Sunday Link Roundup

It's beginning to look like weekly link posts is all I can do these days -- which is a shame, because I have so much to blog about: leaving the coffee shop, starting my new job, training for the Regina City Police Half-Marathon, and this post about the "slash-fiction writing retards" I commented on last week. I stand by my comments regarding slash fiction, even after reading this Wikipedia article, but I obviously need to explain myself.

Anyway, without further delays, here are the posts I'm talking about this week.

• Now you too can use apostrophes like a pro! (link)
  
  
• Schmutzie uses Diaryland; I use Blogger. Schmutzie uses Kinja; I use Bloglines. To-MAY-to, po-TAY-to. I'm not quite sure how I feel about Bloglines right now, especially as these RSS feeds can be added to My Yahoo!, but I'm giving it a go to see how it fits my lifestyle. One good thing I learned is that Bloglines polls an updated source once and distributes the content to all subscribers, reducing server load. I don't know how many other aggregating services do that. (link)
  
  
• Google has doubled its GMail storage, now offering 2Gb. If you don't already have a GMail account, you can use the GMail Spooler to get one -- over 700,000 invitations available! (link)
  
  
• With eMessenger, you can now use MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! Messengers on the web -- with no Java applets and nothing to download. Yeah, I know MSN offers this already, but Yahoo! doesn't, so what the hell. (link)
  
  
• Clocky is, without doubt, the coolest alarm clock in the world. It's just a prototype right now, but I will seriously consider buying one when they come to market -- and not just because I've cast aside my 20-plus year-old alarm cube in favour of a tiny but bowel-strummingly annoying travel alarm. I'm also concerned about how many of my weekly links deal with timepieces, especially after my steadfast denial that having an accurate timepiece is of any importance to me. (link)
  
  
• Jian Ghomeshi has been working on CBC Radio with panelists and the general public on building a list of the top 50 essential Canadian songs. Now, I didn't have the opportunity to listen to the programs, due to me working at the hateful coffee shop, but I understand the discussions were very interesting. So while this list lacks the punch of why these particular songs were chosen, you are at least free to agree or disagree with their choices. (link)
  
  
• Two things come to light with the death of Pope John Paul II: the first is a look at the process of the papal transition, of which both America Magazine and Wikipedia give a thorough overview. The second is the excoriating of the deceased by Chris Hitchens over at Slate. This is nothing new for Hitchens -- he also skewered Bob Hope in the wake of his death; shame he hasn't the balls to put the same columns forward while his targets are alive. This time I'm not nearly as pissed as I usually am because he does make some important points -- but I do disagree with his last statement about America being a secular society. America has been a lot of things, but I sincerely doubt is has ever been secular. (link)
  
  
• There's also some biblical prophesy that comes forward with the death of an important religious figure, but you can't take any it seriously because it all looks like this. (link)
  
  
• This is a great story in Wired about a bunch of guys from MIT and how they made a bajillion dollars playing blackjack in Vegas. It's an older story, but it's popped up in my conversations a couple of times in the last few days, so maybe it's time to bring some attention to it. (link)