I've been cursing the name of the X10 Camera for a few months now. You know the one-- its pop-up windows appear every time you try to go to a popular website (like Yahoo! News). But what I hate most about it is that the whole business of a script opening new windows, unbidden, in my web browser, makes me feel a little bit violated.

But thanks to a link from metaphorage, you can click here and stop those damned pop-ups. Really. Just click and they'll go away. Poof!
posted by AR Ross at 10:33 PM

While I could wax nostalgic about Eudora Welty, now that she's passed away, I won't. Instead, I'll point people in the direction of what I think is her best work... yes, better than 'Why I Live at the P.O.' (which frankly, most people know simply because it was anthologised in the Norton Anthology of American Literature). The Ponder Heart is a beautiful book, lovingly written in the voice of a genteel Southern lady, and at once a scathing commentary on the class rift in the South. Genius.
posted by AR Ross at 11:17 PM

Reality media takes a new twist... (Richard Gere jokes not appreciated)
posted by AR Ross at 11:59 AM

My apologies to everyone who sent e-mail to my mail.com address. (<---Note the lack of link: it stems from my fury) between 15 June and today. It appears that they've been saving my mails instead of forwarding them. Why? I think it has to do with their recent upgrade to an even slower server, now zooming along at a presumed 33 Mhz...

Well, most of the e-mails in the Inbox there were from someone named Suzzie Sneakers who wanted to show me pictures of 'n00d taBLe dancers'... Perhaps there's nobody better to have trapped in one of the Internet interstices for a month.
posted by AR Ross at 3:39 AM

If you like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain...
posted by AR Ross at 8:37 PM

A few months back, a good friend and I held a wine tasting using mostly wines from Majestic. As it turns out, this person seems to have tasted most of the wine there (and that's a lot of vino). If you're wondering what to buy (or if you're not in the UK, what you should ask your wine merchant to buy), take a peek.
posted by AR Ross at 11:00 PM

It is by far the best organised Grand Slam in tennis. That the technology is ubiquitous yet invisible is yet another testament to its glory.

By the way, I went this year and saw Henin and Ivanisevic play. All for £12.
posted by AR Ross at 9:44 PM

Way back in 8th grade, my class was set the pretty impossible task of memorising every US president, in order, along with the years each served as president. Ouch. I think most people just panicked for a good week or so and then finally got down to the business of jamming all of those names and digits into their pubescent brains. (I've always thought that this particular teacher was desperate for a long-term project that would keep us occupied indefinitely, so that she could spend more time in her own mini-reveries of existentialism which usually involved biting her nails and flipping through the Sears catalog...)

At some point, I realised that the only way to tackle the job was to use mnemonics for the names and a little trick whereby I squeezed all of the term dates into seven digit telephone-number-like series. It worked beautifully, and along the way, gave me my first introduction to heuristics and chunking.

So if you're inspired to tackle an uphill, boulder-pushing task in a similar vein, you could commit pi to memory out to 3,000 digits. All you need is this clever little poem.
posted by AR Ross at 11:53 AM

As promised, here are the photos from the lovely vacation in April... mmm, pasties.

(Maximise your browser first, though)
posted by AR Ross at 11:59 PM

I'm not so keen on the mysimon.com animated mascot, myself. However, after this firestorm of abuse, I'll be holding my tongue.
posted by AR Ross at 11:20 AM

Once upon a time, there was a television psychic called Ms. Cleo who predicted infidelities and, well more infidelities. (Oh, and unexpected pregnancies.) Then she started e-mailing innocent people with Cassandra-like bleating-- prevailing upon them to call her to discover the secrets of her prophesies. (I was lucky enough to receive one of these gems in my 'Bulk Mail' folder via Yahoo! Mail.)

Then, a journalist called her bluff. The results are... not unexpected.
posted by AR Ross at 11:25 AM