Bryan Gruhlke

The following is just a quick review of some interesting articles, photos, videos…heck, whatever…that I came across during the past week. Do what you want with it

xkcd – A Webcomic

The words billion and million have been used a lot recently. It takes a sharp ear and a keen mind to always hear the difference. Xkcd, an online comic, has put up their feelings on the issue or clarity. Click to enlarge.

View Online: http://xkcd.com/558/

Migrating Websites (like WordPress!)

I just recently completed the migration of several websites to my new web server (Fedora Core running Apache/MySQL for those who will inevitably ask) and after much trial and error I believe I have a solid “manual” for completing the task. I’ll try to get it written up and posted, but until then feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment if you need help!

Style by Jacquie – Visual Shopping

Stumbled across an interesting shopping website this week. Style by Jacquie provides an unique experience allowing customers to visually browse a huge selection of clothing and accessories. Its an interesting idea and may yet work, but I wonder about the SEO (search engine optimization) capabilities of such a site. I feel they’ll be needing someone like me in the near future to drive traffic. But once they get the traffic I have a feeling they’ll have a higher than average conversion rate.

Visit Online: http://www.stylebyjacquie.com/

Just took a peak at one of the recent Penny Arcade strips. It explains perfectly the silliness of the obsession over Amazon.com’s Kindle.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/progress/

If you haven’t heard of Penny Arcade I highly suggest taking a gander at their huge archive of web comics. They focus on gaming and technology, but hit other topics frequently as well. And Tycho’s commentary is always a joy to read (vocabulary, anyone?).

External Link: Penny Arcade

Received this short story in an email the other day (from my mother, no less) and thought it was pretty good. People get so caught up in making unearned money that they lose sight of the truth. Remember – the only way to true wealth is honesty and hard work.

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!