mello-family.com

Remembering Names

A colleague asked if I had any tips on remembering people’s names.  She had just come back from a sales conference where she met dozens of people who chose to forgo the courtesy of wearing their name-tags.  The week-long conference had approximately 200 attendees – enough to make name-remembering a challenge, yet few enough for you to recognize most faces after a week.

Here are my tips:

The happy traveller

My niece Lily is ready for her flight back to London

Red Sox Book

I haven't read this yet.  I'm recommending this on the cover photo alone.  My friend Paul and I were at that game and only a few meters away.  A-Rod is pushed by Jason Varitek after Rodriguez was hit by a pitch from Red pitcher Bronson Arroyo in the third inning at Fenway Park, July 24, 2004.

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
by Stewart O'Nan & Stephen King

The United States of China

In China, more than 300 million people are studying English, which is more than the number of Americans who speak it.

The Week, Janury 14, 2005

The Real Original Sins

"There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring:  impatience and laziness."

Franz Kafka, quoted in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette

View unsecured web cams with Google

Use any of these search strings below with Google, and you will find dozens (thousands?) of unsecured webcam feeds (most seem to be security cams).

inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode="
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
inurl:"view/index.shtml"

Ripping MP3's

If you have audio CD's (which you do have) and an internet-connected PC (um - you definitely have one of these), then it is time to start 'ripping' your CD collection to your hard drive.  Yes, I'm talking to you avó! (grandma!)

No longer a pass-time limited to teens, 'ripping' is the process of taking the huge, inefficient digital files off of music CD's and making a small (compressed to about 1/6th the size) copy of the file playable on your computer.  "Windows Media Player" will load hundreds or thousands of songs and play them in sequence or randomly.  The Apple iPod, and dozens of devices like it are MP3 players.  You can have thousands of songs with your in a rechargeable device which at the moment is 1/4 the size of a CD player.  You can put over 100 songs on one CD which you can play on MP3 CD players which are becoming more common these days.

If you're still not convinced, here are a few reasons why you want to start ripping music:

Larry's plane

My friend Larry's twin-engine.

Lily Videos

The Lily video collection can be found here.  These videos were produced using Vegas Movie Studio by Sony.  I'll have more details on how as a hobbyist you can make cool home videos.