Category Archives: Thoughts

Thoughts

A Squirrel on Our Balcony

Back when we lived in DC, squirrels used to come onto our balcony all the time. Our building was in a park and it was full of them. When you think squirrels you normally think “Oh, how cute!” but I’d beg to differ. They were cute from a distance. When they dug in your flowerpots and sometimes overturned them, or they investigated anything and everything on your balcony, spilling the contents of whatever they found, they were no longer cute. And they were vicious little critters, too. When cornered they made these really, really nasty sounds and were ready to claw and bite you. So yeah, not so cute.

Now that I’ve ruined squirrels for you, enjoy this video I shot of one of them being cute on our balcony (after it knocked over some flower seeds and started eating them).

Adorable, aren’t they? 😉

Standard
Thoughts

Bubu and Tira Playfight

Each day, as we work, one of our cats decides it’s time for a little playfight with one of the others (or with my pants or shoelaces). This video presents Bubu and Tira, our lovely adopted siblings, playfighting. This time Tira initiated the activities — it’s usually Bubu who does it. Tira is the grey kitten and Bubu is the large brown one.

Enjoy, and I hope it relaxes you as much as it relaxes us!

Standard
Thoughts

Meet Tira

Merry Christmas! We’re spending a quiet Christmas day at home, relaxing with old movies and old cartoons…

Here’s a quiet little video of our grey kitten, Tira.

We adopted her along with her brother, Bubu. Tira’s a lovely cat. She loves being around us. Wherever we go or sit in the house, we have to be careful, because Tira will inevitably fall asleep somewhere near our feet. She loves attention and once you begin to pet her, she’ll cling to you like sticky tape, asking for more. You can’t see it in this video, but she’s a fairly small kitten. Her brother’s huge, but she’s short and soft and very, very cuddly.

You can also see Tira and Bubu playing with Fritz, our grey bunny, who has since gone to a better place…

Standard
Thoughts

Where’s the Netflix Shelf?

The more movies and shows Ligia and I watch on Netflix, the more convinced we become that Netflix lacks a vital feature. We call it the Shelf. Where is it?

The Netflix Shelf would hold titles we’ve seen and loved. It would contain two collections: a smart collection, which would automatically bring together the titles we’ve rated 4 stars or higher), but more importantly a manual collection, where we could add titles we’d like to watch again in the feature — movies and shows we really love, perennial favorites if you will.

Within the Shelf, we could sort titles by genre, keywords, actor or director (using the metadata added by Netflix staff or metadata we could add ourselves).

There were so many occasions we saw a movie, loved it, wanted to store it somewhere so we could see it again in the future, but didn’t want to leave it in the queue, cluttering up the list of titles we still haven’t seen. There was and is no place for them yet, and that’s regrettable, because it’s a lost opportunity for Netflix to create customer goodwill at a time when they need it.

Standard
Thoughts

Where’s Google Photos in this drop-down menu?

If you use FeedBurner (which has been part of Google for a good number of years now), you probably know about the Photo Splicer feature, which allows you to merge your photo feed from services like Flickr, BuzzNet or Webshots into your site feed, providing extra content for your readers. It’s a great little option and I hope Google keeps it turned on for years to come.

My question for Googlers reading this is simple: where’s Google Photos (PicasaWeb) in that drop-down menu? Isn’t it about time for it to show up there?

Standard