I’ve been using it for awhile now and my profile is http://getglue.com/mrheadrick. It’s kind of cheesy but it’s fun and addictive (surprise.. I get addicted to things easily). You’ll also notice to the right (if you’re looking at my blog’s main page and it’s still there) a GetGlue widget that shows my latest check-ins. As you check into, like, or review items you unlock stickers. Some stickers are always available, such as the Ice Cream Superfan while others are only available for a limited time such as a TV special or while a movie is in the theaters. To date I have earned 220 stickers. At the moment, after every 20 stickers you’ve earned, they will mail physical copies to you. So far I have received 4 batches of GetGlue stickers. They are about 1.5 inches in diameter.

So far I’ve been pretty much on the up-and-up and only check into items that I am actually watching, listening to, eating (yes, you can check into food and drinks), or doing.  There seem to be some that just check into things to get the stickers as there’s not enough hours in the day to watch all those shows LOL.

As of this moment, it has the ability to send updates to your Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts and you can check which, if any, to update with each check-in. There is a GetGlue API that I’ll hopefully be able to figure out at some point to allow my Winamp now-playing script to automatically check into artists with song title and album information. Doing it manually is somewhat of a chore LOL.

Anyway, check it out and you might get addicted to it like I have. I think the fact that it’s unique and not trying to be another Facebook, like Google+, helps.

On the way home, I rubbed it with a Shout Wipe stain remover they had in the truck and then tossed it into the washer when I got home. When it came out of the dryer, all I managed to do was just make a bigger darker area in the shirt. “Look ma! A new truck rag!” LOL. I tossed the shirt on the dryer and there it sat until I did laundry again which was a few days ago. So, it just sat there for some time.

While was I doing laundry, I looked at the shirt, looked at the bottle of Dawn on the sink and decided why not. You know, “Dawn, it takes grease out of the way!”, or whatever their slogan is. So, I squirted some on the spot, lathered it up, and tossed it in with the rest of that load.

When I took the shirt out and looked to see what the damage was this time, I was actually shocked that it was completely gone! Hot damn! It worked! LOL

So now, not only is Dawn the only thing I clean my glasses with (the kind I wear on my face to see with.. those alcohol things just spread the gunk around), it will be my most frequently used pre-wash stain remover now.  Yeah, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal, but it was for me at the moment.

I was born with one (maybe more) of the muscles in my left-eye missing or otherwise defective. As such, that eye was pointing to the side. This generally results in what is called a lazy-eye. I went through 5 eye surgeries by the time I was 5 years old. I also happen to suffer from astigmatism.

Due to my sight issues occurring at such a young age, my brain essentially re-wired itself to deal with it and how I see is perfectly normal to me. 75% of what I see in my field of vision is my right eye. When I close my left eye, I only loose a certain part to the left of me, basically, what my right eye doesn’t physically see (the nose kinda gets in the way LOL). However, what I see does not shift any.  Now, when I close my right eye, things change a lot. My brain lets my left eye now “see” what my brain had only been processing from my right eye and images shift to the right and down.

Because of this non-convergence in my eye-sight, none of this 3D stuff works with me. With those red and blue glasses I either saw all red stuff or all blue stuff. The images simply do not combine to form a single image. Needless to say, I will not be buying any 3D HDTVs, 3D DVD/Blu-Ray players, or watch any 3D television networks.

Thank god Avatar was released in a 2D version at the local AMC theater; otherwise, I would have skipped it. If you look now, you’ll notice that only the 3D versions are still playing there.

My only hope is that movie studios keep releasing 2D versions of their movies. Well, the ones worth seeing anyway LOL.

June 6th.. well, not only is today D-Day, it’s also my B-Day. I turn 40 today! ACK!

The following music video also mentions the date June 6th:

Convoy

Yeah.. that’s about all I have to say for now LOL. I’m tired.

(Update 12/21/2009: With the release of Winamp 5.57, the Now Playing Plug-In version 2.1.2 I discuss below started to cause Winamp to crash. I found a new plug-in and discuss it here.)

I use Winamp to play my music with: MP3s, MIDI, MOD files, Internet Radio and so on. I also use the Winamp Now Playing Plug-In version 2.1.2 which interfaces with a PHP script on my website to create now-playing images, and a list of the past 10 songs I have listened to. The plug-in is rather old and it’s amazing it even still works with the current version of Winamp. It does seem to exhibit one rather odd and maddening behavior that has taken a while to track down.

The behavior manifests itself when playing a URL playlist stream (which are typically from Shoutcast) such as this one from Club 977 Music: http://www.club977.com/CLUB977HI.pls. When it first starts playing, the Now Playing Plug-in will always see the first song that is played and update the images and lists accordingly; however, it would not always recognize changes in the song title when a new song started playing. This was, of course, annoying. Over time I seemed to notice a pattern and today I tested it out and here are my findings:

1. If I start Winamp with a classic skin such as Bento Classified or the standard classic skin that comes with Winamp, the plug-in will recognize song title changes as the stream plays. If I then switch to a different classic or modern skin while Winamp is running, it will continue to work.
2. If I start Winamp with a modern skin (Winamp Modern, Bento, etc.), the plug-in will NOT recognize song title changes as the stream plays, even if I change to a classic skin.

So, the key is to always close Winamp with a classic skin loaded so that it will start with that skin and the Now Playing Plug-in will work. The work-around is simple enough but figuring out what was going on was a bit maddening. If you use this plug-in then, hopefully, you’ll find this useful.

Since Winamp does not provide tech support for 3rd-party plug-ins, I’m not going to bother to find out exactly why it acts this way. At least I now know how to keep it working.