Porres.com – Eric's Humble Place in Cyberspace

Over the past couple of months I’ve been taking inventory of the various ways in which I communicate, whether is be for myself to keep track of news and information (on NetVibes), externally through tweets, Facebook updates, NYGrapes updates, dojo updates, or this blog.  In short, while I hope to keep this site fresh, you are more likely to catch what I’m thinking about or doing via my Facebook (which is connected with Twitter) feed.  As the song goes (name that band!), “Time is the measure before it’s begun, Slips away like running water…” and I’m just out of time to write down at-length prose on all of the various topics I’m interested in.

So, if you know me (and by know I mean more than just we met once and/or we’ve communicated more than once since we were in highschool), have a look for me on Facebook.  Better yet, rather than pseudo-conversationalism through blogs, tweets, and the like, just pick up the phone and call.  Cheers.

What do these three items have in common?  Batshit crazy lunatics who have conspiracy theories to disprove what facts and history supposedly don’t support.  Penn and Teller do an excellent job debunking them all here. Thanks to Glenn for pointing this out.

Picked up the Pearl on opening day and have had nothing but great things to say about it since I powered it up. A recent ‘glitch’ was posted on Engadget regarding jostling the Pearl in your pocket; however, I haven’t experienced the problem yet. Perhaps it’s the way I set-up the Pearl for everyday use, but by default, I lock the keyboard when I put it in my pocket (hold down * to lock). I found that with an open-faced phone I got into the habit of locking the keyboard so as not to call someone accidentally from a favorite key, etc. When a call comes in, by default the screen comes up with two options: Answer or Ignore. Scrolling the pearl will select either of those two things and ‘clicking’ will select one or the other. I also have my phone set by default to Vibrate then ring in my ‘Normal’ setting so maybe I’ve just got lucky with how I use the phone to not have encountered this problem yet. As with all BlackBerries, RIM does take some care with OS upgrades, and with a lot riding on this product launch, I’m hopeful that they are paying attention to Engadget and the comments herein.

I’ll post a full review of my experience with the Pearl soon.

We held our 3rd annual 9/11 commemorative fundraising seminar at the dojo this past weekend at the dojo to raise money for The Bear Search & Rescue Foundation.  This year we exceeded all possible expectations and raised $3675 for the foundation.  It was a memorable seminar, not only because we saw faces of people who have supported the fundraiser for the past 3 years, but also because Captain Scott Shields came and gave a presentation about his work and the work of rescue teams in the field.  To top it off, my teacher received an award for “extraordinary service to humanity.”  Over 3 years we have raised over $7,000, about as much as it costs to train and qualify one search and rescue pair (dog + person), and when you think about just what such a team can do in rescue or recovery situations, you realize very quickly that our donations are going towards exceptional work.  Just Google “Captain Scott Shields” or check out the site link above to find out more about the extraordinary work that he and the foundation do so that others may live.

Found Alexaholic today…as described by the site:

Alexaholic blends Alexa website traffic graphs with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic chart junkies – aka Alexaholics.

Webmasters, SEO/SEM specialists, and domain owners can compare and measure website statistics for up to five domains at once, switch traffic chart types and ranges without page loads, and generate report pages that are easily bookmarked and shared.

Click on the following link for an example; it compares the page traffic to my site and the sites of some friends.  Naturally this can be used for smarter and less ego-centric purposes!

My friend Tom Simpson forwarded me this link today from ThinkGeek.  As the title of this post describes, for $14.99 you can buy a mini-joystick keychain that includes actual Atari games.

• Joystick 1 – Asteroids and Millipede
• Joystick 2 – Centipede and Yar’s Revenge
• Paddle – Pong, Breakout, and Warlords

Plug an included cord into a TV and voila, you have some classic Atari games your fingertips.  Very cool….

Today’s WSJ has an important article on the rise of wine counterfeiting (of the likes of Sassacaia, Lafite Rothschild, Penfolds Grange). The sad part may be summed up by the last line in the article:

Claudio Gufoni, a 59-year-old wine enthusiast who lives in Santa Croce sull’Arno, east of Pisa, was the client who was duped into buying more than 100 bottles of the bogus Sassicaia. Although prosecutors confiscated most of his fake bottles as evidence, a few were left behind. Mr. Gufoni says he now serves them to unsuspecting guests: “No one has noticed the difference.“

Here’s a whimsical ready reference guide for dads out in cyberspace.