Everything else

After spending 15+ years using various “executive” office chairs, I recently decided to try something different and bought myself an exercise ball (aka stability ball or yoga ball) to use as a computer chair. I know a few professional authors that use exercise balls as chairs, they spend as much time on their computers as I do, but they don’t complain about bad backs and computer fatigue as much as my programmer friends do. After using my friend’s exercise ball computer chair for a few hours, I was convinced it was worth trying – and eventually ended up buying my own. I’ve only had it for about 2 weeks, but so far, I’m 100% sold on the idea.

I can easily sit at my computer for three to four hours and not even notice that I’ve been gently bouncing around – which is good for my spine, circulation and brain. And when I stand up, I don’t have any back pain or leg fatigue. The unconscious bouncing (yes, it’s exercise!) gets even more pronounced when I’m listening to music.

I’m now officially one of Leo Laporte’s bouncing ball converts. My expensive executive office chair is still in my office, but it’s slowly getting kicked towards the door.

If Facebook is going to recommend friends that I should add, the least they could do is not threaten to disable my account if I follow their suggestions.

I spent a few hours with a Wacom Bamboo Fun over the weekend, and although I didn’t have quite enough time to give it a complete test, I was impressed enough to put it on my shopping list.

Features:

• Combines the benefits of pen and Multi-Touch input into one tablet
• Use a single finger for navigation and multiple fingers for gestures
• Simple gestures make it easy to scroll, zoom, rotate, move backward or forward
• Pressure-sensitive pen tip for natural pen and brush strokes
• Battery-free, ergonomic pen with two switches
• Textured work surface for a pen-on-paper feel
• Quick access to user-defined shortcuts with four ExpressKeys
• Attached fabric loop conveniently secures pen

The Wacom Bamboo Fun package also includes Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter Essentials, which is a great deal if you don’t already have them.

“Error sending out-of-band password”. This is why I hate using third parties. Goodbye Vidoop.

Netdisaster has been taken offline. Netdisaster was a brilliant site that enabled users to deface any site on the internet – not by hacking or editing the code, but by simply displaying various “disasters” over the top of it (e.g cow poo, chainsaws, crawling babies, vomit, UFOs etc). It was silly and childish, but it was also fun, and more importantly – it was totally harmless. But eBay, and to a lesser extent Yahoo, didn’t see the joke, and classified it all as a phishing attempt – which eventually forced the creator of Netdisaster to take the site offline. Read more about it here.

Although it’s not as much fun as defacing other people’s websites, Netdisaster still offer an ‘opt in’ disaster service – click the cow (above) for an example.