Hi all, some banal updates from yours truly.

First off – I’m on twitter as prodaea. Fun little microblogging piece of software that you can update from anywhere and basically do anything you want with it. Some sites that I like to use with twitter are:

• twtrfrnd.com - for those times when christi1987 is following you and has NSFW pics.
• tweet stats - nice graphs etc.  to let you and your friends know just how much you tweet.
• twanalyst.com - brings you one of those personality tests – based on some twitter stats algorithms. is fun.
• twitpics.com - by far the most useful you can email or txt twitpics and it will post a short url for that pic to your twitter account.
• twitter.grader.com - gives you a grade out of 100 based on how you’re networked and some other stuff that i never really took the time to care about. i got a 70.
• www.twibes.com – is a system for group management and group tweeting based on the # thing that some genious came up with. i’m in a twibe, but i’m hoping twitter just integrates groupings.

I’m sure there’s a ton more that I’m not aware of, but I use these fairly regularly. Also you can plug twitter right into your facebook status. is fun.

Finally get involved in politics using twitter. Starting with Mr. Obama, there have been many politicians to get into Twitter. Some are good and informative – even responsive, some suck. Here’s  a great aricle I found that highlights several and let’s you know how useful they found them to be.

I love the conversation when you meet up with a friend: “so what do you want to do?”, and the reply: “ehh, nothing, you”, “yeah, I don’t know”. With my group of friends this conversation invariably ends in one of several ways: TV, Videogames, or Jam Session. It was after one of these conversations with a larger assembly of my friends we began to play beats from a keyboard and battle rap each other. This may seem like a totally legitimate course of action for some people, but a closer look at the social make up and musical taste of our group would reveal, without a doubt, that rapping is not on the top of our “fun things to do” list.

However, we ended up rapping against each other, with each other, and around each other. It was hilarious. We rapped about school subjects like geography and science as much as we rapped about the funny growth on my nose or each other’s sexual preferences.

So, to that unexpected fun burst of creativity i have found some fun links for improving the battle rap skills of those around me. Read these and take heed. Though it may not happen often, battle rapping may soon become a regular member of our “bored-time” repertoire.

1. How to SURVIVE a Battle Rap
2. Learn your flocabulary
3. Wiki on freestyle wrapping

the hypochondriac’s favorite (or most feared) site has a decent article with pointers for getting more energy. don’t read the last page, it’s advertisements basically (and totally lame). top on my todo list is exercise (in the morning!?!?) and breakfast.

great list of credit pointers (10 commandments style) from the consumerist.

what apple product have you owned? my first mac (besides the ][‘s at school) was a Mac Classic. with a black and white screen, i was able to surf the web through prodigy (which is still around somehow). which basically meant i was surfing a fake web.

i don’t usually link straight to Fake Steve Jobs, but he includes some parody thoughts that i particularly like regarding the sloth known as the recording industry.

more screw-the-recording-man goodness: ars has a little article about a grandma who is fighting back, as well as some related stories down at the end which are worth a look.

I wonder what was going through this poor girls head. I wonder if the guy isn’t exaggerating the story, because I’m pretty sure his examples above are farcical.

An interesting list of 35 “historical” facts that are pretty rarely known. I was tricked into checking out this site thinking that it was one of those “alternative histories of the US.” You know, critical of how the settlers and the early (to current?) American Government treated the Native Americans and others “not like us.” Bummer.

Who really decides who gets to be the next president? It sure as hell isn’t the American People. In this case some Iowa Tax Relief organization and a Christian Right organization have decided that they don’t want the people of Iowa or America to hear what Ron Paul has to say. Corporate censorship? Maybe not exactly, but something like it.

Cultural lesson for the Chinese enthusiast. My friend at work says they also burn

not just money, we burn other stuff like, house, passport, maids, food, etc….

But, she says it’s not really a party for her family. They gather at a gravesite with the family and have a nice picnic.

Are we really this ignorant of the international scientific community? I mean… WHY HASN’T REST OF THE WORLD SUBMITTED TO OUR AUTHORITY!

Another government switching to Open Source. I just hope this doesn’t lead to the abuse of a system that really can benefit people.

ABC News (reputable?) is reporting on a video from a Pakistani reporter showing a “graduation” of suicide bombers who will go out into the world and wreak havoc on the world (as some would assume). !@#$%^#@#$%^&* is all i can think to say about that.

Don’t steal social security numbers. Don’t accidentally give them away either.

From one of my random “car” subscriptions: How to Buy a used Car. (Girlfriend, you better read this!

after some “militants” fired some rockets into Israel, Lebanon and the UN are working together to kill them. the count so far according to the bbc is 150+. At least it isn’t Israel this time. Of course, the words civil and war have appeared somewhere in that article.

this site makes lists. lots of lists. and i typically find lists to be helpful and yet annoying. so here maybe this is helpful, but most likely it’s annoying.

i’ve heard so many rumors of this, that it simply must be true. this is the first article i’ve actually read about chinese gold harvesting in world of warcraft. i miss that game so much. i only got a hunter up to lvl 56 then i got more bored than i could bear.

An interesting article on arstechnica through digg about Verizon disclosing records to the NSA, claiming the first amendment in defense of a lawsuit. I haven’t had time to check the facts on this one too deeply, but there is a great comment on the digg page and a link to an interesting write up on the rights of corporations.

A top 25 list from usatoday about public meltdowns. Who knew famous people were this crazy? Oh wait, we all do.

I was thrown a little curveball by this article, but thought I would comment on it briefly. More and more I’m becoming a huge fan of Ron Paul, so when I saw this article I was very interested to see how it would turn out. I ended with slightly mixed feelings. I started reading expecting more information about Paul and ended up getting a lot of rhetoric about the “new media.” Don’t get me wrong, the “old media” makes me absolutely sick. I’m just not a big fan of rhetoric. So now I’m looking for a transcript of the debates because it’s looking like Ron Paul might be my man for the big “P”. More info on my findings later

And finally, some good news from Cisco. I don’t typically follow stocks as much as I probably should, but Cisco interests me because the recently acquired webEx, and I’m a regular user of that software.