Category Archives: Tech

Mushmouth, and the power of the mighty Internet

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Permit me to get a little geeky here for a minute, but for reasons known only to Google it seems that this blog, nay THIS VERY POST on this blog, has become THE go-to location for information on the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids character known as Mushmouth.  I made a reference to this guy in a post about Nikki being cold all the time, and then went on a diversion about how the character that I always thought was Mushmouth was actually Dumb Donald (being the dude in the excellent toque with ocular orifices cut out).

Anyway, through the magic of page rank and the fact that there just aren’t many other blogs that have the electrons to spare where it comes to discussing these weighty matters, it seems that when you search for the rather recognizable word “Mushmouth” on Google, two of the first images that comes up are hosted right on this very blog.  I would love to say that this is the result of clever search engine geekery on my part, but actually it’s dumb (Donald) luck.

So what happens with this favourable ranking?  Well, people click on those pictures a lot, is what happens.  But how often do humans of the Earth (that are connected to the Internet) actually wonder enough about Mushmouth to Google for that word?  I can tell you:  a startling amount of times per day.  And some weeks, for whatever freakish reason, it goes absolutely bananas.  Here’s a little chart of the blog traffic from the first week in December.  Let’s see if you can tell when Mushmouth became a topic of interest for a short period…

Yes, Dec 4 was the most recent peak in Mushmouth’s popularity.  The VAST majority of the traffic around that day was Mushmouth traffic.  To give you an idea of the power of this one topic, if I ran ads on the blog, I might have earned ALMOST $1 that day.  Yer darn right, wow.  Still, that’s an incredible amount of traffic for this blog, and might I add quite likely the brightest that Mushmouth’s star has ever shone.  There’s no reason for me to share this with you, and you have likely gone off to some other shiny Internet thing by now, but one thing I have accomplished with this post?  Ever so slightly bumped my Google page rank for the word “Mushmouth”….

xkcd’s Tech Support

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Oh, man does this comic from xkcd ever nail the frustration of calling a help desk PERFECTLY.  As a geek there are few things more teeth-gnashingly horrible than having to call a help desk for a problem you know you can’t fix yourself, but you also know IN YOUR BONES that the poor guy that first picks up the phone definitely can’t fix it either.  A code word would be really really awesome, and of course immediately unusable because the knowledge of such a word would leak immediately and render it powerless because everyone would just start babbling “shibboleet” as soon as the phone got answered, even if they know nothing.

Still, it’s fun to dream about.

Thank you, xkcd.

Mobile Ramblin’s

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Time to get your geek on.

We here at Mundane Ramblings know that sometimes you just have to know what Lloyd ate next, or just what hilarious thing <insert child’s name here> said today, or even just how geeky Courtney is today.  These Ramblings are critical and many, many of you have asked for an enhanced mobile experience.  After an extensive R&D period, and untold efforts (I actually took about five minutes to find a WordPress plugin that does this), we are pleased to announce the new mobile Ramblings!  Just hit the blog with your phone and gaze in wonder at the mobile-ey goodness.  Because sometimes you just need your Ramblin’s wherever the heck you are at.

We aim to please, so let us know how close we got.

173.194.34.104

Too bad gamers are already fitness gods.

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Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) writes a really excellent blog that I follow religiously. This sentence doesn’t make sense, especially when you read a lot of his blog. Scott is rather sure that we are all moist robots living in an artificially constructed world, or possibly a very complicated computer program. It doesn’t matter, since this moist robot right here enjoys reading his stuff.

Recently he posted about an idea for a gym where all of the gym members participated in a MMO or multiplayer video game just by working out. The machines kept track of your efforts and these translated into points that made your team more competitive in the game. You could watch the game unfold in real time as you worked out on huge monitors, your team captains directing your real efforts so our team would beat others in the game. The harder you worked out, no matter what exercise you were doing, the better your team would do in the game. To say that this idea makes me excited is an understatement. I think I would be incredibly, scarily suited to this for many reasons:

  1. I’m a data nerd, the more detailed data the better. If it’s also about fitness, all the better. My running hobby (I wouldn’t call like 7 runs all summer a habit, but still) is largely driven by the fact that I can easily track it using my iPhone running app. If I wasn’t sure how far I was running, or how fast, or easily chart my progress, I wouldn’t give a crap. The game would have to let you keep track of your personal contribution as well as the whole. I would imagine a series of milestones, or badges, or something to keep you motivated. Maybe like Foursquare badges, something to keep you going and keep it fresh.
  2. I love video games, and games in general. I never have time to play, naturally (ask Wilson, I literally haven’t finished a game since Myst, I think it drives him nuts more than me), but I still love ’em. This would let me get exercise and play games at the same time, and it would probably prove to be an incredibly addicting combination. Scott even mentions that folks might need to be monitored so they don’t get too wrapped up in the game and work out too hard or something. I honestly believe this.

So, with that in mind, I am requesting that some brilliant tech wizard take Scott’s idea and start a bunch of gyms around it. You would very likely need to partner with a large game development company or technology firm to make it a reality. I will join. I promise. You will probably be rich. Now, off you go.

Nerd Humour Alert

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I try to keep the hardcore nerd content off the radar here, since it probably only makes sense to two other people I know who might even casually glance at this blog.  Anyway, I will make an exception today just for fun.  In my current contract I’m back to full on mail server nerd and was doing some documentation this morning when I came across this antivirus scanner option:

Illegal MIME header action

Cue immature nerdly snickering and snorting, while pushing up my horn-rimmed glasses.  Fnar fnar fnar.

Caffeine + sleep deprivation + early morning = giddy geek

I know I’m a geek, it pays the bills ok?

MacBook Pro FTW

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Let me just say that I forgot my power adapter this morning when I left for a whole day of work offsite.  Nikki has her brand-new work-issued HP EliteBook laptop, I have my year-old used MacBook Pro.  Her battery was dead before lunch, and mine is still going (albeit down to the dregs now) at 4pm.  I didn’t have it on all day, and it wasn’t all that graphic intensive, but I was using lots of WiFi all day.  I only just turned down the brightness so I could get this blog post out.

That is some nice battery life….