Allow me to introduce a new feature here at Omega Point: Catherine Uses…! But what is that, you ask?

Readers, as you can imagine, I get asked to endorse all manner of products: video games, athletic shoes, questionable dietary supplements… the list goes on. Rest assured, it’s only my strong sense of ethics and responsibly that keeps me from shilling for anything that comes my way. (Are you from Golden Palace? Let’s talk.)

Moreover, would anyone really believe it when I did sell out? I know when I’ve finished a hard day’s work pretending to enjoy Red Bull and signing autographs, there’s nothing I like more than to take a load off and curl up with a nice, frequently-used product or application.

If only there were a way to combine the two! Then it hit me: what better endorsement could I offer than a nod to something I actually use myself?

As my friends can attest, there’s nothing I like more than telling people about neat software I’ve discovered, or which shell scripts they should be using to make their lives easier. Also, fonts. I definitely like those.

“Um, obviously,” I am probably saying, as I set everyone straight about some program or other. (Photo by Jeremy Lim.)

So really, it’s a win all around. Catherine Uses… will be a regular feature on Omega Point, bringing you mini-reviews of only the tools, techniques and time-wasters I use most frequently.

As I recently told Renee, what Twitter’s done for me–yes, beyond all the espresso machines people keep trying to give me–is force me to tighten up my writing. I wondered if Twitter’s limit of 140 characters helps me keep my two-sentence missives under control, how could I benefit from a limit of 140 words?

Renee excitedly jumped to her feet, her mai tai spilling across the other occupants of the sunny patio. This was the best idea she had ever heard. I assured her I had even better ones, but she was having none of that, waving her goodbyes as she rushed off to write her own 140-word post.

So what does a limit of 140 words do? Evidently, it makes blog posts really short.

I just finished reading the interview and I’m happy to confirm that I didn’t sound insane or say anything terribly inappropriate this time. I find I do have something of a tendency to do this. If we’ve spoken in any capacity, you may have confirmed this for yourself.

Case in point: at the end of the interview, Stephen said, “We did a story last December on Second Life and Google Lively. I wish our writer had been able to get in touch with you for it.”

“Oh, am I not the top hit on Google for ‘Second Life Vancouver’ any longer?” I asked.

I really can’t believe the things that drift out of my mouth sometimes.

But more importantly, no, no I am not the top hit for ‘Second Life Vancouver’! In fact, I’m not even on the first page.

Currently, the top hit is an article about the Vancouver Police Department’s recruitment/awareness project undertaken by the Masters of Digital Media program, prior to my employment there at the Great Northern Way Campus.

That’s only peripherally related to me! Man.

Anyway. You should go read the Q&A at Straight.com!

Unfortunately, my ability to hammer out posts dried up shortly before I literally tipped out from exhaustion, so those of you at home missed out on the effects of that.

Thanks to those of you who donated directly and to those of you who pledged per-post to the Canadian Cancer Society! The final count was 28 posts on my part and $108 raised on yours.

I did manage to have fun, at least. Thanks to Rebecca, Raul, Raincoaster and everyone else at Workspace last night who helped us all along!

On a brighter note, I did work on many more post outlines than , so at least I have a backlog of material to finish up over the next few weeks.

Ultimately, I suspect I’ll roll this site into it.

Anyway, while the art style I’m using is very, very different than this, both use a nice slab serif typeface called Rockwell. While selecting it, I came across this this video I liked from a couple years ago: the “Say ‘what’ again. I dare you.” scene from Pulp Fiction, in type form.

However, I couldn’t help but notice a number of interesting searches by which people are coming here.

Okay, that’s different.

This sums up my day fairly accurately.

Other bewildering search terms people used to arrive here include:

• bridget botelho chocolate sweet deal
• omega.com robot chat
• pentagon demon
• the omega point that could make the end
• vacuum ejaculator

You people. Seriously, what the hell?

So I hadn’t tweeted announcements of my Blogathon blog posts for fear of totally spamming the hell out of my Twitter, but everyone else seems to be doing it — and in fact, are surprised that I’m not. So what the heck, let’s do this.

I’m told WordTwit is the “dear Twitter: I posted on my blog” WordPress plugin of choice, and it’s certainly highly rated enough! I hadn’t realized it was codeveloped by fellow Blogathon Vancouver-er Duane Storey, but that just means I can huck something across the room at him if I need help, right?

I definitely like that installing plugins on WordPress is a lot quicker and easier than installing modules on Drupal. The two are apples and oranges, really, but it sure is a pleasant change.

So it’s installed, activated, and now I just have to turn it on. Aaaaand, done. Neat.

One handy feature is that it can optionally use your own server as a URL shorterner service rather than something like bit.ly or TinyURL. Sadly, “catherineomega.com” is not exactly short.

While I was writing this post, Karen Fung brought up a good point: how to include the #blogathon hashtag at the end of the tweet?

Simple: in the Settings panel, you can just set the string, with escape codes for [title] and [link]. (Guess which one does what?)

Just add your hashtags wherever you like.

So the whole thing is pretty pain-free, frankly. Now let’s see if this tweets anyone when I publish it.

Edit: Yes, yes it does.

“Spam really sucks :( delete it“
“Delete this spam!“
“No more spam, man!“
“Is it possible to delete all this spam?“
“You have so much spam in here.. :(“

Unfortunately, I actually don’t have any spam in here. Also, all five of them have the same IP, seemingly randomly-generated Yahoo and Hotmail email addresses, and have provided URLs that want to sell me Viagra, ringtones and Nelly Furtado lyrics. For some reason. So that’s giving me some cause to consider the possibility that they might not simply be confused.

This sort of “hey, I’m a real comment, everyone” spam generally follows the form of, “That’s really interesting. I agree. Visit my site.” Some go further, containing a great deal more text completely unrelated to the blog post. These are the ones that I find most entertaining.

I particularly liked this one:

I feel like a fog, but so it goes. I just don’t have much to say right now, but it’s not important. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me recently, but pfft. Not much on my mind right now. I can’t be bothered with anything lately. I’ve just been sitting around not getting anything done.

Wow, dude. That sounds like it could be pretty serious. Those aren’t the words of someone who has everything under control! Neither are the dozen links to sites on mortgage refinancing accompanying them.

Of course, the vast majority of spammers just post 40-line lists of links, but that’s boring. Seriously, who’s going to moderate that up? Sometimes you have to actually go the extra mile and invest in some creativity. Sadly, only one spammer has produced anything clever enough to fool me — if only for a second. I think the trick in this case was that it seems to have been hand-written, not generated by a bot. As “Ricky Conway” commented upon last year’s post, “LOLcat art show? I am definitely going to this.”:

I was there with my family. The four of us. My partner, son and Lisa. Lisa is my cat. It was worthwhile. It was amazing and the work was real artistic. Do you happen to know when would Marianne Goldin be putting up a similar show at Vancouver?
…………………………………..
Ricky Conway

Wait, what? Her show was in Vancouver, Ricky! Also, why are you linking to “www.hookup-tonite.com”?

Actually, I really wanted to leave this one up, just because it’s so random. Also, it sounds as if the author is drunk and possesses basically no reading comprehension whatsoever. In the end, I realized spam is spam. So I reproduced it here instead. Sneaky!

She cut me off: “Flogging conference!?” she exclaimed, seemingly both intrigued and alarmed.

After we cleared that up, I mentioned an idle interest in video blogging and suggested I might try my hand at it at some point.

“So what would you talk about?” she asked.

I tried to remember the last few posts I’d written here.

“Oh, you know… stuff.”