The Cranking Widgets Blog

The Twitter Drinking Game

Let me be honest with you – last week’s drinking game (in honor of Friday Fun) that dealt with the television show House, M.D. was, frankly, a dud. I did my best, but it kind of sucked. So, I’m here to redeem myself with a little pre-Friday Friday Fun. That said, let’s [...]

The House, M.D. Drinking Game

< ?php if(!is_home()) { ?>

Like watching surgeons do their thing? You can watch a lot closer with a Surgical Technician degree.

< ?php } ?>

Some of you may remember the moderately popular Law & Order Drinking Game from a few months back. Sitting around with my wife coming up with marginally esoteric (yet regular enough [...]

365 (or so) Merlin Mannerisms

Everybody’s favorite productivity eccentric has agreed to have a whole slew of quotes published as a “Quote of the Day” calendar for 2008!
Not to sound like a fanboy, but I find Merlin to be an immensely entertaining guy, as I’m sure many of you do as well. Not to be encumbered by traditional thinking [...]

Celebrating Cranking Widgets’ First Birthday

Sure doesn’t seem like it, but today marks the one year anniversary of the first post on this here blog. Wow.
I must admit, this blog is doing better than I would’ve imagined way back then. We’re doing a respectable 3K+ subscribers and roughly a thousand pageviews per day. And while that’s child’s [...]

How to Talk to a Toddler

I’ll be honest – before I became a parent, I had a hell of a time interacting with small children. Kids who were still in the midst of learning to talk, but had learned a few words and used them frequently (and, not surprisingly, sometimes incorrectly). Tell me if this situation sounds familiar…
You [...]

How I Almost Sent my iPod to Nigeria

Having been a computer guy for many years, I’ve had surprisingly little interaction with eBay. I’ve just never had much use for it, as I don’t generally sell things and prefer to buy things new. A seasoned eBay user is, I would imagine, accustomed to all the regular scams and such that are [...]

Back Online After the Digg Assault

Just a quick one – the previous post (The Definitive Guide to Covering Your Ass) hit the digg homepage 2 days ago, which promptly brought this little blog to it’s knees. After several go-rounds with my webhost’s support staff, things seem to be back to normal.
Anyway, apologies for those who tried to get here [...]

Why Digg and Reddit are Doomed (and Metafilter Isn’t)

I’d hardly call myself an internet journeyman or anything, but I’ve been around “the cloud” for several years now. In that time, I’ve learned a few things about people, specifically how they act on said web. Frankly, the Internet has a way of unraveling some of the best and brightest (as well as [...]

So I Got a New Tattoo…

Nothing productivity-related here, kids. But I got a new tattoo last night (first one in about 10 months or so):

Nora, for those of you who don’t know, is my little girl (almost 4 months old already – sheesh).
And if you want to see a nearly-exhaustive gallery of my tattoos, you can do [...]

State of the Blog

When I started this blog all those months ago, I really had no idea it would do as well as it has. We have a pretty respectable number of feed subscribers and page views and consistently high-quality comments. Among all of the fantastic productivity-themed blogs out there, I like to think we’ve carved [...]