You may have seen contests where the challenge is to provide the most clever caption to an image. You can find them all over Google .

Well, here is a twist: your challenge is to deconstruct an image and the caption in a creative way. There are no rules, as order stifles originality. Just make sure the image and caption are together.

Share your entry by linking it to this blog post using the phrase Mad Morpho Caption Deconstruction Challenge. Alternatively, you could leave a comment with a link to your entry.

Here is my entry:

Verizon Wireless Ad Execs Scour Icanhascheezburger.com For Ideas

During the monthly briefing with the Verizon Wireless client, Winston zoned out. He had a boring graph on his laptop, but his part was at the end. Right now, Maria was explaining to the client that their current “Join in” campaign was losing steam and Acme Ad Agency had a few proposals.

As she droned on and on, Winston was tempted to visit his favorite poker site. Instead, he opened his webmail and sent this picture to Jonah, seated beside Maria.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Of course, Jonah lost it. As a big fan of LOLcats, Jonah always enjoyed an appropriate image. However, not wanting to seem ignorant, he quickly smothered his giggles in the crook of his elbow, pretending to sneeze.

Maria, glaring furiously at Jonah, fairly hissed, “Perhaps Jonah would like to share his views on the campaign proposals?”
Jonah thought quickly. He hit the favorites link on his browser, did a quick search and turned his laptop around:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

“I was just thinking about how we can have a cool cat walking around town, holding a cell phone and saying, ‘Can you hear me now? Good!’ ”

The client was delighted.

Does the world need yet another printable Sudoku puzzle software? Of course it does. I wanted to make one using my creaky spreadsheet programming skills. Along the way, I made a startling discovery…

Get Printable Spreadsheet Sudoku Now!

If you just want the spreadsheet, here’s what you have to do:

• Go to Morphoboard.com
• Register
• Check your email to confirm your subscription
• Get instant access, both online and via download

The Nitty Griddy

Okay, they’re gone. For the geeks remaining in the room, let me wow you with this revelation:

Sudoku puzzles are nothing more than collections of cryptograms!
This does not mean you can solve a Sudoku puzzle like a Cold War spy. Maybe.
But if you want to quickly create an absurdly large number of puzzles, you no longer have to create a tentative puzzle and exhaustively check it for accuracy. Just grab your code key and translate one Sudoku puzzle into another! I’ll demonstrate the technique with pictures.

Consider the first grid to be the solution to a particular Sudoku puzzle. Consider a substitution key where 1 becomes 4, 2 becomes 9, 3 stays 3, 4 becomes 5, 5 becomes 8, 6 stays 6, 7 becomes 1, 8 becomes 2 and 9 becomes 7. After translating the first grid, we arrive at the second grid!
Now that you know the “secret”, you can use your favorite program to generate new Sudoku Puzzles!

Here are some tricks I used for Printable Spreadsheet Sudoku:

1. I randomly select one of 99 different solutions
2. For the substitution key I use one of the rows in the solution!!
3. I randomly shift and rotate the grid, ensuring that the puzzle remains intact
4. Blank squares are randomly displayed – more blanks mean a tougher challenge

I limited the total number of possible combinations because I figured 48,000 puzzles are enough. By the time you finish them, you won’t even remember the first batch and you can play all over again!

Who’s Out There?

I wanted to see if anyone else had created Sudoku Puzzles based on substituting values. I discovered an interesting site:

This site has a Sudoku variation called Twin Corresponding Sudoku. Henry Kwok is the author.
This variation requires you to use cryptography in order to help solve both puzzles simultaneously. As an aside, I believe I have found the original creator of this variation. He has a lengthy post on a forum, discussing his invention:

With my friends and even some strangers, I have discussed the problem of my sudoku variants popping up here and there like mushrooms on some websites, in books and some international championships. Among them, the opinion of one person, who has a deep interest in Zen, is particularly interesting.

I almost fell off from my chair when he said that such happening shows that my sudoku variants are a great success and it should be viewed as a positive development. He said that my task is to make it “more positive” by thanking whoever is interested in my sudoku concepts and encouraging him to use more of my ideas, whether on websites or in books! He said that I cannot force others to advertise for me, but others cannot stop me from advertising myself . He said I can never stop others from using my ideas, and similarly others can never stop me from trying to get the maximum benefit out of the whole situation.

Now I am putting the advice of that “Zen master” into practice to see how successful it works.

First I have to thank http://www.sudokumasters.in for using my idea of “Twin Corresponding Sudoku” in its so-called “Substitution Twin Sudoku”.

… An article in http://www.notelay.com/articles/did_you_know/what_is_sudoku/ has this interesting comment about sudoku: “Because Sudoku is logic-based, other puzzles could be created that use the same concept and replace the numbers with other objects, such as colours, letters or shapes.”

I have used graphics, Chinese words and the alphabet for my Twin Corresponding Sudoku. Please refer to the following websites:

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5518

http://www.ageofpuzzles.com/Collections/TwinSudokus/TwinSudokus.htm

http://www.chinasudoku.com/

I have to thank http://wsc2008.com for designing its so-called “Alphabet Substitution Twins”. Whatever name the “new” puzzle is called, it is still identical to my “Twin Corresponding Sudoku”.

Finally, I hope more people will use my sudoku ideas freely on their websites and in their books, but at the same time as the Chinese saying goes, “remember the source whenever you drink water”, so please don’t keep me totally out of your limelight.

- aman, on Phorum 5 (and elsewhere, evidently)

There ya go, Henry!

It has been fashionable to equate intense experiences with crack cocaine.
That is twisted, perverse and sooo effective.
So move outa my way as I jump on the crack-as-metaphor bandwagon.
I am finally admitting that I am an information junkie.
Not your garden-variety World News/TechCrunch/Digg-type information (NTTAWWT!)
No, I go for two types of information:

• Arcane and ridiculously trivial
• How do “They” make it seem so easy?

I’m sure I don’t have a monopoly on seeking arcane trivia like, “How do coaches encrypt base-stealing signs?” It’s just that I obsess over it until someone at the computer Googles it to shut me up!

As for the second category, I am just like every other marketer who is trying to improve his or her skills. I marvel at the various Internet Marketing blogs that appear to be very successful (I only have their word for that, you know!)
Although there are obvious answers – find a niche, feeding the starving crowd, offer valuable content – still, I wonder just what separates Internet Marketers into strata that range from Fake Gurus to quiet multimillionaires.

One way I keep the pipe full is by using Google Alerts. It is great when I just need a quick hit.
I use RSS feeds too but, for reasons that will soon become clear, RSS usually winds up in the sock drawer.

Another thing, I subscribe to countless email lists. If I’m keeping it real, I would have to say that this addictive habit stems from my roots as an opportunistic wanderer.

I just don’t want to miss the latest thing. I no longer chase everything, but I do succumb to a few wacky ideas now and then.

While a good 90% of the email subscriptions are a waste of my time, I have discovered some interesting people. Within a month, I can’t remember anything about their newsletter, but they leave an impression on me.
If I decide, like now, to write about them, I have to pull out the pipe and smoke them out.*

That won’t happen with Tinu Abayomi-Paul. I was reading an eBook from Marlon Sanders. He mentioned something called Evergreen Traffic and linked to it. The link led me to a sales page that claimed that she is the Queen of Free Traffic.

No, Really.

Screen shot of http://trafficreality.com/evergreen/

I never did finish the sales letter because I had to see for myself. I typed in free traffic tips, clicked on her website and got hooked.
Here is the headline that fried the synapses and got the dopamine flooding my brain:

The article is fantastic reading, hitting points about RSS in a way I had never seen before:

The book I wrote on RSS in 2005 years ago should not still be relevant today. We’re too “close” to RSS. It should be two degrees from us, just like web pages are two degrees from us, via things like search, visual editors, and the web browser. Email is two degrees from us, via the online or offline mail client, filtering, spam-catching technology, and whatever the compose email button does that makes me able to write an email without knowing anything about mail headers. RSS is still one degree from us. And that’s too close. There’s no just add water element to the use of RSS in our daily lives as publishers, or as consumers. If I want the headlines of another site, I have to know what an RSS feed is, so I can find it and add it to my reader, even if I use Google Reader. If I’m a publisher and I want people to know about my RSS feed, I have to know all the steps of implementation. And yet if I want people to know I have a website, all I need to say is “www blahblahblah dot com”.

All hype aside, this article is the type of proof I need that a person knows what she is writing about. You figure that there is a reason we take to one technology and not to another. Most of the time, we blame ourselves, rather than the underlying technology. So, I enjoyed a sense of vindication vis-à-vis my burgeoning feed reader.

Tinu’s blog does something else. It satisfies my thirst for “How Do They Do It” – for now. After all, it focuses only on one piece of the Internet Marketer’s puzzle: how to get free traffic.

Photo by J.J. Verhoef

You know how people love to say, “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you”?
Well, I like to believe that, just because the lower stratum of Internet Marketing is polluted with bovine methane by-products, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a breath of fresh air in the upper layers. I just hope I don’t rot my lungs during the long journey.

A chasm, a yawning credibility gap, lies between marketing professionals and self-proclaimed Internet Marketing gurus. As chasms go, this one is rather oddly configured. It is not very deep, yet it is wider than the jaws of a sleep-deprived hippopotamus. Step with me into this forsaken terrain, and let me show you the ruins and wonders in the Wasteland of Opportunity.

Photo by Max Wolfe

Keep a sharp look out for snakes. These slick-looking sidewinders will slow us down considerably. They’re everywhere, but nearly impossible to spot until one jumps up and bites you. Don’t worry, I bought a survival guidebook. It guarantees that we can suck the venom out and live, and it has a mandatory 60-day money back guarantee. Plus, I received a stick and a handkerchief as a bonus, with instructions on how to make a life-saving tourniquet.

Let’s move on.

Photo by seanmcgrath

It’s hotter than the devil’s butter knife out here. Luckily, an oasis is just ahead. Oh my, we sure got fooled by that mirage, huh? There is another one over yonder. Nope, not this one, either. You know, I read about these in another guidebook. If we conceive of an oasis and truly believe that it is an oasis why, we’ll be drinking until our bellies burst! Wanna give it a try? The trick is, you can’t just wish it into existence, you have to take massive action! Whatever that is.

Tell you what, I brought a canteen. Take a sip.

Photo by annleah

Now, you may begin to feel that nothing can survive out here. That couldn’t be further from the truth! There are many creatures and plants that thrive on scarcity. It’s like a mindset, okay? I left that guidebook at home, but I remember reading about the ecology of deserts. The thing that stood out was the idea of a community. You’ve got these plants that everyone else depends on. Herbivores eat the plants. Carnivores eat the herbivores. Both die and get eaten by microorganisms, which make soil for the next generation of clueless plants. Then, there is this whole interaction going on for territory and resources. You’ve got your competition, your predatory behavior and your parasites. It’s not anywhere I want to be after dark!

Can you hurry up, please?

Photo by Jesper Särnesjö

We’re almost out of water, so this is a good time to tell you about this book I bought. It teaches you 97 ways to get water in any desert on the globe! I am so glad I kept it, even though many people claimed that the techniques didn’t work. In fact, I recall technique number 20: you just need to dig a hole, stick a cup in there, put some plastic wrap over that, seal it up good and drop a rock in the center of the plastic. No! arrgh! That was too big. Let’s try that again. Oops, that was my last bit of plastic. Can I put my rock on your plastic? I’ll give you the first sip, okay?

Photo by desert-dweller

At last! We’re on the far side of the chasm. I never noticed this before, being on the other side of the Wasteland: that’s quite a cliff face! How in the name of Joshua’s tree are we going to reach the summit? Oh, we just have to get there, you know. The ecosystem is vastly different. There is an abundance of resources and parasites are quickly eradicated, leaving the rest of the community to cycle peacefully. I’m tired of wandering in the desert, searching for strays like you, waiting for a chance to share my knowledge. You see, I end up spending all my time (and yours) repeating the same old crap from the same old guidebooks. I’m better than that! I have real stuff to share! But I can’t do it without real guidance.

So, keep looking for some kind of ladder, or even a brass ring. We’ve just got to make it to the summit.

Image courtesy of chrisg.com

Read about my earlier travels through the Wasteland: Empire of the Niche.

Getting Our Bearings

One of the biggest problems that plagues rational beings is debating on dual planes. The use of emotionally charged words invokes irrelevant images, which cloud the judgment and usually obscure any attempt to make ourselves understood.
…
Once a discussion has reached enough thinkers, chaos perforce, ensues. In its simplest form, the chaos manifests itself as two people shouting across the chasm between the two planes.

– Mitchell Allen, from Fruitless Debates

I’ve always been fascinated by the polarizing power of personal beliefs. Truth and Fallacy are poor step-sisters to Perception. The reason is simple: we can not know all things, but we can believe whatever we wish.

Indeed, some ideas do not come down on the side of truth or fallacy. Instead, they represent conversations about different ideals – the way things ought to be. Naturally, some conversations are louder than others.

Bear Right – Conservatively Speaking

One way to confuse matters is to attach an ideal to an ideology and then, in the heat of discussion, paint the speaker with a stereotypical broad brush. Ideologies, at best, are a framework within which a consistent set of ideas create sense of the world. In other words, ideology is systematized perception!

Part of the systemization is the inclusion of ideals within the framework. What we tend to forget is that one or more ideals in a specific ideology might also be found in other, possibly conflicting, ideologies.

Obviously, we don’t all see things the same way, so it is pointless to base arguments of ideals on ideology.

The Right To Bear Arms

In 2006, a few months before I wrote Fruitless Debates, I indulged in one of my own.
I naively sought to interpret the Second Amendment:

Security, on the other hand, is based implicitly on the idea that a sovereign nation would wish to remain autonomous and would take steps to ensure their sovereignty. The Constitution of the United States makes this clear in various places:

• Preamble – We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
• Article I, Section 8 – The Congress shall have power to … declare war
• Article II – The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States,
• Second Amendment – A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Because security was not a major factor in the formulation of the United States of America, it cannot, therefore, be linked arm-in-arm with the notion of freedom.

-Mitchell Allen, Essential Liberty Vs Temporary Safety

The long-standing argument, by proponents of gun rights, that the Second Amendment applied to individuals, has finally been affirmed by the Supreme Court (District of Columbia v. Heller).
I take solace from the fact that a dissenting opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, resonates with my interpretation:

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.
The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

-Justice John Paul Stevens, from Supreme Court Opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller

My Body, My Rules

To what extent does self-governance permit peaceful coexistence? If you and I decided to debate a social topic from the perspective of whether individuals are capable of self-control, how long do you think an objective discussion would last?

Here’s the problem: any assertions which strike at the core of an ideal tend to be taken as personal attacks (remember, we’re going to try leaving ideologies out of it).

Abortion is one such polarizing topic. Any statements we might make will strike at one or more ideals – the sanctity of life, a woman’s right to choose, etc.

As it relates to the theme of this post, I quote an interesting website that appears to put forth an unbiased debate on the topic:

It is important to realize that both the pro-life, anti-abortion and pro-choice positions cover a range of beliefs and advocacy. Most of the media are wrong: there is no single pro-life/anti-abortion position and no single pro-choice position.

-ReligiousTolerance.org

Prohibitively Expensive

Alcohol is another hot-button topic. Whether we drink alcoholic beverages or not, each of us has a view about our capacity, the capacity of others and the right of governments to dictate acceptable capacities. We possibly also hold moral beliefs about consumption. Can we talk about these things? I’m not sure.

In Virginia, where I live, the distribution, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages is governed by the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC). Recently, I read an interesting article about Happy Hour Advertising Laws. This article, and the accompanying comments, further point out the futility of reaching common ground in the debate between government control and personal freedom.

Quantifying the Fruitless Debate

Just to be controversial, I decided to include these provocative “graphs”, which depict my own perceptions. If they make no sense to you, rest assured that I couldn’t get them to clarify anything for me, either.

I deliberately refrained from assigning meaning to the chosen colors and the relative placement of the icons.
What do these graphs evoke in your mind? Are they judgmental? Self-serving? Stupid?
Leave your feedback!

Anyway, about 49 minutes prior to my search, Palki S. Upadhyay published an article on IBN Live: A tribute to Angela’s Ashes author, Frank McCourt!

Spooky, eh?

The past two nights, I have awakened before dawn, driven from sleep by powerful dreams. The first night was awash with a harrowing hallucination of omniscient epiphany. Alas, the wispy wonders of conscious creation scattered from memory, shredded like mental cumulus as they retreated to my subconscious. Last night, however, a different cloud emerged.

Obscure Clarity

In stark contrast to that ephemeral first dream, last night’s episode was a concrete chimera. Formless yet solid, this dream anchored its presence firmly into my waking mind. Even as I write these prefatory statements, there rests a static front at the junction of my creative and analytical thoughts: ideas raining steady to the thunderous claps of jumping conclusions.

Photo by wili

I fear that mere words would fail to paint the pictures of these two dreams. Lyrics without the lyre, uttered without rhythm, perceived without power. Yet, words are all I have, and sentences are all I shape. Perhaps an impression will linger …

The Secret of the Seventh Son

The Secret evokes a land of abundance, wrought by active belief. Seventh Son builds a fantasy world abstracted from historical figures and folklore. These influential books tantalize in the truest sense: holding out delectable treats just beyond my grasp. Conscious creation is at the core of both and subconscious recollection has obviously colored my dreamscape.

Photo by berlin fan

Imagine a montage depicting frantic construction of a globe. Slow down the frames until you can discern each stage of the task. Now, watch as a scrolling marquee appears beneath your field of view, captioning the steps, from beginning to end. You are experiencing what I call omniscient epiphany. Whether it holds in the waking world is irrelevant – the dream is real and the power of knowledge inebriates you until, ironically, you no longer understand what is happening. Upon awakening, you have a virtual hangover; the fantastic revelation is all but blacked out. What remains is the essence – an ester – from the tree of knowledge in a receding pool of wisdom.

The Question Behind the Question of Getting Things Done

QBQ evokes a philosophy of personal accountability, attained by active introspection. GTD presents a system of personal productivity abstracted from countless refinements to techniques for planning and organizing. These concepts are empowering: pointing out not only the tools, but also the responsible party, required for producing whatever I need.

Chiaroscuro

There is no way to imagine a shadow after its maker has passed your line of vision. Yet, an after-image of a Titan is not soon forgotten. Much like adrenaline-powered visions after a near-collision with a tractor-trailer on an icy freeway, these concrete dreams leave a prescient stamp on my waking mind.

Photo by Josef.stuefer

Concentrated Apple Juice

Sometimes, it is better to abandon one dream in order to focus on another. Indeed, it may be the case that one dream provides the goal of the other. If I can have both while pursing one, then I need never thirst.

Here, for the first time since I indulged myself with a list of posts from my very first blog, is a folder dump of folderol that seemed like a good idea at the time. Some of the ideas appear elsewhere on my blog, hopefully in a more palatable format than this junkyard collection.

The dates in parentheses indicate when I created the drivel, proving that mediocrity is a full-time job!

Happy New Year!

Mitch

1. Heard Any Trees, Lately? (1/16/2008)
2. Thursday Treasure Hunt: Volume One Issue One (2/28/2008)
3. How to Chortle Like a Champ (4/30/2008)
4. Why I Suck At Search Engine Optimization (5/29/2008)
5. Celebrating the Sardonic Boo (9/25/2008)
6. Noise in Living Color (10/6/2008)
7. The Destructio of the Fourteeth Letter (10/10/2008)
8. Sarah PayPal (10/31/08)
9. Comment Power (11/28/08)
10. Web 3.0 Ushers in the Ideation Revolution (7/26/2008)

Heard Any Trees, Lately? (1/16/2008)

If you have a lot of software to keep track of your files, you are literally missing the trees for the forest!

From email to favorites, we live in a constricted tree-view of our data.

I suspect that we bring our physical world mindset into our virtual world of bits and bytes. If we misplace a piece of paper or the car keys, we may have to tear apart the home or office to find it.

Once we do find it, we resolve to “put everything in its place” so that we don’t have to suffer through such anxious episodes in the future.

With computer files, we take one look at the tens of thousands of file names in the thousands of folders and think, “I’ll never find anything in there!”

That’s just not true.

Sadly, we while away precious hours, organizing 1’s and 0’s into pigeonholes, failing to recognize two things:

1. We’ll probably never look at 80% of this stuff again
2. We can find the other 20%, no matter where we file it.

I can only speak for myself, but I know I’ve ignored 80% of the emails I’ve read, PDFs and free software I’ve downloaded. I am not talking about important stuff. Just dumb stuff like forum comment notifications, e-books and “productivity” tools.

Thursday Treasure Hunt: Volume One Issue One (2/28/2008)

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Thursday Treasure Hunt.

In this age of information gluttony, Google hegemony and misguided advice, I wish I had a hotline to a bunch of knowledgeable and resourceful folks who could just find stuff for me.

Sure, I could post the requests in forums and other likely locations, but then I have to monitor the posts or subscribe to email alerts. I’m trying to simplify the task, not complicate it. Besides, the requests are so varied, there is no one place that I can go, other than the (blechh) search engines.

So, I decided, why not ask right here?

To make it fun, you can post your requests here, too!

There are no rules, just the usual caveat: “Remember, my kids read this blog!”

Here is the first week’s Treasure Hunt item list:

1. Flat Earth File Theory: any web document that gives serious thought to pruning the ubiquitous tree structure for file management. Right now, I’m into naming files with prefixes that suggest subfolders. I used to abhor that, until the subfolders became so numerous that I could remember where to place new files! Really, what’s so wrong with 2008 02 28 Post – Thursday Treasure Hunt? Don’t answer that, I already know. I just need answers. Actually, deep down inside, I want a mind map for file management.
2. Proof that multi-vitamins are a waste of money.
3. A BS Hype-o-Meter: Imagine a reverse Alexa. Or an anti-StumbleUpon. If I created it, I would call it DumpUpon. I’ll settle for an aggregator site that pulls in posts from scam.com, snopes.com, 419eater.com, ripoffreport.com, etc.
4. A nifty logo for the Thursday Treasure Hunt. If I use yours, you’ll get a groovy link back to the website of your choice!

The Flat Earth File Theory has really become an obsession with me. Google Desktop represents a step in the direction I wish to travel. However, it doesn’t index everything. Besides, it is more helpful when you don’t know where you stored something.

I take a multi-vitamin every day. I feel great as a result of what? Overdosing on the RDA? Skipping breakfast? Placebo effect? What? Help!

The good thing about spam is that it is so blatant. Guru-generated hype, bolstered by hypnotic writing and slick copywriting, can trip up the best of us. Problem is, not everyone who gets burned will speak out. In Unleashing the Ideavirus , Seth Godin praised PlanetFeedBack.com as a word-of-mouth aggregator. The barrier is too high for instant gratification, though. I want to right-click on a sales letter and flag that puppy!

How to Chortle Like a Champ (4/30/2008)

Today, dear reader, come with me to explore the fine art of laughing through your nose.

Why I Suck At Search Engine Optimization (5/29/2008)

“The beginner who thinks he can play a game of chess after learning how the men move is like a soldier who believes he can lead an army after learning how to shoot.”
-Edward Lasker, in the introduction to Modern Chess Strategy

Celebrating the Sardonic Boo (9/25/2008)

Here is a bouts-rimés for your enjoyment
Front verse Mulan
[something about Ghengis Khan]

Noise in Living Color (10/6/2008)

I want to know why my brain insists on throwing up a purple haze whenever I think of the word chartreuse.
Did some well-meaning but uninformed adult define that word to me when I was a child? Did I somehow associate the word with the wrong color, due to the context in which I first encountered it? Did I fail third-grade Art? Over the past few years, I’ve made some discoveries that may answer this question:

• Neurobics
• Synthaesia
• Stroop Effect

The Destructio of the Fourteeth Letter (10/10/2008)

I sent a silly email to my friend,
Sharon Hurley Hall:

Hi Sharo,

I saw your commet o your blog ad o twitter.

I kew that you could ot have forgotte or, more correctly, mistyped those two words.

It struck me as slightly amusig. As a matter of fact, I immediately created the idea for a post:

The Destruction of the Fourteenth Letter

…

Sarah PayPal (10/31/08)

No, I’m not going on a political tirade.

I had an interesting experience with the 21st century equivalent of the famous ELIZA program.

Mitchell Allen

Thank you for chatting with Sarah! Here’s the copy of the transcript you requested

Transcript:

Sarah – PayPal :

Hello, I’m Sarah and I’m here to answer your questions about PayPal. Even though I’d like to be a real person, I’m not. I’m programmed to answer your questions. How can I help you?

You :

I want to instantly transfer funds from my PayPal account to my checking account

Sarah – PayPal :

Do you mean:

• How long does it take to add funds from my bank account?
• How do I sign up for a PayPal account?
• How can I make my transactions proceed faster?
• How do I withdraw money from my PayPal account?
• What are my funding options?

You :

How can I make my transactions proceed faster?

Sarah – PayPal :

PayPal’s Instant Transfer feature allows you to send money from your bank account instantly.

You will not need to pre-fund your PayPal account or wait for an electronic transfer. Use Instant Transfer to pay as much as you want, when you want, using funds from your confirmed bank account.

To use Instant Transfer, you must have both a credit card and a confirmed bank account registered with PayPal, and will need to choose a Back-up Funding Source. Once you confirm your bank account and add a credit card, Instant Transfer is the default method of payment.

Did I answer your question?

Yes

No

You :

No

Sarah – PayPal :

I may not have understood your question. Can you rephrase it? Anything else I can do to help you?

You :

instant transfer FROM PayPal TO checking

Sarah – PayPal :

I’m about to give you information I’ve already given you. Perhaps you need a more specific answer. Then is there anything else I can do for you?

You :

Evidently not. Thanks for trying

Sarah – PayPal :

You’re welcome. If you think of anything else I can help you with, I’d be happy to assist you.

Comment Power (11/28/08)

Snippet from cnyapse.com blog:

In a small survey that we did with a few of our customers,

80% of them believed that between 30% to 40% of their entire digital knowledge lies in the comments, 60% of them agreed that the number of comments in their cyn.in system is growing faster than the number of content objects being uploaded / created.

The worst of the worst is truly bad stuff. Road kill stench bad.

“Plan 9 from Outer Space” was better than this!
In order to appreciate how bad it is, you have to understand that I had felt the need to create some kind of framework for the ideas presented in Marxist Internet Propaganda. Without such a crutch, I was too chicken to post that “paper” as a main blog entry. Indeed, it currently lives as a page in the Fiction category.

Web 3.0 Ushers in the Ideation Revolution (7/26/2008)

Putting the Wide in World Wide Web


What a tacky title!
Headlines are so Web 1.0 – required to attract attention of eyeballs and search engines.
Would you have clicked on this?

The Higgins Project is Short-sighted

Well now that you’re here, I have less than three web 2.0 seconds to convince you to read this fantastical chronicle of the

“People know what they want when they search for stuff on the web.
Today’s search engines are laughable, because they assume the opposite.
Even the ones that pretend to be ’semantic’ can only guess at the searcher’s intent and, frankly, that wastes everyone’s time, including the engineers’, because they have to keep rewriting the code!
I watched my five-year daughter, Betsy, go to our bookshelf and grab her bedtime storybook in two seconds.
There are at least a dozen red, thin hard-cover books up there, yet she went straight to hers.
I remember lying in bed that night thinking, ‘What if folks could grab what they wanted right off the web?’

4 April, 20__
Ganda Research Unveils Hobble.com

At the annual conference of the Association of Influential Information Purveyors, Ganda Research demonstrated it’s new “Resource Locator” and the new website, www.hobble.com”
Once the implications of the Hextable Bookbinder Algorithm became clear, Ganda Research expedited the development of its latent semantic indexing engine. Expanding on the affectionately termed “Ignorance Function”, engineers threw out all keyword value indexes and focused solely on such attributes as previous search queries, geographical location of the client and server, and 57 other properties.
When pressed to disclose more details, the official Ganda Research spokesbot would only suggest that the attendees “do their own [expletive deleted] research.”

During the demonstration, the server crashed. However, before the connection failed, the presenter managed to find a pair of rare petrified wood bookends from TheEarthsTreasure.com, simply by clicking on an image of a tree.
Apparently, the search engine (we just can’t get used to writing ‘resource locator’) made a connection between the tree and the fact that the requesting computer belonged to Ganda Research, which is the leading company studying the Bookbinder Theory (get it?)

6 May, 20__
Ganda Research Suspends Work on LSI, Fires Engineer

The official Ganda Research spokesbot announced that the much-hyped Resource Locator was seriously flawed and further work would be suspended until “somebody figures out what the [expletive deleted] ‘tangential transformative taxonomical pattern matching’ even means!”
In an unrelated matter, Gerald Boxtopfield IV, senior project leader for Subliminal Studies, was fired after he tricked a secretary into behaving inappropriately with a pair of rare petrified wood bookends.

7 May, 20__
Jimmy Throckswattle Publishes Questionable Term Paper

James Throckswattle, son of the millionaire owner of the Daubers Paint-by-Numbers empire, was placed on probation, after he turned in a very sophisticated term paper in his twelfth grade Social Studies class.
His teacher, Imagene Splicer, had this to say:

“The little twerp never read a book in his life. Coming up in here with some Marxist propaganda, disguised as a term paper about the future of the Internet.
If you ask me, he’s just rebelling against his old man. Well, I’m happy to help him along by expelling his narrow, cheating behind!”

A copy of the term paper has been obtained by doing a search for marxist internet propaganda.

Web 3.0 will be an example of nervous consumption.

Connections to the WWW will be increasingly decentralized, with Local Information Brokers providing point-to-point data service.

The validation of the Bookbinder Theory provides the foundation for the implementation of a feasible semantic web.

No longer controlled by search engines, the WWW will feed off innovations in semantic engineering, which enable viewers to instantly retrieve requested content.

Pinhole heaped a heavenly helping of Honest Scrap Award upon me. Having mistook this for a Commemorative Metal of Honor for the erstwhile Rex 3000, I was not going to write this post until I learned that this is an award won before the recipient actually earns it! I’m supposed to “tell on myself” with ten juicy tidbits of truths known just by me. Frankly, I think these memes are an attempt to gain all of the possible information a home invasion crook needs to make it more difficult for me to signal my wife to not come home, but call the cops: “Darling, don’t forget the ricotta,” knowing full well from this meme that I never have called my wife “Darling.”

How symbolic! In naming the award “Honest Scrap”, one is pre-empted from absconding with said trophy prior to justifying its place on the bookshelf. Yet, like any good swindler knows, the hustle is only as good as the presumption of a guilty conscience. And therein lies my dilemma: if I don’t earn the Honest Scrap Award, I’m a swindler; if I do post, then I’m a wimp with a conscience.
This reminds me of the time when I told my cousin I would pay him to beat up Nate Blackwell’s little brother, Tony.

You may not know Nate, he played basketball for the Temple University Owls. Long before he became a legend in Philadelphia sports, he was just “Day-Day” from up the street. While he was a likable chap, his brother was a little snot. He actually spit on me once and ran into the house – as if the first order of business was for me to go chasing him, with flecks of saliva flying off my cheek!

Anyway, we used to play “street” football. Tony and I would play against Nate and my cousin, Peter. Sometimes, there would be other fools and we would have six or even seven of us (remember the “Steady Quarterback” who threw for both teams?) running, diving and recklessly endangering our skin and bones. Imagine a narrow street, just large enough to allow parked cars on one side and nothing larger than an ice cream truck to amble from Tasker St. to Pt. Breeze Avenue. A typical South Philadelphia cross street.

I stayed summers with my grandmother in this concrete jungle. While other little kids (including my wife) went “to the country” to be with their grannies and pop-pops, I tackled dirty street urchins on glass-strewn sidewalks. Well, we had the fire hydrant, you had the garden hose. Nanny-nanny boo-boo! You haven’t lived until you’ve run around in the blast from a fire hydrant. We didn’t bother with the soup can cannon, either! We just laced our fingers together and bravely “hugged the plug”.

Too bad the hydrant wasn’t running when Tony spit on me; I’d have dunked his little ass. That’s another thing. I cursed like a sailor.
Unless lumberjacks curse worse, in which case, I cursed like they did. My relatives thought I was crazy. I did, too. I was doing road rage before I learned how to drive. Hell, I probably invented it, although my late aunt gave as good as she got, behind the wheel.

We used to walk to school, then come home for lunch before going back. One day, a man nearly ran me over, coming out of a gas station. I gave him my best Rudy Ray Moore epithet and continued on my way. My cousin, himself a badass back in the day, was shocked. I know this is so because he has never forgotten this event. He brings it up at family gatherings, peppering it with all the little nuances that little cousins recall:

Mitchell raised his fist and called that man a #&@##!!-X$###@!

Then that man slammed on his brakes, jumped out of the car and said, “WHAT?!!”



Mitchell took off down the street! I laughed so hard.

Whatever, man.

Another time, we were playing wall ball, or pitching pennies. Maybe we were just standing in the middle of the street. Suddenly, one of the neighbors, who must have just gotten his license, backed his car into my leg. It didn’t hurt, but I was so startled, I yelped, “Sugar honey iced tea!” – pretty much the same way Ralphie said, “Fudge”. Pete promptly ran into our grandmother’s house, not to report the accident, but to tattle on me. Thankfully, the perceived trauma of having been struck by a moving vehicle was enough to grant me forbearance on what otherwise would have been a for-sure spanking.

I grew up all over Philadelphia, covering every region except the great Northeast. Good thing, too. I took an evening Real Estate Licensing class during a three month period. Twice a week, after getting off from work, I took the R8 train out to the end of the line.
This neighborhood, Fox Chase, is one of the most beautiful sections of the city (Chestnut Hill and Roxborough are the others.)
What was not to like? Well, for starters, the bus service stopped 15 minutes before my class ended. I had to walk for about ten minutes to reach the train station. The other thing, there was no good pizza for miles. Not that I tried all of the shops, I’m just saying.

The boardwalk at Wildwood, NJ had the best pizza on the planet. Except for that time when I grabbed the glass sugar container and sprinkled what I thought was some salt onto my slice. Not satisfied with the results, I liberally dashed sugar onto my pizza until it became inedible.

Well, that’s nine scraps and one fib (I didn’t really ask my cousin to beat up anybody. I did what any good boy would do when spat upon – I told his mother!)

The tenth scrap ties together my childhood memories of South Philadelphia and my emergent self-expression as a young adult:

Remember those scams where you received a letter in the mail, inviting you to send in a poem for a contest?
I sent one in, commemorating the innocent children gunned down during drug violence.
I got a form letter from the “Poetry School”, telling me that my poem was a winner. For once, I believed them.

How’s that for an Honest Scrap?

1. Breathe A Sigh of Relief

The vigil is over. The bloated registry, clogged Start Menu and ten thousand temp files have been silenced. Whip out the digital organ donor card and start planning the reclamation project. Somebody is going to be very happy with that extra RAM and creaky graphics card.

2. Seek An Impartial Advisor

Get an assessment of which goodies to hoard and which gifts to share. Relinquish total control of the hardware. If you’re the only person who can build or purchase the replacement, spend extra time on step 5.

3. Contact Loved Ones

With the immediate arrangements underway, borrow another computer and plug into your online network of family and friends. Inform them of your loss. Give them a remembrance of the old computer: a favorite photo of the time little Johnny spilled milk onto the keyboard; an ironic blog post of how you were finally gaining control over the machine.

Then, let everyone know that you won’t be in touch for a few days. The last thing you should be thinking about doing is tweeting, blogging and emailing as if nothing catastrophic just happened.

4. Acknowledge the Loss

Hopefully, the hard drive was not the fatal organ. If your advisor assures you that the old hard drive is okay, you’ve really only lost a comfortable habit and a familiar (inter)face.

A total loss of data is not as common as you may think. Between the backups that you’ve faithfully made and a skilled technician, you may yet recover your address book and fruit cake recipe.

5. Go Play

Wriggle around a bit. Imagine if this were your new life.

Go ahead, fantasize about all the things you now have time to do.

Play that game. Practice that guitar. Watch a movie.

Spend some time with real, living people.

6. Dare To Be Different, This Time

Old habits die hard but, since this one is dead, you may as well develop a new one. Be aware that it really doesn’t matter. It’s just fun to be different.
The goal here is to imagine a more efficient partnership with whatever machine comes to take your old PC’s place on your desk.

Why not use the old hard drive as a backup? Stick it in a USB-style enclosure and you’ll be able to run at least some of your old programs! Delete the operating system and use the space to hold downloads. Your new hard drive will thank you.

7. Experiment With Portability

Why go through this pain every seven to eight years? If your whole computerized life is on a flash drive, you can keep your sanity when the next PC kicks the bit bucket.
If you really want to live on the edge, cuddle up with Google and other web-centric enterprises.

8. Vow To Write Everything On Paper

Let’s face it, when the new computer comes, all you want to do is get up and running. As you start installing your favorite things, you’ll run into roadblocks like SMTP settings, proxy server URLs, that one password for StumbleUpon that never made it onto your RoboForm database because you haven’t logged out in three years!
Do yourself a favor, get a notepad and pencil and write down all the settings.

9. Take Chances

Okay, portable Firefox is installed. All those lovely extensions are going to have to be downloaded again, right? Nope. If you can find them on the old hard drive, all you have to do is copy them en masse (or piecemeal) to the same folder on your new hard drive and restart Firefox!

Other software may actually be transferable without reinstalling. Give it a try – if it doesn’t work, well, you were going to have to reinstall it, anyway.

10. Smile, It’s Behind You

As you begin working with your new iron partner, old memories will haunt you for a few days. Hold fast to fond recollections and forge ahead with a renewed sense of purpose.

Count your blessings: it’s just a computer.

Photo by Ruth and Dave