Five Cats Blog
~ The life and antics of 5 cats and their human family
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Friday, March 02, 2007
Mystery of the Blogging Cats
This morning Tux woke me up with a huge howl. Turns out Sam stole his food last night. The kids looked hungry but not suspicious at all. If you have been following the saga at FiveCatsBlog you'll note that the cats have been mysteriously blogging.
Anyway, I struggled out of bed, patted Jack who was snoring gently, and then logged on to find out this time Kaku had blogged! Of course, at first I was proud but then perplexed how the cats were managing this.
I'm considering internet monitoring to see what the heck is going on. I can see if they actually log on, what they type, where they visit, what programs they run. I'll keep you posted.
After considering my plight, the rather amused SpectorSoft kindly decided to sponsor this post.
Two articles of note this morning about our favourite topic: ourselves!
In Study: Familiarity Can Muddle Communication, scientists found that because people who are close and familiar have so much history together and accumulated knowledge, they use "short, ambiguous messages" to communicate and this "vague and jargon-loaded talk" often leads to misunderstandings.
I haven't quite come across this in my experience, the misunderstanding part, although I believe because of the closeness, people are more willing to overlook the misunderstandings. On the jargon-loaded talk, I can totally relate. My brother and I have weird noises (they sound like hoots) we make to each other, which friends have found quite hilarious. But that's how we express hilarity. :)
In The Rich See What They Believe, people see what they believe, not what is actual. The psychological study suggests that this, particularly for the rich, keeps moral outrage at bay which is a bad, because it inhibits change.
Research has shown that people become emotionally distressed when confronted with inequality. The privileged minority is particularly affected, and they are likely to have a nagging worry that their cash and prizes are undeserved.
To keep a clean conscience and legitimize privilege, individuals often alter their perceptions of the status quo.
It does explains why inequality is still so prevalent in our world today.
This sounds like something out of the movie The Core where Hilary Swank and team drill themselves into the core to get the Earth spinning again.
Bizarre? But pretty remarkable, especially on the heels of news of the discovery of a sea as large as the Arctic under Beijing. It looks to be an exciting month ahead for science.
As someone who has only ever won a Yakult t-shirt in my life (which I never bothered to collect by the way) in any contest or competition, this is thrilling. :D Like someone who has just won an Oscar, I'd like to thank the peeps at Celebrity Baby Scoop for this great honour and for their wonderful blog which is always a delight to visit.
I must confess how much I love widgets. Especially one that is black and streams videos, podcasts, and pictures. It looks way cooler than the Flickr one you see on my sidebar, the Box.net Widget is sheer poetry.
That said, the usability of the site can be improved. It was not immediately intuitive how to add and move pictures and videos around, and how to create a widget. The option Options should be removed from the dropdown bar as users have to click twice to use its functions.
There are also several technical issues that are most likely due to Flash and Java. My videos don't seem to be playing in the Box and the buttons and fields appear unlabelled. For the same reason, it is very much slower to navigate and use than other photo and video sharing sites.
Still, I'll be sticking with this for a while. It's a fantastic product and I expect a much higher uptake once the bugs are ironed out. The Box's interface is simply beautiful and beauty is what attracts people to add them to their sites.
This review was based on a one-time user experience, just as a regular user would use it. Many thanks to Box.net for this cool widget and for the kind sponsorship.
Only since Jack was born did I become enamoured with the idea of decorating a room for him. Pregnancy books wax lyrical of how mothers in the 8th month of pregnancy obsess over getting things in order for their baby's room. But since Jack had no room to speak of, throughout my pregnancy, I was simply more concerned about eating and resting.
The site is logically categorised by manufacturer and type, accompanied by pictures of their furniture, which fully decorated, shows to full advantage how their range fits in your home. There are ample descriptions and specifications for each piece and the all-important, availability.
Their children's furniture is how I always imagined children's furniture to look like. Looking at their beautiful range reminds me how tender the feeling of having a child is, and how much I want to see Jack in a room of his own. I think I'm going to go hug my baby now.
I wish to thank the kind sponsors Great Priced Furniture for allowing me the pleasure of reviewing their wonderful site. It was sheer delight.
A sea as large as the Arctic has been detected under Beijing. Wondrous stuff.
It brings to mind the science fiction novel Abduction by Robin Cook where explorers find an ancient civilisation below the sea. Living so deep in the planet, the virtually immortal and way technologically superior inhabitants were safe from natural disasters that caused a series of mass extinctions throughout the ages. This caused them to be a very peaceful civilisation, of course, until present-day humans came to disrupt that serenity.
Despite how ludicrous the story turned out to be in the end, it is still a fascinating premise.
One of the primary responsibilities of being the COO of a home is to balance the budget. This includes paying the bills, managing the investments, maintaining good relations with our vendors and suppliers, negotiating the best deals for purchasing products and services, planning vacations (if any), and human resource management (of the King - yes, inspired by Gwen Stefani's).
So if we get into bad debt, it is my fault.
In this day and age with the easy accessibility of credit, too many people get into bad debt (debt that does not bring you any assets - no, cars are not assets). Only when you do the sums will you realise how frightening compounding interest grows your loan amount.
Often, loans roll over to exponential amounts that can cause sufficient stress to break up relationships and poison families. Those in debt sometimes turn to loan sharks or feel that suicide is their only option (consider the 40 year old guy who killed himself to feed his kids from his insurance payout, which didn't happen in the end!). Others consider filing for bankruptcy or consider bankruptcy alternatives.
Regardless of what the situation is, if you are in debt, please seek help. It's a terrible place to be and you shouldn't be alone.
For more information, please visit our sponsor CareOneCredit's excellent resource library.
Yes, this is my mission for the month of March. The I.T. Show is looming and I am frantically researching the prices and models so that when the time comes, my hands will be all over the lovely machines.
Since this will be my sticky and guide for myself, I present to you, Mephala's Tips for Buying a Laptop.
1. Decide what you want your laptop for.
Is it for work, school, design, gaming, or just surfing and email? Each function requires a slightly different configuration.
If you need it for work or school, you'll probably carry it around. So portability is a concern. You'd probably want to look at the laptops with a weight under 2.5kg (including battery pack - ah this they don't always tell you in the specs).
If you want it for design, get one with a large screen and the best graphics card you can afford.
Similarly for gaming, you'll want a large screen (minimum 14" - come on, how are you going to PvP on a 12") and a good graphics card.
In fact for the above two categories, get a desktop if you can afford the space and don't need the portability. The price you pay for a laptop can buy you two desktops already. Or else just get an external 20" screen. I have one. It is very very nice. :)
Finally, for just surfing and email, and probably photo storage, get a basic model.
2. Decide on a budget.
Sigh... this is the part when reality bites. Perhaps I should retitle this, "decide on a realistic budget".
Laptops are expensive. As mentioned before, you can get 2 desktops for the price of 1 laptop, and usually with similar specs.
But there is nothing like a laptop nice and warm on your lap, beside you while you sleep, and greeting you with a startup when you wake.
Okay, I digress.
Yes, decide on how much you can afford and then match it to your needs.
3. Do some research.
So now you know roughly what you want, visit some review sites to see what you can get for that price and range. Then isolate your selection to let's say 3 models and search online to see what peeps are saying about them. Read in particular what users say.
With technology, you can read the reviews and be absolutely certain you want something but then at the store, when you handle it for the first time, you become sorely disappointed. It is almost like having an online romance (not from personal experience but I can relate) and then meeting that person IRL.
Anyway, be prepared for this shocking experience. I did so with my first digital camera purchase. I spent a month and a year deciding to get the Canon A70 but the moment I touched it I cringed. It felt so heavy, chunky, and plasticky. Vincent immediately passed me the Panasonic Lumix F1 and the moment I touched it, I was in love. Never mind I never read a word about it before the "touch test". I bought it and spent many wonderful months with it.
I digress again.
Okay, so head to the store and touch the laptops. See if you like how the keyboard feels when you touch it. See if you like the touchpad or prefer the pointer (little nub thing). See if you like how it looks in real life.
5. Sleep on it.
If you have some self-control (don't worry if you have none - I buy my tech stuff on the spot), sleep on it and see if you can sleep at all. If you can't, get up and surf a bit, look at its picture, and return to get it tomorrow.
When you are there, see if you can haggle for extra bits like DVDs, SD card readers, a mini-mouse, and other peripherals. And then pass them to me.
Oh sweet! I was just thinking of how else I can back up my stuff when I stumbled on IDrive-E Online Backup. They give free 2GB for storage online. No strings attached.
A friend of mine who is a hardcore techie told me that they don't make computers the way they used to anymore. We gave the computers of old a moment of silence and he proceeded to tell me why. They're not made to last anymore. Components are more fragile, especially hard drives. So much for storage huh, he grumbled.
It got me thinking how else I could store my precious photos, poetry, articles, websites I had archived over the past few years, now precariously and rather haphazardly kept in various CDs (which have not been examined for scratchage) and two old hard drives which are still working. I am hesitant to delete Jack's photos and videos from the 1GB card in my phone.
So the timing couldn't be more perfect!
Storage is an iffy thing. Even keeping stuff offline can be hazardous to fire, mold, angry cats, curious babies, and fastidious husbands. I've lost 2 years of work from a crashed computer which I lazily forgot to back up.
With the IDrive-E Online Backup, you can do a remote backup in a simple drag and drop interface, and this part I like: it has enhanced security with 128-bit SSL encryption on transfers, 256-bit AES encryption on storage with a user-defined key. It doesn't get more secure than this.
I'll post a review on TechBot after a couple of weeks of test running it. If you have any questions, visit their FAQs and then go download it already.
This post is kindly sponsored by Pro Softnet Corporation which is the makers of the cool IDrive-E. Thanks for the 2GB!
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
A woman's romance with motherhood, green living, finance, and this heady thing called life.
where Hilary Swank and team drill themselves into the core to get the Earth spinning again. 
by Robin Cook where explorers find an ancient civilisation below the sea. Living so deep in the planet, the virtually immortal and way technologically superior inhabitants were safe from natural disasters that caused a series of mass extinctions throughout the ages. This caused them to be a very peaceful civilisation, of course, until present-day humans came to disrupt that serenity.
