iGala

A little while back I asked a bunch of friends, and twitter-friends, and woodland fauna and just whoever to send pictures to my living room via the geeky expedient of my magic new internet-attached digital frame. You hipsters succeeded like gang-busters, so here's an update on this ongoing experiment - in review form.

I don't have much use for digital frames, because who in the world ever rotates the pics on them? Plus, if you want pics you didn't take yourself, you have to cart them back and forth through the sneakernet with your own wee flash card - which we all know is a pernicious choking hazard looking all candylicious and technically alluring and such - and, plus, I have better things to pretend to do like understand the tax code, master thighs, withstand peer-pressure or look at pictures of my friend's goofy-ass babies ... er no, not your baby, that other friend's.

Oh, yeah, pictures! Anyway, what sets the frame I got, a shiny iGala, apart from the run-of-the-mill trash from Best Buy is that with a little complicity from your friends, new pictures are beamed by wifi directly into the frame from such convenient sources as Flickr and gmail.

In fact, if you want me to see your pics, go ahead and send them to photos4daniel@gmail.com. I'd love to look at them. Note, I'm not easily offended, but be forewarned that sending me gross and/or pornographic pictures just occurred to everyone else who read this, so it's not even clever no more. I just ask that the pics be a bit interesting, and that if you're at all nekid in them, you try to be correspondingly attractive.

So, the review is that I'm loving it. The frame has its little quirks, and the icons on the user interface are just inscrutable. Luckily they're quite easy to memorize.

Set-up was easy for someone as clever, technical and well-dressed as myself, but as a gift for grandma it might need to be accompanied by fifteen minutes of on-site tech support to get the wifi sorted. The transitions from pic to pic look like they were imported in bulk right from 1980's cinema but whatever, they're still gonna be goddamn astounding to gramps, right? He still has a VCR and it's still perpetually noon at his house.

I've had my frame running for a bit over a week now and I occasionally laugh out loud or get misty at the pics my awesome friends have sent me. On the off chance that you've chosen friends who suck, you can always subscribe to a Flickr group and pretend those people are your friends.

You poor sad monkey.

Aaaaaaw crap!

My butt is so furious at the environment right now!

Is nothing sacred?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

Apparently, if it's the least bit fun or pleasant it will either kill you stone dead or wreck the world for your children. Soft toilet paper is worse for the environment than Hummers?

I have to presume that's partly because not everyone puts a Hummer underneath themself a few times a week.

So everything good is bad. Sex, if it isn't just complicating relationships, increases unwanted exposure to herpes, crabs, back-ache, the HPV, the HIV and, in particular worst-case scenarios, the FBI.

Cigarettes cause lung cancer; Drink causes fights, cirrhosis, and unwise 2 AM shouts/chats at/with people best left uncalled; And weed, it turns out, after lying to us about being totally blameless and all mis-characterized and whatnot by administrations Nixon through W, causes ball-cancer.

Delicious food makes you fat; And wine, eggs, butter and olive oil can't seem to make up their goddamn minds what's up, thereby raising blood pressure and generalized angst about the whole mess.

Don't you dare console yourself with a goddamn carbohydrate! Don't you dare!

And as we should probably expect by now, what we put in ourselves is only half the problem. We're also wrecking the world when that crap (quite literally) comes out the other end. Did you want to nurture and pamper your bum with a soft toilet tissue? Did you want to enjoy a brief, private respite from the abrasive vicissitudes of life while you're at your most unguarded and vulnerable? Oh! You did?

Well why don't you just go skull-fuck the Lorax while you're in such a festive, feckless mood, you filthy monster!?!?! Turns out it's all the same in the end.

Christ, what next? Cuddling with your children gives puppies buboes? Lollipops foment civil unrest in Indonesia? You know what caused the worldwide financial meltdown? You did. By enjoying a sunset, you insensitive jerk.

Adorable. Expendable!
img from vociferous

Life can suck it! If I can't poop in comfort without being the Devil, I don't see why we shouldn't just cut to the chase and strip mine ANWR with an ICBM, just you know, for the spectacle.

If it's all the same to the Universe, I'm going to start wiping my ass with chinchillas from here on out and be done with it.

They look soft at least.

Also, there's this, which by contrast is rollicksome tragicomedy: http://ecoworldly.com/2009/02/26/extremely-rare-bird-photographed-for-first-time-then-eaten/

Writing about stuff makes you healthier?

This (pdf) article suggests that writing a little bit each day about emotional stuff should make you feel physically better.

I knew there was a good reason to be a writer (or self-absorbed blogger)! Just ask Franz Kafka or Sylvia Plath.

I'm not sure what the mechanism is. I have to re-read the article, which I hardly even skimmed the first time. I sometimes think that shoe-horning the miserable jumble of stimuli that constitute real life into some sort of meaningful narrative may be enough to make you feel not only like you understand what's going on, but as though it has some meaning. That's probably enough to make you a bit more chipper and lower your blood pressure, I guess.

Meanwhile, in DH news, I'm still looking for a place to buy or rent in DC (have to start applying for mortgage loans tomorrow if I want to buy), I'm trying to write more - though more for my career's well-being than my body's, and I'm coding my ass off in order to get giftgaff looking all pretty and awesome. End of this weekend or I'm going to kick my own ass.