Turning Into Mark

My reading list is starting to look more and more like Mark's reading list, thanks to my current workload. A quick look at my Google Reader will show more subscriptions to SEO and Internet-related blogs than any other blog category. Gadget and tech blogs are also catching up, with almost daily visits to Techmeme, Techcrunch, Techradar, and now...Lifehacker. Its crazy because these are the very blogs I found so utterly boring even as Mark found them fascinating(?). I am pleased though with what's happening because there are lots of upsides to the forced evolution of my reading habits...

1. I'm learning a lot of new things.
2. I'm actually starting to gain interest in tech stuff!
3. It will hopefully give me and Mark more common interests (or at least I'll understand what he's talking about more).

Who knows, I might end up being a techie yet? Not!

My SEO daily reads by the way are:

Google Webmaster Central Blog
Phoenixrealm
SEO by the SEA
SEO Book
SEOmoz Blog - Don't bother much with YouMoz since the excellent posts there are upgraded to the SEOmoze blog anyway.
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog


So many more blogs on my reading list, but these are the ones I find myself visiting most often. 

WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha brings out the geek in me! Woot!

Personalization

I just noticed that the header in Neopets looked like this.

To make sure that it wasn't Neopet's birthday but them greeting me a happy birthday in the cutest and least annoying way possible I logged out just to be sure. As I expected the header reverted back to the usual unadorned yellow color. Though it may be a small thing, as I've said I love commercial greetings. It is the small things like this that adds pleasant surprises to one's day and [in this case literally] adds more color to my life. I don't know about you but I think personalization rocks!

Off course I took a screenshot of this since it'll be gone in a few hours. I'm thinking of compiling a repository of Neopets' birthday skins over the years! Wish I had logged on every year during my birthday before so I'll know how long they've been doing this. Oh well maybe I'll shoot them an email just to satisfy my curiosity.

Changing Names and Hearbreaking News for Geeks

I found out from Twitter that Sara Morishige just got married to Twitter's c0-founder and chairman, Evan "evhead" Williams. Poor hubby. I don't think he'll be that blue about the whole thing though because he's been into Niniane lately.

What I'm wondering about though is if Sara will find it easy to transition to Sara Williams or if she'll do the hyphen thing like I sometimes do. I do the hyphen thing not because I don't want to use my hubby's name but I feel a little disloyal to my clan whenever I drop the Tasarra from my name. It's bad enough that the Balagtas, my mom's maiden name, has to be dropped. On a more practical note, I also use the hyphen because it makes it easier for past acquaintances to recognize my name on emails. If I use my new name some might go...Hannah who?...and then mark me as spam. If I were Sara I'd use the hyphen (Sara Morishige-Williams) just because it looks and sounds a lot cooler than plain Williams, which makes her sound like a tennis player (which isn't really bad either if you think about it). Anyway though they'll never read this. Congrats to Ev and Sara.

Sara Morishige in Vegas last year. Photo from Sara's Flickr.

Sara and Evhead in St Peter's Square. Photo from Evhead's Flickr.

Posting entries like this makes me realize how much I have turned into Mark's wife! How in the world would I know about these people otherwise?
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Update: Here's the link to Mark's short post on Sara and Evhead. I couldn't believe that was about 3 years ago!

Pal and Ubuntu

Just went to visit the Ubuntu website and look who I found in the new cd cover!
The guy on the lower right looks sooo much like Pal...cool.

For those who don't know about Ubuntu, it's a great Linux-based OS that I actually use sometimes (usually when Windows acts up and I have to reinstall and don't have time or an installer with me). Am thinking about going Ubuntu all the way though.

Ubuntu - an African word meaning "Humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are"

The software as the Ubuntu website says, "brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world." Uber cool.