Andre's Big Blog

Good Friday in London

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:54:02 -0400

Processions led by people who appear to be from the Indian sub-continent. Their flyers are just like the American ones: crappy-looking and in comic sans. Globalization!

ilovecharts: -apollo-bars

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:46:41 -0400

ilovecharts:

-apollo-bars

A 'diary'

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:36:00 -0400

Around these parts, is not where you keep your innermost private thoughts. It’s what we, in ‘Muhrikah, call a calendar.

English breakfast

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:43:00 -0400

English breakfast

It's weird...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:37:00 -0400

I’ve already been in the office for an hour, and it’s still only 4:37 a.m. back home.

inkcrumbs: Fashion hypocrites come out in full force during...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:11:57 -0500

inkcrumbs:

Fashion hypocrites come out in full force during award ceremonies.

My Yelp Rubric

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:27:13 -0500

Having been bestowed the Yelp! Elite badge for my third year in a row now, I am now officially interested in keeping up with it because Yelp Austin throws awesome parties. I struggled with how to make Yelp! work for me, but after some fits and starts, I think I am officially a Yelping machine.

You see, Yelp allows you to rank businesses on a star rating of 1 to 5, 1 being bad and 5 being the best. They even have a suggestion for what each should mean but I invented my own rubric:

Bad food, bad and borderline berating service. I.e.: it offended me from how bad it was. I am not an easily offended person. Never, ever going back.
Bad food, bad service. Not going back anytime soon unless I get a weird craving or am with friends who insist on it.
OK food, OK service. Some spots of brilliance but overall this is probably how they normally operate and they are unlikely to get my continued patronage. Would consider visiting again but likely wait a few months before trying again.
Moar, please. I really like this place and get giddy plotting my next visit and what I will try on the menu next time.
Everything about this experience was amazing: from the host to the service to the food. I will likely treasure this experience for a long time and will be able to taste the food that sat in my palate during this dining experience when I tell others of this tale.

Note: most of my dining experiences will be either a 3 or 4.

United Breaks Guitars - and Bloggers, now, too

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:20:30 -0500

In 2009, musician Dave Carroll made the now-Internet famous song regarding his ordeal with United Airlines’ breaking his much-beloved musical instruments.

Fast-forward to 2013 and United has another social media crisis in its hands: blogger Matthew Klint and this innocuous picture of his United BusinessFirst seat. You see, on February 14, Klint boarded UA 904 to Istanbul, Turkey and despite his cooperation when told that he could not take pictures was allegedly verbally berated by a flight attendant (FA) and subsequently thrown out of the flight by the Captain.

Klint’s blog comments include a handful from other UA 904 passengers who all state that the FA flew off the handle despite Klint’s calm demeanor and cooperation.

I work for the PR department of a cloud computing company. Can you imagine if I pursued with great vengeance and furious anger those who use our products and take screenshots of dashboards to write reviews and blog posts? It sounds silly when you translate it to another industry, doesn’t it?

Why would any business anywhere ever be interested in punishing a loyal flyer and a promoter of their product?

Surface v. iPad - in a nutshell

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 21:14:54 -0500

This morning, a friend who’s on the market for a tablet and I headed over to our local shopping center where we stopped at the Microsoft store for him to check out the Surface. He’s heard a lot of good things about it; me not so much but then again I haven’t heard much besides the fact it exists.

I am first taken aback that the Microsoft store is essentially empty save for a few patrons and employees. Then I start tinkering with the Surface and think, ‘oh, that’s a nice keyboard’. But that keyboard will set you back $129, something they do not advertise up front until you start reading the fine print of the specs strip next to the tablet.

As I tinker around some more, I start wondering how do I get to the home screen from an opened app if I don’t have the handy Windows key from the $129 keyboard. It takes a few awkward multi-finger swipes and presto, there I am back at Home screen. I doubt it was the ‘right’ (read: most efficient) way but it worked.

Next, I try the browser and it takes an unacceptable amount of time to load a file from C:\ before going to msn.com. At that point, both of us are really underwhelmed with the Surface and go to the Apple store down the mall.

First of all, you cannot simply get to the back half of the store because of how full it is.

I stick to the front of the house and start picking up iPads. I immediately get going on browsers and apps and off I am browsing the interwebz, looking at the Mail set up and seamlessly going to the home screen each time. It was that easy. It was so easy to the point that I seriously considered purchasing an iPad mini right there on the spot before finding reason within myself to walk away for now.

Look, Microsoft, you got a lot of work to do if you think the Surface is going to make any significant dent on the tablet market share. And don’t deceive your customers by displaying the item on sale with add-ons either. Sure, iPads also have optional keyboards but the Apple store doesn’t display them with that peripheral without any notice that it’s an add-on.

A Stand on Copywriting and Smartphones

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:03:43 -0500

I am tired of smartphone emails that have some half-assed excuse for typos in the signature. Look, there’s no excuse for typos and sloppy grammar. If you are not in a place to send someone a message, then wait until you are in a place where you can draft a message and proofread it. You proofread emails when you are sitting at your desk, don’t you? Why don’t you give your smartphone the same courtesy?

Before you fire off an email from your smartphone next time, think about whether or not the message require more than a yes, no or maybe to satisfy the sender.

Quick take on this article alleging social media failure from Poland Spring re: Rubio

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:52:00 -0500

Quick take on this article alleging social media failure from Poland Spring re: Rubio:

I beg to differ with this article: Poland Spring is a regional brand and thus unlikely to gain any additional significant market share from capitalizing on this. Not to mention, the left-leaning Northeast region it operates in would have come hammering down with the “Shame on you for supporting this (insert whatever flaws the left has with Rubio here) politician.” It’d be a headache over $3 million.

ilovecharts: World Tennis Sponsorship...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:31:44 -0500

ilovecharts:

World Tennis Sponsorship Rankings

via cobbastevens

Cool #tennis sponsorship chart!

Today Will Be Interesting (or why I am purposely sleepwalking)

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:54:23 -0500

Being the tennis fan I am, I chose to not go to sleep last night and stayed up to watch the Australian Open final. Poured myself a cup of coffee around 215am and it kept me going until 515ish, or until the end of the first or second game of the 3rd set.

I flat out passed out at around 515 until 630, right about the time Djokovic took a commanding 4th set lead to end the match in a few more minutes. I contemplated going to bed after the trophy presentation, around 7. But then it’s like, what’s the point? I’ll just sleep til 10-11 then get screwy again tonight. I’ll just power through the day and go to bed early tonight.

Thankfully they only play the Australian Open once a year! It’s been worth the sleeplessness. It’s fun to see tennis enter another golden era where there are as many as 4-5 guys always in the mix for any given title.

actualfacebookgraphsearches: “Single women who live nearby and...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:19:24 -0500

actualfacebookgraphsearches:

“Single women who live nearby and who are interested in men and like Getting Drunk”

Ow, my head!

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:35:25 -0500

Just got done learning about for and while loops in Python. Sorta makes sense, I just wish this book had some real-world examples of when these commands are used.

laughingsquid: The Nature of Ambition

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:56:44 -0500

laughingsquid:

The Nature of Ambition

trextrying: T-Rex Trying to toast She-Rex on New Years… #TRex...

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:24:41 -0500

trextrying:

T-Rex Trying to toast She-Rex on New Years…

#TRex Trying

Whew! Just finished Chapter 3 of Python for Kids

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:43:35 -0500

That was…starting to get challenging! I notice that it’s just like a foreign language: the more you practice, the more you get better at it. Inversely, the longer you go without using it the harder it is to come back to you.

Case in point: yesterday morning when I was working on this chapter, it’s explaining how to use % and %s to store and later recall a variable when you hit print. In particular, as you insert that variable in a string.

One of the final chapter exercises asks you to create 2 variables: one with your first name and one with your last name. It then asks you to create another string with a greeting message and print the message so it reads “greetings, whomever”. I remembered walking through that code snippet in the book yesterday but when it came time to recall it, I had a tough time.

I also learned about tuples and maps. One thing that stood out to me on maps is that when I printed the code snippet on my shell from a map after a couple of edits, the order changed whereas the book’s code snippet did not. The content didn’t change, just the order. What gives?

. @UTAustin - you send donation emails to those who didn’t...

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 11:01:18 -0500

. @UTAustin - you send donation emails to those who didn’t get accepted? (Read on…it’s short) This is how the attached image reads to me: “Sorry you didn’t get accepted to our university, but we’re gonna use the email address you used for the online application to ask you for donations”.

Computer hacking skills

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:49:53 -0500

I’ve made it through 2 chapters of Python for Kids today. They were the first two chapters, which helped me understand a few basic concepts and ideas of Python.

The one thing that surprised me the most is how straightforward it all appears to be, from a word processing standpoint. I remember from previous attempts at learning how to code with going back, copy and pasting, and other such word processing tasks the tools I used was not very forgiving with letting you cursor up and down, delete, etc.

This is fun, chapter 3 covers strings, tuples, lists and maps but it’ll likely have to wait until later this weekend.