The comic book world was rocked in the past couple of weeks when Marvel dissolved the Spiderman Peter Parker-Mary Jane marriage.
Titled “One More Day”, comic #545 sees Spiderman deal with a devil like villian Mephisto to save Aunt May (who was in a coma). In the deal, Mephisto wipes Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s memory, essentially making it look like their marriage never took place. So Peter Parker is now a 20 something bachelor living with his aunt (who is now alive and well). The deal with Mephisto also erased the part about Spiderman telling the whole world who he is (something Marvel shouldn’t have done that in the first place!).
Marvel comics had said they regretted writing the Spidey-MJ marriage plot. I guess the (dis)continuity of the Spiderman script is what spoils it for the fans (including me) — the writers should have thought about it more. In recent times, we’ve seen Peter Parker and MJ separating, MJ having a miscarriage and even a story line telling us that it was Peter’s clone is the one that got married. Joe Quesada, Marvel’s editor-in-chief then stepped in to say that the marriage just couldn’t continue as it was bogging Spiderman down as a superhero.
Says Quesada, “At the end of the day my job is to keep these characters fresh and ready for every fan that walks through the door … while also planning for the future and hopefully an even larger fan base.”
Bad scripts and storylines… come on guys, I think you can do better than that. It’s a fresh start but lets not screw this one up again. It would be interesting to see how they try to write MJ into Spidey’s life again. Reminds me of how DC’s Superman dying and came back to life again — pretty absurd.
J emailed me this nifty way of making her students solve a math problem (with an incentive) i.e. the answer to the math problem is the password to open the (Microsoft) Excel file.
Lets see whether you are smarter than a 5th grader …
There are 7 girls in a bus
Each girl has 7 backpacks
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats
For every big cat there are 7 little cats
Question: How many legs are there in the bus?
The number of legs is the password to unlock the Excel sheet.
If you open it, add your name and send it on to see who else can unlock it.
This is a real math problem so don’t say that a bus has no legs.
Also assume that there aren’t any other person on the bus except the 7 girls (i.e. there isn’t a bus driver).
If you get the correct answer that’s the password to the spreadsheet (link is below).
Put your name in the column with the names and forward it on, if you were smart enough to get the right answer.
If you are really stuck, email me for the answer.
Update: Since I’ve been overwhelmed with people emailing me for the answer (more than 400+ people from over a 1200 downloads), I’ve decided to publish it. Here is the link to the solution. No cheating!
Saw this on FOX news yesterday… find your presidential candidate match.
# Play 20 questions to find your closest political match
# Dig deeper into the candidates’ answers, stances and news coverage
# Download a cool political bobble head widget
# Embed this quiz on your blog or site
YouTube seems to be a good place to find many good singers (and bad ones too). The pool of talent there is enormous. From randomly stumbling across them, I’ve come some very good ones that film themselves, hoping to get their big break and get picked up by record labels.
You know they have talent when they sing cover songs better than the actual singer, with just a guitar or piano. One other sign of a good singer is when he or she makes an original song (that is really bad) and makes it sound good. America’s Got Talent may have to dip into YouTube to see the many good singers and musicians out there.
Two of my favorites are Marie Digby and Sarah Barailles. Thanks to YouTube, they did get their big breaks on Carson Daly and The Late Late Show respectively. Last year, Sarah Barailles was featured as the iTunes “free single of the week”. She then released her album (under the Sony BMG label) a month later, became the most downloaded album on iTunes and debut at #45 on the billboard charts. Thanks to Angela for telling me about her. I was going to post her cute “Love Song” video but the embed code has been disabled. Here’s the link to her official music video posted a couple of months ago.
I stumbled across Marie Digby on YouTube when I was searching for a James Morrison song (You give me something). Gotta say she does play a great cover of that song on her guitar but her trump card is Rihanna’s “Umbrella” song (see the video below). You may want to fast forward about a minute or so to hear her. She also sings a better version of Britney’s Gimme More on her guitar (actually makes that song sound good). I believe she is releasing an album pretty soon.
Judge for yourself below … what a great TV debut, isn’t she something!
Couple of weeks ago, J was laughing at my choice of iTunes song downloads. It seems that most of my songs of recent months are from TV commercials or previews. I’ve become quite good at searching for a song I’ve just heard on TV and finding it on iTunes (without even knowing the singer’s name). Can’t help it, just happen to like the songs…
1234 - Feist (Apple iPod Nano commercial)
All that I want - Weepies (JC Penney Xmas commercial)
The Way that I am - Ingrid Michaelson (Old Navy commercial)
You give me something - James Morrison (played during the FX channel previews)
This is the day - The The (M&M commercial)
What I Like About You - The Romantics (Esurance commercial)
Love Song - Sarah Barailles (Rhapsody commercial)
Sweet Pea - Amos Lee (AT&T Wireless commercial)
My Patch - Jim Noir (Target commercial)
Family Affair - Mary J. Blige (Propel Fitness Water commercial)
Never realized that YouTube and TV could be such a good source of music.
I was going to research/compile a list of URL shortening services but Mashable beat me to it today. Worked out for the best as it saved me a lot of time.
If you don’t know what a URL shortening service is …
It’s a service that minimizes a long address, creating a shorter URL address that gets forwarded to the original link.
So from a long URL like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1425103804/ref=s9_asin_image_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s
=center-1&pf_rd_r=1G29T17YTB01SHPCZ7EG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=265623401&pf_rd_i=507846
turns into this:
http://snurl.com/1×13h
and both links are equivalent and go to the same location.
When is it useful?
- Email messages
Sometimes long URL links in email messages get cut off. Using this allows you to preserve the original long link location.
- When using micro blogging services like Twitter or Jaiku where you are limited to 140 characters.
- SMS text messaging or Instant Messaging a link to someone… you won’t need to type in (or remember) the whole link.
As you can see Mashable has an exhaustive list of 90+ free services. I use snurl.com because it has the ability to track how many people has clicked on the shortened link, to see a history of links you’ve made, the ability to manage/modify the link you’ve made and to customize the shortened URL with private keys/ nicknames. The handy java bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser toolbar lets you to quickly shorten the long URL and copy it with one click. It also has interchangeable aliases of snipr.com and snipurl.com to choose from if you don’t like the snurl.com shortened domain name.
As of date, many of the new services that have sprung up on the web offer the same functionality too (I’ve stuck to this one because it has served me well). It was also one of the first ones I encountered and came highly recommended by some of my friends.
Other well known shortening services include
TinyURL (official service of choice used by Twitter)
Firefox users can download an addon here.
URLtea
Lets you add a tag in the shortened URL.
Metamark*
URLSplit
Split a single URL among multiple websites so it goes to each one randomly. (Not sure why you would want to do that unless you are advertising something)
Shorturl
Lets you create a short url as a subdomain i.e. http://yourname.shorturl.com. Choice of 20+ subdomains. Provides traffic reports and stats.
Notlong
This one has the ability to password protect your short URL. Provides traffic stats and subdomain URLs.
*NOTE: Besides Metamark (where the links expire after 5 years), all the URL services above promise to hold your shortened links indefinitely.
It is also easy enough to host/start a URL service on your own domain with the scripts:
Phurl (Free)
Bring2.us (Free)
Brokenscript (Free)
XYZ Short URL (Script cost $29)
GentleURL (Script cost $29)
Negatives with using these services
If you are hosting your own URL service is the problem of spam and the potential for it to be abused. I’ve yet to see the scripts provided that tackle that problem. An extreme scenario will see your domain being banned by ISPs if it is associated with spammers. My advice is that if you are installing the scripts, that you use it for your personal use only. This is unless you want to further customize the scripts to catch those pesky spammers/ spam bots and not allow splogs.
Will it be gone tomorrow? The other problem with using the free services on the web is that you never know how long the service provider going to last. Therefore, it’ll be pretty risky if you are ultra dependent on all your shortened links or if you use it for monetary purposes. With how I use it, I really won’t care if I lose the shortened URL links I’ve accumulated. I normally use it as a temporary reference link in Twitter or in an email i.e. one that probably be clicked on once or twice and then discarded.
One has to be wary with clicking on these shortened URLs too, especially if the link originates from a source you aren’t familiar with. I have two general rules when using shortened URLs
- I refrain from clicking on shortened links that come from people I don’t know.
- When I use shortened links in an email message or an IM, I always leave a little description on what the URL links to.
Tip Update: Use linknark to find out what the shortened URL is before you click it (thanks MC)
On a lighter note, if you ever want to make your URL (insanely) long … use HugeURL.
Overall, for personal usage, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. URL shortening services are very useful web tools and something you shouldn’t do without. For business users, you may want to download a script, install it on your domain and further customize it to prevent spam or unwanted abuse.
“Anything you can do, I can do better!”
With the New Hampshire primaries just completed and Hillary defying the polls to win there, I couldn’t help but post this one up.
Jatech LLC has come up with the Disappearing Car Door, a futuristic and innovative hingeless car door design that folds beneath the car. The technology can be implemented in any automobile or an originally designed body frame. It reminds me of something out of a Transformers movie.
The site is not very informative and I would have liked to hear more on it’s structural safety. There is nothing on the site besides the general statement:
We work with the finest and most experienced coach builders in the US and Europe, ensuring that your vehicle will be manufactured to the highest quality, reliability and safety standards, including a manual override for door operation.
With just an email, no company address (just its location), no other details of its licenses and who owns this company… it is hard for me to take them seriously. Is it a company out of someone’s garage? Is it a college project? It’s really hard to tell. Word of advice, cut the irrelevant sidebar Bed and Breakfast and Pet Retreat ads — not very professional.
They really need to add more facts and figures on their site instead of stating general statements without anything to substantiate it. The slideshow presentation (the link is located on right column above “Click here to Advertise”) has artist renderings, door specifications and they estimate that implementing it would be the same as a powered van door.
Some areas that was left unanswered after I saw the presentation:
- safety numbers; has it been tested? what are the crash test ratings?
- it states that it significantly improves in strength, stiffness and lightness; what is this in comparison too? numbers/ data would help me be a believer
- what is the extra costs to implement it on a current model car (as I highly doubt it would be the same a powered van door) i.e. a ballpark figure on a small, midsized and large car
Very cool idea and definitely a step towards the future. However, implementing it would depend on it’s safety and whether it is cost effective commercially.
“Breaking news, Britney Spears has been released from the hospital hours after she lost custody of her two sons to her ex-husband…”
It’s pretty sad when I turn on a news channel on the radio/ TV and they report on Britney Spears before the New Hampshire primaries, war in Iraq or any other national news. The war on Iraq, the New Hampshire primaries and other news worthy topics are relegated to less important secondary news. And to top it all off, we get camera footage of the hospital where she is in from a birds eye view closing in on the entrance where she actually was rushed through (who really cares!). And they play that “live” footage and still pictures of it from different angles (again and again) like the never ending Energizer battery.
There are more news worthy topics to cover than Britney and family. Yes, she has problems but we have heard it a thousand times from every possible angle. Heard that Britney’s parents are on Dr. Phil sometime this week (to get their 15 minutes of fame) and they are going to write a parenting book too. With Britney’s sister getting pregnant and being paid millions for pictures of her baby … is it ever going to end? I am so sick of it and I am sure everyone else it too.
Nice way to usher in the New Year with a pesky cough and stuffy nose. This pesky cough has been lingering since the 27th. I’m so clogged up my head feels like it’s ready to explode, my ears ache, my skin’s dry and my nose is sore from constantly blowing it. It seems like when I lie down, my cough gets worse too.
So there goes my plan to go to the gym for at least another week until I’m better. I hate winter in Ohio and it’s not even the coldest part of the year yet — 33F today. J and family had Pork & Sauerkraut on New Years day as a tradition, supposedly it brings good luck and a prosperous year. Not really a Pork & Sauerkraut guy (can’t stand the smell!), so I cooked myself Garlic Spaghetti and a side of Stir-fried peppers instead — hope that brings me a good year.
My beloved Cleveland Cavaliers started off the year well with 2 wins out of 2, lets get the confidence and momentum going again. Ohio State Buckeyes plays their BCS Championship game in a couple of days. Wishing them good luck and hope they win! Love to see another championship again (since 2003) after losing it last year.
Registered for my penultimate Masters course this week. I am down to my last two courses for my MBA. Woohoo! It has been a long time coming but I’m finally near the end.
Had a bad case of browser problems this week too. It seemed that my Firefox 2 and IE7 browser had problems displaying javascript. After a few days of messing around, uninstalling, reinstalling the browsers without success — it magically worked when I reset IE7 and reinstalled the Java Runtime update 3 plugin. My suspicion is that it has something to do with Microsoft’s patch updates, every time it updates my WinXP operating system, something gets broken on my computer. I’ve since set it to manually update instead.
Now that I have got all my the rants and ramblings out of my system, I feel better now. However, the grumpiness still remains. Sorry J, bear with me till my cough and stuffy nose clears up.
Happy New Year to all my readers and friends! Here is to 2008 being a year full of joy and happiness for all of you.
