Category Archives: Misc
Web seals: fact or fiction?
A web seal looks impressive doesn’t it? But does anyone actually know what they mean?
Seriously, does anyone take the time to read them?
Even more important, a legit seal links to a site that tells you what that seal means. Does anyone take the time to click on them?
Even “real” seals can be faked. This article from Consumer Reports describes how a site can grab a legit seal, such as one from the BBB, which links to an exact copy of the “real” BBB site, which opens to a page showing a AAA+ rating for their bogus company, but is actually hosted by some scammer in backwoods China. (Assuming there are backwoods in China.)
This is like your standard phishing schemes, where scammers link to fake bank or credit card sites (and lately, World of Warcraft logins) hoping you won’t notice.
You know how to beat these phishers right? Before you click on any link, hover your mouse over it to see where it is actually going to take you. Practice with the seal above!
Then when you get to a site, before entering anything important (passwords, email addresses, credit card numbers, paypal, world of warcraft account) make sure you have a secure connection (https://) and your browser is happy with the web site’s signature. E.g. a bank site should say “Verified by Verisign, Inc.” or another one of the big name verification sites when you hover over the “https”.
Regardless, seals do make a web site appear important. As pop music and reality television have taught us, appearance is far more important than substance. (I’m not talking about you and me, of course — we have both.)
Even if your web site already sparkles like evening sunlight on turquoise ocean wavelets, an official-looking seal with something that sounds important on it can only make your web site better.
And as we have already established, no one is going to look that closely at it anyway.
So for a limited time only, the first 50 people to respond to this post are eligible to join the Random Website Alliance as Founding members.
Early membership benefits include:
- the right to put this beautiful seal anywhere on your web site
- waived joining fee
- waived mandatory up-front contribution
- waived first year membership dues
- waived second year membership dues
- the right to answer “Yes” whenever someone asks you “Are you a founding member of the Random Website Alliance?”
Join today!
Note: All seals here were created by me, using the GIMP. Feel free to use any of these seals in your own stuff, but please credit the creator (and a link to here would be nice). Credit from me goes to Tabatha Bundesen for the image of Tard, the infamous grumpy cat.
Audible has cheap audiobooks
I’ve rattled on about Audible and audiobooks in a previous post. Well, last week I found myself without one. I had spent my two credits for the month… The Horror! … what to do?
Audible was showing a $10 credit for something, no idea where that came from (crossed over from Amazon?) so I figured I should spend it. I tried looking for low cost books. They used to have a category for that but it’s gone.
On a whim, I tried a search by keyword for “books under $5” and lo! I got a crapload of them. Most were radio shows or excerpts (teasers) but I was able to filter them out by using the “Refine Search Results” in the left column. Picking “audiobook” and choosing a length over an hour filtered out most of them.
I decided to go a step further. Searching for “free books” got everything with “free” in the title… so I tried “books under $1” and got lots of free books.
Most were crap, but one was Legion, by Brandon Sanderson, the author of the excellent Mistborn series. A well written and well narrated two hour short story, for free. Not bad, eh?
After I finished that, I splurged and spent $5 on Oliver Twist as narrated by Dickens’ great-great-grandson. He is turning out to be a pretty good narrator.
Anyone got other Audible tips to share?
Introducing: the Irn-Bru Float!
I accepted the challenge set down by my friend Stu, after he read my post about my world famous creation, the Coke Float. He is from Nottingham UK, not too far from the birthplace of Irn-Bru and, as I found out, the only place in the world where you can find this bizarre but beloved beverage in its native habitat.
What is Irn-Bru? Only the third most popular soft drink in the UK, just behind the international juggernauts Coke and Pepsi.
It has been made in Scotland for over a century and is available internationally, but not necessarily in your corner store. You have to know a guy. Preferably one who rrrrolls his arrrrrs.
It’s pronounced Iron Brew, geddit? Apparently that is the original spelling, but in 1947 the British government was threatening to enforce truth in advertising, and since the soft drink was not actually brewed, they fudged with the name. There really is iron in it, though. But don’t worry, so does breakfast cereal and that hasn’t killed you yet. (Seriously, there are iron filings in breakfast cereal.)
It wasn’t easy, but I tracked down some Irn-Bru so I could repeat my Coke Float experiments. Okay it was a five second Google search, but just because it was easy for me doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard for Google.
“Will you shut up already,” I hear you grumble, “and just tell us what on God’s Green Earth does this stuff taste like?” Don’t worry, I was getting to that.
The taste of Irn-Bru is unique in my vast soda experience: sodas from around the world and various combinations at the D-I-Y soda fountain. It is sweet and fruity, but strong… kind of antiseptic, like cough drops. I rather like it.
There is indeed a hint of orange flavor. Well duh, you say, it is colored orange, but think about that a moment: when flavor and color are mostly artificial, if they coincide it is probably coincidence.
Plus, I was watching a show on History Channel that showed how our perception of flavor is biased by the color of whatever we stick in our mouths. As proof, the guy tasted orange-colored apple juice and he thought it was orange juice. Go figure.
So that means if I hadn’t seen the bottle before I took a sip, I might have thought it tasted like watermelon or kumquat. Oh well. I’ll stick with “sweet antiseptic orange”.
Anyway, back to the experiment. Just as I used Coke to cover the taste of artificial sweeteners in diet colas, I thought to use Irn-Bru to cover the taste of the artificial sweetener in diet Irn-Bru.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get diet Irn-Bru. Apparently it does exist, but the distributor in the USA doesn’t distribute it. That makes him an oxymoron to me.
Thus I decided to use compatible diet sodas that I could get locally. Given that there is no soda like Irn-Bru around here, this posed a special challenge. I settled on a half dozen diet sodas that also averred fruitiness.
Warning: Just like last time — Do not try this at home! Soft drinks are a carefully balanced combination of exotic colors and flavors that come from at least as intriguing chemicals. Mixing them can cause unwanted effects. Irn-Bru in particular is dangerous with a long and checkered history. Apparently that’s how Braveheart got the blue face.
On with the science!
| Combination | Fruit implication | Conclusion |
| Irn-Bru + Diet Sprite | lemon-Lime | tastes like weakened Irn-Bru; that sounds like criticism but it’s not |
| Irn-Bru + Diet Sun-Kist Orange | orange | doesn’t taste very good to begin with, Irn-Bru makes it worse |
| Irn-Bru + Diet Canada Dry Cranberry Ginger Ale | cranberry | not bad, actually pretty good (can you hear the surprise in my voice?) |
| Irn-Bru + Fresca | grapefruit | sounds disgusting, does not disappoint |
| Irn-Bru + Diet Cherry 7-Up | cherry | was okay, but the 7-Up lost its cherry (this whole experiment is worth it just for that joke) |
| Irn-Bru + Minute Maid Light Lemonade | lemon | tames the wild pucker of the lemonade and softens the sugary smack of Irn-Bru, but since I like both, I’m going to say “no”; some may like it though |
Conclusion:
Irn-Bru makes a pretty good mixer for fruity drinks. Goes best with lemony flavors. Cranberry was a close third. Incompatible with orange and grapefruit. Violates cherry.
And yes, I know cranberry is a berry not a fruit, but since berries are fruits, it’s still a bloody fruit.
Updated review of the “Jaybird JF3 Freedom” Bluetooth earbuds
In my previous review of the Jaybird JF3 Freedom earbuds I extolled their virtues. I also said how tough they were.
Well, last week my beloved earbuds died. They are indeed tough on the outside, but the inside, not so much. The battery won’t take a charge anymore.
The little red button goes on when I plug it in, so it looks like it’s charging, but the little red button doesn’t do nuthin’ once it’s off the charger.
Sadly, I only got 10 months out of it. But considering I used it every day, I’m willing to forgive. It has a one year warranty so I’ll see if I can get a replacement. That is, if my wife can find the original receipt, which is looking unlikely at this point.
I tried using a pair of wired earbuds for a day and managed to get them caught on my bike seat, my jacket collar, my car steering wheel, and my butt (I sat on the cord).
“Screw this,” I said.
So I went out to Best Buy and got a new pair. Interestingly, at least to me, nothing has changed. The package has changed (old one on the left, new one on the right):
But everything else is identical. Same buds, same case, same accessories, same price, and to my disappointment, same performance. I was hoping they would have improved transmission outdoors, but nope.
Ah well. They are still damned good buds.
And so far I haven’t managed to sit on them while they are in my ears.
Why I can’t watch (un)reality shows
Taking a short break from my series on humor for a quick rant.
Reality shows: love ’em or hate ’em?
I never saw Big Brother. The first reality show I remember is Survivor. The previews built up the show like these people were stranded on a desert island and had to fend for themselves. Except they didn’t.
Other than crowd pleasers like eating bugs and rats, there was very little demonstration of actual survival skills, such as building shelter and finding food. Instead, survivors spent their time performing contrived stunts for “immunity” and sitting around on the beach backstabbing each other. Which turned out to be the only really important skill, in fact.
The next season’s survivors learned from this. They started backstabbing right away. They were so good, in fact, they must have practiced backstabbing in the off season.
Then there was American Idol, which perfected The Reality Show Formula for all the imitators to follow:
(1) you need three judges: one nice, one neutral, one jerk.
(2) you start with The Freakshow. Each episode starts by showing you the line of hopefuls that stretches around the block. Focus on the ones with weird clothes and freaky piercings. Being a talent show, you would think they would only want talent. Nope. The horrible singers get equal time with the great ones. Remember William Hung? He made a career out of being gleefully tone deaf, launched by the show that searches for America’s best singers.
On The Freakshow, the judges have their roles: the jerk-judge cuts them down, the neutral-judge offers advice, and the nice-judge smiles a lot. Guess which judge everyone remembers.
(3) you move on to the actual competition. It’s part soap opera, part Gong Show. Each contestant tells a weepy story of how winning this competition will validate their life. Then they sing. The judges get to buzz them when the show starts to drag, and make up words like “pitchy”. The jerk-judge pulls out his most creative insults at this time. Then the cameraman zooms in to the contestants’ faces hoping they will cry.
(4) you introduce viewer voting. Ballot stuffing is inevitable and encouraged, since it makes more money for their sponsor AT&T. The judges can still insult the contestants, to influence viewer voting and make sure the correct demographic makes it through to the final.
(5) the last part of the formula is the results show. The contestants stand on a stage in front of millions of people and look anxious and uncomfortable while the host builds up tension through melodramatic background music and unabashedly artificial pregnant pauses.
They could just announce the winners, but they have to fill the hour, so they sort the contestants into groups and move them around, and throw in musical guests with their own albums to sell, all the while eliminating contestants one at a time. Of course, they carefully split the last set of results across a commercial break. Then the cameraman zooms in to the contestants’ faces hoping they will cry.
This formula made the Fox Network enough money to wipe out the national debt so naturally all of the other networks cloned it. They did play with the formula a bit. What that means is, they focused on the parts that appealed to humanity’s basest natures: eating testicles (Fear Factor), crying (The Bachelor), backstabbing (The Apprentice), screaming (Hell’s Kitchen), violence (Jersey Shore), and Parisites (The Simple Life).
I do have one guilty pleasure: America’s Got Talent. It’s pure formula, but through the magic of DVR I can fast forward through the artificial drama to get to the acts. Some of them are world class, and the producers make sure there is a lot of variety.
The show jumped the shark this year, though. They had less acts, and they spent endless time on banter between the judges and the host. Who tunes into a talent show to watch the judges?
Plus the shows got shorter and they kept repeating them. I assume that was to pay for the outlandish salaries these judges get. Ironic isn’t it? Reality show judges get $15-$20 million per season to do stuff we fast forward through.
The one that has impressed me so far is The Voice. They tossed out The Freak Show and the judges don’t get to insult the contestants. Plus the judges aren’t just talking heads — they are coaches who join in the competition. There is no screaming, backstabbing, eating of pig rectums…
Come to think of it, does The Voice even qualify as a reality show?
(another) Midnight Writer 