Baggas’ Blog

On the Trail, One Aide Looms Over Obama - NYTimes.com

For a young, single, athletic, educated guy, this would have to be one of the best jobs in the world. This story from the NYT looks at Reggie Love, 26 year old personal aide to Barack Obama. If you’re a West Wing fan think of Charlie and you’ll get a rough idea of this guy’s job - assistant, friend, training partner. Better yet, read the article.

And not only does he have a cool job but he’s got a pretty funky name - Reggie Love.  Speaking of cool names, another good one I heard last week is the Australian Indy car driver Will Power. I once worked with a doctor who’s surname was Power - now that’s a name you can get creative with. I think if it were me I’d name one son William and the other Max. Anyone else got any naming suggestions for the Power family??

We get them all the time - those emails that are endlessly forwarded on around the net. Funny stories, cute pictures, sickly-sweet poems, ‘fascinating’ articles or amazing photos. Occasionally they are interesting, but mostly they are either mildly amusing or just annoying. But I never thought one of them would contain me!

Yesterday I got an email from my mum which her brother had forwarded to her (after being forwarded many times prior to that)

Subject : Fwd: FW: FW: I don’t think so………… !!!!!!!!!

Message Body : In Zimbabwe, Africa, you will find the magnificent Victoria Falls, at a
height of 128m.

The location is known as the “Devil’s Swimming Pool”. During the months of
September and December, people can swim as close as possible to the edge
of the falls without falling over.

These falls are becoming well known amongst the “radical tourist”
industry, when more and more people search for the ultimate experience.

Would you dare?    

Underneath that a series of photos of people on the edge of Victoria Falls in Devil’s Pool (which is actually on the Zambia side, not Zimbabwe), many peering over the edge. And the first of those photos … me and Owen! Looks like we’ve been emailed around the world - at least we’re famous for being daring “radical tourists” and not for something embarassing. Probably someone has stolen the photo from flickr, where there are plenty of other photos of people at Devil’s Pool. This one is my favourite of the ones we took there…

Go to Google, type “find chuck norris” and hit I’m feeling lucky … if you dare!

I don’t often do business recommendations on here but let me mention one I am very happy with CheapChips.com.au. Although the name might suggest otherwise this is not a company dealing in junk food, poker supplies or wood products - they are an online seller of memory cards and associated products. Their products are very competitively priced, their website is excellent and easy to use, and they ship the same day. Twice I have ordered from them and received the order the next day. In addition the order comes with a bag of minties and a discount card for next time. Very impressive.

The only thing I find unfathomable about this company is their location - their postal address and bank branch are listed as Norseman, Western Australia. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Norseman, it is a small town in the east of WA, 725km from Perth, which is itself the most isolated large city in the world. Norseman is the gateway to the Nullabor Plain, one of the world’s largest flat treeless landsapes. As you can see from the map it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Just another amazing thing about the internet when you can successfully run a quality e-business from a place like that! What really makes me wonder is the logistics - how can they achieve 1 day turnaround of orders when shipping from a place like that? Maybe they have a warehouse in the city that they ship from. Regardless of how it’s done, kudos to Cheap Chips!

Zazz! One Day. One Thing. One Chance.

A friend told me last night about this cool site called Zazz. Rather than try and describe it myself I’ll quote from their FAQ (or wtf?) I especially like the last paragraph…

Q:  So what is Zazz?
A:  Zazz is a very special internet-based store that only sells one item a day, at a large quantity. Zazz will continue to sell that item until either it sells out, or the 24 hours ends. Should it end prematurely, you’re more than welcome to hang out but a new item won’t be available for sale until midnight the next day. Beyond this, Zazz is also a community of people who love gadgets and buying cool things they’ve always wanted but could never afford, until now.

Q:  That’s ridiculous. Are you guys insane? Why on earth would you do something so stupid as to sell one thing a day?
A:  In answer to your first question, No. In answer to your second question, we feel that online stores are too bogged down with items. You know what it’s like, you go to a major internet department store and unless you know exactly what you want it’s near impossible to find something suitable for your 3rd cousin’s 65th birthday. And if we were going to just sell one thing for the rest of the company’s lifetime we don’t think we’d make very much money, so we keep things fresh by selling new things every day.

Q:  That sounds an awful lot like impulse buying, is that the case?
A:  Look, Zazz really is impulse buying, but at it’s best. We’re willing to say that. A lot of the stuff we sell you DO NOT NEED. But that’s irrelevant; because last time I checked, the things I want (a new plasma tv, swiss army knife and coffee grinder) are much cooler than the things I need (air and water).  

These products go on sale at Midnight Australian Eastern time each day, which is cool for those of us in Western Australia since it’s only 10pm here. They also offer an sms alert service via twitter which I am yet to check out. Looking through their list of past products it seems most of them have been selected to appeal to the geeks and the gadget freaks. This may not have been such a timely discovery for me since I’m currently saving towards our upcoming trip and hopefully a new guitar, so I shall have to be strong not to give in to the temptation. I was even tempted by today’s $988 computer system, which is an awesome deal, even though I already have a relatively new PC. Anyway, check it out at your own risk!

Ok now this is cool, well at least in a nerdy sort of way. I’m sure everyone has heard of Wikipedia by now, the incredibly useful internet encyclopaedia. Well now the StarWars Universe has it’s own version, the aptly titled Wookieepedia - the Star Wars Wiki. The depth of information here is surprising, going far beyond the six movies and deep into the vast realm of other Star Wars related fiction. A person could get lost in this world, and it seems to me some devoted fans probably have…

As you may know I’m quite an avid reader and collector of books, my shelves being full of books, many of which I haven’t had a chance to read yet. And I’m also a bit of an internet geek. Now here’s a way of combing the two - Library Thing! This is arguably the best thing I have come across on the internet .. ever. It’s basically an online catalog of the books in your library, drawing data from Amazon and a host of world libraries. Now I’ve tried similar things before but this is light years ahead. Adding and tagging books is very easy - it usually finds what I’m looking for right away. The feature that really won me over was the ability to import from your amazon order history - that way all the books I’ve bought from them in the last few years were added almost automatically (though it did take a few hours of waiting in their “queue”)

Like most of the new generation of websites, Librarything is big on tagging and using tags to connect you with other people with similar interests/book collections. It will also generate book recommendations. One cool feature is the Zeitgeist page which basically has a huge range of interesting lists of popular books, tags, authors, ratings, and users. I even crack a mention on there today as number 5 (currently) in the ‘books added in the last 24 hours’ section.

So far I’ve added 363 books which is comprised of all my amazon purchases and plenty of others, but I still have a lot of work to do to get my whole library into it. Playing with this site is already proving to be an unhealthy addiction - not only working on my own library but browsing around others. There are ways of including it in your blog through sidebar widgets and rss which I’ll look at in the next few days when I get a chance.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the beginnings of my library - be sure to try the ‘graphical shelf’ view which is pretty cool. There are plenty more books to come but this represents a sizeable portion of my collection. If you know me in real life and want to borrow something, just give me a call.  And if you’re a book lover yourself, why not sign up and start cataloguing too?

PS - here’s a challenge to you - see if you can work out which of the books in the bookpile image above I actually have in my library…. I’ll give you a clue - it’s not The Lusty Lady…

Anyone find themselves irritated by those motivational posters you sometimes see in corporate offices and other places, praising the virtues of teamwork, persistence, creativity etc? If so, then I may have found the site for you. A friend send me an email with a bunch of “de-motivator” posters, which look the same, but have a quite different sort of message…

These posters came be found at despair.com, a company who are devoted to lowering people’s expectations…

AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That’s why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

Read the rest of this entry »

Fascinating post by Joel at The Bench, who has been using Google Earth to nose around some aeroplane graveyards in the US. It’s fascinating to think that places like this exist, and some within a stones-throw of residential areas and a golf course. I imagine security would be tight, but could you imagine being a kid living near a place like that and finding a hole in the fence. How cool would that be? Anyway check out Joel’s post - the pictures are amazing!

Discovered this over at Phil’s blog this morning. It’s an early advertising campaign for one of the first iPod models - take a look. That’s classic!

Ok you may have heard of the Crystal Cathedral (if not, watch early early morning religious TV some time), or admired the great cathedrals and churches of Europe, but have you ever seen anything like this? Abston Church of Christ - this is an intricately detailed Lego model of a church, complete with it’s own pipe organ and choir. As a kid I used to love playing with Lego but I never built anything as cool as this!

Along similiar lines is something I think I’ve mentioned before - The Brick Testament, which is a Lego version of the Bible. Check it out if you haven’t seen it before.

I’m a big sucker for gadgets of all shapes and sizes, and tend to acquire all sorts of useful bits of equipent to fill up bits of space in my house and car that would otherwise remain unoccupied. I’ve got all sorts of USB cables snaking out from behind my computer for various bits of equipment that rarely get used . The best sources of these cool knick-knacks are drug reps and ebay. Just looking around the study I can see the following drug company parephenalia (of varying utlity) - celebrex PS2 mouse which I use with my laptop, Effexor hourglass thing, 2 little radios, 1 clock radio with the wonderful feature of 2 headphone jacks (go figure?), Rapilysin coasters x 2, a Norvasc torque screwdriver kit, extra large BP cuff, 2 stethoscopes, Seretide deodoriser and the mandatory 20 or so drug pens. From ebay today I received another neat gizmo called a Cuecat which I bought for about three dollars US. It’s a little USB device which looks like a cat but works as a barcode reader. I thought of this a couple of weeks ago when I found some software to catalog my books which looks up their details using the ISDN number. The idea hit me that it would be much easier to scan in the bar code than typing all the ISDNs in by hand, hence the ebay search which led me to the cat. SO i’ll be cataloguing like crazy over the next few weeks - books, CDs, DVDs. I have an irresistable desire to catalog the world. Anything with a barcode, look out!

A while back I brought you a little game called ‘Smack Pingu’ which I know my sister-in-law Sarah quite enjoyed. Well now from the makers of that game, I’ve discovered a whole range of Yeti Sports where you not only get to smack more Pingus (for example by throwing snowballs at them) but all sorts of other animals as well. It’s lots of fun for thw hole family. Check it out.

For today’s people, who virtually live at their computer, there’s a new range of USB peripherals being developed to make that a much more comfortable and pleasant existence.

Who could be without the USB Aquarium, the USB Coffee Cup Warmer (for my fellow lovers of coffee), a USB Massage Ball (to soothe those aching muscles), USB Aromatherapy Pot (to get that study smelling nice), or for something more festive the USB Christmas Tree.

What will they come up with next?

Well it’s not quite origami, but the nation that brought us the art of paper folding now show us the perfect way to fold a T-shirt - check it out (1.9Mb mpeg file - right click and ‘Save As’) - if only I could speak and read Japanese I might begin to understand exactly how it’s done.

In the fire station in Livermore, California, there is a ight blub that has been burning continuously since 1901 (for more info click here) - they even have their own “Bulb cam” so you can view it in action. I wonder how distraught these people will be when it finally gives up the ghost?

People who watch a lot of kids TV will be familiar with the show ‘Pingu’ which shows the exploits of a fairly obnoxious penguin. I know that a lot of people (including my dear Jenni) find him quite distasteful, so I’m sure they would find this game, “Smack the pingu” quite fun. In it, you play a Yeti of sorts, and the challenge is to see how far you can send Pingu flying by whacking him with your club. My personal best is 302.7 - see if you can beat that!

Well here’s a novel site, The Brick Testament - it uses Lego bricks to illustrate Bible stories. This “reverend” dude has certainly put a lot of work into it. It’s a little irreverent at times but still worth a look - amazing.

My alarm didn’t go off this morning, which was very frustrating - lost a whole hour out of my day! The morning is a time where I usually get so much done.
Now this has nothing to do with getting up in the morning, but it’s a nifty clock you may find useful at work, particularly if you feel like a long relaxing lunch ‘hour’ - Lunch Clock.

Just been chilling out doing some random web surfing. Came across thsi interesting site Japander.com, which has video clips of Western stars doing all sorts of advertisements for products in Japan - it’s kinda bizarre but interesting. These stars wouldn’t be caught dead doing the same sort of thing on Western TV.
Meanwhile, Jenni’s been browsing around the World Vision website on the other computer deciding what cool things she’s gonna buy for people - for example buy a goat for a village, or chickens, or even construct a classroom in Somalia, or a soybean plantation in Laos. I think she wishes we were rish so we could buy all these things and do all this stuff for people. Still we just have to do the best with what we have. If we all gave one fifth of the amount we spend on our own entertainment to those in less fortunate parts of the world it would go a long way towards solving their problems. We in the West are an incredibly selfish society. Theres an interesting article on the site by Tim Costello about the amount that Australians give, both individually and at a governmental level - the fact he makes reference to the imminent federal budget is kind of ironic, given that the federal treasurer is his brother. I wonder how much influence Tim would have over Peter? I visited Tim Costello’s church once, which was a very interesting experience - small, inner city, kinda Left-ish, socially aware, politically correct, gender-neutral … yet still with a strong awareness of God.

Here’s something I just discovered to while away the boring hours stuck in front of a computer at work - Wicketball!

It’s a kind of a Bradmanesque take on the old breakout and tennis computer games from the early 80’s (with much nicer graphics though) Give it a try!