Feb 16

Dropbox

home_logo-vflWA3gZlI use a product that just caught my attention in the last month and has now become absolutely invaluable–Dropbox. It’s one of those products that I can’t see getting very much better–it’s almost perfect already. It’s like a folder out on the internet, accessible from all your devices (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Blackberry). Unlike Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox runs on my 11 year old Macs.

Like most things that people absolutely adore, it just works. I really can’t say enough about how awesome it is. I really started using it when I began work on VBS for 2013. It lets me keep all my stuff online, access it from everywhere, and share specific folders with specific people. Best of all–it’s free.

I know you’re thinking, ‘what’s the catch?’ And you should–everything has a catch. The catch with Dropbox is that it is free for the first 2GB of storage. If you need more than 2GB, that’s when it becomes a paid product subscription. For me, once I hit that limit of stuff that I absolutely need accessible everywhere all the time, it will be well worth the money, especially since I’ve gotten such a benefit from the free 2GB.

The only improvement I could see them making is being able to assign differing levels of permissions to shared folders; right now when you share a folder, everyone you share it with has as much power as you do.

I’ve included a handy link below where you can download it. I should tell you that if you download it with this link they will give me some more free storage for recommending you.

Shameless Plug to get Dan some more free storage

Or you can just go to http://dropbox.com/install.

You’ll love it.

Feb 15

Quotable: Sherlock Holmes

“Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.” –Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia

Feb 12

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #9: Chinese Language

As part of my ankle-deep immersion for his VBS I have been learning Chinese. I am using a number of apps, but mostly I am listening to podcasts from ChineseClass101.com. The podcasts are great for picking up the language and they have lots of notes about the culture, but they will email you incessantly, and you should really be careful about what paid options you are actually paying for and/or what options they will auto-renew your account for without telling you.

Contrary to what I expected, Chinese is pretty easy to learn so far–especially compared to Welsh, in my opinion.

The sentence structure, at least for the simple sentences I have learned is similar to English–subject, verb, object. Declarative statements become interrogative questions with the addition of a particle at the end of the sentence. The greatest thing–no conjugating verbs–verbs have only one form.

I can’t read a single character (besides the one for ‘middle’, but I can hear, identify, and speak several words and make a few simple sentences.

The hardest part? Probably learning the tones. According to the instructors there are only about 400 sound combinations in Chinese. However, there are 4 or 5 tones, and changing the tone changes the word, whereas in English changing the tone gives some auditory cues as to the intended meaning, or maybe whether the word or sentence is meant as a statement of a question.

I’m enjoying it a lot, and maybe eventually (after smatterings of French, Spanish, Welsh, Hebrew, and Greek) I could attain bilingual status.

Right now, I still just know enough to get me in trouble.

Feb 10

Quotable: Humphrey Bogart

“I wish I was dead with my back broken.”
–Humphrey Bogart as Linus Larabie in Sabrina

Feb 08

Quotable: Humphrey Bogart

“You two boys must have been born in a revival meeting.”
–Humphrey Bogart as Fred Dobbs, Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Feb 06

Overheard: 36 yr old female

“At least you weren’t eating a whole watermelon a day.”

From a conversation between two women discussing their cravings during pregnancy.

Feb 03

Tetchy

adj; irritable, bad tempered, or touchy.

Feb 02

Lanugo

N., la-NOO-go. Lanugo is fine, downy hair, seen on babies, and also on anorexics.

Feb 01

greeblie

n., “According to ILM founding member Lorne Peterson’s book on the Star Wars model shop, Sculpting a Galaxy, a greeblie is defined as ‘Miscellaneous mechanical details that add realism to a prop, model, or set.'”

from Norman Chan’s article at Tested.com

Jan 29

Quotable: Adam Clarke

“Were it necessary a dissertation might be written on the Persian words, and Persian forms of speech, in this and the two following books; but probably after my toil few of my readers would thank me for my pains.”
–Adam Clarke from his commentary on Ezra 8:36