Archive for July, 2008
Posted on July 9, 2008 - by Loren
NO PIRATE BAY FOR YOU
This is what I get when I try to go to ThePirateBay.org from my home. From the looks of it Qwest, my ISP, has decided to block access to the popular foreign torrent site. This block irks me as there was no warning that I would no longer be able to reach this site. It’s like someone telling me I can’t go into a store because I could steal something. This will be the first time I’ve had problems with Qwest, but it won’t surprise me to see more torrent services mysteriously stop working.
Thanks Qwest!
Have you found more ISP blocked sites? Leave them in the comments.
Update: I’ve gotten it to work. Looks like there was a problem with my browser. Pirate Bay’s up and running.
Update 1: It looks like Pirate Bay will only work during certain parts of the day. Qwest has to be invovle with this somehow.
Posted on July 9, 2008 - by Loren
Podcast: You Look Nice Today
During the summer many podcasts tend to slow production or even go on hiatus. I encounter this problem every summer and I’m always looking for a podcast to fill the void. While watching TWiT Live a couple weeks ago I heard Leo talk about Merlin Mann’s new podcast, You Look Nice Today, and I didn’t consider listening to it because I find much of Merlin Mann’s stuff a tad boring. Not until I saw You Look Nice Today in the top ten comedy section of iTunes did I decide to give it a listen.
From first listen I’ve fallen for this podcast. YLNT is simply three, very witty guys talking about nearly everything. It’s hard to put a pin on what they talk about but it’s nothing like any other podcast. For example, the guys were considering renting a store where they would sell Christmas trees, but only out of season would they sell the trees.
The podcast has no advertising, no gadget news, no movie news. It reminds me of the casual conversations I’ve had with friends late at night. This isn’t like any other podcast I’ve heard before and YLNT could easily take the place of a subscribe podcast.
Posted on July 8, 2008 - by Loren
Wallpaper of the Week: Sandringham Beach
A beautiful HDR shot of the deep orange sunset on a cloudy gray day.
Download [not a direct link]
Wallpaper of the Week will be showing off the best free desktop wallpapers every week. If you want to have your desktop wallpaper considered please email me a link or a picture of the wallpaper to mail [at] r3fresh dot com.
Posted on July 8, 2008 - by Loren
Saying Goodbye to the Macbook
My Apple Macbook laptop is my first mac and has a very special place in my heart. I’ve used it for school, blogging, graphic design jobs, and even just to mess around. Without my Macbook I would have never started r3fresh.com or taught myself the Adobe Creative Suite. Tomorrow I will be receiving a brand new Macbook Pro and my old Macbook will be sold.
Anyone looking to switch to a mac should consider buying a Macbook. It’s one of the cheaper macs, but it will provide the computing power you need for most projects. I’ve had my Macbook for almost two years and it has just now starting to show it’s age especially with pro apps.
The Macbook is smaller than a standard laptop; making it easy to take on long trips or even just a trip to the coffee shop. When I had first gotten my Macbook, I had people asking me what it was and “How could it be so small?.” The white plastic outside was the biggest concern of mine because of fading and dirt, but after two years I’ve had no problems a little Windex can’t fix. The battery life is okay and will allow for a couple hours of online work or music listening.
The Macbook has been an amazing laptop, especially for a student like me. It’s relatively cheap, but has a lot of power inside the box. I’ve made a list below of my favorite and least favorite parts of the Macbook.
The Good:
- Bang for your buck
- Chiclet keyboard takes getting used to, but is better than the regular style
- Large trackpad
- Small size
- Very quick (non-pro apps)
- Easy to add external monitor
- Easy to change out memory
- Mag-safe
- Front Row (w/ remote) makes watching movies and listening to music a theater experience
- High quality overall
The Bad:
- Palm rests tend to get dirty quickly
- Integrated graphic card has trouble running games or flash
- Overheating
- Back-light is touchy, especially on battery power
- Speakers are weak, especially with music
Posted on July 7, 2008 - by Loren
Don’t Remix That Lollipop!
If you listen to the radio for any amount of time you’ll know “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne. It’s a pretty catchy song with some laughable lyrics, but Lil Wayne has done one better with a remixed version with help from (the master of terrible) Kanye West. The remix strays from the songs original lyrics and will leave you baffled on how these guys wrote this song. (more…)
Posted on July 4, 2008 - by Loren
InterfaceLIFT: Sleek and Nimble
InterfaceLIFT, the Flickr of desktop wallpapers, has recently freshened the site up. The new design is very simple and is far cleaner than the previous design. With the new look brings faster navigation and fixes the long load times that once plagued the site. The redesign has only been applied to the “Wallpaper” section of the site, but I would expect to see it expand across the entire site very soon.
I’m a sucker for a new look.
Posted on July 1, 2008 - by Loren
r3fresh and Outbrain: We’re All Good
This post is an update to a previous post about Outbrain’s recommendation system.
Previously, I had come to the conclusion that Outbrain had been (unknowingly) selling links in their recommendation widget. After talking to the Outbrain guys, this is (fortunately) false. The Outbrain widget is the first recommendation widget of it’s kind and goes against most web 2.0 practices. The recommendations widget finds the best posts on the entire Internet and puts them on your site. With alternative recommendation engines you would only have recommended posts from users using the same service, which may lower the quality of recommendations on your site.
Outbrain is the first web company that isn’t greedy with their service. They don’t have any advertising in their widget, anyone can use the service, and recommendations come from everywhere, not just from bloggers using the widget.
After this experience I wanted to publicly apologize for my outburst towards Outbrain. I should have contacted them before posting anything on the Internet. Outbrain is different and every blogger should give their service a try.
Picture by Macwagen
