="message you"><strong>Johnny Appleseed:</strong> Hey, im @ the field. You should come here</p>
    <p class="message me"><strong>Alissa Miller:</strong> Oh yeah? Who you out with?</p>
    <p class="message you"><strong>Johnny Appleseed:</strong> Work peeps. Theyre cool. Come out  </p>

</body>
</html>

Styling Our Conversation

For the purpose of this conversation, my goal was to make the HTML page mimic the look of the iPhone text messages. I also want to make the HTML page self-contained, so I’m going to use internal CSS styles for everything.

Basic body styles

The first thing is to add some very basic styles to the body element. Here we are setting the background color and fonts. We also use the margin: 40px auto; to center the page and the width property to give us a nice narrow page width for our conversation.

body {
    background-color: #dbe1ed;
    color: #000;
    font: 14px/1.4 helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif;
    margin: 40px auto;
    width: 450px;
}

Styling the strong tags

Next we should style the strong tags. In this case, I want the strong elements to have a normal font-weight, but to be a different color. I styled all the strong elements as a medium gray color and then used the me class to override the the gray color with a bright green for my texts.

strong {
    color: #555;
    font-weight: normal;
}
.me strong {color: rgb(78,145,3);}

Basic paragraph and date styles

Now we style the paragraphs and the date class. We’re going to be floating elements in a bit, so we want to make sure to add a clear to all of the paragraphs on both sides. Also, the date class should have bold text that is centered and slightly larger than usual. Here are the styles:

p {clear: both;}
p.date {
    color: #777;
    font: bold 14px/1.4 helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif;
    text-align: center;
}

Creating rounded speech bubbles

Now that we’ve done some basic styling, we can start mimicking the speech bubbles. First we’ll style the message class to give some padding and rounded corners. We’ll also set the max-width of the each message to 70% so that it will stretch only slightly less than three quarters across the page.

p.message {
    position:relative;
    padding:5px 10px;
    border:2px solid rgb(74,77,82);
    border:2px solid rgba(74,77,82,.5);
    -moz-border-radius:10px;
    -webkit-border-radius:10px;
    border-radius:10px;
    max-width: 70%;
}

Add the fancy CSS gradients

After that, we’ll set the background colors and use CSS3 gradients to create the green and gray speech bubbles. The gradients are a bit complex, so I used the online Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator tool. This was a fabulous way to visually match the iPhone styles as closely as possible while getting the cross-browser compatible code automatically generated. After generating the two sets of gradients, this is the CSS I ended up with:

/* Gradients and styles for each bubble */
p.you {
    background: #EBEBEB; /* old browsers */
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #EBEBEB 5%, #D6D6D6 15%, #D2D2D2 71%, #E7E7E7 99%); /* firefox */
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(5%,#EBEBEB), color-stop(15%,#D6D6D6), color-stop(71%,#D2D2D2), color-stop(99%,#E7E7E7)); /* webkit */
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#EBEBEB', endColorstr='#E7E7E7',GradientType=0 ); /* ie */
}
p.me {
    background: #D0ECCC; /* old browsers */
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #D0ECCC 5%, #87CD65 15%, #92D664 70%, #ADE763 99%); /* firefox */
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(5%,#D0ECCC), color-stop(15%,#87CD65), color-stop(70%,#92D664), color-stop(99%,#ADE763)); /* webkit */
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#D0ECCC', endColorstr='#ADE763',GradientType=0 ); /* ie */

    float: right;
}

Notice that I also tucked in a float:right to the ‘me’ class. This will set my speech bubbles off to the right of the page.

Using just these few styles, we’ve created a nice looking self contained HTML page displaying our exported SMS conversation. Take a look at the HTML page so far.

Make more better speech bubbles

We could stop here and the page would be fine. However, we’ll use some really fancy CSS border trickery to make the text bubbles looks just a little bit better. Using images would make the text bubbles perfect, but remember, we want the file to be self contained.

In order to make the speech bubbles, I used a technique of arranging multiple CSS borders and using positioning to create a small triangle off to the side. The code is modified from Nicolas Gallagher’s excellent post on Pure CSS Speech Bubbles. In this case, I chose to use a modified version of the “Triangle Border” shown in Gallagher’s demo page (the one’ with the thick green border). The CSS had to be changed a bit because I didn’t actually want borders. Here is the final CSS I used:

/* The basic speech triangle */
p.message:before {
    content:"";
    display:block; /* reduce the damage in FF3.0 */
    position:absolute;
    border-style:solid;
    border-color:transparent rgb(74,77,82);
    border-color:transparent rgba(74,77,82,.5);
}
p.message:after {/* creates the smaller  triangle */
    content:"";
    display:block; /* reduce the damage in FF3.0 */
    position:absolute;
    border-style:solid;
}
/* Me points to the right */
p.message.me:before {
    right:-14px;
    bottom:7px;
    border-width:8px 0 8px 14px;
}
p.message.me:after {/* creates the smaller  triangle */
    right:-10px;
    bottom:8px;
    border-width:7px 0 7px 14px;
    border-color:transparent #94d749; /* green */
}
/* Other person points to the left */
p.message.you:before {  /* creates the larger triangle */
    left:-16px;
    bottom:7px;
    border-width:8px 16px 8px 0;
}
p.message.you:after {   /* creates the smaller  triangle */
    left:-10px;
    bottom:8px;
    border-width:7px 14px 7px 0;
    border-color:transparent #d3d3d3; /* grey */
}

You can see the finished effect on this page.

So with just a little bit of work we’ve marked up our conversation into HTML and created some advanced CSS styles to put our entire text conversation into a nice self contained HTML page that should be easily viewed in browsers for years to come.

Even better, we’ve made the CSS generic enough that we can just copy and paste it into another conversation we’ve marked up using HTML.

Obviously, there are a few caveats here. The Decipher Text Message program only on works on Macs. I haven’t tested any Windows-based software for the same purpose, but I stumbled across quite a few of them when I was looking for the software, so there are definitely options out there. Also, we’ve used some pretty complex CSS and several CSS3 properties that aren’t fully supported by all browsers. I have tested this in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Hopefully things shouldn’t look too terrible in other browsers. I confess though, I did not even check it in IE.

[…] analysis of the file released by the crackers themselves indicates that the breach extends to employees of Gawker, includes credentials for internal systems (Google applications, collaboration tools) used at the company, includes a leak of Gawker’s custom source code, includes credentials of Gawker employees for other web sites, includes FTP credentials for other web sites Gawker has worked with, includes access to Gawker’s statistics web site, and includes the e-mails of a number of the users who left comments at Gawker as well as users of lifehacker.com, kotaku.com, and gizmodo.com. Forbes.com

Bad news. Even worse, the evidence seems clear that this attack was going on for quite some time. Lots of fishy things were happening and nobody at Gawker was able to put two and two together. You’d hope that a business as big as Gawker would have their shit together.

Check out the complete slide show of the place on TPM.

Patchwork Nation is a reporting project that aims to explore what is happening in the United States by examining different kinds of communities over time. The effort divides America’s 3,141 counties into 12 community types based on certain demographic characteristics, such as income level, racial composition, employment and religion.

I always find this type of information fascinating. it’s incredibly interesting to me that whenever I find national data like this, there is always a section broken out for the Mormons. It seems as though they are such outliers to the rest of the country that they (and those regions) need to be viewed on their own to put things in perspective.

Also, according to this data, I live in a “Monied ‘Burb”, which is entirely surrounded by “Campus and Careers” counties. Interesting, but also not terribly surprising when I stop to think about it.

Another interesting personal parallel that I picked up was in viewing the state of Montana, where much of my family comes from. Montana is a mostly rural state. It’s also mostly conservative and has a fairly low per capita income. The two major college towns Missoula and Bozeman are notable exceptions, serving and liberal and cultural epicenters. There are also some other cities such as Butte, Helena and Billings. I’m pretty familiar with both Helena and Butte, but I can’t speak to Billings although I do know it’s very large for Montana.

In northwestern Montana there is a large lake called Flathead lake. My family owns a cabin there. My great grandfather bought the land in the 1930′s for $500. We own 5 acres of lakefront property and another 10 off the lake that is completely undeveloped. Our lakefront property has a one room cabin with electricity and no running water. There’s an outhouse. It’s very rustic, and very beautiful.

We’re kind of the odd ones on Finley Point (the area where the cabin is). All of our neighbors have retaining walls and docks. One of our neighbors has a giant water slide. Most of them cut all the trees down and grew grass. None of the animals in the area can actually get to the water because of all the development on the lake.

Over the past couple of decades (more or less, I don’t know), Flathead Lake has become a popular destination and summer home spot for tourists. And in Montana, that pretty much means people from outside the state. In particular, people from California…with money. Flathead Lake has become so popular with the tourists that the land value has skyrocketed, making it almost impossible for Montana families to hold on to their land in that area. This is a problem that hits home for me as my Montana family struggles to figure out how to keep their very modest family cabin in the family. If you take a close look at the Patchwork Nation Communities in Montana, you’ll notice that Flathead County is one of two counties in Montana that are labeled as “Monied ‘Burbs”. Interesting. This kind of screws with part of my point, but the southern part of Flathead Lake region (where my family’s cabin is) is actually in Lake County, designated as a “Tractor Country” community. Regardless, much of Lake County (in particular the stretch of 93) is quite a bit different that the areas bordering on the lake.

Long story short, you should definitely check out Patchwork Nation and draw your own personal parallels.

And the HTML/CSS that slowly sashayed that 300×250 div right the fuck over that paragraph you were trying to read is an open standard too.

Definitely made me laugh out loud.

[..] The Bible is the only Book in the world that predicts the future. Thus the Bible is more modern than tomorrow’s newspaper. The Bible accurately foretells the future [...]

I actually really like the phrase “more modern than tomorrow’s newspaper.” It has a nice ring to it.

Check out the video comparing the performance differences. And finally, here’s the link to the SSD express card on New Egg.

• Linux Commands – A practical reference

The list is not customized for OS X systems, so not all of the commands or options necessarily work as listed. I was however able to find similar commands using the man pages. This list is really an amazing reference for commands to do practical things that you might not have known you could do.

I just discovered wget using this list. I think I might have used this a long time ago and then promptly forgot it existed. Basically it downloads files or websites for you. This was exactly what I happened to need to download all of the student websites for my Web Design class. I was able to download all of them in a matter of minutes. The only problem was that it didn’t seem to pick up CSS background images or fonts used from @font-face, so I had to manually check those. An indispensable nevertheless.

First Impressions

The typical nerd response to this has been laughing and pointing. Now, I have to admit, that was my first response as well. But, after I stopped laughing and shaking my head (well, actually I’m still shaking my head), I started thinking of all of the crazy things that I’ve seen people do in the last 5+ years I’ve spent working in computer support. While I find this whole thing rather amusing, I can’t say that I’m actually surprised. I have witnessed someone physically lift a mouse into the air when asked to “move the mouse up”.

I think the biggest difference between developers (or nerds) and normal people, is that normal people don’t want to know how a computer or the internet work. They don’t care. They don’t want to learn. I’ve never really gotten over this because it’s something that I find terribly disappointing about working in computer support. I can watch a person do the same thing over an over again knowing that there is a better way to do it, but they don’t care. They don’t want to understand. They don’t want me to teach them how to understand why something works a certain way. They just want to get the result they need.

I still have yet to decide the which angle of this attitude is the more important one. Is it an indication that a certain population of people will always be lagging behind because they refuse to adapt to a quickly changing world that requires them to understand certain aspects of technology? Or perhaps is it an indication that technology (and the people who develop it) simply hasn’t evolved enough to adapt to “real people” who do not “need” to understand black box in order to use it?

The Wider Debate

Much has been written in regard to the Facebook login fiasco, and quite a controversy has been sparked in the development community about what this really means, and whose “fault” it is. First, check out some of these articles which highlight very interesting points for both sides of the debate.

• We’re the Stupid Ones: Facebook, Google, and Our Failure as Developers
• Reply to Funkatron’s Analysis of the RWW/Facebook Debaucle of 2010
• No, We’re Not The Stupid Ones
• Really? Are we the idiots?
• Some People Can’t Read URLs
• Why It’s Not A Google Failure

On Whether Or Not Google Got It Wrong

I guess this really depends on how far exactly the RWW article made it up the search rankings. I’d say that it’s an entirely different debate depending on whether the search result was first or fifth. I thought originally the result was first, but Stratton claims it never made it to number one. I don’t see any reason why that RWW article should not reach a high rank on the search term “facebook login” since that is what the article is about. It’s a popular blog and presumably the article was popular as well.

A number one search result is another matter though. I agree with the camp that says it would be impossible for Google (or any other search engine) to always know what a person meant. But seriously, isn’t that what Google is always trying to do? It just doesn’t sit right to me that an article about a website as huge as Facebook would ever be a more popular search intention that the site itself.

The search “facebook login” seems to clearly indicate a search for the login page itself. That seems fairly intuitive. In fact, substitute facebook for most major web apps and I think it’s the same. However, if the search changes slightly to something like “facebook changes login”, it’s now an entirely different issue.

Perhaps the artificial intelligence of search algorithms just isn’t sophisticated enough to parse nuances of language that seem so obvious to humans. Then again, perhaps they are and that’s why the RWW page never made it to the number one spot for the “facebook login” search. In that case, I really think this whole debate about whether or not Google got it wrong is really a non issue.

On The Users Themselves

Moving past the whole Google question, there are a couple of things that really baffle me about this entire fiasco. First of all, it’s clear that these users have no idea what a URL is. Both because they are using Google Search to find a URL like facebook.com and also (and more importantly) because they did not realize that the RWW URL bears absolutely no resemblance to any Facebook URL, and therefore cannot possible be the Facebook website.

How is it that these users who have to most superficial understanding of what a website is and how the internet works, are also capable of writing comments to the RWW page? They are baffled about how to log in to a site that’s not the Facebook site they’re used to (and in fact bears absolutely no resemblance to it). But they still can use the comment form in order to voice their disapproval of the perceived redesign.

Okay so, maybe typing into a comment form is no big deal. Even people that think the entire internet is just Google/Facebook/YouTube can figure out a comment form. What about using Facebook itself? It’s not like Facebook is that simple to use. This isn’t a slam on Facebook user interface, it’s just that Facebook is huge, and there are a lot of things that you can do on it. How can these people figure out how to use Facebook?

Perhaps this is an issue of normal people realizing that they want to use Facebook enough to spend time learning about friend networks, walls, how to upload photos in the little snazzy uploader. Why is it that they deem it important enough to figure out how to use websites like Facebook, but at the same time don’t care to understand what a web address is? I think I just fail to understand why someone would not care about that kind of stuff because I am so interested in it myself.

Is It Actually a Facebook Problem?

I logged on to Facebook for the first time in several weeks today. I don’t find myself doing this too much these days because I often either don’t look at Facebook at all or only look at it through the Facebook iPhone app. Much to my surprise, Facebook looked quite a bit different than the last time I saw it. I started thinking about how often I have to do what Steve Krug calls “muddling through” when I’m using Facebook. I know what I can do on Facebook, it just usually takes me a couple of tries to figure it out.

Why is this? Well, when I think about it, the Facebook website changes quite a bit. They’ve made several large and small changes to the website in recent years (or less?). Compare this to something like the Google home page which has changed very little since it’s inception.

Perhaps Facebook users have come to expect over time, and through personal experience, that the Facebook website will change, and sometimes change dramatically. They expect this because it has happened. Perhaps it wasn’t so far fetched after all to believe that the RWW page was simply just the newest reiteration of a Facebook design.

Now, I know this is a stretch, but perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch. Has Facebook changed its pages so much that users are now willing to accept that a complete makeover, such as the RWW page being a new Facebook design, is a real possibility? Does Facebook redesign too often? Has Facebook unwittingly trained it’s users to expect this?

One Last Only Slightly Related Thought

Anyone like me (aka: nerd, developer, gamer, general computer enthusiast) who thinks that the iPad is stupid and going to be a flop is not seeing the big picture. The iPad is designed for exactly the type of people commenting on the RWW website. Both Mike Rundle and Fraser Speirs are dead on (along with some other smart people as well). I think that most people will love the iPad. I think the iPad is going to revolutionize the netbook/eReader market just like the iPhone revolutionized the mobile phone market. Will the iPad be as successful a device as the iPhone? I don’t know. But I guarantee that it will change the game.

What we can all really expect from this rebranding is nearly spelled out by Marc Brownstein:

“Verizon has FiOS. Comcast now has Xfinity. It’s rebundling it in a high-tech package. You are rebundling an improved product, an enhanced service,” said Marc Brownstein, president and chief executive officer of the Brownstein Group, a Philadelphia brand communication, public relations, and advertising firm.

When you read that sentence about “You are rebundling an improved product…” just imagine that you are the subject and what he is really saying is that “you will be paying more money for an ever so slightly enhanced service with a different name.”

They also have a clever and vacant holding page for a new website. Is it just me or does this look like the cover of a Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet? Seriously. All they need is a little Jesus on those clouds.

Dear Comcast: Good luck making people like you more once you’re called Xfinity. Here’s a tip, if your services still cost a fortune and barely work, and your customer service is atrocious on top of that, that new name will be just as dirty as the old one.

This all started last year when I got fed up watching those guys on the football shows picking teams. Have you ever noticed how poorly they pick? It’s probably more a statement about how unpredictable football is as a game than about their actual knowledge. Regardless, I decided to do my own picks this season. I estimated that I could pick about two thirds of the games right.

So How Did I Do?

I’ve you’ve been keeping track all season, you’ll likely already know the answer. But for those of you fresh out of the gates, I’d say I did pretty good. Anything over 50% counts right? For each week I picked all but one of the games normally. I’d save one game to do a totally ridiculous pick, called See If It Sticks®. Those of you that have ever read King Kaufman’s column on Salon.com should be familiar with the idea (since I kind of stole it). I actually did decent on the See If It Sticks® picks until the end of the regular season when I started picking blindly against the Colts every week. I do dislike them so much.

Anyway, for the entire regular season, including my See If It Sticks® picks, I finished 154-83. That works out to just under 65% (I think). So I didn’t quite make my goal of picking two thirds of the games correctly, but I got real close. Better luck next season. I finished my See If It Sticks® picks at a paltry 6-9. Bad news bears.

Enjoy the Super Bowl this weekend. I will be cheering loudly against the Colts. But beyond that, wouldn’t it be great if New Orleans won?

Indianapolis √ at Buffalo
Jacksonville at Cleveland √
Chicago √ at Detroit
San Francisco √ at St. Louis
Pittsburgh √ at Miami
NY Giants √ at Minnesota (See If It Sticks®)
Atlanta √ at Tampa Bay
New Orleans at Carolina √
New England √ at Houston
Green Bay √ at Arizona
Washington at San Diego √
Tennessee √ at Seattle
Baltimore at Oakland √
Philadelphia √ at Dallas
Kansas City at Denver √
Cincinnati √ at NY Jets

Hmmm. Not so great that week. Started out good though. That makes me 9-7 for the week and I missed my See If It Sticks® pick.

• Pure CSS3 AT-AT Walker

Buffalo √ at Atlanta

Hehe. Last time I pick Bills.

Kansas City at Cincinnati √

Oakland at Cleveland √

I love it when I pick bad teams to win and they do!

Seattle at Green Bay √

Baltimore √ at Pittsburgh

Close one here.

Houston √ at Miami

Jacksonville at New England √

I say trap game for Patriots. Hopefully the pull it out.

Tampa Bay at New Orleans √

Unbelievable.

Carolina √ at NY Giants (See If It Sticks ®)

Detroit at San Francisco √

St. Louis at Arizona √

I’m going to be pissed if Arizona blows this one. Apparently some teams are even worse than the Lions.

NY Jets at Indianapolis √

Wow. Didn’t see that coming. I’m glad they lost, but I wish Peyton had been playing in it.

Denver at Philadelphia √

Letdown for Philadelphia? I don’t think so.

Dallas √ at Washington

No reason for Dallas not to get this game under control.

Minnesota √ at Chicago

Minnesota slumps to new lows.

Results

Interesting week. Some close loses. I came out 11-5. Not so bad. I got my See If It Sticks®. That makes me 145-76 and 6-8 for See If It Sticks®.

Indy isn’t going to show up this week. At the same token though, I still don’t think the Bills will win.

Jacksonville at Cleveland √

Resurgence in Cleveland? I don’t think so. I’m still picking them though.

Chicago √ at Detroit

I went out on a limb to play the Chicago defense this week. I didn’t think the Eagles were going to be so hot. They better not disappoint.

San Francisco √ at St. Louis

Pittsburgh √ at Miami

Pittsburgh playing for pride and a prayer.

NY Giants √ at Minnesota (See If It Sticks®)

Hmm, which team is in more of a slump. I vote for Giant pride.

Atlanta √ at Tampa Bay

Atlanta has been out for a while, but they are still a good team.

New Orleans at Carolina √

Carolina is the team that everyone would be scared of if they were in the playoffs. Too bad they hit their stride too late. Saints are benching Brees also.

New England √ at Houston

Houston should be a tough opponent. Pats better show up to play. They’re not good enough to take a game off.

Green Bay √ at Arizona

Washington at San Diego √

I would say the the Chargers were going to take this game off, but I still think that they will win.

Tennessee √ at Seattle

Another non-playoff scary team.

Baltimore at Oakland √

Philadelphia at Dallas

The game of the week here. I’m still skeptical that Dallas can close anything out.

Kansas City at Denver √

Denver is still in the race right?

Cincinnati √ at NY Jets

Bengals. Yeah Bengals.

This game should be exciting. Chargers charging (I did it) and Titans stomping (I don’t know). Finally, a great special time game. Let’s hope the fam lets me watch it!

Buffalo √ at Atlanta

Buffalo has to win some of them right?

Kansas City at Cincinnati √

Oakland at Cleveland √

Browns player show up for the new GM…this week.

Seattle at Green Bay √

Baltimore √ at Pittsburgh

Houston √ at Miami

Jacksonville at New England √

I say trap game for Patriots. Hopefully the pull it out.

Tampa Bay at New Orleans √

Saints get it back together. They need to pick it up for the last two games if they expect to roll through the playoffs.

Carolina √ at NY Giants (See If It Sticks ®)

Giant surprise. They choke.

Detroit at San Francisco √

St. Louis at Arizona √

I’m going to be pissed if Arizona blows this one. Apparently some teams are even worse than the Lions.

NY Jets at Indianapolis √

I wish I could say that I thought the Jets would beat the Colts.

Denver at Philadelphia √

Letdown for Philadelphia? I don’t think so.

Dallas √ at Washington

No reason for Dallas not to get this game under control.

Minnesota √ at Chicago

Minnesota has to win this game. They need that bye week.

Nice job for the Cowboys in a December game. I was cheering the Saints on towards and undefeated season, but alas, they didn’t get it. I still think they are a good pick for the Super Bowl. Then again, they’re a young team, and young teams don’t seem to do well in the playoffs.

New England √ at Buffalo

New England pulled it together in a lackluster fashion. At least Randy got in the game.

Arizona √ at Detroit

Ditto for the lackluster part.

Miami at Tennessee √

This was a close one.

Cleveland at Kansas City √

Wow, huge game for Cleveland. No fair beating up on another bad team though. Don’t be fooled, Cleveland is still a mess. I can’t believe Holmgren took the bait. What’s in that Cleveland cool-aid?

Houston √ at St. Louis

Atlanta at NY Jets √

Jets trying to make it to playoffs.Scratch that, Jets are pretty much out.

Oakland at Denver √

Cincinnati at San Diego √

Tampa Bay at Seattle √

Chicago at Baltimore √

I picked right, but I didn’t realize that it would be a blowout.

San Francisco at Philadelphia √

Green Bay √ at Pittsburgh

What a catch.

Minnesota √ at Carolina

What’s going on in Minnesota? Somebody tell them the season’s not over yet!

NY Giants at Washington √ (See If It Sticks ®)

Couldn’t have been more wrong about this one.

Results

It was kind of a rough week, again. I’m 7-8 for the week. I think that might have been my first week below .500. Yikes. Better luck for the next two. Remember, my goal is to hit .666 for the season. So far I’m 134-71 and 5-8 for See If It Sticks®.

Jets √ Vs Bills

Philadelphia √ at Atlanta

St. Louis at Chicago √

Detroit at Cincinnati √

Oakland at Pittsburgh √

Tennessee √ at Indianapolis

Denver √ at Kansas City

New England √ at Miami

New Orleans √ at Washington

Tampa Bay at Carolina √

Houston √ at Jacksonville

San Diego √ at Cleveland

Dallas √ at NY Giants

San Francisco √ at Seattle

Minnesota √ at Arizona

Baltimore √ at Green Bay

Week 13 Summary

So for week 13 I ended up being 8-8. Bad news. Apparently I forgot to do a See If It Sticks ® pick. Season total: 115-60.

Week 14 Results

New Orleans √ at Atlanta

Green Bay √ at Chicago

NY Jets √ at Tampa Bay

Miami √ at Jacksonville

Detroit at Baltimore √

Seattle at Houston √

Denver √ at Indianapolis (See If It Sticks®)

Buffalo at Kansas City √

Cincinnati at Minnesota √

Carolina at New England √

Washington √ at Oakland

St. Louis at Tennessee √

San Diego √ at Dallas

Philadelphia at NY Giants √

Arizona √ at San Francisco

Week 14 Summary

I did much better on week 14. 12-3 for the week and I missed my See If It Sticks ®. Picking against the Colts every week has gone against my better judgement. I still think they are not as good as it seems.

So through week 14 I’m 127-63 and 5-7 on my See If It Sticks ®.

Cowboys at Saints √

It’s still December. I’m going to go out on a limb here and pick the Saints. I know, I know. Risky.

New England √ at Buffalo

New England will pull it together this week.

Arizona √ at Detroit

Hopefully Arizona can beat Detroit.

Miami at Tennessee √

Cleveland at Kansas City √

Houston √ at St. Louis

Atlanta at NY Jets √

Jets trying to make it to playoffs.

Oakland at Denver √

Cincinnati at San Diego √

San Diego is on a roll.

Tampa Bay at Seattle √

Chicago at Baltimore √

Uh, I don’t know how to pick this one.

San Francisco at Philadelphia √

Green Bay √ at Pittsburgh

I never thought the Steelers would slump so low.

Minnesota √ at Carolina

I guess the real question here is when Minnesota will start benching the old man.

NY Giants at Washington √ (See If It Sticks ®)

Giants are in a big time slump.