amitvaria

Moving (Part 1)

Come mid-July I’ll be moving to my new place, which luckily is only 1 floor and 2 units away. Because of the close proximity, I’ve opted to forgo the traditional pack/move/unpack, and just hold a “Pickup and Move” party.

The layout of the old and new apartment are mostly similar, so I’m asking people to head to the old place, pick up stuff, and bring it new the place. During this whole time I’ll have food and drinks for everyone to enjoy. I’m hoping to get the biggest items moved in the morning (TV, tv stand, desk, bed, futon, etc.) so only the small stuff remains. I’ll also have two boxes setup for donations and garbage.

I’ve also decided to shed my place of furniture that I’ve been meaning to replace. There are several pieces that I purchased more than 4 years ago when I wasn’t sure what I wanted. The process started today with a trip to Ikea to replace my desk and living room rug. I’m also in the process of upgrading some technologies, but more on that later…

How do you verify news?

In response to a recent Gizmodo article asking How did you learn about Michael Jackson’s death, I wanted to ask a more penetrating question:

How did you verify the news about Michael Jackson’s death?

In a world where news has to be delivered instantly with the help of Twitter, Facebook, and other sources, I wonder if “old media” (CNN, NBC, etc.) is still where people turn to when they want to verify news. I caught wind of Michael Jackson’s death on Twitter, but considered it just a rumor until multiple news organization websites confirmed the news for me.

Now I wouldn’t trust a single news source, but I still consider Twitter and the like to be gossip vehicles rather than news vehicles. I know that CNN won’t always get the story right, but I certainly trust CNN more than the average Twitter user. But Twitter does shine when it comes to bringing to light under-reported stories as in the recent Iranian election. But now even that has become almost impossible to follow on Twitter. The amount of noise created by re-tweets, imposters, and users abusing the #iranelection tag has annoyed me to the point of dropping Twitter as a source on the topic.

Twitter is there mainly for entertainment and is there occasionally for news, but I still laugh when people brag about hearing the news first on Twitter. I usually follow up their naiveté with news that Bill Gates’s new email tracing program that will earn them a $1000!

Name the next influenza strain

Seeing the affect “swine” flu has had on the pork market, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s name our next influenza strain the “cigarette” flu. What else could we name it?

This is 99% of Twitter and Facebook

I Fight Dragons - The Faster the Treadmill

Often dismissed as geek rock, these guys have a great sound and probably put on one of the best live performances.

1,2,3,4

Super Bowl Ads

Today's Creation

Red Velvet Mini Cupcakes

Smoked Paprika Samosas

San Francisco

Joining the Twitter conversation

I’ve longed debated the value of Twitter, but now it has a chance to prove itself. The thing about Twitter is that it allows real time conversation with anyone/everyone. As opposed to IM where you can send a message to a friend, Twitter lets you send public messages that anyone can read. I’m also able to use their search feature to find messages with certain keywords.

Today my keywords are ORD and O’hare. I’m watching people “tweet” live about the status of the airport and their flights. I’m finding several others who are in the same boat as me. Both SFO and ORD are experiencing delays, but my airline and every other source is slow to update me. Let’s see if Twitter can help get me the information I need.