Talia Carbis

Myspace.com

I have been a myspace user for a number of years now, and have so far been reasonably happy with its service. I mean, it’s not the greatest in the world- not by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s got a huge database of people- nearly everyone’s on there, and I can make my page look… okay.

This afternoon I went on the myspace to get rid of the links to my old blogs, and do a link to my new site. On my page I have links to my flickr, twitter, del.icio.us, and other sites as well. When I went in to edit I found the links I had made weren’t there anymore- links to another site, msplinks.com were there in place.

The way it worked was that people could still go to the page I had linked too, but they had to go THOUGH msplinks.com to get there. The person looking at my site didn’t notice, and neither did I, until I checked.

I asked Luke about it and he said that it’s referred to as a ‘link condom’ crude name, I know, but what can you do? He said that basically it redirects your link through another site, so that MySpace.com doesn’t get seriously penalised on Google for having heaps of outgoing links, and the people you link to don’t get a huge bonus for having a link from MySpace.com. It goes against one of the 10 commandments of SEO linking (words curtousy of Luke Carbis).

I feel like my site has been spammed.

So that’s where I’m at with myspace at the moment. Not too happy. I suppose they do what they need to do, but at my expense? That’s just not fair.

Thanks to Red Block, and Luke Carbis for the information used here.

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Gmail

I am loving my decision to move to Gmail, particularly now that they’ve got a bunch of new things out. 20MBs of attachment size, and lots of things that were around before, like updating conversations (email histories), and gmail on your mobile.

Two new things that I really like, and that have made my night, is not only the ability to have multiple gmail accounts accessible from the one default log-in, but now also OTHER email addresses! I have added me Uni email, s0079405 (@) student.cqu.edu.au, and also my old hotmail account.

Being able to have multiple accounts was one of the reasons that I used Thunderbird before, only I could never get the hotmail or webmail to work. Now I don’t need to worry because it’s all there on my main email, 87purple.elephants (@) gmail.com.

One of the other things that I like is being able to press ‘forward all’, and forward all the messages in a conversation, not just the first one. Similar to ‘reply all’ which is something else I’ve only just discovered and LOVE.

One of the things that I love about Google is that it all fits together so nicely! From Google Docs, or Picassa, to Blogger, to Gmail, and all the rest in between, it just works.

Twitbin

I have lately become obsessed with Twitter- a site that lets you update what you’re doing so that everyone knows, and also lets you follow around what other people are doing.

I first heard about it on TWIT (this week in tech), a podcast with Leo Leporte, but that was ages ago (when it was the new ‘thing’, and I never did anything about it. I then read about it again on Jim Whimpey’s blog, and decided that I would at least sign up with an account- just to see what it’s like.

Twitter is a fair bit of fun if you have friends who are on it, and it is made even better by the fact that you can set it up to get a text every time one of your friends post, and also send via text message for just the cost of a regular text (that might just be my plan though, so don’t think that’s for everyone).

I was a little disappointed when I realised that there wasn’t a decent  ‘twiteriffic’ type program for linux, but then I found twitbin- a firefox plug in.

Twitbin has been really great for me, I keep it opened most of the time I’m on the internet, and it comes up like a miniature version of the twitter site.

I have had a few problems with Twitbin today, but yesterday was fine. I find that sometimes Twitter has problems actually, and this slows, and sometimes wrecks my twitbin, txt notifications, and even my notifications on twitter.com.

I  think that twitbin is great for me- it isn’t obtrusive, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to post, just type it in and press enter. Txting is a great option as well- if your phone company allows it.

twitter.com/sunshinetalia 

Lost In Translation

 When Lost In Translation came out in 2003 I was keen to have a look at it. It looked arty and interesting- my kind of movie. Unfortunately I heard quite a few bad reviews for it before I got the chance to watch it, and so I didn’t. FORTUNATELY though Luke had only heard good reviews, and some quite recently, and so when we were at the video shop last Tuesday, we decided to give it a go. I’m so glad we did because I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s an art house film, that’s for sure. My brother walked out half way through because it really wasn’t his thing, and that’s okay, but it was totally my thing. It was interesting, and sweet. I really enjoyed the cinematography, which always managed to capture the moment, as well as the music- always fitting and charming. It stars Scarlett Johansen, and Bill Murray. I loved Scarlett in The Prestige, which is up there with the best of them, including the one I saw the other day, The Illusionist. GREAT movie.

So I would definitely recommend Lost In Translation- it makes you think, and what I really like about it is that it’s not all sexy, slutty and a waste of my time and innocence. It’s a relatively clean movie that can be a little depressing, but is overall really good.

3 1/2 stars.

Pzzizz

I use to have such trouble sleeping. I still do sometimes. But when I feel like it’s hard to get to sleep, now I pzzizz. Pzzizz you say, what the hell is that?! Well, it’s a program that you buy that really does help you get to sleep.

What does it sound like? Well, it there is this guy who talks to you in with a soothing voice, he tells you things about sleep, and sleeping, and relaxing and what you should be doing and just rambles on about nothing really. But if you want to hear it for yourself, then you should just get it.

You can put it on your ipod, burn it to disc, whatever. It’s really great.

There are two options- sleep, or nap. Sleep will just run out after an hour (you’ll be well asleep by then, trust me), and the nap one just give you a five minute nap. FIVE MINUTES, that’s nothing! I hear you say. Well never fear, because Pzzizz actually lets you choose how long your nap is, not just five minutes, but I find that five minutes is all I need to be put gently to sleep, or at least in a deep state of relaxation and be fully rejuvinised and ready to take on my day again.

I know you must think that I have strange mind reading powers by now, but trust me, I can also hear you asking me if it gets boring listening to the same thing every time. Well the answer is yes, I imagine it would, but you see, the thing is that you don’t actually listen to the same thing twice. These little babies can create over 1 billion different combinations. It’s all random, so you won’t hear the exact same thing again!

Anyway, it’s a really neat little product, and it would be super cool if I got paid for advertising it like this, but I don’t. I just wanted to let you guys in on the little Pzzizz secret and also take the opportunity to remind you that I have not abandoned you just because I haven’t updated this blog in a few days. I am actually busy blogging nearly every day, it’s just that I have three of them.

http://87purpleelephants.com/blog is this blog,

http://87purpleelephants.com/teachingtalia is my teaching blog,

and http://87purpleelephants.com/taliaslife is my personal blog. Between the three of them I am updating every day, so don’t hold it against me, just check them out as well.

Hope you have a good week!