Tag: technology

Hi, my name is Jason and I Twitter.

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve been using Twitter for a while now. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure I remember what made me decide to make an account to begin with, but I’m pretty sure it’s Wil Wheaton’s fault. But, since I’m an old pro now, I thought perhaps it was time to talk about it…

I’m not a huge fan of social media. I avoid MySpace like the plague. In fact, I’m fairly certain MySpace is a plague carrier… I do have a Facebook account, but that’s because my best friend apparently hates me. I’ll show him, though. I refuse to use the Facebook account for anything more than viewing his updates, then I’ll email him comments. There, take that!

Why do I avoid these? Honestly, it has a lot to do with what I believe are poorly designed and implemented interfaces. Seriously, have you ever seen a decent looking MySpace site? Until yesterday I had avoided Facebook, much for the same reason, and while Facebook definitely looks cleaner, I still find it very cluttered and difficult to navigate. I’m probably not giving Facebook much of a chance as I’ve only seen 3 or 4 profiles, but they all look the same…

But then there’s Twitter. Twitter, I find, is quite interesting. What intrigues me the most is the size restriction. Posting via twitter is limited to a max of 140 characters. Generally, this means you need to think before you post. Sure, you can use that insane texting vocabulary [PDF] made popular by phone texting, but I certainly won’t be following you if you do. Twitter also has a pretty open API which has spawned a slew of third-party apps, as can be seen in the Twitterverse image to the right.

Twitter has a lot of features, some readily apparent, some not. When you first start, it can be a little daunting to figure out what’s going on. There are a bunch of getting started guides out there, including a book from O’Reilly. I’ll toss out some information here as well to get you started.

Most people join Twitter to view the updates from other people. With Twitter, you can pick and choose who you follow. Following someone allows you to see their updates on your local Twitter feed. But even if you don’t follow someone, you can go to that user’s Twitter page and view their updates, unless they’ve marked their account private. Private accounts need to approve you as a follower before you can see their page. Wired has a pretty good list of interesting people to follow on Twitter. Me? I’d recommend Wil Wheaton, Warren Ellis, Tim O’Reilly, Felicia Day, Neil Gaiman, and The Onion to start. Oh yeah.. And me too!

So now you’re following some people and you can see their updates on your Twitter feed. Now, perhaps, you’d like to make updates of your own. Perhaps you’d like to send a message to someone. Well, there are two ways to do this. The most common way is via a reply. To send a reply, precede the username of the person you’re replying to with an @ . That’s all there is to it, it looks something like this:

@wilw This twitter thing is pretty slick

Your message will appear in the recipient’s Twitter feed. Of course, if it’s someone as popular as Wil Wheaton, you may never get a response as he tends to get a lot of messages. If you’re one of the few (100 or so) people that Wil follows, you can send him a direct message. Direct messages are only possible between people who follow each other. A direct message is the username preceded by a d. Again, quite simple, like this :

d wilw Wouldn’t it be cool if you actually followed me and this would work?

In a nutshell, that’s enough to get you started with Twitter. If you need more help, Twitter has a pretty decent help site. I recommend using a client to interact with Twitter, perhaps Twitterific for OSX or Twhirl. Twhirl runs via Adobe AIR, so it’s semi-cross platform, running on all the majors. Twitter has a list of a few clients on their site.

There are two other Twitter syntaxes I want to touch on briefly. First, there’s the concept of a Re-Tweet. Simply put, a Re-Tweet is a message that someone receives and passes on to their followers. The accepted method of Re-Tweeting is to merely put RT before the message, like so :

RT @wilw You should all follow @XenoPhage, he’s incredible!

Finally, there are hashtags. Hashtags are a mechanism that can be used to search for topics quickly. Hashtags are added in any message by preceding a word with a #, like so :

This thing is pretty slick. I’m really getting the hang of it. Time to install #twitterific!

Now, if you head over to hashtags.org, you can follow topics and trends, find new people to follow, and more. It’s an interesting way to add metadata that can be used by others without cluttering up a conversation.

So what about the future of Twitter? Well, the future, as usual, is uncertain. That said, there were rumors in April about Google possibly purchasing Twitter, though those talks apparently broke down. Right now, Twitter continues to grow in features and popularity. There is speculation about the future, but no one really knows what will happen. I’m hoping Twitter sticks around for a while, it’s a fun distraction that has some really good uses.

 

That no good, nothing Internet

At the end of May, the New Yorker hosted a panel discussion called “The Future of Filmmaking.” At that panel, Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, made the following comment (paraphrased version from Wikipedia):

“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet, period. [The internet has] created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

This statement was like a shot across the bow of the blogosphere and incited ridicule, derision, and a general uproar. In many cases, though, the response was one of incredulity that a CEO of a major content company doesn’t see the bigger picture and cannot see the absolutely amazing advances the Internet have made possible.

Mr. Lynton responded by writing an article for the Huffington Post. He expanded on his comment saying that the Internet has spawned nothing but piracy and has had a massive impact on “legitimate” business and threatened a number of industries including music, newspapers, books, and movies. He goes on to say that the Internet should be regulated, much like how the Interstate Highway System was regulated when it was built in the 1950’s.

The problem with his response is that he overlooks the reason behind much of the piracy, as well as making a flawed comparison of the Internet to a highway system. This is a gentleman who was formerly the CEO of America Online, one of the first Internet providers. Having been at the forefront of the Internet revolution, I would have expected more from him, but apparently not.

At the moment, he’s the head of a major media organization that makes their money by creating content that the viewers pay for. For many years the movie industry has created content and released it in a controlled fashion, first to the theatre, then to VHS/DVD, and finally to cable television stations. Each phase of the release cycle opened up a new revenue stream for the movie companies, allowing them a continuous source of income. One of Mr. Lynton’s chief complaints is that the Internet has broken this business model. His belief is that people are no longer willing to wait for content and are willing to break the law to get their content.

In a way, he’s right. The Internet has allowed this. Of course, this is the price of advancement. Guns allowed murderers and robbers to threaten and kill more people. Cars allowed robbers to escape the scene of the crime faster, making it more difficult for the police to chase them. Telephones have made fraud and deception easy and difficult to trace. Every advancement in technology has both positive and negative effects.

As new technology is used and as people become more comfortable with it, the benefits generally start to outweigh the drawbacks. Because the Internet is having a global effect, it has shaken up a number of industries. Those industries that are not willing to change and adapt will die, much like the industries of old. When cars were invented, the horse and buggie industry did what they could to make owning a car difficult. In the end, they failed, and went out of business. When movies were invented, the theater companies protested and tried to stop movies. In the end, movies mostly killed off theaters. Of course, in both instances, traces remain.

The Internet is forcing changes all over. For instance, users are finding their news online through social media such as blogs, email, and more. Newspapers have been slow to provide online content and are suffering. Because of the instant nature of the Internet, users are more likely to find their news online, rather than wait for the newspaper to be printed and delivered to their home.

Users want more content in an instant manner, and the industries need to adapt to the new climate. Media companies have not adapted quickly enough and users have found alternate methods of providing the content that people want, often leading to piracy. And this, I think, is the crux of the problem. If the content is available in a quick and easy manner, people will be more likely to obtain it legally. But it has to be provided in a reasonable manner.

Media companies have decided to provide content, with restrictions. They claim the restrictions are there to prevent piracy and protect their so-called intellectual property, but if you look closely, the restrictions always mean that they make more money. Music and movie companies add DRM to their content, restricting its use and, in many cases, causing numerous interoperability problems. Content is provided via the company, but if the company vanishes, so does the content you paid for. In many instances, the company holds the key to whether or not you can view or listen to your content, and if the company disappears, so do the keys.

When movies were provided on VHS, and music was on tapes and CDs, people were able to freely copy them. There was piracy back then, too. But the overall effect on the industry was nil. Now, with the advent of the Internet, distribution is easier. What’s interesting to note, however, is that distribution (both legal and illegal) increases awareness. X-Men, the pirated movie that Mr. Lynton mentions in his article, still opened with massive revenues. Why? The pirating of the movie was big news as the FBI was brought in and as the movie company ranted and raved. As a result, interest in the movie grew resulting in a big opening weekend.

It doesn’t always have to be that way, though. Every day, I hear about interesting and new things via the Internet. I have discovered new music, movies, books, and more. I have payed for content I received free over the Internet, purely to give back to the creators. In some cases there is an additional benefit to buying the content, but in others, it’s a desire to own a copy. For example, a number of stories by Cory Doctorow were re-imagined as comics. You can freely download the comic online, which I did. At the same time, I’m a fan and I wanted to own a copy of the comic, so I went and purchased a copy. I’ve done the same with books, music, and movies. All things I learned about through the Internet.

In the end, industries must evolve or die. There are many, many companies out there who “get it.” Look at Valve and their Steam service. How about Netflix and their streaming video content. How about the numerous music services such as iTunes. It is possible to evolve and live. The trick is to know when you have to. Maybe it’s time for Mr. Lynton to find a new business model.

 

Search gets … smarter?

Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica, a leading computational software program, have developed a new search engine, Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha has been hailed by some as a “Google Killer,” and as a possible “Propaganda Machine” by others. Although, incidentally, if you type “iraq war” into Wolfram Alpha as the propaganda article mentions, you get the following :

And that seems to be the major difference between Wolfram Alpha and a typical search engine. Wolfram Alpha is more of a calculation machine rather than a search engine. Type in something that can’t really be calculated, say you’re looking for a ferrari, and you get the following:

Wolfram Alpha just doesn’t know what to do with that. Of course, that should cut down on the porn spam quite a bit…

There are some funny bits, though. For instance, ask for a calculation such as “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow,” and you may actually get an answer:

Or, perhaps, “What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything?“

Overall, Wolfram Alpha seems to be a pretty decent source for statistical and mathematical information. For instance, type in “Google” and you get a plethora of information about Google, the company:

Choose to view the information on Google as a word, and you get this:

Though, I find it surprising that it doesn’t suggest the origin of the word itself, “googol.” However, if you search for “googol” it does have an accurate answer:

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s anything close to a “Google Killer,” but it definitely has potential, both in the academic community, and with students overall. Google won’t just roll over, though, and has announced the launch of a new Google Labs project, Google Squared. Google Squared is an attempt to organize the data on the web into a format the seems to be more usable for researchers. Time will tell, though, as Squared hasn’t been launched yet.

I encourage you to take the Wolfram Alpha engine for a spin, see what you can find. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the incredible amount of useful information it has. And, assuming it survives, it will only get better as time goes on.

 

Slaves to Technology?

Over the past few years I have slowly moved from carrying cash to using my debit card for purchases. It’s pretty convenient for me, and reduces, somewhat, any loss I suffer from a lost wallet or something similar. I’m sure I’m not the only one doing this. However, this means I rely on technology a bit more. And when that technology fails, life becomes difficult. This bit me again this week.

I received a new debit card a few months ago and found that after just a few months, the magnetic strip on the back of the card started to rub off. I guess they’re using something different to fabricate these newer cards as my previous card lasted several years, and was still good, when it expired and I needed a new one. So, I went about ordering a new one and life went on.

Now, a mere month or so later, the strip has yet again rubbed off. Again, I’ve ordered one and I’m expecting it any day now. In the meantime, I had to run to the market the other day. I run around, gather the stuff I need, and proceed to checkout. I normally use the self-checkout, if only to avoid the usually long lines elsewhere. I go through the ritual of scanning everything, placing them into bags, etc. When I ran my card through, it failed, pretty much as I expected. I tried running it through a few times, and even tried the “bag” trick which also failed.

So what do you do in this situation? I thought there was a pretty simple solution to this, so I asked the girl at the counter to run it through by hand. This, apparently, was a big mistake. What resulted was a 20 minute ordeal as they ran to get a manual card machine, screwed it up three times and had to keep running to get new carbon sheets. Once they finally figured out how to use the manual machine, they had to enter the data into the computer. Of course, they screwed this up innumerable times. All said and done, they were finally able to get the transaction to go through.

Seriously? Come on… I do this on the Internet all the time! Enter the card number, name, expiration, and CVV. Done! I even mentioned this and was told that it was “far more complicated than that.” …. Ummm…. ok … ?

So in the end, they have a physical copy of the card (albeit a fairly crappy one… they had to hold on to my card to read the numbers because it didn’t copy well), and they have the computer transaction receipt as well. The computer receipt has the exact same information on it that a normal transaction has… So what was the problem again?

And it’s not just this particular store, I’ve had problems elsewhere. Burger King has no alternate plan if their credit card processing fails. At most, I was offered the option of running to get cash to pay with or wait for their computer to reboot… In hindsight, I should have gone to get cash.. Apparently they’re running the slowest computers on earth.

Lowes? The girl at the counter got frantic when the card wouldn’t read. She called for help, and the help got frantic too. Luckily it scanned after the umpteenth time, otherwise I may have been witness to a nervous breakdown.

Dunkin Donuts! Well, apparently they’re fairly competent there. My card failed to scan so the girl at the counter asked for it back, typed in the numbers, and ran it through manually. Took an extra few seconds. Done.

So let this be a lesson. Technology is great when it works, but you may be in trouble when it fails… At the very least, it can be incredibly inconvenient. And to think… Only a few years ago, credit cards had to be manually handled, with the carbon paper and all. And it only took a few minutes back then… How times change…

 

Bad crawler, no cookie!

My wife is a professional SEO consultant with her own business. I work with her on occasion, helping out with the server end of things. It’s fun and challenging, and I think we work pretty well together.

So, the other day she comes to me with an odd question. Why is Google Analytics suddenly showing a high bounce rate for new keywords? Interesting problem, of course. One of the first things that popped into my mind was either a blackhat SEO or a rival of some sort. It sounds paranoid, but it does happen.

So I pulled the access logs and started pouring through them. Since the bounce rate came from a keyword search, it was easy enough to locate the offending entries. There were hundreds of log entries, all coming from the same 65.55.0.0/16 address space. A couple more seconds of digging showed that 65.55.0.0/16 was owned by Microsoft. Reverse DNS on some of the IPs revealed that these IPs were all part of the MSN web crawler. MSN apparently doesn’t provide reverse DNS for all of their IPs. No matter, there were enough to prove that this was MSN. Here’s an example from the log:

65.55.110.195 – – [24/Mar/2009:03:08:05 -0400] “GET /index.html HTTP/1.0” 200 58838 “http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=keyword” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

So what in the world is going on here? Why are we getting pounded by hundreds upon hundreds of requests from the MSN crawler? And why is the MSN crawler reporting itself as Internet Explorer 6.0? The referrer URL showed the source of the request to be from a live.com search, but these being crawler addresses, I’m willing to bet this was programmed in rather than a result of an actual search. It doesn’t really matter, though, because whatever it is, it’s causing a high bounce rate and really screwing up the site statistics. The high bounce rate may be affecting the Google ranking as well.

Before we blocked these requests, though, we wanted to make sure this was unwanted behavior, so we started digging for info. One of the pages we came across described the same behavior we were seeing. As it turns out, this strange activity is intended. Live.com claims they do this to detect cloaking. Of course, it was quite easy to identify these IPs as coming from Microsoft, and determine (rather quickly) that they are sourcing from a search engine. It would be very simple to broaden any cloaking to include those IPs, making this crazy technique useless.

Microsoft claims they are continuing to tune their crawler to reduce the spam and make the keywords more relevant. The point is, though, that this seems to hurt more than it helps. As a result, many webmasters are blocking the referrer spam, at risk of having MSN blacklist the site. We have followed suit, deeming both MSN and Live.com to be irrelevant search engines.

Of course, if someone out there has a better idea of how to handle this, I’m listening…

 

Introducing, The Touchbook

Engadget posted a story about a new Netbook from a company called Always Innovating. A press release about the product can be found here. In short, it’s a netbook, and a tablet PC, but without the typical “fold it over on top of the keyboard” scenario. The screen literally detaches from the keyboard and becomes an autonomous unit.

Inside this little beast is an ARM OMAP3 processor with 8 Gig of storage on a micro SD chip. They don’t specify which OMAP3 processor is included, so both speed and die size is unknown. It touts an 8.9″ screen, typical of the current netbook generation. For network access it has 802.11b/g/n Wifi. Bluetooth is also included, so the possibility of tethering exists as well.
Both the tablet and keyboard have built-in batteries. Battery life is expected to be 10 to 15 hours when both the tablet and keyboard are used in-concert. The tablet is expected to last between 3 and 5 hours on battery when it is disconnected from the keyboard. Battery life in the keyboard is, of course, irrelevant.

Always Innovating demonstrated the Touchbook at DEMO 2009, a technical conference that wrapped up yesterday. The demonstration video is included below:

Overall, this looks to be a fairly decent device. I’m a bit concerned about the ARM processor, and I wonder what sort of OS support it will have. The TouchBook OS will be installed by default, though from reading the FAQs, it appears that it will run anything from Android, to Ubuntu, to Windows CE.

I’m also curious as to what the device will be using for memory. Is memory shared on the SD card? Or will there be actual RAM in the device? All questions I hope to have answers for in the near future. Looks good, though, and I’m excited at the prospect of possibly getting one. Definitely something I could put to good use!

 

Testing a new blogging tool

I joined this really cool network called Mac Developer a few days ago. The programmer from Celmaro, creators of Webbla, pointed me to the site. Anyway, Mac Developer is a beta testing site. Basically, developers put their software up there and let users test it. They can submit bug reports, suggestions, and contribute to making the software better. As a reward for testing software, users gain points that can be used to gain free licenses, discounts, and more.

Anyway, I was alerted yesterday about a new project up there called Blogo. Blogo is, well, blogging software. I’ve used a variety of blogging tools thus far and, to be honest, LiveWriter has been the best. However, as I’ve moved over to a Mac, using LiveWriter is, well, not convenient.

I’ve been looking for something decent to use on my Mac and thus far I’ve only found Ecto and ScribeFire, a Firefox plugin, to be somewhat decent. Neither of these seem to have the features that LiveWriter has, though. LiveWriter handles images quite nicely, even going as far as adding some on-the-spot enhancements such as cropping, adding borders, and more. The interface was actually pretty decent, especially for a Microsoft product.

Anyway, I’ve been checking out Blogo, and I figured writing an actual blog entry might give me some more insight into how it works. Thus far I’m pretty impressed. The interface is pretty straightforward and seems to have all the major features right out in the open. I don’t see anything for video, but I can handle pasting in an embed in html mode. It seems to handle images, so let’s show a screenshot of the editor in action.

According to the image tool, which you can see in action in the next shot, it handles both fullsize and thumbnail images. I definitely like that particular feature. It does not display the image itself in the editor, though, and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. On the one hand, I suppose it’s ok. On the other, it would be nice to see the image, just to know which image is which. Though clicking on the image in the editor shows it in the little preview area, so that helps a lot and generally saves precious screen real estate.

Blogo has a preview feature as well. It accesses your blog and attempts to create a template that it uses to create a preview of the blog entry. It can periodically update the preview as well. Below, is an image of the preview feature in action.

Anyway, it’s looking to be a pretty decent tool so far. I’ll beat on it some more and hopefully get the points I need to get a discount. If not, I’m definitely interested and unless something really bad pops up, I think I may have found my new blogging tool. Here’s hoping!

 

eBooks and e-Ink

My lovely wife surprised me with a wonderful gift for my birthday (which was a few months ago). She has been pretty eco-friendly for a while and is getting the rest of us on the bandwagon as well. So, while being something that I had wanted for a while, this particular gift also happens to be pretty eco-friendly as well. So what did she get me? Feast your eyes on this!

It’s a Sony PRS-505 eBook reader. The PRS-505 uses LRF as its native format, though it also supports TXT, PDF, and RTF. The latest firmware update also brings the new ePub format to the table as well. It does support secure versions of LRF, PDF, and ePub, though I have not encountered them as of yet.

The screen is about the size of a standard paperback book and uses something called electronic paper for display. E-paper is a pretty cool technology that can be used to display static images with very little power. Due to how e-paper works, it is much easier on the eyes as compared to reading from an LCD.

I’ve been looking at eBook readers for a while and comparing the various differences between them. And while the Sony doesn’t have all of the best features, it does have support for the formats I was interested in. Sure, the Kindle supports other formats like PDF, but you have to send the file to Amazon to have it converted. This is not something you want to do with confidential work documents. And the Kindle has wireless support, but I didn’t think that was a compelling enough feature to lock me in to Amazon’s DRM. So, in the end, I chose the Sony.

And since I’ve had it, I’ve discovered that it has very rich Open Source support! In particular is a project called calibre. Calibre is an open source book management tool written specifically for the Sony PRS family of eBook readers, though support for other readers is starting to be integrated. What makes calibre more useful than Sony’s own eBook management software is the ability to convert a slew of different formats to formats that the PRS supports.

For instance, I can convert a .DOC file to .LRF. Or, even cooler, I can convert a .CBR over to a .LRF. CBR, if you don’t know, is a compressed comic book format. So in addition to reading books, manuals, etc, I can also catch up on comics! Calibre also has a feature that allows you to synchronize various RSS feeds with your reader. Feeds are automatically downloaded, converted to .LRF, and transferred to your reader. Old versions of the feeds can be removed automatically as well.

Calibre does not support secure, or DRM’ed, formats though, so you have to watch what you purchase. Fortunately, there are a few sites out there that provide DRM-free reading material in most of the popular formats. Baen Books is one of the more popular sites for DRM-free reading material. Baen deals in Sci-fi and Fantasy books. Another fine book site is Fictionwise which seems to deal in just about any genre. And finally, there’s MobiPocket, who also deals with all genres.

One problem I’ve noticed with purchasing eBooks, however, is that you generally pay the same, or more, for the eBook version as compared to a printed version. The “accepted” explanation seems to be that if eBooks were cheaper, it would hurt the printed business, so they price them the same. This is unfortunate. I find it hard to pay the same price for an electronic copy when it doesn’t have to go through the same printing process as a paper book. I’d like to believe that the extra money a publisher makes on an eBook goes to the author, but if they’re anything like the music industry, I’m sure the author never sees any of it.

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoy my new eBook reader. I’ve been spending my time catching up on comics and reading many of the free eBooks available at the Tor.com site. If you’re into Sci-Fi and Fantasy, I definitely recommend checking it out.

If you’re interested in eBook readers in general and what the future may hold, check out this article as ars technica. It’s a pretty good look at the start of eBooks as well as some insight into the future.

New Tech!

I spent some time out in the wastes today and I stumbled across a cave of sorts.  I know, I know..  caves are dangerous, what with all the various wastelanders and other dangers.  But sometimes you just have to take a chance, right?  Besides, the rad count was pretty normal, so I didn’t think there was anything really nasty in there.

Anyway, I made sure my trusty phase pistol was loaded, turned up the luminosity on my goggles and headed into the cave.  The front of the cave was pretty dull, just the normal skeletal remains of a variety of animals.  I walked about a half a klick before I started wondering if the trip was worth it.  I was just about to call it quits when I tripped over something buried in the dirt.  There was a high pitched whining noise and then the cave was flooded with light.  I had inadvertently triggered some sort of automatic response system.  Luckily enough, there didn’t seem to be any sort of automatic weapon system.

After I stopped shaking, I took a good look around.  I’m not sure what this place used to be, but it was pretty big.  The first thing I noticed was the massive metal doorway built into the rock.  The door itself was covered in brownish dirt that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in forever.  On the door, towards the top, was a strange symbol I’ve never seen before.  It was a triangle with an eye in the middle.  I wonder what that means.

I didn’t see any immediate way to open the door, so I started looking around a bit more.  Over by one wall of the cave were a bunch of large metal containers.  Each one bore the same image as the door.  As with the door, though, there didn’t seem to be any immediate way to open them.  I was about to turn my attention elsewhere when I heard a loud metallic click come from one of the containers.  Upon further inspection, I noticed that one of the smaller containers had opened.

I cautiously approached the container and nudged it open a bit further with the tip of my gun.  Inside was a small, black cube the pulsed with a strange glowing light.  I’m not sure what this thing is yet, but it’s definitely interesting.  I packed it up and prepared to head home.  Before leaving, I dropped a beacon so I can find the cave again.  I can’t wait to head back.

So, here I sit, staring at my new find.  I haven’t figured out what it is, yet, but I look forward to finding out.  Anyone out there come across anything like this before?

Annual Rabbit Hole Day …  Thanks Warren