davidbarbarisi.com

This past Tuesday was my birthday. I didn't get a present from you. It must've gotten lost in the mail, so you should look into that or send it again. I'll wait.

I see Google still hasn't learned my birthday. Now it's acting like it doesn't know me. I'm not David Barbarini. My quest to get Google to learn my birthday has failed. I didn't even get famous either. Doing nothing didn't work again.

I'm back from DC. I went there over the weekend to go to Festa Italiana DC. It was pretty good. There were food and booths and stuff to look at and do. It was just a little bit too hot outside though. So anyway, I'm back home now.

Today I was Google Earthing it up. Google Earth is a big fat waste of time, but it's so much fun. I found this Google Earth Hacks site, which has a bunch of files that open up in Google Earth to show extra info. Some of them are cool places to see and some add extra functionality.

If you're bored with Google Maps by now, here's some good sites to check out to make it interesting again. Google Sightseeing is like traveling but without going anywhere. Wait that's not traveling. Anyway, they show you cool places on Google Maps. Like UFOs and the double missed bridge. Another cool Google Maps site is Google Maps Mania They link to mashups that involve new uses of Google Maps. Most of them show various info displayed on top of a Google Map. Some are really creative ideas.

Google is so smart. The other day I was listening to the song "Virgo" by Ludacris, Nas, and Doug E. Fresh, and I was wondering if they really are Virgos. So in Google I typed ludacris birthday, nas birthday, and doug e. fresh birthday, and right at the top, Google showed me what I was looking for. Yep, they're all virgos. Just like me. Then I tried david barbarisi birthday because I'm so vain, but Google doesn't know my birthday. So maybe if I tell Google here, it'll figure it out. Hey Google! David Barbarisi's birthday is September 5, 1983. I'll check up on that progress in a few weeks if I remember. That would be great if it works.

Here's some info about Virgos if anyone cares. I'm not really really into astrology, but it's fun to think about. I can't really say if I think it's real or not. I don't have enough information on it. Do people do astrology studies where they try to find out how well descriptions of the signs match actual people? It would be pretty complicated I think. You would have to find people for the sample, and probably get people from every sign. Then you'd have to ask those people, and their friends and families, if they possess the traits common with that sign. Then you'd have to gauge how well the sample matches up with the sign, based on some scientific scoring system. Alliteration not intended. Then you'd make graphs and charts and do some hypothesis testing and other magic. My prediction would be that 70% of Americans possess at least 50% of the traits of their astrology sign. I don't know, I'm just making that up. I think it's possible that astrology could be real. But pretty much like all other generalizations, it can't cover everyone, and won't cover any single person perfectly.

Now I must go aspire to be like my favorite Virgo rappers.

Ok maybe not. But these newsmap and amaztype sites are really cool. Newsmap shows you news from Google News but in a more visual way. The bigger the section, the more it's talked about. Then the colors are for different categories of news. And the darker the color, the older the news is. It makes more sense when you see it. Amaztype lets you search through Amazon for books, music, or movies and shows you the results by placing images of the covers in the pattern of the thing you searched for. Both sites are really cool, although they might not be entirely useful.

Some jerks registered domain names that are misspellings of Google and when you type the URL wrong it'll put viruses and other nasty stuff on your computer. Here's the story.