Life is Fleeting May 28, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Life , 1 comment so farYesterday me, my cousin (and roommate), and my lil sis were walking back from breakfast when we saw a bunch of firetrucks, EMTs, and firefighters standing around a building down the street from our place. Some of the firefighters were on top of the building pumping water through a hole they cut in the roof. The fire was already contained by the time we got there, but there were a couple of dozen firefighers standing around and half a dozen large firetrucks. Clearly the SFFD was worried that the fire might spread to other buildings. It was kind of scary, since it was so close to our home and it could have been our building.
After we watched the firefighers at work, both Mike and me independently decided it was high time to get some renters insurance.
Bay to Breakers 2006 May 22, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Fun , add a comment
I recently did the Bay to Breakers race with Biao. Here are our photos.
Add Iconator icons to your website May 9, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Website , comments closedI’m testing a new feature of Iconator–the ability to add Iconator icons to your website. Please take a look below and let me know if you can’t see these icons or if they’re all the same: [Removed. Problem with my blog software?]
Boneheaded Quicken UI Error #768 May 4, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Programming, Weird , 5comments
Ok, there’s a lot of things I find annoying in Quicken, but I think this is easily the funniest. Check out this screenshot of the “Create Renaming Rule” window. It looks normal, right? Well take a close look at the “Contains” dropdown. Notice how the two Contains menus look slightly different? What Quicken does is show you an IMAGE (i.e. a JPEG) of the menu and when you click on it the software substitutes in the real Windows dropdown menu. It’s flabergasting–did Intuit have their intern design the menu? How could anyone possibly think this is the correct way to design an application? I think this is a perfect candidate for the Daily WTF.
Bubble Tea May 2, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Life , 4commentsYou know you go to Quickly too often when they have your order rung up before you even get to the counter.
Avatars! April 29, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Website , 2comments
The big news is that Iconator now has avatars. Avatars are like giant icons that are used in web forums, Xanga, MySpace, LiveJournal, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and Skype. Phew. That’s a long list. The coolest thing about avatars is that they’re larger (96×96 pixels) so people create more expressive artwork. I’ve been really impressed by the quality of avatars submitted to the site. My goal is to have the largest avatar website on the Internet by the end of next month. We have had over 2000 avatars submitted in the first 3 days, so I think it’s an attainable goal. As far as I can tell the largest display picture / avatar site has around 5000 icons, so we might achieve it after just 1 week! So check it out and let me know what you think.
To sum it up, here’s an email I got from a user:
Thanks so much for putting avatars, I have msn and there are no good sites with cool images. Thank you so, so, so much, keep ‘em coming! Iconator rocks!
Maker Fair Photos April 29, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Fun, Life , add a commentLast weekend I went to the Maker fair (which was way cool). Here are my photos. This is their story.
iMac as a Laptop April 11, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Weird , 3commentsI just saw a woman today in the Internet cafe that was using a full size flat-screen iMac as her laptop. She even had a *huge* bag for it. Considering that an iMac weights 16 lbs, I don’t think it’s the most portable option. 
Edit: I wasn’t the only person who thought it was strange.
Buddy4u vs Spammers Round 2 March 28, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Website , add a commentIn the continuing saga of Sanity versus the Spammers, war has been declared. The spammers have decided to spam my “Contact Us” form with hundreds of “comments” a day for soma (the drug from Brave New World?), Xanax (yes, the spam is making my anxious, thank you), paxil weight gain formula (a big seller, I guess), and cheap hgh (so I can be fat and young looking). Now since the comments are emailed directly to me and no one else can read them, I don’t think it’s a very effective method of advertising. Even worse, every single damn submission comes from a different IP address. Now I really can say that spammers are out to get me using a fleet of zombie’d computers. Where’s my Xanax?
Spammers 2, Me 0
Buddy4u vs Spammers March 24, 2006
Posted by Owen in : Website , add a comment
Recently, Buddy4u has been the target of a spam campaign. Someone has been making a lot of profiles, pumping them high in Google’s rankings, and redirecting users to a spam page when they click through. For example, Buddy4u is in the #6 position for a search on “tmobile”, #6 on “bcbg”, #5 on “rockport shoes”, #4 on “free nextel ringtones”, and so forth. See my screenshot from the Google Sitemaps website.
Now, of course, I’ve taken steps to prevent the spammers from registering more profiles and deleted all the spam profiles I could find, but the damage is done. While my reputation is (slightly) tarnished, at least these particular spammers won’t see any further benefit out of their illegitimate profiles. I have no idea how they got these content-free profiles to such a high ranking in such a short time, but I’m sure it wasn’t kosher. Sigh. Spammers 1, Buddy4u 0.