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Can anyone tell me why this happens and what it means?

I’ve been coming across this warning more and more frequently but have no clue what to do with the problem. Henre, this applies to you as the example I am using is your blog.

What an incredibly long day. All admin aside (it’s really not that much of a big deal to discuss) I was awake at 5:30 am yesterday. which meant a very, very long day for me.

Had breakfast with a friend who is moving to Australia today. Big move. Then misjudged my timing and thought it was 9:45 but it was actually 8:45. An entire hour early. Anxious and waiting for the tattoo parlor to open.

Eventually it opened and I was the first in. First come, first serve. And I was first.

I’m not going to blab on too much. I must say though, this one hurt, alot. I had forgotten how much it could hurt. And I had underestimated the pain relative to the size of the actual tattoo. So before I bore you, here’s the gallery.

This post has been sitting in my draft folder for a while. To be honest it really feels like an out there mish-mash of thoughts that have surrounding Google Reader (RSS reader by Google) and social networks.

I am really becoming tired of the buzz around social networking. Don’t get me wrong there is value in it and I am not saying it is dead or dying, I am just tired of reading TechCrunch daily and feeling like I’m reading the same post with a different startups name plugged in.

Anyways back to my point. Google Reader (GR) is great, I love it and swear by it. It allows me to follow and read some of my favourite topics, streams, memes, bloggers, blogs and insights. I think that I make fairly good use of most of the services on offer at GR.

Why do I think that Google Reader takes the form of a social network?

Basically for me, in my little world social networking means networking with others. Whether it is friendly-friend sort of stuff or basic “this is what I am reading”, I would consider it a social network.

Thus, therefore and hence, I believe that for me Google reader can be and is a social network.

There are two distinct features that I use in the process of connecting with others:

1. The “Discover” feature that was recently added to the service.
This feature allows you to discover feeds that GR thinks you might like. You can peruse them at your own pace and delete ones you aren’t interested in. This allows me to discover things that I might like and really get rid of things that I don’t. Therefore allowing me to spread my network of subscriptions and giving me more to share with my friends. Which brings me to point 2.

2. Shared items

This is my favourite and most sociable feature. I have a wide network of Gmail chat friends that I interact with daily. I can never find enough tim to talk to them all about valuable things relating to the web. Instead I simply view their shared items. How is that possible? Easy, GR places their shared items in my GR homepage under the heading of “Friends’ shared items”. I can then see who shared what, when and why. I can then interact with them on an effective level targeting a specific topic with them that I know they are interested in.

I can also share items. These items will also be sent to my friends GR pages as well as a specific url that the whole world can see if they want to.

All you need to do to share an item in GR is click the little “Share” button at the bottom of any post in your reader. Simple, effective, networking on a targeted content basis. Too easy.

I’m sorry but what is that? This monster received a whopping 28 years in prison for the following:

In his plea and sentence agreement with the state, James admitted that he had raped the girl in bushes on November 5, 2006, and sodomised her before stabbing her in her side, bashing a rock over her head and throwing her into a fire.

Let me list those things for clarity:

1. Rape
2. Sodomy
3. Stabbing (attempted murder)
4. Bashing a rock over her head (attempted murder)
5. Throwing her in to a fire (attempted murder)

For the above Abraham James received a mere 28 years in prison. He is 30 now and will then get out close to his 60th birthday. That is if he doesn’t get off earlier for “good behaviour”.

One thing I left out, is that the girl that this maniac attacked is 7 years old.

The only solace I can find in his sentence is that even lowly prisoners can recognise that child rapists deserve death and often put the convicted through a living death in prison. Let’s hope there are some fathers in that prison who have 7 year old daughters. Let’s hope it’s James’ cell-mate and let’s hope it hurts. Bastard.

source: IOL

I absolutely love High Fidelity. If you haven’t seen it, what the hell is wrong with you?

Here’s a clip:

There are some definitive reasons that make me love this film. It integrates a few of my favourite things.

1. John Cusack is a phenomenal actor.
2. Quirky and fast conversation, dialogue and monologue. Brilliant.
3. Music and opinion about music.
4. Jack black as a supporting actor is incredible.
5. Scepticism and slight insanity.
6. The feeling of a cult hit, underground culture and subversive messages of disdain for society and pop norms.

If you haven’t seen this film, rent it. Now.

I hate birthdays. I thought I liked them at one point but I think the truth is I am a birthday grinch.

It’s not the usual things that I dislike about birthdays. I like the presents (ofcourse) and I like that I am getting older - I think that people are like wines, they get better with age. I think it’s the expectation that gets me.

I hate the expectation of having a party or getting involved or seeing people and trying to force contentment on yourself. I hate that.

I am excessively happy that I am now 24 years old. It sounds better, people might start taking me more seriously and not looking down on me when I tell them my age. But then again, who knows?

Basically I wont be having a birthday party for a very long time I don’t think. I haven’t had one since I was 19 and I know now why.

May is a busy month, so if it is your birthday soon or it’s already been and gone recently, have a happy day and see the people you love and who are close to you!

Image: emma.c

Charl posted this on twitter. Definitely worth hoping on the bandwagon. Found the video at Blueworld.

I just received an email about Coldplay releasing their new album. It’s coming in june. But for those die hard Coldplay techie’s you can head over to their website from Tomorrow at 11:15 SA time and download the first song off their new album.

They join the likes of Radiohead with this endeavour. It seems like the download era is beginning in all sincerity and bands are starting to realise the power that their listeners hold…online.

Brilliant:

I have done a lot of drawing, thinking and talking over the past few months regarding my tattoo.

There is a lot of design work that goes in to something like this, something so permanent.

I am at a bit of a black hole. I have design, ideas and ways that I want things to work out. I have pooled my resources, googles, downloaded free brush sets, drawn, redrawn, traced and visualised. But I think that I need some popular opinion or some professional assistance.

So what I am asking for is a little help. I want to crowdsource some ideas for the design of my tattoo.

The size of the entire thing cannot exceed the dimensions of an A4 piece of paper. Below is some of the design that I have (a cropped version of what I have, there is alot of stuff missing), if you want more, please email me and I can send you what I have so far: nharalambous at gmail dot com.

I can’t and wont promise to use stuff that is sent in to me as is, but I can be sure that I will use the ideas and credit the designers on this blog when the final design is placed on to me arm. By the way, the design is for my left arm, above the elbow and below neck/shoulder.

So Nebomax tagged me asking me to show him my desktop, here it is:

When those spammy, mass, rubbish emails that state that you MUST send this mail on to 10-gazillion people or face a frightening and certain death consisting of horns, the devil, skin-melting-torture and any other rubbish…

are sent to you.

MushyPeas chatted to me today on gmail, this is what transpired:

Nicholas (Jabber status): not. bovvered. ye. no. but.
Peas (Jabber status): is addicted to cappuccino.
Peas: but you look bovvered
look at your face
Nicholas: ye
Peas: youre clearly bovvered
Nicholas: but
no
but
Peas: ye no ye no ye no
Nicholas: ye
HAHAHAHA
Peas: did you just tell me my dad needs a crane to get out of bed in the morning?
Nicholas: HAHAHAHA
no but
Peas: did you just call my muvva an alcoholic?
Nicholas: ye, but
Peas: are you disrepsectin me?
Nicholas: no but
Peas: are you disrespectin my family?
Nicholas: tha’ is wicked bad
no but
Peas: that is well shameful
Nicholas: ah, peas, you making my day!!
Peas: no dude, YOUR status just made my day!

And then a brief interlude of normal conversation and straight back innit:

Peas: watch the one when she’s in french class
its by best
Nicholas: Ah, that is hilarious!!!
do you shave your armpits miss?
Peas: “you use razors miss? in frenchland?”
hahahaha
Nicholas: hahahaha
Peas: suis-je bovvered?
Nicholas: BWHAAHAHAHAHA
classic
Peas: est ce vous disrespectez ma famille?
Nicholas: HAHAHAHA
Peas: est ce que vous appllez ma mere une pikey??
NON. JE SUIS PAS BOVVERED
Nicholas: oh dude, stop
can’t. take. the. chav.
Peas: in fact, Im gonna go watch it RIGHT NOW

What a load of absolute bullshit.

This has me going. I am blown down by the blatant christian attempts to take over a secular business show.

When did American Idols become a christian show broadcast on a christian channel? It hasn’t. I wonder how much the church paid for the “top 8″ to play this song?

Have a lovely listen:

It pains me to place this sort of stuff on my blog but I just can’t help but wonder how the hell this got on to TV??

I know that the states is struggling with political independance, secularism in schools and “religious terrorists” but this video/situation strikes me as propaganda.

It’s as if they are saying, “Oh look how proud your American Idols are too sing about the lord, and only a good American Idol would sing about the lord and if you want to be an American Idol you must sing about the lord.” Bollocks.

What would’ve happened if one of them said no? What would’ve happened in the press if one of them was jewish or an atheist? I am dissapointed and am probably not going to watch this innuendo-pushing-program anymore. Done.

Here’s just a short list of some things I’ve been thinking of lately:

The music industry needs to get its head on straight.

What needs to happen is that CDs need to go bye bye. Ok that was harsh. They don’t need to go anywhere but there needs to be an effective solution to purchasing digital music in stores.

Here’s my suggestion:

Stores like Musica and CD Warehouse need to offer customers the option to purchase a removable disk (flashtick) that they can use as a “CD”. Instead of going in to a store to buy a CD you can use the flashstick to plug in to a computer, pick music song by song, album by album, genre by genre or any other which way that they like, save the music, pay per song, check out, swipe credit card and legally have purchased digital music.

I love shopping for music, not online all the time and this provides me with a perfect and effective solution.

Then taking this a step further, I think that the flashsticks need to be identifiable as a specific customers flashstick. Why? So that you can go home, plug in the flashstick and connect to the store online. Then pick your music again, enter your credit card details and bam, you have music on your flashstick.

Obviously there are issues that need to be worked out, but I’m not that guy. I am an ideas man, let someone else make it happen!

The next idea has to do with PVR.

This is what PVR is:

The PVR will revolutionise the television experience and the way you watch television.

The DStv PVR Decoder is a Personal Video Recorder and decoder in one. With your DStv PVR decoder you will be able to take control of your television.

Some of the exciting features of the DStv PVR decoder that you can look forward to include:

* Record 80 hours of TV Programming
* Pause live TV
* Watch two channels and record a third channel at the same time
* Rewind programming
* Fast forward and slo-mo programming you have recorded

So the idea stems from a night at the pub. Someone I was drinking with was missing a programme, so he tried to call home to get someone to record it. Nothing. Another person at the table was however, recording the self-same programme.

Here’s the kicker. In the era of Internet and gaming platforms that are able to hook up to wireless and networked internet connection, why can’t I send a recorded programme from one user of PVR to another? This should definitely be a function. P2P2P sharing (programme to person to programme).

On top of that, if we have Internet capabilities then we should be able to set the PVR to record a programme from a mobile website that is linked to our account via the TV guide. I visit the mobile site, login with my PVR number or code, pick a timeslot, programme and option and BAM you are recording. Too easy.

What do you think? Am I losing my mind?