Links

Guster.net Kingdom of Loathing S2ki New England

Friends:

Travis Billy Pete-Head My Food Geek (Jef)

On Twitter, re-tweets and followers Date: 01-20-2010 00:06 I really like Twitter. This is something I probably wouldn't have said years ago when Erin was pushing me to use it. Now I get it and I use it all the time, I'm sure she's proud of the monster she indirectly created. There are a few things about Twitter though that I'd like to rant about: It doesn't scale well when following hundreds of people. In between trying to coordinate my personal activities, yet keep tabs on everything else, things start to scroll off before I can read them. "Use lists" you say. Okay, to some extent the lists feature is great. I use a private list now to follow my inner circle of friends, but at the same time it has one important limitation. When you use a list, every post is fed into the list's feed. Normally if someone is @ replying to someone you don't follow, you normally wouldn't see it. Not with lists, you get everything. Maybe Twitter needs one more feature, let's call it "Filters". A filter would essentially be a list, but treat tweets the same way they would appear on your main timeline. Then again, maybe this is getting all too complicated, part of Twitter's original beauty was it's simplicity. Not everyone utilizes the re-tweet feature. I really like this feature because to be honest I don't care about most people's re-tweets. In fact, for most people I follow, I shut off their re-tweets. If they're not using the re-tweet feature and going old school with a "RT tweet-here" there's really nothing I can do about it. Personally, I use both. For those "Hey, that's a cool link" type thing, I'll simply use the re-tweet feature. For something where I'd like to add a comment I'll do something like "my comment, RT original-tweet". Basically what I'm saying is, if you have nothing to add use the built in re-tweet feature and give your followers a choice. Which brings me finally to: I'd like to follow you but... You RT too much In between the great stuff about your personal life and activities you flood your tweet stream with old school RT's that I can't shut off. On top of that you have nothing to add to those re-tweets. You .@username Again, Twitter has this cool feature that wont show me tweets you're making to someone else that I don't follow. It's there for a reason. If you are going to .@username reply to bypass this, your tweet had better be pretty awesome. News flash, it's not that awesome. You're list crazy And even worse, you rant only about only marketing and social media, i.e. Top 7 ways to ramp up your Social Media engine, Ten things to improve your follower count, blah blah and blah. You're just not my bag, baby While I might like you, your twitter might not be a good fit for me. You might talk a lot of sports (I watch sports, but I'm really in it for the beer and pizza) or maybe your business just isn't what I'm into. Great example, I met Megan, the girl behind @agirlmustshop and while I would follow her for her personal tweets she has a lot of shopping and offers intertwined on her twitter account. So I don't follow her but I would if she broke out her personal stuff from the shopping stuff. However, I'd never recommend that she do this because it would take away from the personality of her twitter account. What she's doing is the right thing, but... just not right for me. We're not connecting A majority of the people I follow I've met at least once. Or, I'd like to meet and connect on some other level than just being superficial "followers" on Twitter. Sometimes I random follow people, and if I do this to you it's because I'm genuinely interested in something you said. Might have been a comment about a new restaurant in town or maybe we're going to be at the same event. However, if we don't connect I'll probably unfollow you. If you follow me and we make no attempt at connecting, well, I probably wont follow you back either. So, introduce yourself! I read all my @ mentions on a regular basis. -- Okay /RANT is over.

Searching for a better commuter Date: 08-19-2009 12:27 I've hopped on-board the fixed gear bicycling thing but I'll never be a true hipster and I'll never fit into skinny jeans. It's really more about getting myself to ride more often. Two years ago I was bike commuting on a regular basis and last year I barely did at all. This year I've got a new bike: A Surly Steamroller. I've been riding a lot and my cycling interest has been renewed. The only problem is that the Surly isn't a very good commuter. My main issue is that there's no rear rack and there are also no mounting points for one. I know, I know, wrong tool for the job but it's fun! So for the month I've been using my backpack or my messenger bag to bring clothes and food to work. Not a major issue but the sweaty back is getting annoying. Having panniers or a trunk bag is so much nicer. Sometimes I miss the old Trek commuter which had plenty of storage not to mention the Specialized Fatboy tires which feel indestructible compared to the stock Surly tires. The only real problem with the old bike is that indexed shifter is shot (No, it's not an adjustment, it's really broken) so I basically only can get 5 gears out of the back which is annoying. I've also changed the stem and handle bars to accommodate a friend of mine who started riding with me but doesn't have her own bike. So basically now if I want to ride the old bike I've got to swap back my stem and bars which is time consuming. I've been contemplating building a real commuter using a frame which will accept a rear rack and maybe the new Sturmey Archer S3X, 3-speed fixed gear hub, just because it would be fun to do. What would be even better is if Globe gave me one of their Haul bicycles. The integrated rear rack is a cool design and looks clean. It even has integrated LED lighting. I also like the fact that it can come with an 8-speed internal hub. The lower model does have a standard derailler but that would just make it a candidate for a S3X hub replacement(evil laugh).

Why you shouldn't buy an OnGuard "OG Series" U-Lock Date: 08-18-2009 22:45 I picked up a second U-Lock because I wanted to leave one at work (As suggested by Sheldon Brown) and keep one around to lock up around town. The model I picked up was the OnGuard OG Series model 5501. The other lock I already own is an OnGuard Bulldog DT. The OG series seemed like a a steal at 16 dollars. Well for about half the price of my DT I noticed some interesting differences. The OG series only comes with 2 keys vs 5 keys for the DT, okay no big deal unless you're prone to losing the key. OG's mounting bracket can't be rotated 90 degrees. The clip on the U is made of plastic whereas on the DT it's solid metal. Basically, in the long run it'll probably break off. The biggest things though have to do with with the design keeping security in mind. The outside covering seems cheaper than my more expensive DT well it turns out the OG lock has a much thicker plastic coating on the outside which makes the bar diameter appear larger. Smaller is good for weight savings, but a thicker metal bar is generally better for bike security. I would imagine that it would be substantially easier to cut through the OG series lock or break it using a leverage attack. So, I'm leaving the OG series at my office, which I would consider a very low-risk environment, but if anyone is out there looking for a lock... move on. The OnGuard 5501 is a budget lock that's probably not much more secure than a cable lock (which are very insecure). Get a higher grade lock if you care about your bike. Interestingly the folks at OnGuard don't even list the OG series 5501 in their list of U-lock products. Probably because it's the red headed step child of their U-lock family.

Show All Entries...