The Dark Furie

Zap's superhero career was off to a great start.

Unfortunately she chose She Hulk, Cyndi Lauper and Dame Edna Everage as her role-models.

Make The Pie Higher by George W Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over. This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked " Is our children learning?"
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth! Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

Today is the international day in celebration of Bad Poetry. So pull up a seat, make yourself some toast and read some bad poetry.

A while back I was asked by a couple of people how I view the future of mobile phones. The article I wrote up was quite dry and entirely too large for me to post from my phone, but this is an excerpt from the section regarding the evolution of the Contacts application.

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I believe that the Contacts application is on the verge of going through yet another major evolution and that these online functions are only the beginning steps of this. The emerging application (which I'll dub "Connections" here as I believe it deserves a new name) will be so much more than a list of people and details about them. Connections will bring true online connectivity to your phonebook, and combine parts of several other major applications together. Messaging is one of the other core applications that will be integrated into Connections with separate inbox views as well as threaded message history in each person's entry and links to other people involved in group messages or calls.

Calendar integration will allow you to keep updated on your friends plans as their online calendars are downloaded in the background to your device and integrated with your own calendar. Flicking between layers of the calendar will be easy enough and you'll be able to bring up a single calendar layer straight from that person's connection entry. Wondering when your favourite band is on tour? Create a connection entry for them and the details will be entered into your calendar as they happen. Click on a concert date and you'll be taken to a site where you can order tickets.

We're already starting to see social media being streamed into contacts (but only from the big names) but Connections will take that one step further with users able to set up downloads from any site that has an RSS feed and retain styling based on personal preferences, with the updated set-up being pushed as an option in the default list to all other devices. This means that the very first person to set up a feed from a site may have a complex set-up procedure to go through (a form that would have to allow for variables from all sites) but, once they've done that, the site would then be added to the default list for other devices and other users would only be presented with the form parts that they need in order to set up their account.

Bookmarks will also be integrated into Connections. While now we have to click on a bookmark and visit a site before we can start doing anything on that site, Connections will allow us to start doing things straight away. One example would be a Wikipedia connection entry that allows us to visit the site, or search straight from the search bar contained within the entry. Wikipedia, being a large and well known site, may even provide some downloadable styling for their entry in your connections application. Or suppose, like me, you keep a close eye on the weather. You may have set up a connections entry for a meteological site.Again you could visit the site from the entry easily enough, but the entry will also be downloading your local weather directly to your device and displaying it in your connection for it. Advanced options will let you display the Wikipedia search bar or downloaded weather directly on your home screen, turn updates off to conserve battery life or add another source to the connection (a Google entry may have a general and an image search bar for example).

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The phonebook application is, and always has been, the heart of a mobile phone and it's constantly changing. I wonder what will come next?

This series of posts continues with a look at the future of mobile applications.

Around seven in the morning on Thursday, a man was walking through a field near the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Holy Eucharist convent in Independence when he was approached by two nuns. One of them had spotted him through the window walking through the field and, concerned that he was lost, came down to offer him assistance. It was at this point that they noticed the shotgun he was carrying.

Now concerned that the man was poaching, the two began to question him, taking note that he was also carrying other miscellaneous items including boxing gloves. The man turned tail and ran into the woods and one of the nuns followed him. Although the man escaped the 49 year old nun was able to give the police a detailed enough description that they arrested him the following day for burgling two nearby houses.

Moral of the story - Thou shalt not steal... or the Brides of Christ will fuck you up.

Yeah, that's exactly how many cups of coffee it takes to get me up in the morning.