educating eric

Okay, if you've read this for any length of time, you know that I've got lots of search results for my miscellaneous Kari Byron comments, which just encourages me to talk about her more because that's what people are coming for. Well, looking at my search results, folks occasionally search for "Kari Byron married", which is why I put up this post: educating eric: Kari Byron has a ring! Engaged? Married? The problem? Some poor person from Reno, who did one of those searches, landed on one of my other Kari Byron pages and never clicked on the Home link here, which would have brought him (or her... nah, "him") out to the home page, where he would have seen last night's post that talks about the apparent wedding ring that Kari's wearing. So, here's the challenge: How do you design a site so that people who land deep within it can find their way out to get to where they really want to be? I suppose I could go back and update all my old posts wit...

UPDATE: Good news from the L.A. Times. Stone-Throwing Girl Granted Probation : "Maribel's father, Martin Cuevas, said the deal was good because his daughter was not required to plead guilty, and will not be in custody. 'I believe it's just,' Cuevas said. 'We've reached an agreement.'... Prosecutors had earlier offered Cuevas a deal in return for her guilty plea to a lesser, misdemeanor charge, but the girl steadfastly refused." Looks like the best possible result out of a horribly messy situation. For my original commentary from a couple days ago, click here .

You heard it here first! Engaged? Married? I don't know. But in tonight's episode of MythBusters, as Kari Byron is working on the arrow-splitting rig, you can clearly see a ring on the ring-finger of her left hand. As news of this leaks out, I'm thinking my "Kari Byron" blog hits might start dropping. Sorry, guys! Looks like she really is taken. Maybe a quickie wedding in Las Vegas? Who knows... but, given the popularity of Kari's dating life as a topic on the Internet, I'm surprised there isn't more talk about it! Based on this screen capture -- yes, that's Kari's hand; you can see the same ring in other shots clearly attached to her arm (which connects to her shoulder, then neck, then face, so there's no doubt that it's hers) -- it seems to be a wedding band. So, assuming we're right... Congratulations, Kari! UPDATE (June 2006): I've moved all my Kari Byron commentary over to a different site; you're welcome to browse ar...

Okay, there are bigger issues on our little blue marble of a globe for us to worry about, but sometimes something comes along that's so blatantly stupid that you just have to comment. The Maribel Cuevas story fits the bill perfectly. The poor girl goes on trial today and faces four years of incarceration. This story is floating around through various news sources , but the best and most accurate version so far is the one at SFGate.com . Here are the facts. Maribel Cuevas, an 11-year-old girl, was playing in a relative's yard with her six-year-old brother, his six-year-old friend, and that friend's four- and three-year old sisters. Eight-year-old Elijah Vang and SIX OTHER BOYS ride up on bikes. They throw water balloons AND ROCKS at Maribel and the small children around here. The water balloons hit Maribel in the head; the rocks "merely" hit her in the shoulder and side. Maribel picks up ONE OF THE VERY ROCKS THROWN AT HER to scare off the kids that are threat...

I just have to take less than five minutes to comment on a line from the latest PayPal phishing scam I got. The complete text of their passionately persuasive plea is: "We demand that you take 5 minutes out of your online experience and renew your records to avoid running into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in your account suspension. Once you have updated your account records your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal." Oh, the comments I could make. Wow. But, anyway, the fact that they're "demanding" is a really interesting choice of words. Do you think phishers would get better results if they said, "Please"?

Okay, folks, I need your ethical opinion here. In the context I use it in this blog, what do you think of hotlinking? Here's a description, from the article Bandwidth theft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : "Web pages may link to other web pages using hyperlinks. The hyperlink object allows a viewer to click on a link to reach another site. The owner supplies bandwidth as a gift, or to sell something, etc. "It is possible to use a HTML tag in a webpage to embed material from another site in it. Thus when the webpage is sent to someone to view, the bandwidth for the embedded material is supplied by the owner of the second site. Simply linking to a file is also considered to be bandwidth theft. "This may not be desirable for the owner of the second site: he or she may only be willing to supply the material, with the corresponding bandwidth, if that material is viewed embedded in his or her own webpages, e.g. because otherwise it does not help him earn mon...

I wish I had read sites like this one before agreeing to evaluate eHarmony's new "marriage enrichment" program. If I had, I'd have realized that we'd never get the $25 Amazon gift certificate they promised us. Their new program, "The Compatible Marriage," is basically a re-hash of all sorts of good books and programs that have been around for years. They wrap it in a "scientific" test and profile, but you don't need my background and degree in personality assessments and instructional design to question its construction. (Don't bother looking for any information on its reliability or validity, let alone anything about its development or norms or...) Long story short, it's a multiple-choice assessment with a horrible navigation structure. At the end, the claim that they'll e-mail you a series of exercises to take. No e-mails ever came. But we found one on the site and went through it. It was interesting. On July 25th, we...