I love fonts.

I found a totally nerdy game that I wish I was better at. It shows you a few letters in different fonts, and you have to "shoot" the correct one. I'm pretty decent at the fonts that come default with Word, but... Clarendon Light, Bliss Light?

(play here)

Another cool, yet nerdy font thing that I enjoy... Kinetic Typography. There are a bunch of videos on YouTube if you search for that... This is one of my favorites.

ImmoralCoho tells me about Islam...

see RipenedCoho

I hate Vikings.

At 12:58 pm, I officially ruined my entire Sunday. I spent the majority of the rest of the day saving Vikings from the perils of the icy sea.   Please don't begin saving the Vikings unless you can commit a few hours to the rescue effort.   Link

DataDrivenCoho

see RipenedCoho

a usability analysis.

I've lived many different places in the past 5 years.  From the Penn State dorms, to K4, to a condo in Chapel Hill, to a almost new townhome in Raleigh, to a new apartment building at Penn State, to my current apartment in Conshohocken.  With these six or so different residences, I've experienced many different microwaves.  Yes, microwaves.

Somehow, with my awesome microwave abilities, I got the microwaves in the dorms to say CHILD and not work.  Our K4 microwave just had a little knob that you turned to set the time, I could handle that.  Very easy to understand user interface.

My first experience with a newer style microwave was in my townhome in Raleigh.  This microwave had the "popcorn" button and beeped every minute if you didn't open it after your food was done.  That was so annoying.  Don't they know that Lean Cuisine has to sit a few minutes before you eat it?

These new microwaves have buttons for about everything.  My parents just got a new microwave and I still don't know how to use it.  All I want in life is a microwave that defrosts, cooks, and maybe even times.  I don't want a popcorn button.  I don't need a potato button.  WTH does the Melt button do?  Being forced to look-up codes to use the Defrost button, thats terrible usability.  

My current apartment just got a brand new microwave, and while I like that its all shiny and clean, I hate 21 of the 35 buttons.  I only like the numbers 0-9, Start, Stop, Power and Cook Time.  Inside the microwave is a huge table of numbers that I don't even want to look at.  I'd rather just guess how long to defrost a dinner plate, or cook a pizza, or soften...whatever you'd soften in the microwave.  

I just tried to use the microwave, and left it the kitchen while I let it do its thing.  It beeped at me, multiple times while I was trying to defrost chicken.  Halfway for turning, and at one minute, to warn me? Then it beeped when it was done.  Then a minute after that, and a minute after that...

Those microwave designers must think we all wanna be spaceship pilots with all those buttons.  I think they should be fired for their terrible user interface and usability.

A few of my favorite Twitter things

If Twitter has taken over your life, you're not alone.  If it hasn't, shame on you, go join.  Below I've gathered some of my favorite Twitter "tools".  Tons more exist, so if I missed your favorite, let me know!

Qwitter is a tool that helps you figure out when someone unfollows you (gasp!) on Twitter, and the last tweet you tweeted before that mean person unfollowed you.  All you have to do is sign up with your twitter username and email, and they'll email you when someone decides to pull your plug on twitter.  I hope I won't be getting many of those emails after I post this...   http://useqwitter.com/

This site is a great tool for those people who are OCD about making sure they only follow active Twitterers.  I had a few friends that joined, and then decided Twitter was not for them (Pat), or an a great idea of a Twitter account that just never took off (StateCollegePD).  MyCleenr goes through your Twitter friends and sorts they by the time they tweeted last.  It was interesting to see how infrequently some people tweet.  You can even delete Twitter friends right from their site (harsh, I know, but someone has to do it).  http://www.mycleenr.com/mycleenr

Some of my good friends have found me on Twitter just because I was friends with their friend (Caitlin).  Instead of stalking who your friends are @-ing, use Twubble.   This site searches your friends friends and picks out people that you might like to follow.   http://crazybob.org/twubble/

My favorite, and nerdiest Twitter related site has to be TweetStats.  This awesome site gives you most any statistic you can think of related to your Twitter account. From how many tweets per day (tpd) to Tweet Density to Daily Tweets, Hourly Tweets, to Interface used to a Tweet Cloud.  TweetStats provides hours (maybe I'm just weird) of entertainment analyzing your tweets.  I found out my top 5 Twittered words were going, good, fun, today and think.  I tweet most on Wednesdays, and somehow, have tweeted every single hour of the day, but 3pm seems to be the high point with 62.  http://tweetstats.com/

I hope you have as much fun with these as I did, because if you don't that just means I'm really nerdy.

RipenedCoho?

For the past few months, I've been getting IM's from the screen names adjectiveCoho.  Today, RipenedCoho talked to me.  This time I decided to respond and it turns out it was someone named Leah.

The Coho "bot" relays messages between two unsuspecting IM users.  It has something to do with LiveJournal, but either way its kind of creepy.  I had no idea what Coho was when they contacted me the first few times.  My only thought was that it was some sort of bad word that I didn't know the meaning of (which is partially true).

This Coho bot is part of TheGreatHatsby, which I found from wikipedia.  I feel special that TheGreatHatsby has chosen to contact me.  But now, since I've talked to the random confused person on the other side, I'd be okay if they never contact me again.  Lets hope this works.

Dear GreatHatsby,

I hate your stinkin guts.  You make me vomit.  You're the scum between my toes.

Love,

Alexis

Regulating Tweets

Blogger note: Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

1. Don't have conversations on twitter. If you find yourself @'ing the person multiple times to find out where you're meeting for tea, call them, or at the very least direct message.
2. Please watch your alcoholic intake before tweeting. Drunken tweets are confusing for others.
   
3. Keep it within a few hours. @'ing someone 8-hours after they tweeted causes a lot of confusion for other people who have to search back through tweets to find the specific tweet that you are just now referring to.
4. Tweets usually arrive in groups of two or more. This is an unnamed phenomenon.
5. Don't follow hundreds or thousands of random people. Do you really need to know what Sally in Alaska is doing all day if you don't know Sally?
6. Twitter allows 140 characters. Just 140 characters. They provide a nice character counter too. This is 140 characters, do not exceed 140.
7. Really though, all of those rules are unimportant and the biggest rule of all is TWITTER. Not updating is the worst thing you could ever do. Don't be a Twitter Fail Whale.
   

The Mythical Creature - The Fanboy

Wikipedia describes this term as "any individual who is devoted to a single subject in an emotional or fanatical manner, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession." How do you become this obsessed? What responsibilities are required of a "fanboy"?

Just as an example, not to point out any person in particular, lets say we had an Apple fanboy. What would be some characteristics of an Apple fanboy?

Items that would be on the fanboy or within 7 feet at all times:	MacBook (only the newest "metal" one), iPhone (3G), Apple iPod earphones
Lifestyle changes from pre-fanboy:	Constant access to the internet, music, email, instant messaging, and Twitter
Frequented websites of the fanboy:	macrumors, appleinsider, techcrunch
Words commonly used by the fanboy:	zomg, plzkthxbai, probs, maybs, poss, n00b, ijwd (abbreviation for "i just wanna dance"), lolz
Customary activities of the fanboy:	blogging, coding, geeking
Heroes:	Steve Jobs
Favorite Drinks:	Red Bull
Topics they love to talk about:	New Apple technologies (the ambient light sensor, the no button track pad and how it will probably get a firmware upgrade soon, how the metal laptop is lighter and slimmer than the previous versions, the battery that takes a long time to charge, etc...)
Life Goal:	Be a hax0rz