JP Greenwood Photography

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Casey

A good friend of mine, JP Greenwood, who usually only has time for major photo shoots for huge clients such as Oakley, Vanity Fair, ESPN, Surfer, Forbes, and Glamor, (to name a few) has just started selling his prints online. These are high quality framed prints at an extremely good price. You can order them online by clicking here.

He also has 15 pieces displayed in the gallery at Capo Beach Calvary from July 1st, 2009 through September 1st, 2009. If you’re in Orange County, swing by and check it out.

A few samples of Greenwood’s work:

[Show as slideshow]

Borders Books Online Reservation Feature FAIL

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Casey

I’ve seen the “Everything is amazing, nobody is happy” video, and totally agree with it. I complain about way more than I should considering

how amazingly far we’ve come with technology. However, sometimes I just want to wring someone’s neck for being lazy or not caring.

Borders FAIL

I checked Borders for two items: a book by John Eldredge, and a Moleskine notebook. Both inventory reports for the Mission Viejo Borders said that it was “likely in store.” I reserved it online by putting in my name and email address, and the confirmation page told me to wait for an email within two hours to tell me if it was in stock or not. Well, I didn’t want to wait, and figured they would at least have one of the two in stock, so I drove down there.

When I got there, I checked my iPhone for an email, but nothing. I went straight to the Moleskine spinning display and found about 10 of the notebooks that I wanted. I grabbed one, and headed for the other book. I found the last copy on the shelves within about 5 minutes, and headed for the check stand. I checked my email again on the way to find the following email:

We’re sorry to say that the remaining stock of the item you requested has been purchased since our last online availability update. [Edited for relevance.]

The books were in my hands, so clearly the system kinda broke down somewhere. Apparently the website sends an email to the store, which is then taken by an employee to hunt down the request. When they don’t find it, they notify the website that they don’t have it and then you are emailed. When I asked the checkout clerk what might have gone wrong with the system, she said that it probably just got put on the shelves right before I picked it off the shelf. That means that when the employee looked for it, it hadn’t been stocked yet. This doesn’t make any sense because the website said that the book was “likely in store” which would mean that the system had some sort of awareness that the book could possibly be there.

My theory for what happened: Request landed in the hands of one of the lazy, coffee drinking, mohawked, minimum waged employees who wiped his nose with the paper, and then reported back that it wasn’t in stock so that he could go take another smoke break. He probably thought it wouldn’t matter because who would be stupid enough to go to the store when they told you they don’t have what you’re looking for? What he didn’t account for was my impatience… and maybe a little bit of my stupidity.

I guess it bugs me because it could have caused me some inconvenience had I waited and trusted what they said. If they didn’t have it, then I probably would have had to drive to a farther bookstore which would have wasted my gas and time. Or I might have ordered it online which would mean that I have to wait till next week to get it.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain because it’s pretty amazing that it’s possible for almost anyone to get their hands on virtually every written word in the world within a week. These huge stores provide vast amounts of learning possibilities and wisdom from millennia ago that would blow the minds exponentially of every reader going back thousands of years. It’s just a shame that forward progress can be halted by one lazy person.

WordPress Footer Spam

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Casey

I’ve had a ton of spam links for drugs of various kinds showing up in my header and footer for a long time. I keep deleting them and they keep coming back. They aren’t visible, but they have caused Google to no longer list my site in results even when searching for my specific domain name. I finally hunted down the code that was causing the problem. I don’t claim to know everything about php or WordPress, but maybe my experience will help you.

In my footer.php file, I found the code <?php do_action('get footer'); ?> at the bottom of the file just before the </body>erbium doped fiber amplifier tag. This seemed to be retrieving the spam links in the footer.

I found some help on the WordPress forums, so I guess it’s a known problem.

Strange Name-Collecting Twitterer

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Casey

For those of you using Twitter for more than a couple weeks have no doubt received at least one email notifying you that someone new is following your updates. Some of you even know that these followers are usually someone you don’t know that just wants you to follow them back, even though they are just retweeting the good stuff that they get from other people. Well, I received the strangest and probably the scariest follower this morning.

Apparently, this user only follows people who have the name “Alex” or “Casey” with the exception of some famous Twitterers like Kevin Rose and John McCain.

The notification email sent to me said that “Cody Hutchison” was now following my updates. This user, who also goes by “footballguy166″, has what I can only describe as a fetish. He seems to be collecting a certain type of Twitterer, but not based on what they tweet. He’s following 365 people and hasn’t posted a single update, which makes me wonder what the heck is going on. It’s like a train wreck. I can’t NOT look and wonder what’s gonna happen.

Do you have any weird followers or experiences on Twitter?

Something About "FAIL"

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Casey

I saw this article on the NY Times site, and thought it was really interesting. It’s a visualization of the Twitter chatter that happened during the Super Bowl. Those chatters are placed on a map of the U.S. so you can see what location is saying what. There’s also a play button that lets you view the chatter over the course of the game. Very cool, right?

My favorite part is if you view “Talking about ads” and keep your eye on tweets near Lake Forest, CA, you’ll see at the end of the game the most used word was “fail”. I’m not sure what ad it’s referring to, or if it’s even referring to an ad at all, but it only appears in Lake Forest.

The word is definitely not localized to Orange County, as was noted on Slate.com. Apparently, it comes from a video game with poor Japanese-to-English translation.

It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the first reference, given how common the verb fail is, but online commenters suggest it started with a 1998 Neo Geo arcade game called Blazing Star. (References to the fail meme go as far back as 2003.) Of all the game’s obvious draws—among them fast-paced action, disco music, and anime-style cut scenes—its staying power comes from its wonderfully terrible Japanese-to-English translations. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: “You beat it! Your skill is great!” If you lose, you are mocked: “You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!”

For a while now, I’ve personally noticed the use of “fail” increase in everyday speech, mostly under the age of 25. I’m not sure why, but I really get a kick out of this word when it’s used like this. Maybe it’s because it’s so simple and to the point. Maybe it’s the way it perfectly embodies the arrogance of the cyber geek who casts judgement and ridicule from the safety his armchair. Maybe it’s because of the many images that I’ve seen this word tattooed on. Maybe it’s a combination of all the above.

Whatever the reason, I have to soak in the enjoyment from this meme as much as I can. As history has taught us about slang, it won’t last forever!