As Leah and I laze around the house, not putting away clothes in the bedroom, I will fire up Google Reader and read blogs the way nature never intended, in a newsreader. One of the not-really-blogs I read this way is FARK. FARK is the apotheosis of what a nonsense everything/nothing site is on the web. One of the best things about it is the headlines, at least 10% of which make me laugh out loud, or at least chuckle. They also keep me up to date in the quickest way possible what’s happening in pop culture.

Let’s take a completely random sample from just now:

Travel news:
Thanks to Borat, tourists are flocking to Kazakhstan

Dumb criminals:
Bus driver peeps in woman’s apartment, meets golf driver

Transportation news:
U.S. Airways “new” computer system just did what most “new” computer systems do

War news:
AP photographers claim U.S. soldiers deleted their photos and videos, and warned them not to publish images of scene where Afghan civilians were shot to death

It’s faster than watching the actual news, and just about as in depth. If I want to pursue these in more depth, I can chug over to news.google.com and do a search and read what I want when I want it. Fark is also great because it’s so silly at times. I really like their PhotoShop contests. For example: HA HA Guy.

Read more about news in a recent article by the founder of Fark, Drew Curtis: Why the media passes off bunk as news

the url for “web/HTML/info design jobs” on craigslist used to be http://losangeles.craigslist.org/art/ . I know this because until this morning I was subscribed to the RSS feed for those kind of jobs. That changed when the url for those web jobs changed to http://losangeles.craigslist.org/web/ , which of course means that the RSS feed also changed.

Points off, Craigslist, for changing the urls of something people have bookmarked and subscribed to without any kind of notice or even notification. But bonus points for for choosing a better url for things artistic. I can only think you changed urls because you found that people were “guessing” the url “/art/” and getting confused. URLs are user interface.

If you look at Google right now for this search, you can see Google still thinks the old url applies. It’ll catch up soon I bet.

If I had built any Yahoo Pipes or other applications or mashups based on that RSS feed, I’d have some changes to make.

Given that Craig Newmark is a web guy, I always looked at the /art/ url as a kind of nod to the “artistic” aspect of making web pages. A tiny appreciation of HTML geeks like me. I suppose that’s a bit of wishful thinking on my part.

I loved that guy
Previously.

A bike was freedom to me when I was a kid. Above is a picture of the bike I got not too long ago. It represents freedom. It’s hard to get out on the bike, and I don’t do it as often as might like to, but I do it when I can and I have the motivation. I’m finding it easier to see ways to have it fold into my life in a way that’s seamless, and I like that a lot.

I’ve not blogged this week, actually in the past two weeks. I ended up my last contract, and I’m on to my next one, I started on Wednesday last week. I’m on for a six month engagement with the online game maker Vivendi Games, Sierra Online. So far, I like it a lot. They have a nice work environment and everyone’s been awesome so far.

Fun datapoint: I updated my linkedin profile with where I’m working, and the minute I got a phone extension at Sierra I had a message on that phone trying to recruit me away. I got another call on Friday. Dude, too soon! So I’m delighted to tell people that I’ll be occupied till the autumn at least.

I had a nice birthday last week. Leah wrote a little bit about me last week. Yesterday her sad broken camera came back from the shop and I’m adopting it. It’s easier to use than her behemoth digital SLR.

Yesterday I had a blast looking at all of the entries in the Supergirl meme. I made comments on the ones I liked. I think this one is my favorite overall. Seeing all the variations on Supergirl was inspirational to me. Perhaps it’s time to do some drawing when I get some clear time. Last year I remember the Batgirl meme.

On the agenda today is looking for places to live in Moorpark. We had a good time driving the streets yesterday. We saw some signs. Sometimes Craigslist is not enough. Wish us luck! and if you know of 3 bedroom places less than $2000/month right in Moorpark, drop us a line.

Onward!