Flaky Friday (F)Links

I’m now fully in the flaky phase of the tattoo process, and am losing large black/grey flakes at a pleasantly quick rate.

It’s really, really hard not to encourage the process, though, especially when (squick alert!) attached flakes are catching on my shirt at work.

Grody!

Sleeping has been rough since Saturday. When it was all raw and fresh, it just (ha!) hurt badly. Once it dried out, it hurt to do anything that stretched the skin, like lie on my stomach. Or lie on my side. Or relax my shoulder.

The winning solution for sleep so far is to use a small pillow under the front of my tattoo’d shoulder so I can sorta sleep on my stomach and keep the shoulder propped up. It’s not unlike my sleep solution for when I first hurt my shoulder, except that was on my back.

An even better solution (thanks, Angi!) was to switch from using lotion to using vitamin E oil. So soothing. Difficult to avoid overuse, though.

I’ve been conflicted between wanting all this to be over with–to just have a damn tattoo already–and enjoying the strangeness of what’s happening. Now that the pain’s mostly abated, I’m feeling more in-the-moment.

Anyway, in the midst of all of this, I’ve finally caught up on some innernet reading:

• Ex-CEO: Barclays Isn’t The Only Bank At Fault : NPR – "Barclays has admitted some of its traders submitted falsified information in attempt to manipulate that rate so it could pad their profits."

  And we'd just started to trust banks again… Actually, no we hadn't.

• Google Now Better Than Siri – Business Insider – "I was in San Francisco last week to cover Google I/O and meet with some other companies in the area. I had a meeting in Mountain View on Friday morning. Google Now sent me a notification about 45 minutes before my meeting that said I should leave if I wanted to make it on time. It even took traffic into account. Incredible."
• Hmm: EA On Steam/Origin Mega-Sales | Rock, Paper, Shotgun – "The trouble with DeMartini’s comments, for me, is not that he’s saying Steam or the publishers that do embrace mega-sales via it are wrong-headed. It’s that he’s talking about “cheapening intellectual property”, and he works for a company that’s quite happy to disregard Syndicate or Ultima’s heritage/value in favour of chasing the prevailing wind (rote FPS and F2P browser-strategy respectively), to rush out a sub-standard Dragon Age sequel, and to shut down multiplayer servers for games that its staff worked bloody hard to make after just a couple of years."

  Note that just a few days later, Origin offered a massive sale on some of their games. Cute.

• Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I’m Gay." – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast – Strangely, I only just heard of Anderson Cooper a week ago, in the context of his "my personal life isn't for public consumption" response, and Monday morning, this comes out.
• S.Lott-Software Architect: How to Write Crummy Requirements – “3. Silliness. "GUI". It's 2012. What non-GUI interfaces are left? Oh right. The GNU/Linux command line. Apply the reverse test: try "non-GUI" and see if you can even locate a product. Can't find the opposite? Don't waste time writing it down.”
• Orbitz Shows Mac Users Pricier Hotel Options: Big Deal Or No Brainer? : The Two-Way : NPR – "It makes sense, from an advertising standpoint, to target the apparently wealthy, ad-receptive, self-assured, high-spending contingent that buys Apple products. But what about those of us who irresponsibly purchased our iPhones on credit, have only been 'directors' of our own unemployment, and are only looking for the cheapest roadside motel in Devils Lake, North Dakota?"
• MoreDigital.com Scam Or Not? "Subject: Enquiry regarding …." Email! | SEO, Marketing Consulting, Entrepreneurship by Piotr Krzyzek – I get emails from MoreDigital.com, and got curious as to whether they were a scam. Their site looks legit, but their "cold call" is pretty generic. I found this post (and the linked followups) in my searches.