Kara’s Blog

Here's a cereal aside for you today regarding advertising.

Lately I've been seeing a lot of commercials for "Diamond Shreddies", which are apparently just like regular Shreddies, only they're diamond-shaped. For those of you familiar with Shreddies but not this commercial, I'll give you a moment to visualize the difference.

Got it? :D Yeah, they're exactly the same. This commercial is very clever, because it's one of those "it's so dumb it has to…

I got my first camera (first digital camera too) on Boxing Day of 2005. It was actually the first time I ever went to a store early to try and get a deal--it was on sale at CompuSmart. They were only letting a few people into the store at a time. I snagged my camera; I also got a free printer with mail-in rebate. (I almost forgot to send in the rebate, but that's another…

This is mostly for my dad, who has been bugging me about how I'm doing in school but doesn't understand that I feel more comfortable writing about such matters in front of several million strangers instead of actually talking out loud about it to a parent. :r Curse you, modern society!

I have one more day to go, and then we've got Reading Week. It's our version of "spring break" for universities. I don't have…

Got your attention, didn't I?

Neil Gaiman, one of the greatest authors of our era, is going to offer one of his books online for free to celebrate the seventh birthday of his blog. But that's not the best part. We get to choose which book! Head on over to his blog and vote for the book you want to see online for free. Take his advice, though, and instead of voting necessarily for your…

My dad was out of town on business for Monday and Tuesday night, which left me in charge of the household and my brother. :o In this situation, I had to do certain chores I've never done before--such as make supper from scratch!

That's right. Although I've helped out in the kitchen before, I've never cooked dinner from scratch without supervision before. I made diced chicken with pasta. I didn't remember how to make a…

Last night I signed up for Twitter, an increasingly popular online service that allows users to send status messages from a variety of platforms--mobile, web, IM, etc. Big deal, you say. So what--who cares? The neat thing isn't so much what Twitter does as how you can use Twitter elsewhere on the Internet.

For example, thanks to a Facebook application, I can update my Twitter status and have it show up on my Facebook…

Canadians flying to the United States now require a passport. We don't need one to cross the border by land yet, but that is in the works. So earlier this month, after over a year of procrastination, I finally applied for a passport.

The application process wasn't that hard as far as government applications go. Passport Canada offers an online form that you can fill out and save, so you don't have to complete it…

I have a lot of projects going on all at once. I'm coding VSNS Lemon, trying to code another site, managing a couple of other sites, trying to redesign this site, doing support at InvisionFree/ZetaBoards--and that's just in my free time. I've also got school and work to balance. So time management is a big deal for me. Unfortunately, I'm the sort of person who, instead of doing the things on his to-do list, spends…

I learned today that Gmail offers free IMAP access now (they have for awhile, but I'm out of the loop, I guess). I wub Gmail in general. I forward all of my email accounts to my main Gmail account--except for my university account, which is separate. Using Gmail for their email system was, incidentally, the smartest technical decision my university ever made.

However, up until tonight, I've been using POP to view my messages in…

I've finished Sandworms of Dune, the final installment of the Dune saga. Originally conceived by Frank Herbert, who wrote six novels before his death, his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have written six prequels based on the material left behind by Herbert. Since then, they tackled the challenge of completing the famed "Dune 7", the conclusion of the story arc begun in Chapterhouse Dune. This book they split up into two: …