Technology

Apple

Looking at this ugly apple, I remembered a joke someone told me recently about the three famous apples in the history of humanity – the one Eve gave to Adam, the one that fell on Isaac Newton, and the one on the logo of the Apple Computers Inc. Actually, I don’t even remember the joke. I just remember the apples.

Thinking about them, they all must have been quite ugly. After all, Eve had to promise to Adam that he will get laid if he bytes the fruit. The other one that fell on the head of a genius must have been ugly by definition. It also made Isaac think a lot. If it was a nice looking apple, he would have just eaten it without much thought. And the last apple sparked the creativity of Steve Jobs. He must have seen an ugly apple and thought of it as a creative challenge. A lot of people can take something ugly and make it better. But how can you take something ugly and make it even uglier? Steve Jobs took a byte of it. Simple, easy, yet genius as well.

The apple I have in front of me is ugly. I’m blogging this for historical reasons. After all there is a small chance that this apple will become the fourth famous apple in the history of the world…

And if that wasn’t enough, I had one more revelation. If you look at this image in a certain way – with your side vision, and you’ll cover the top part of it – then this apple looks a lot like watermelon. So there you go. My ugly apple story ends here.

Money scam via Skype

It’s been a long while since someone tried to scam me online. But today I got lucky. Someone knocked at my Skype door and I opened it. Here is the full transcript of the conversation. Pardon me for having some fun in the process.

[2:26:57 PM EEST] micheal2455: hello
[2:27:06 PM EEST] micheal2455: how are you

Before, when most of my online friends were technical people, a username with numbers in it pretty much guaranteed that you are talking to a spammer or scammer of some sort. But in recent years a lot of non-technical people got online and all bets are off. So, I allowed a person in.

[2:27:09 PM EEST] micheal2455: my name is micheal ofori,a regional manager of almal bank limited i discover a domant account what of 5.6MILLION UNITED STATE DOLLARS.Iam looking for a honest person who can help me to move this money out of were i kept it in self keeping custdy.i agree to give you 20% for your mutual help.i do not want my c0-worker to raise eyebrow toward this fund.

That’s a very standard, direct, to the point, proposition. That’s all you need to see to know with absolute certainty that you are being scammed. You have two options from now on. Either end the discussion immediately and block the person from every talking to you again, or try to scam them back, for fun, and see what they have to say. I’ve chosen the scam path.

Continue reading Money scam via Skype

Personalized phone call from Santa

Gmail team, as awesome as it is, has outdone itself. Here is a little tool they’ve created for the seasonal greetings – SendACallFromSanta.com . The idea is old but the application and execution is fresh and excellent. Basically, you just provide a bunch of information about the recipient and then gets either an audio or video message from Santa, very personalized and unique. Here is a video message that it created for my son Maxim after I answered all the questions.

Try it yourself – it’s fun and cool!

Website traffic, the learning curve

I’ve built plenty of websites over the years. Some – from scratch, others – mere customizations and adaptation of someone else’s work. But when it came to web promotion, I’ve usually handed it over to someone else. Don’t get me wrong – I have a pretty good idea about how these things work, but I didn’t keep up and I haven’t practiced in a long while.

Currently, I am involved in the project, where the web promotion bit is my responsibility. Until the project grows and earns enough to hire a professional. So I’m using it as a platform to refresh my knowledge, catch up with current trends, tools, and techniques, and to try out a few ideas of mine own. It is an interesting experience.

One thing I like is that the website is brand new on a very young domain with no previous history. The A/B testings and statistics cuts are very clean. There is an opportunity to measure the effects of this or that campaign with a lot of precision and no interference from any other traffic sources.

A lot has changed since I did it the last time. One thing that amazes me is how dirt cheap the web traffic is these days. I mean that when I first went in to buy some, I had a price in my head. I paid less and I got more than I expected. Then I studied it for a few days and got a way better price. Then I tried something else and got an even better price. I’m sure I’m not at the end of the tunnel yet either.

Of course, this is a random, not targeted, pretty much not convertable traffic. But it does have its pros this early in the game, and given the price – it’s well worth it. Even with that I’ve got more conversions than I hoped for.

Let me mention it once again – I am pretty much a newbie in the practical terms of this. If you have any advice or any resources that you think might help me out – please share and let me know. Once I get a better hand of it, I’ll share my thoughts and experiences too. Right now though it’s too embarrassing to do so.

Death by a thousand clicks

If you don’t know or remember the expression “death by a thousand cuts”, it refers to an ancient Chinese torture.

Slow slicing [..], also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts [..], was a form of execution used in China from roughly AD 900 until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly. Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one’s parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death.

Then, of course, there is a modern day office variant – “death by a thousand papercuts”, which I won’t go into any detail – you can get the idea.

Well, today I discovered yet another, even more modern variation of that – death by a thousand mouse clicks. And even if you’ve heard that before in regards to a bad user interface, there is another meaning to it. Yesterday I paper cut my right index finger. While it’s not that bad on its own, when combined with a mouse button it is indeed a new form of torture.

Do you have any idea how many times you click, double-click and wheel-scroll every day? A lot! I tried to count but I don’t know a number that large. Except gadzillion, to which I don’t know how to count. Anyway, even if you don’t use your mouse so much, you still need to type, don’t you? And typing with the cut on the index finger is more annoying than with any other finger. All because of those little nobs they put on keys F and J so that you could find the home row. Good thing I’m not bleeding at least…