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Twitter Stats

I thought today - being New Year’s and all - would be a great day to post some graphs of my Twitter usage. A huge amount of thanks goes to Damon Cortesi for his work on the Perl script that creates these stats and the Numbers template for creating the pretty graphs.

There’s not a lot really to note in my stats. The replies are interesting, though. They show who I talk to and/or about the most. It also seems I’m most active in the mid-morning. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: There was apparently a bug in Damon’s script that was causing inaccurate stats; below are my revised stats.

Twitter Template

Support IconFactory

This post is basically copy-pasted from Seth Dillingham’s site with minimal alterations where appropriate. For my part, I’d like to add that this is the height of distaste. I was feeling Mike Lee when he said, “Who would steal from the Icon Factory?”

Twitterific is a great little Twitter client for Mac OS X. The software is free if you don’t mind seeing an ad once an hour. They show up in the same space as the “tweets” and can be skipped or ignored very easily. If you don’t like the ads, you can register the software for $15. It’s a good deal all around.

Some idiot unhappy person, however, has posted a hack that strips out the ads. People who use this hack are stealing money from the Icon Factory: they didn’t pay for the software, and they’re not showing the ads.

In response, I just registered my copy two copies, one for me and one for my wife. They now have my our $15~$30.

The idiot gentleman who posted the hack is defending himself, as if he didn’t do anything wrong. Here’s how we (all Twitterific users, especially software developers) should respond:

Let’s see if we can drum up at least a few hundred registrations for them, to show our support. Turn the idiot’s bad behavior into something good for the Icon Factory.

Applescript to Add Specified Track(s) to Specified Playlist(s)

This is an Applescript I whipped up over the past day or so to facilitate adding the currently playing or currently selected track(s) to one or more playlists. It includes facility to create a new playlist to add the track(s) to. More information is in the included README file.

Download it here, and leave any feedback in the comments on this post.

Five of My Favorite Quicksilver Tips

Quicksilver is beloved around the Mac-o-sphere, and I am no different. Today I want to share five of my most frequent, non-application-launching uses for the app that never ceases to surprise us. Continue reading ‘Five of My Favorite Quicksilver Tips’

The Carnival

When someone dear to you is gone, you develop defense mechanisms to guard your emotions and maintain your sanity. In observing my own grief following Pop’s death in 2003, I know certain times when I’m likely to think about him. When I go to my grandma’s house, I force myself to prepare for that environment. When I’m driving around Abilene, I know particular places like the domino hall and his old workplace where I’m likely to be reminded of him. Keeping myself guarded in this way is how I keep from being a basketcase. I maintain that when we lose those who are the most important to us, we never get better - just distracted.

Well, on Saturday night, Ann Margaret and I went to a movie at the mall. I never went to malls with Pop. I don’t know if he ever went to a mall in his whole life. It wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t. As I turned into the parking lot, I saw the large lit spokes of the ferris wheel. There was a carnival in the parking lot adjacent to the mall. I joked with Ann Margaret that we should go see what’s up. We’re both reluctant to go to carnivals between the risks of riding the rides and the risks of being around carnies. As we were leaving the theater, I saw something that caught me off guard.

One of my most vivid and fondest memories of my childhood is of going to the West Texas Fair & Rodeo with my family. One of the highlights of the fair with Pop was when we would ride the Super Slide together. We always rode together, even when I was big enough to ride alone. If you don’t know what the Super Slide is, it’s essentially a giant plastic sine wave gone slightly awry. It’s a couple stories tall. When you’re four or five years old, it’s pretty intense. I remember us carrying our green faux grass rugs up the steps for the ten second ride. Seeing that damned slide across the parking lot was like a suckerpunch. I wasn’t prepared to deal with seeing it. I didn’t know there’d be a goddamned carnival.

I cherish the memory. Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But whenever I get undistracted, it smashes me for a while. I don’t just get the memory that reminds me of stuff. It completely disarms a huge number of my defenses. The last time I remember this happening was when I was sitting in the turning lane at South 14th and Sayles Blvd. in Abilene. I suddenly remembered the very last time I saw Pop before I saw him in a neck brace a cruel eleven days before he died. He smiled and waved on his way past us. That memory fucked me up for about a week. I’m not depressed like I was for so long after he died. I’m just missing him more than I usually allow myself to.

How to Get Through to Spoiled Rich Kids

Give up just one...

So, this is how you get through to spoiled rich kids. Other gems from the sign series include “pack of cigarettes,” “album on iTunes,” “pack of beer” and “pedicure.” This is the kind of thing that makes my cynicism regarding TCU more than justified. I read this sign as, “We know you are a prissy [bitch|prick] but think about someone else for a change.”

No More Open Registration

Over the past several weeks, I have seen a fair number of bogus new user registrations. I’m sure this is spam, but I’m apparently not devious enough to figure out what the end game is. At any rate, new user registrations are closed. If you want to register for an account, which by the way nets you nothing, email me and I’ll set it up. I’ll also be setting up an OpenID plugin to allow for authenticated commenting. Thanks for reading.