Some stuff from early December 2014

Shopping mall pictures from 1989 - all I can say is "why?"

Helen DeWitt wrote a second novel - apparently it is some kind of sex comedy.

Myopia is on the rise - Can I do it until I need glasses?

Game of Thrones Spoiler

Don't read this unless you already read Storm of Swords or have seen Game of Thrones S3E10.

I made mention of "next week" (the last episode of Season 3/Storm of Swords) being "even more fun" than the Red Wedding. I was referring to Joffrey and Margaery's wedding and Joffrey's untimely demise. Recently, however, I have seen some reports that the wedding will not occur in Season 3. We shall see on June 9.

I had a discussion concerning this and whether or not Melissandre's sacrifice of royal blood actually led to Rob's death or if it would have happened anyway. What about Joffrey and Balon Greyjoy? Would they have died anyway?

Catching up

This is a catch all post with some comments on things I saw on the web the last few days...

As usual, lifehacker has more advice than any reasonable person could use. Take 9 Kits You Should Have in Your Home to Prepare You for Anything. This is like reading EULA's. It's a great idea, but nobody does it. I'd be surprised if the author has all 9 kits complete and ready to go. Also in lifehacer, The Eight Secrets of Success, According to TED Attendees. I think TED is cool and all, but by and large, I am somewhat hesitant to let a bunch of hipster techies tell me how to be successful. But if you are really interested, you could read Richard St. John's blog. You still have time for Hacker Challenge: Hide Your Cables. Sunrise Starts Your Day with an Email Digest of Your Appointments, Events, and Birthdays. Is it better than Mingly or Reqall? Can it scrape everything from Outlook, Android, iPhone, etc? Does it need to be installed on multiple devices. If I actually check it out I'll write more. Here is the direct link to Sunrise. You authenticate with your facebook login.

A few more:
Obama Is Literally Buying This Word on Twitter
Amazon Makes Everything Better
Bill Blass was in the Army during WW II - Exhibit and film celebrate World War II’s Ghost Army
Put money in your wallet

Weirdness in MeFi land

Redwolf's Adventures on MetaFilter

After spending some time reading a MetaFilter post about author Emily Giffin and her latest book - "Can we just be kind and respectful to one another??". This really leads into weirdness, including the realization that some of the posters on MeFi have been moderately successful in media such as books and movies.

At this point, writing a coherent post no longer seems like it's worth doing, SOOOOooo
Frickin' Corey Ann's blog entry about her battle with Emily Giffin. Then, as something of a non-sequitur, the Wikipedia entry for Something Borrowed (film).
How this leads to BuzzFeed's Steve Martin: King of Social Media, I'll never know (yeah, it was a link in the comments, but does it have any real meaning?)
This XKCD comic clearly has implications for the Corey Ann-Emily Giffin feud.Author John Scalzi commented on the feud, too.
So did Nathan Caswell.

A bunch of advice columnists talked about being advice columnists.
...The key is sympathy and empathy
My Boss Has Body Odour...

Other MeFi Links:
Infrastructure Costs
All exotic white girls look the same to me
Some cool logos on The Westeros Football League.

Some links from last week

List of Android Apps

Sex Questions from 7th Graders

10 clever uses for Dropbox

Get your product noticed at trade shows

Avoid paying for Wifi

MeFi - Corn & Drought

MeFi - Welcome to Sex House

Some Stuff I should really do

Here are some links I really want to investigate:

Lifehacker: Use the first 30 minutes... - OK, I went back to this one and it's really lame. Read the news for 20 minutes? Do that at home before you leave for work. Reviewing yesterday's email is a good idea, but it takes me more than 5 minutes.

Lifehacker about toutapp

Lifehacker: 7 Awesome features of Win 7 that were forgotten

Lifehacker: Turn on 2 factor auth.

google 2 factor verification

Twas 2 nights before Christmas

and I have some weird links to share: I always find Amy Alkon's Advice Goddess blog interesting and annoying. I got there via Popehat and there report of Amy's assault by the TSA. Who will watch the watchers indeed.

You can get Louis CK's performance for $5. Apparently, this has been wildly successful. More travel info from MSNBC. Apparently you can now call the TSA while you are being abused. And I bet this family doesn't think that Southwest Airlines is the greatest thing in the sky. This report of a football player's heroism off the gridiron may belong on Scoreless Tie, but I'm here, so here it is.

Beware Krampus, the German Christmas demon. Some misc. links:
What to do with Christmas crap.
Baking 911
And today is Festivus!