blog.tonyschreiber.com » Little Things

The Importance of Naming

tony — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:50:05 +0000

Of my arsenal of unique skills, I covet my ability to name things. To be more specific, I like naming systems, or at least groups of things. I take great pain in some of the more unfortunately named things in my consumer history.

I owned and operated a website for the Mitsubishi Montero Sport while owning one. It was difficult to get the message across that the Montero Sport was not a Montero, nor a smaller or related version. A few years later, when I was actively looking for a Montero, a prospective seller drove his truck 60 miles for me to see it, only for me to then discover what was advertised and discussed as being a Montero, was actually a Montero Sport. Frustrating.

Among my favorite bands is another example of bad naming strategy: The The. What was previously ironic and rebellious (The Smiths?), is now virtually impossible to google (is this a real verb yet?).

I found this article today with maps that have had their place names researched and translated to English. The staggering blandness and often erroneous naming is a delight my sarcastic sensibilities. Granted, many places have been named after their unique geographical attributes (Western Steps, Land to the Right), but others…
The Thousand Islands, and the next group over, The Hundred Thousand Islands. Town of Happiness, next to Town of Submission. Palace on the coast, and Here is the Palace located a little further inland.

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-37310.html

Enjoy.

Now this is a website!

tony — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:14:29 +0000

I once telneted to cdnow.

If that means anything to you, then you know I’ve been around the Internet for a while. I’ve done my share of web design and creative directing. Rarely do I see a site that leaps over everything else I see in my daily web life.

I’m a bit old-school in my web design preferences. I enjoy the art of a finely spun html page over a flashy interface. But there’s no reason a site shouldn’t be able to pull out all the stops. Websites for musical artists have this freedom. And when someone with the right style and skill pulls out all the stops?

http://www.jamesmorrisonmusic.com/site.html

This site loaded really fast. And the interface is beautiful.

2006 Toy Drive finishes just shy of $20k

tony — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:43:35 +0000

The 2006 Automotive Enthusiast Toydrive finishes at $19,560; my.IS has a great showing in second place with $3,200 in contributions. Methinks that’s mighty damn impressive for a bunch of Internet car guys (and gals).

Now we just have to figure out where our money is going before this Sunday!

Smile! (And I can tell if you mean it)

tony — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:51:33 +0000

Check out this fantastic article about decoding facial expressions I came across the other day. If you take nothing else from it, know that real smiles are involuntary and use entirely different muscles than the smile you contort your face into when a photographer says “Cheese”. But the article goes into so much more – I found it a fascinating read.

2006 Car Enthusiast Website Toy Drive Hits $10k

tony — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 03:29:35 +0000

Dayum. We’ve done good this year so far.

For the last several years, Darren Seeman from scionlife.com has organized a toy drive competition between a group of automotive enthusiast websites. One of the leading sites each is year is my own my.IS, a Lexus IS enthusiast site. At the time of this writing, members of the my.IS website have donated over $1600. Scionlife has definitely upped the ante this year with the help of outside donations, pushing their contribution to almost $4000. The total for all participating sites as of 11/24 is $10,001 with 18 days remaining.

Marriage Advice

tony — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:12:41 +0000

Found this on the Intarweb today: 12 Rules for Marriage. It’s a pretty good list. I’ve been married 13 years now and can agree with the advice – I might have to write my own list soon.

I got a gift basket!

tony — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:54:58 +0000

For real yo. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a gift basket before. I didn’t even have any idea of who it was from. Flabbergasted.

Last week, I covered a Casino Night party for a group of lawyers. It was a fun party. I may even have gotten hit on. I *think* that may have been what happened, but I’ve been married for 12 years, so I’ve forgotten how to know. I shot solely with my new 17-55/EF-S lens. What a cool lens. So the reason I’m even *at* this party is why I’m writing…

…flashback…

About a month ago I was digging through my desk looking for some paperwork (boy, do I hate paperwork). I came across a file of old stuff from high school. I found scripts from drama class, a report card (“A” in power mechanics. Woot!) and the 1987-88 Youth Leadership Broward program. Ha. I remember that. There were only 40 or so kids, so I must remember some of them. I start to look through the book and some faces and names ring familiar. Geek, that I am, I start to Google some of the names. And I started getting results – that must have been a good crowd to hang out with. For each person I found, I sent out an email that must’ve sounded like drunk-dialing, since I was doing this around 2am.

The next morning, I had gotten a reply from one of my targets. It began: “OK crazy person up in the middle of the night on google!”. During the course of our email conversation me being a photographer and her planning an event collided and I got booked for the party. Late-night-emailing for the win!

…jump to present day…

So today I received this gift basket. It was from my new YLB buddy – “I know we were a tough group, but your photos were wonderful”. How cool. *pats back* In celebration, I decided to put my lens to the test and record this historic moment. The shot at the top was taken at ISO 800 f2.8 1/13 with image stabalization. Contents of the basket included cookies, brownies, chocolate-covered popcorn and these really tasty toffee/chocolate/peanut things. Thank *you*, Jennifer.

If this file was writable you could edit it.

tony — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 04:01:18 +0000

Sometimes, an error message is just perfect. Actually, it’s not even an error message – it’s a pre-cognitive solution. Genius.

I was wondering where the save button in the WP theme editor was when I noticed this text:

“If this file was writable you could edit it.”

Huh. What a doofus.

*goes off to edit permissions*

Soma FM, Radio Done Right

tony — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 22:03:47 +0000

I love my XM, make no mistake. XM hit the mark by giving listeners an alternative to Top 40-wasted radio land. That doesn’t mean though, that they get every station right, something that Soma set out to do from the begining:

“We look for music and formats that aren’t available on commercial radio, or formats that are ‘not being done right’ as Rusty puts it.”

Check them out. If you like the stations they offer, give them some money.

http://www.somafm.com/

XM Tip

tony — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:02:01 +0000

I love my XM radio. The newer SkyFi2 has a 30-minute buffer (like the TiVo) and it wasn’t until recently that I really put it into use. I have, on a good day, a 30 minute commute to work. On a bad day, it’s more like an hour. I like to listen to the Comedy channel (#150), it helps relieve that stress. It is, however, one of the non-music channels, so it has commercials. And there are, of course, some comedians I just don’t care for or bits I’ve heard too often.

So, the tip: Tune your receiver to your favorite channel, then hit pause. Go about your listening business on something else like a CD or your mp3 player… When you go back to your receiver, you’ve got some songs or juicy bits of comedy cued up, ready to be enjoyed or skipped at your leisure. Just like skipping commercials with your TiVo…