how to tick people off

this is doing the rounds on mailing lists these days... i refrain from publishing from these sources but this is too funny to pass up

how many people have actually tried one of these?

1. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
2. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sexual favors."
3. Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."
4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.
5. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
6. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."
7. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."
8. Practice making fax and modem noises.
9. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.
10. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
11. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
12. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.
13. Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the ink cartridge across the room.
14. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
15. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."
16. Staple pages in the middle of the page.
17. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.
18. Honk and wave to strangers.
19. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.
20. TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
21. type only in lowercase.
22. dont use any punctuation either
23. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.
24. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.
"DO YOU HEAR THAT?"
"What?"
"Never mind, it's gone now."
25. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
26. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.
27. Ask people what gender they are.
28. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
29. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.
30. Sing along at the opera.
31. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
32. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."

ex googler talks about his days

a 42 year old marketing guy joined google in '99 - he has now left google and is writing a blog of his experiences - very good read and very high on the del.icio.us rankings - xooglers

Excerpt:
"When Sergey showed up, my initial impression was even more reassuring. He was wearing gym shorts, a tee shirt and inline skates. He had obviously been playing hard. I'd known better than to wear a tie, but he took office casual to a new level."

wish my office was this casual... maybe when I start my own tech company.....

my firefox

Following is a list of extensions that are *must-use* if you are a firefox user - if you are'nt one, do yourself a favor and go get it

. adblock - gives you the option to right click on an ad image and select "block image" or iframe or url with a wildcard (e.g. *_ad_click*) - the image is removed alongwith the whitespace that would have been left behind

Use the script here in tandem to give the best adblocking support

. apart from the heavy loading time, the one thing that was stopping me from switching to firefox was the terrible usage of tabs inside firefox - ctrl-tab opened the next tab in the firefox window and not the last selected - e.g. if you have 10 windows open on your windows machine and you opened window # 5 and then window # 8, pressing alt-tab would open 5 & 8 alternatively - in firefox doing the same for tabs would open tab 9 after tab 8 and then tab 10 next... grrrr.... fortunately we have lasttab now - not only it opens the previous tab but also gives a menu listing all the current tabs in the window

. this extension saves the state of your browser in real time (did not feel any difference in system performance on my p4/512 mb ram) - it's great in case your browser crashes with many tabs open - it even saves the text you are typing in an edit-box !

. one of the most annoying things on the web is when java applets decide to loading without asking you first - noscript can disable them (asking you politely at the bottom of the screen whether you want to run it or not) - it also disables javascript too - not sure if this is really useful...

. mouse gestures really improves your browsing experience, now you can only move your mouse without clicking to open and close tabs and windows - trust me, it's not an indication of laziness...

. firefox has a problem with adobe pdf files - use this extension to receive a prompt about whether you want to download the file

. use this extension to bypass compulsory website registration on websites (these come up often if you regularly read google news)

. stumbleupon - probably the best thing next to google for web browsing afficiandos

. I left Greasemonkey for the end but in the long term, this will probably overtake all the extensions - this is essentially a piece of code that acts as an extension engine - it lets people write scripts that can be run inside this extension - the coolest thing is that these are scripts, not compiled dll's or even zipped xpi files - so you can change variables, add functionality if you know even the most basic javascripting. Installation is very simple

1. just install the greasemoney extension and restart firefox

2. Next search for the best site-specific and generic scripts here and here

3. Click on the script you want to install - a whitepage with javscript mumbo-jumbo will open up - just click Options-> Install User Script and click OK on the window that opens up

4. Refresh the page on which you want to see the script action and you are ready to go

I have installed quite a few scripts including:

. Gmail delete button - this one is buggy, use the "smart" Gmail Delete Button
. adblocker
. bookBurro (let's you see prices of different books on different sites side-by-side, fantastic!!)

Please let me know of any other extensions if they are necessary for your firefox browsing

Murphy's love laws

:)

• All the good ones are taken.

• If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.

• Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.

          This constant is always zero.

• Money can't buy love, but it sure gets you a great bargaining position.

More here

ms live

microsoft finally decides to go the google way through it's Live initiative - i.e. embrace online("live"), free, integrated services (think google maps integrated with local search, gmail integrated with orkut) using a combination of Javascript and DHTML called Ajax

Ajax is cool since it HTML, Javascript and basic database services and you don't need extra plugins like Flash etc. to create lightly animated, dynamic web pages (check out the google personalized page and protopage)

Some of the "new" inventions include"

"It’s all new web mail, built from the ground up. Preview your e-mail without loading a new page each time...."
Gmail copycat?

"Coming soon - This will be the next-generation MSN Messenger. The name is new, but it will still be free to download Messenger and use most of its features"
How about an option to cut out the crappy ads? Right now the only way to do it is through hacking the resource file

dapnhe & apollo

Adel Adili is an Iranian artist who was one of the winners of the Master & Servant Challenge at cgTalk, held earlier this year - this leading CGI forum hosts a now annual heavily sponsored contest based on a phrase and people create imagery using 2D and 3D software - it's essentially a contest for the emerging and the relatively well established artists to showcase their work to the world



© adel adili

Click here to read and see how the image was created - if you have ever wondered how they create those beautiful masterpieces, this is it

Adel's entry was based on the mythological story of Apollo, the Greek god, chasing Daphne, a nymph, who prayed to be changed to a tree in order to save her modesty (! - sounds like an Eastern story :)

pumpkins in the field

Sam Javanrouh proves his pictures are the most beautiful in a photoblog on the entire 'net


© ddoi

See larger images here and here

(writing this again - blogger ate my entry text :(

drag the div

ever wondered how you can drag and move the boxes in the personalized Ggl homepage?

Here is an excellent tutorial on how to do it... the Ggl page (and maps & gmail too) uses Ajax, a combination of different technologies and techniques to achieve this effect - the ability to drag and move the div elements takes place using javascript

see the previous post for more on ajax

ajax

Found this tutorial on Ajax through del.icio.us, the tagged bookmarks website

http://dhtmlnirvana.com/ajax/ajax_tutorial/#

(my del.icio.us page is here)

The tutorials starts from the basics and builds it up - have'nt gone through it completely but seems to be one of the best tutorials on the subject yet

Ajax is an acronym given to a collection of existing technologiesan which are intended to improved the user's web surfing experience by reducing the time taken between a click-button -> page submit -> page refresh with new data - Ajax reloads the data in a table or an image in a div etc. without an annoying page refresh

Ggl uses Ajax extensively including in maps, personalized home and gmail

Some other very good examples of Ajax usage are protoPage and start.com, supposedly the MSN portal for people with a normal aesthetic sense