Bye Bye Yelp

I'm sad. I've decided to pull the plug on Yelp, a website that I really love. Why?

Well, the evidence of extortion is just too big to be ignored. It's not hard to find. I just searched for [yelp extortion] and turned up about 50,000 articles. Now accusations are not the same as being guilty for sure. So here is why I believe it.

1. The fact that so many people's stories are similar. These are people who are not in contact with each--how is it that they all have very similar experiences with Yelp management? It is hard for only 2 criminals to agree on a story to tell, much less hundreds of people.

2. Much more damning is my personal experience with Yelp. One of my reviews does not show up unless I'm logged in. (Evidently, they are smart enough to not filter out your review when they know you are looking.) When it was 5 stars I could see it, but when I updated it to 3 stars, it magically got dropped from the list of reviews! FISHY. And others have experienced the same.

So I'm pulling the plug, and deleting my account. Who knows if yelp will honor my wishes and actually delete my reviews?!

P.S. For those of you who think "Well, it doesn't affect me so I'll keep using yelp" consider this: how many restaurants will you waste your money on because the ratings were manipulated?

Get out of town

Sometimes I want a quick getaway, but don't have a particular destination in mind. Wouldn't it be great to say: "find all flights leaving SFO (or nearby) for under $400". Kayak now has this, but it is hidden away in "Buzz"--who picked that name?!!!

http://www.kayak.com/buzz

Craigslist Scammer!

I'd always read about scammers on craigslist, but today was the first time I actually got hit up by one. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

From: peterchris002 chris (peterchris002@gmail.com)
Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 10:30 PM

Thank you very much for your swift response and for telling me the Item is still available.I want to let you know that i'm a deaf man and i am satisfied with the conditions has you have stated in the craigslist.

I have a schedule already,for i need to attend an important seminar in Hawai so i wont be able to come to check it at your place.Since i am ok with the condition,i will be sending you a certified check that will cover the amount of the Item and the moving funds.You are to take your money for the item from the check after cleared in your bank within 2-3 days and have the rest sent to the mover via western union money transfer or money gram.For your inconvenience,i will add $50 with the payment to be your running around fee.I'm always a busy person and i will not like to miss this item.The information of the mover will be sent to you after the check is received and he will be at your location for the pick up with a signed note explaining that he will be assuming responsibility for the item on my behalf.

Kindly get back to me with the following information for issuing of
the payment........

NAME:
ADDRESS :
CITY:
ZIP CODE:
STATE:
PHONE NUMBER:

Thank you

Fixing broken space completion on Emacs 22.x

Solution thanks to Karsten Lang:

Joseph Brenner writes:
> I see that space-bar completion on filename entry is essentially
> broken in gnu emacs 22, because they wanted to give you the
> capability to type spaces into a file name. I don't want that
> capability -- I'm glad that emacs can understand filenames with
> spaces, and sometimes I need to select them via dired, but I
> personally never create files named like this.

> So: what do I need to munge in order to get the old space-bar
> completion functionality back?

klang was good enough to email me his solution (which I'm passing on with his permission):
(if (boundp 'minibuffer-local-filename-completion-map)
(progn
(define-key minibuffer-local-filename-completion-map " "
'minibuffer-complete-word)
(define-key minibuffer-local-must-match-filename-map " "
'minibuffer-complete-word)
)
)

James Nourse's Rubik's Cube Solution

I have a 2 year old nephew that likes to mess up my Rubik's cube. I have no desire to learn optimized solutions; I just need to remember the solution I learned waaaay back in 1981--the one by James G. Nourse. This blog post has a simplified version:

http://macroware.blog-city.com/rubiks_cube_solution.htm#

It is hard to find his solution online and I don't want to keep Googling it everytime!

Shared Documents -- what is it?

Came across this post for how to remove that annoying "Shared Documents" folder. More importantly, it explains that the folder is just a folder: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents. So this is a real folder--not a metaphor for changing the sharing status of files put in there--so if you delete files from there they are really gone!

Instructions for how to remove this folder can be found by searching for (in quotes) "Have you ever wondered what is the “Shared Documents” folder doing in My Computer?" on your favorite internet search engine.

The Fast 50% diet

Here are the main features of the diet:

• Eat whatever you normally do
• Save time and money
• No exercise necessary
• Super simple--no thinking required!

So what is it? Well, there are 2 parts. The first part is the "50%" part:

Eat half of what you normally would.

This means that you have to estimate what you would normally eat and only eat half of that. So if you go to a place that has ridiculously large portions, you might eat only 1/4 of the meal, because normally you would eat half.

You save money because food goes twice as far. You save money because you can eat the other half as leftovers. You save time because it doesn't take long to eat half as much!

So can you eat chocolate all day? Sure. If you normally eat 20 pieces of chocolate for dessert, just eat 10. As long as you do exactly what you normally would but eat only half, you guarantee that you'll be taking in only 50% of your usual calories. That should be enough of a reduction to get anyone down into the weight-losing mode.

You might think that dieting like this would leave you feeling hungry all the time. Normally, that would probably be the case, and that is why you need part 2, the "Fast" part:

Fast once a month to reset your appetite.

Years ago I noticed that fasting had an unexpected effect: right after fasting I would feel full sooner than normal. You'd think you'd be famished after breaking a fast, but if you eat slowly you'll notice that you get that full feeling much sooner than normal. Respect that feeling and stop after 50%.

For me, about 24 hours taking in only water or juice works. The point of the fast is not to skip calories, but to reset your appetite. As a practical matter I find it easiest to fast on a day when I'm doing light chores or shopping--something that keeps me active but is not strenuous.

Historically, fasting is associated with spirituality. And I think it helps your body and mind to get back into balance. As someone who loves eat, fasting helps me to keep food in the proper perspective.