Google ate my brain, and I’m ok with that

(But I think I already said that a few years ago. In the first of tonight’s “other news”-es, that really was a few years ago. Snap.)

Finally re-acquired my photos (yay!) yesterday, so tonight I loaded the least-crappy ones onto Picasa. I had no idea that, since I last checked, Google’s web album service had gained the things I asked for (tagging, video support, & easier organization). Granted, it’s been like… a year… since I thought about it. So that’s nifty.

Three albums cover the summer; at the moment they’re not public so just bookmark or some such.

• Month the First: Yunnan Province
• Hong Kong & Shanghai
• English Camp

Eventually I will get around to georeferencing* locations, tagging things and writing captions - really.
*I’m a geography major, I can actually use that word legally.

Side note: has the horizontal rule (<hr> tag) been deprecated, or is my current code just wonky? I’m curious, yet too lazy to find out.

As promised, in other news: for the non-Auburn characters, work & class started back this week. Work went well; we have a new guy who seems like he’ll make it on our little funny farm. I don’t think I actually got to sit in the office for more than 5 minutes Thursday, and I ran around not one, but two, buildings - yay first week goodness. I’m fairly ambivalent over class. I think I have finally, finally reached acceptance of the fact that ‘holy crap, this is my last semester here’. The heavens opened, rain fell, thunder shouted it’s approval.

And finally, in other, other news: Ryan North has an awesome hat, but really needs a tan. For serious.

No longer jetlagged, merely confused

Sign one should step away from the keyboard:

Realizing it’s morning - not because of light beginning to stream through the window 3 feet away… but because the sun has come up on my google homepage.

For what it’s worth, I did sleep about 4 hours, just got up too early.

Wow

I just posted this to my blog from Google docs. Sweet.

Not that I really see any practical use for this — if ever I’m online, I can just as easily log into /whimsi — but still. I lessthanthree the all-around Googleness. Possibly it could come in handy if I were ever (Great Wall-)firewalled out of a blog. Not for my own domain, but at least another.

Still nifty. I freely submit my brain for indexing, and fully accept all implications thereof.

New Gmail features

Everyone knows “Chat” is either available or in-the-works, depending on the alignment of the stars. But apparently, there is more to it than Google Talk transcript logging.

Last night, on logging into Gmail, I was greeting with a splash screen anouncing the “new Google Chat feature” - with a “continue to Gmail” link down below. Since then, I’ve had the bastard child of an “express” Google Talk and my address book stuck to the side of my inbox. No need to have Google Talk installed on your system, it’s all scripted. Fun to play with, potentially useful, and damn cool. But in sharing the news with Shanon, we discovered that only a lucky few are privy to the new wonderment. Update: My mom’s account has the new bits, but neither my sister’s nor bro-in-law’s do… interesting.

Anyhow, here’s a screenshot of TEH GOODS. I’m curious to know how many of you all, with Gmail accounts, have seen this yet — or maybe even are seeing something completely different?