blogshares.com
Sunday, January 9, 2005, 06:42 - Games
As can be seen by the badge at the bottom right of this page I started playing at BlogShares which is a fantasy stock market for weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by incoming links.

I like playing these kinds of games and the fact that it handles about real-life blogs makes it extra fun!


Twins born 6 weeks apart
Friday, January 7, 2005, 23:27 - Miscellaneous
A Romanian woman has given birth to a son and is due to give birth to his twin six weeks later in what has been called a medical first in Romania.

The twins were conceived from the same egg in May, but had separate placentas. The mother, Maricica Tescu has two uteruses due to a congenital malformation. Her first child was born on December 11, the second twin is due to be born at full term at the end of January.

There have been about a dozen similar cases worldwide.


2005 Weblog Awards
Thursday, January 6, 2005, 22:59 - Miscellaneous
From now until 10:00 PM EST (GMT-5) on Monday, January 10, 2005, anyone can nominate their favorite weblogs for the 2005 Bloggies.
The Bloggies are a set of 30 publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs.
Everyone's invited to take part in the awarding process, so find out how you can nominate and vote for your favorite blogs!


Hollywood Stock Exchange
Thursday, January 6, 2005, 04:12 - Games
At HSX one can trade in virtual stocks in actual movies and filmstars. When you sign up (it's free!) you get 2 million Hollywood dollars (H$) which you can invest in stocks. The goal of course is to turn that into a large portfolio.
Just like a real stock exchange, they have tickers with the symbols and news and graphs and top-X lists. The site contains a little bit of info about each movie and star that you can invest in, but you might want to get more info yourself from e.g. the Internet Movie Database.

BTW they have a referral program so if you are interested to join HSX for free, please be so kind and contact me so I can send you an invite by email. Thus I can earn some more H$, thanks :)


Why Being a Prostitute is Better than Being a Computer Consultant
Wednesday, January 5, 2005, 05:03 - Humor
* You get to choose your clients
* Hotel, etc. expenses are directly billed
* You actually receive that high hourly rate clients are paying for you.
* No dress code
* Close client interaction at all times
* You are working nights anyway
* Finally a way to fit exercise into a tight schedule
* Continual feedback - every two hours or so
* Not tied down working with a team (unless you want to be)
* Either way you are still getting screwed

From Jests and Jokes.

150,000 dead and counting...
Tuesday, January 4, 2005, 05:29 - The News
Wikipedia has an excellent page about the 2004 Tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake.
It explains the cause and effects in great detail.

These QuickBird satellite images at DigitalGlobe just don't do justice to the devastating effect of the tsunami. Footage shot on the ground and shown on TV, together with interviews with victims have much more impact.

There are many websites related to donations and relief initiatives for the millions of victims of this natural disaster.

New SPHPBlog version
Sunday, January 2, 2005, 21:42 - Personal
Alex has released a new version of SPHPBlog: 0.3.7r
Most noticeable change is entry categories. I will be categorizing my posts in the coming day(s).

Yesterday I also moved my blog from my home web server (ADSL) to my external web server, so performance should be a little better for most of you.

I also updated the looks of my blog. The picture in the banner is a stitched together panorama photo that I took a couple of weeks ago from my balcony.
It hasn't the detail of the 2.5 gigapixel zoomable picture of TNO, but it still is a nice picture.



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