So I mention various bits of geekery on different websites like twitter and then end up having to explain it and often times I think, “HEY YOU! YOU SHOULD BlOG THAT!” So I’m going to start tying to be better about letting you all know about cool things as I come across them

First up: bit.ly

Bit.ly is a great little web app similar to tinyurl. Only on steroids. When you create an account and log in, it does cool stuff like keep track of your most recent shortened urls so that you can go back and easily find them to post other places.

That’s not really what I’m wanting to tell you about. I know that a lot of my readers are really into twitter and THANK GOD because how else am I supposed to stalk you all?! Well, bit.ly had this awesome FireFox plugin that makes surfing twitter so much more fantastic.

Here are three of the many reasons it rocks hardcore.

#1 - Follow conversations! It makes following conversation much easier. When you see that somebody has “in reply to *username*” at the bottom of their tweet you can mouse over it and it will pop up a little box that shows you the tweet it’s in reply to. See the screenshot below:

#2 - Picture preview! If you upload a picture to any of the most popular twitter image apps, like twitpic then then when you mouse over the link it pops up a thumbnail preview of the image before you click on it. This is especially great if NSFW images are a problem. Not that they necessarily would be since SURELY you wouldn’t follow anybody that would do that!

#3 - Information overload! This is actually a pretty dang cool feature. When you mouseover any bit.ly link (and some other tiny links) then the box pops up and gives you some pretty cool information. Mainly, it shows the number of time that the link has been clicked. But it goes further! If you click the more information button it redirects you to a page on the bit.ly site that has a wealth of information about your link including where the clicks are happening, the country and if it’s a blog post, it will even list comment responses to the blog and any other backlinks to the post. Here is an example from a tweet I made earlier today about a techcrunch article.

By clicking the “more information” link I can see that it’s been clicked 55 times, 3 other people on twitter tweeted the same link, 0 people posted it on friendfeed and a short preview of all the comments on the techcruch article.

Here is an example of a tweet that ijustine made earlier today:

So, if you use Firefox (YOU SHOULD) and twitter (YOU BETTER*) then bit.ly is just something you are going to have to have. So go get it now!

*And also, if I’m not following you already, leave me your username so I can.

When I first heard about Etsy I wasn’t thinking it would be quite as GODDAMN FABULOUS as it is. Seriously. I pictured a bunch of old ladies posting the scarves and mittens they’d made while sitting in a retirement home sipping tea. I. WAS. SO. WRONG.

When I had finally heard about it more times than I could stand I went to check it out for myself… and four hour later I woke up in a pool of drool and shaking a little. It’s addicting. Seriously, try going to that site and spending less than an hour browsing at all of the amazing stuff. It’s IMPOSSIBLE. It’s an endless pool of awesome creations and originality and a simple search for “scarf” will turn up 1261 pages of scarves. 1261! I’m pretty sure that I’ve looked at EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE.

That first time, when I woke up in a pool of drool, the first thing I thought to do was check my PayPal account to see how much damage I had done and, thankfully, I only managed to buy one scarf in my binge. It was the scarf you see in the picture there from Sweetcheex76’s shop. When it came in the mail it was even better than the description had made it out to be. It’s SO SOFT and thick and I every single time I wear it out in public I get a compliment on it. Actually, I can’t wait till it gets cool enough to start wearing again. Not only that, but it’s the first item I bought that made me want to learn to knit myself which has become a hobby I’ve really found myself loving.

I’m going to start posting more of my awesome Etsy finds here. I’ve honestly never ordered something I didn’t absolutely love and would recommend ANY of the shops I’ve purchased from and thought that I should share that with the world so you too can surround yourselves with all the pretty handmade goodies your Paypal account can handle.

Rating:

When we moved into the NEW HOUSE we realized that we were seriously lacking in some very necessary tools. Things like lawn mowers and garden sheers and my favorite so far: the ever popular wet/dry vac. Ben did some research but we decided to just head on down to Home Depot to take a look at some of them first hand. We’re on a first name basis now with the folks in the Tool Corral at our local Home Depot.

We were originally going to get the 12 gallon version of this vac for around $80 but the awesome gentleman in the Tool Corral pointed us to the RIDGID 16 Gallon Detachable Blower Wet/Dry Vac that as ALSO a BLOWER for just $90! I was really glad later that day as we sucked the pond in our back yard dry that we had gone with the 16 gallon version. We had the entire thing emptied in about an hour and BOY CAN THIS THING SUCK UP SOME WATER. It was amazing. And it wasn’t just water, it was three week old, uncirculated, stagnant, awful smelling water that was full of muck and grime and other scary living things I won’t be mentioning… all without a single hiccup.

The next day I used it to start sucking up the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of tiny yellow flowers that have dropped every day from the tree in the back yard. The entire yard has been blanketed in them and it had absolutely no problem sucking them off the ground and between the rocks of the pond. Ben also used the detachable blower to move some of the other yard clippings into more manageable piles. The blower is very easy to use and can be detached and reattached with a single hand and once reattached turns immediately back into a vac. The 20 foot cord allowed him to work a pretty good portion of our smaller backyard but he did need an extension cord to get into the side yards.

Wet or dry, there was nothing that the vac COULDN’T do for us. I’m sure that it will get weekly use in projects as we work to fix up the house.

The only reason I’m giving it 4.5 stars out of 5 is because the wheels make it a bit of a pain to move around our back yard’s stone walkway. I think that a beefier wheel, like something you’d find on a razer scooter or rollerblades, would make it much more manageable over a more bumpy terrain.

Rating:

Like most good geeks I downloaded and installed the iPhone 2.0 software yesterday and then downloaded EVERY SINGLE FREE APP AVAILABLE (and one paid app). Special thanks to TechCrunch for being on top of things and posting all downloads and links early. The app store is awesome. So far I’m pretty happy with most apps, especially the AIM, Twitterific, and the Faceobook app.

AND!

[StarWarsGeekGirl]

PhoneSaber! That was the first app I showed Ben. I’ve played with this app far too much. I can’t help it. I chased the cat around this morning and it was an epic battle that ended with him fleeing with his tail between his legs. HA!

Okay, I’ll stop now.

[/StarWarsGeekGirl]

The Facebook app is CRAZY fantastic and the developers should be very proud. It’s like a contact list on steroids. From now on instead of asking for a phone number to put into my phone I’m just gonna say “Add me on Facebook!” I’ve never really gotten fully into the Facebook craze even though I have a lot of friends that use it. Having to log in EVERY TIME I visit and the cluttered feeling have kept me away. Now that this is available, I expect that I’ll be much more active in that community… because, you know, what I really need is ANOTHER online community to become addicted to.

One thing I’d really love to see is a way to push info from Facebook to our contact lists, that would be the ultimate in coolness. GET ON THAT DEVELOPERS! kthxbye.

Twitterific is SO VERY PRETTY. I felt kind of bad for ditching Hahlo so quickly (for about 2.4 seconds) then The Pretty won me over. Twitterific is so easy to read and very well laid out for @replies and the integrated Safari browser with the option to also open in the browser for bookmarking was GENIUS. They really captured what twitter users want, I’d say better than even twitter does.

Now, if WordPress can just get it’s app out, I’ll be the happiest little blogger geek. From what I’ve seen though it will be awesome too. Easy to post, integrate pictures from the iPhone gallery on the fly, etc. It, combined with Typepad’s already available app, will take mobile blogging to the next level. It will be cool to see people doing more real time blogging of events.

I won’t be getting a 3G anytime soon because we close on the house today and we can’t really afford to be spending the money on new toys but a little part of me is happy that I got the App Store 24 hours before the 3G users. And my phone will always have the pretty metal back that I’ll flash around like a badge of geeky honor.

Rating:

I bought this laptop November of 2007. I hit refresh on the refurbished Dell website about 562,226,529,526 times and there was ONE laptop that met all the requirements I had. As soon as it popped up I called Ben and tried to act like my brain was not in the process of exploding RIGHT THEN AND THERE because OH MY GOD I WANT THIS LAPTOP and he ordered it for me right away. *swoon*

First things first! Lets get the specifications out there:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)
• 160 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• 15.4 inch WSXGA+ Notebook Screen with TrueLife (1680 x 1050)
• 8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability
• 9 Cell Primary Battery
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
• 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHz (2 DIMMs)
• Intel 4965 802.11a/g/n Dual-Band Mini Card

I seriously love this laptop. So far there hasn’t been a single program I’ve thrown at it that it hasn’t been able to handle. Graphic intensive games like World of Warcraft, Sims2 and City of Heroes play with no problem at all. PhotpshopCS3 loads quickly and even with 3-5 rather large RAW images open at the same time, there are little to no hangups. The only program I’ve run into that causes a bit of lag has been DxO Optics Pro but that is a REALLY memory and processing intensive program.

I wasn’t too sure about the glossy screen at first but for game play and photo manipulation, it’s absolutely perfect and even in outside sunny environments it’s brightness has been enough to allowe me to browse and watch movies.

Of course, this decreases battery life but I opted for the larger 9-cell battery for that reason. I sat at an America’s Tire for THREE HOURS while they worked on my car and played games with Cassidy and surfed the internet at full brightness before I started to get low. The batter does stick out a bit in the back but I’ve not had a problem getting it to fit into a standard 14 inch bag or backpack.

With the 160GB hard drive, DVD read/writer and built in wireless it’s been everything I wanted and MORE. As a matter of fact, it’s been so awesome, that we bought Ben one in black. His and hers.

The best part was that because I got a refurbished laptop, I save over $600 when compared to the same machine built on Dell’s main website. Several people have been surprised to learn that its a refurb because there’s not a scratch or mark on it anywhere. It looks like a brand new unit.

So if you are in the market for a new laptop (or monitor, or desktop, or printer for that matter) anytime soon, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the refurbished Dell website before you make your final purchase.

Rating:

Many people have different opinions on when Summer starts. For some, it’s when you have to break out the shorts and tank tops. For some it’s when you have to put away the knee high socks for the year. For many, many kids all across the country it’s the last day of school.

For me? It’s when I start noticing softball size clumps of hair in every corner and crevice of the house. Every. Single. Crevice.

Fighting the fur is something that I’ve been doing for, well, for the 29 years I’ve been alive because that’s how long I’ve been in love with my kitties. When we had carpet in the house I used to think that hardwood floors would be SO MUCH BETTER for cats. Now that we have hard wood floors, I realize that the cat fur is just more noticeable now! There isn’t any mat and thread to hide it. It sits there in front of the TV, staring at you, mocking you. You get up to clean it and before you can sit back down there are three more clumps, each one bigger than the last.

NOT THIS YEAR THOUGH! I was reading Dooce awhile back and she linked to a fabulous devise called The Furminator. I don’t know what makes this brush so damn awesome and I can’t explain to you at all how it works, but I can tell you that’s it’s the BEST DAMN FUR BRUSH EVER. On the website it says that is grabs the undercoat which is what makes it so effective since it the undercoat that cats shed in the warmer months.

In one five minute session I can pull more hair off the cats then I would in days and days and hours and hours of brushing with any of the hundreds of brushes I’ve owned before. Seriously, that picture there was the result of about 6 minutes of brushing and that was before I really had the hang of using it. Now that I’ve taken the time to watch the video on the website, I’m much more efficient and get loads more hair each time I use it.

It’s absolutely amazing to me how much fur there is hiding in that undercoat. It’s endless. It’s enough to knit my entire extended family scarves for the winter. The nice thing is that as long as I brush them each once a week, the fur that moocks me from all the little crevices of the house has been greatly reduced. When they start showing back up again, I grab the brush and attack each one of them and they go away again.

If you have a cat, and it has fur, then this brush is something you simply MUST own. Go get one, NOW. They’re a bit more expensive then the standard brush but after one use you’ll gladly have paid twice the amount.

Rating:

Awhile ago, Caitlin started a thread over on Lavish about how people drink their tea and me, being kind of a n00b to the tea scene was like, uhh… In a glass?!

Oh how little I knew back then (like two weeks ago). But seriously, that was before I discovered Adagio and my life at this point could end and I’d be completely content because dude, I have drank the Elixir of Everlasting Happiness and it is lemon grass looseleaf tea.

After I received my order I vowed to try at least one new tea a day and this was REALLY EASY because I found myself making at least three glasses a day. Each flavor was like a whole new fabulous discover. Each very different but VERY VERY good. So far the herbal tea’s have been my favorite. The peppermint makes me really unproductive at work because I keep sticking my nose above my mug to breathe in it’s wonderfulness.

I very big part of this process and getting the teas to steep as perfectly as they do is the IngenuiTEA steeper but that’s a product that deserves it’s own review because I could go on and on about JUST the steeper. I might eventually end up doing a review on the individual tea types but for now I just had to get the secret out there.

You can pick up the steeper and a starter set of teas (GET THE HERBAL! TRUST M!) for $20 and both times I’ve ordered I received my tea a day later! If you decide to try it out, drop me an an email and I’ll forward you a $5 coupon making your initial purchase of the steeper and the tea only $15. Now you have no reason NOT to try it.

Rating:

So I figured that my first real review should be something that I’ve been spending time on lately and City of Heroes (CoH) made perfect sense. I actually just got back into CoH about two months ago. I can only really handle one MMORPG at a time and since I was playing World of Warcraft (WoW) with Ben, CoH was put on the back burner for awhile.

POWERS:
Like all MMORPG’s you get the fantastic sense of community, the drive to take yourself further in the game, a great time playing a fun game and the satisfactions for getting to the next level. Unlike some other MMORPG’s what you don’t get is horribly complex game play. When playing WoW, you get power after power piled onto you pretty quickly and keeping track of what they all do, the order to use them, the combination that works best and be REALLY daunting. But in CoH, you get ONE new power every two level ups so you have more time to use them and how best to incorporate them into your already developed game play.

GENRE:
The thing that immediately sold me on CoH was the futuristic or more modern day genre. I love me some trolls and warlocks but getting to battle common day gangs and stop mad scientists from producing the next big biological weapon is a lot of fun and keeps me much more entertained. Modern modes of travel are great too. Getting to ride a tram and not having to wait for a bird to fly you to the other end of the Earth is nice. Although, I used to like to use Griffon rides in WoW for things like bathroom and drink breaks or getting to explore new areas from above. You don’t reallu get that in CoH till you can fly yourself at a higher lever. Still, flight = awesome. Especially now that you get wings! Which leads me to my next topic:

CLOTHES:
Probably the one thing that really sets the ease of use apart from games like WoW, is the costume in CoH. In WoW you have to purchase clothes to up you mana, defense, to hit, crit etc. You outfit will literally make or break your character. It is the polar opposite in CoH where your costume is just that, a costume. And outfit. A way to look pretty. You get one default costume and you earn more by doing missions and as you level up. I generally have seriously outlandish “hero” costume, and another for my “alter ego”. You don’t have to constantly fight over dropped items and travel to distant lands and spend all your dough in the auction house to be able to run one certain instance.

The things I listed are just the most common, simple examples. If you are looking into an entry level MMORPG and want something that’s not going to suck up ALL your spare time, I highly recommend giving City of Heroes a shot. And when you get in, look me up! I’m on Virtue Server playing as one of the following:

Antigone - Level 34 Science Defender
Antig0ne - Level 13 Science Defender
Aflux - Level 8 Science Blaster
a-flux - Level 6 Science Defender
Fluxer - Level 11 Science Tanker
a.flux - Level 14 Science Controller
fluxe - Level 11 Science Scrapper
sylaa - Level 8 Technology Blaster

PS - I like science because I know where all the enhancement stores are!

&nbsp

Rating:

Hello all, and welcome to Sylaa.net. I’ve wanted to have a blog to review products I love, or don’t love, for quite some time now and decided that now was THE TIME. Between my horrible impulse control when shopping and relentless need to tell everybody my opinion, I think that I’ll have plenty of reviews up in no time. Everything from toothbrushes and nail polish to makeup and hair products to motherboards and MMORPG’s.

Opinions on all the things you love and possibly some you’ve never even heard of. If you are a girl, a geek, a girly girl or both, I think that you’ll find something you love here. And, you’ll also be welcome to express YOUR opinion. Whether you agree or not, I want to hear what YOU have to say too.

The first review is on the way soon!