Best Of StumbleUpon

I would have loved to have been there to pick his brain! I was a little disappointed at how lame some of the questions from the audience were. Some people were just asking for small business advice and stuff and I was like “meh go google it newb” but Garrett was of course very friendly and dished out tidbits of advice to those who asked. He talked about how exactly StumbleUpon makes its revenue which I know has been a long time curiosity of many active and nosy users!

Melanie Wells who conducted the interview dissed on Garrett’s clothes which was meant to be funny I guess? It came off as rude from my perspective though, she was obviously jealous that Garrett went straight from college to creating and running StumbleUpon, I thought she was going to swallow her own face when he mentioned how during the period that eBay owned SU he experienced “having a boss for the first time” since he had “never had a job before”. Melanie was obviously a little bit elitist and ended up totally coming off like she thought she was too good to be doing that interview or something which kind of cracked me up because it just made Garrett seem even more charming when he took her grainy personality with a smile. Good job Garrett.

StumbleUpon is throwing a huge party to celebrate getting their 10 millionth user and they want you to come! There will be drinks and Dj’s and a chance to win one of 5 iPads! SU really knows how to throw a party so don’t miss out! RSVP with Facebook and put your party hat on!

Thursday | June 17 | 8pm
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco
21 and over, No Cover
Google Map!

There will be cool giveaways, dancing and loads of fun! If you don’t have an SU tshirt to wear to the party, you can grab one below! Take pictures in the GQ photobooth with all the cool people you meet and then come back and post them here!

Design a personalized gift at Zazzle.

You may recall my post from last month when I first discussed Traveling Star Stumblers, this is another installment of Stumblers going around the world! Today I bring you Setabnevets aka Steven from Australia, who on his trip around the world stopped off to visit several other Stumblers!

His first flight on his epic journey was to Los Angeles, CA but the trip first began on Stumbleuopon, where he invited friends from SU to welcome him into their homes as he made his way around the planet. The following is a quote from his SU page:

New Update (August 22) Well it’s all underway now, Booked my flight yesterday… Leaving for LA on the 12th of September. I intend to explore the West coast of America, the start on the middle bits moving southward. Then from Florida flying down to Brazil & maybe other parts of Sth America. Then back up exploring the East coast, then over to the UK & Europe, & maybe Russia etc. Possibly South Africa New Zealand & then back home, Some six months or so later. Of course I may not get to every place I would like. I have been studying maps & have discovered that Planet Earth is very large.

If you are one of those who were kind enough to invite me to your home, would you please email me your address, phone numbers & any other contact information.

The Stumblers did just that! Setabnevets received an overwhelming amount of invitations to come stay in various countries with other Stumblers! Of course he was very busy along the way but he did stop off and log into SU every now and then to tell us where he was and who he was currently playing with from SU land! The first of such updates informed us that he had already been to Wilmington, Delaware, New York City, New burgh, Sara toga Springs, Houston Texas, New Orleans, Nashville Tennessee and back and forth between a few!

Here he is in Oxnard, CA With Guitargirl from StumbleUpon:

Steven has an open ended invitation to return and here is a bit of what she had to say about his visit:

Steven chose one of the busiest weeks of our lives to come visit! During the time he was here, he attended a flute recital, a high school football game (Rachel plays with the marching band), a jazz jam session, and joined us on a 3 day camping trip at Lake Cachuma.

While I was at work during the day, Steven cleaned my back patio, worked on my lawn, cleaned up my patio furniture (which I thought was junk – now it is beautiful!), and helped out with the kids. He picked Vaughan up from school and made sure he did his homework. Steven did all this while recovering from a horrible case of jetlag.

He sounds like a wonderful guest!! I wonder if he plans to do this again sometime? It was clearly a success!

Here he is with Akapearlofagirl:

With honkytonkyme:

Some of you may know fellow Stumbler setabnevets and that he’s on a world tour. He’s in Nashville this week and we’ve just enjoyed a night out on the town. Went out for dinner and to hear some music.

With fontanelle in December:

“My world stumbling is in my 4th month now. I still cant believe its happening”

British Airways lost my baggage
Jan 15
I have been in London for 8 days waiting for my baggage.
My daughter joins me in London today, flying to Germany on Saturday.

Although his trip wasn’t without its strife, I do believe he had a wonderful time! There is plenty more to this story so make sure to click through! Read the rest of this entry »

Browse other personalized gifts from Zazzle.

I wonder if someone over at SU staff saw my post about the Traveling Star Stumblers from a couple weeks ago? The reason I ponder this is because this neat little blog post popped up on their official StumbleUpon blog today, which is how I found the link for those super cool tshirts to share with you guys! There are also some great tips on how to customize vacation research with the use of your StumbleUpon account, fantastic stuff!

It was a cool day in Paris but you would never know it from our photograph. We braved the wind and cold to show off our new StumbleUpon Tshirts. When we were asked if we would like to have a couple of their new stylish shirts to take along with us during our travels we happily accepted.

We were surprised to see just how subtle the logos on the t-shirts were. They were even nice enough for us to wear around Paris and feel right in place with the good looking Parisians. So where did we head to first with our new duds?

The Eiffel Tower of course!

What a terrific example of fun and stumbling! These two invite you to join them on their travels! You can check out their amazing blog full of stories and photographs featured above or go visit them on their SU blog featured below.

Dave and Deb are an adventure couple that loves to travel. They want to network with other travelers and travel writers/photographers.

Canada’s Adventure Couple! Aren’t they just down right adorable?!? Well I think so! I will surely be keeping my eye on them from now on! It is always a treat to run across a unique set of Stumbler’s like this couple!

As many of you know StumbleUpon recently went through another big change and as a result many of the bloggers took to the internet streets in search of better blogging avenues, which they found, in some cases.

Tumblr was flooded with droves of SU lovers turned rogue back when SU decided to eliminate the tag cloud, the tag cloud is back now but people were already hooked on Tumblr by the time StumbleUpon reimplemented the it, plus there is still a lot of features “missing” in the new SU that are readily available in places like Tumblr.

Personally, I think Tumblr is great if you just want to photoblog and reblog and reblog… If you know where to look you will find some really cool tumblr blog containing original content but for the most part its just a photo re-blogging session, which is fine, if that is what you like. Either way most of the people who joined Tumblr from StumbleUpon are still on SU so it isn’t like SU lost anything, in fact I think they like it because it created an awful lot of inlinks back to StumbleUpon.

Here are some links to Stumbler’s turned Tumbr’s:

Check some of them out and then tell me what you think!

This month’s featured stumbler is Harrystottle, a Stumbler from from Bristol, England, UK.

I first learned of him when a story he wrote came through my stumble button. I spent some time exploring his external blog and enjoying his writings before I discovered he was actually a stumbler and then I really got excited! He has some very interesting views on politics, religion (particularly atheism) and a fantastic sense of humor! I like the way his mind works, he is intelligent and thought provoking. His spelling and grammar isn’t always perfect but I enjoy reading him none the less and besides nobody is perfect, after all it is our imperfections that make us wonderful.

Below is an excerpt from the story that first got me hooked, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Talking to God…

I met god the other day.

I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?

Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.

Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!

It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington. Got myself a nice window seat, no screaming brats or drunken hooligans within earshot. Not even a mobile phone in sight. Sat down, reading the paper and in he walks.

What did he look like?

Well not what you might have expected that’s for sure. He was about 30, wearing a pair of jeans and a “hobgoblin” tee shirt. Definitely casual. Looked like he could have been a social worker or perhaps a programmer like myself.

‘Anyone sitting here?’ he said.

‘Help yourself’ I replied.

Sits down, relaxes, I ignore and back to the correspondence on genetic foods entering the food chain…

Train pulls out and a few minutes later he speaks.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

Fighting to restrain my left eyebrow I replied ‘Yes’ in a tone which was intended to convey that I might not mind one question, and possibly a supplementary, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. ..

‘Why don’t you believe in god?’

The Bastard!

I love this kind of conversation and can rabbit on for hours about the nonsense of theist beliefs. But I have to be in the mood! It’s like when a Jehovah’s witness knocks on your door 20 minutes before you’re due to have a wisdom tooth pulled. Much as you’d really love to stay… You can’t even begin the fun. And I knew, if I gave my standard reply we’d still be arguing when we got to Cardiff. I just wasn’t in the mood. I needed to fend him off.

But then I thought ‘Odd! How is this perfect stranger so obviously confident – and correct – about my atheism?’ If I’d been driving my car, it wouldn’t have been such a mystery. I’ve got the Darwin fish on the back of mine – the antidote to that twee christian fish you see all over. So anyone spotting that and understanding it would have been in a position to guess my beliefs. But I was on a train and not even wearing my Darwin “Evolve” tshirt that day. And ‘The Independent’ isn’t a registered flag for card carrying atheists, so what, I wondered, had given the game away.

‘What makes you so certain that I don’t?’

‘Because’, he said, ‘ I am god – and you are not afraid of me’

You’ll have to take my word for it of course, but there are ways you can deliver a line like that – most of which would render the speaker a candidate for an institution, or at least Prozac. Some of which could be construed as mildly amusing.

Conveying it as “indifferent fact” is a difficult task but that’s exactly how it came across. Nothing in his tone or attitude struck me as even mildly out of place with that statement. He said it because he believed it and his rationality did not appear to be drug induced or the result of a mental breakdown.

‘And why should I believe that?’

‘Well’ he said, ‘why don’t you ask me a few questions. Anything you like, and see if the answers satisfy your skeptical mind?’

This is going to be a short conversation after all, I thought.

‘Who am I?’

‘Stottle. Harry Stottle, born August 10 1947, Bristol, England. Father Paul, Mother Mary. Educated Duke of Yorks Royal Military School 1960 67, Sandhurst and Oxford, PhD in Exobiology, failed rock singer, full time trade union activist for 10 years, latterly self employed computer programmer, web author and aspiring philosopher. Married to Michelle, American citizen, two children by a previous marriage. You’re returning home after what seems to have been a successful meeting with an investor interested in your proposed product tracking anti-forgery software and protocol and you ate a full english breakfast at the hotel this morning except that, as usual, you asked them to hold the revolting english sausages and give you some extra bacon. ‘

He paused

‘You’re not convinced. Hmmm… what would it take to convince you?’

‘oh right! Your most secret password and its association’

A serious hacker might be able to obtain the password, but no one else and I mean

NO ONE

knows its association.

He did.

So how would you have played it? [[Finish the story]]

“We take a closer look at the science behind the Haiti earthquake of 12th January 2009 – as well as other earthquakes. For the first time here on GSGE we interview leading experts;

Prof. Timothy Dixon from Geodesy Lab at University of Miami: published an article already back in 1998 revealing the risks of earthquakes in Haiti. He works with both Paul Mann from University of Texas who in 2008 confirmed that the risks were eminent, and Eric Calais, Purdue University who manages the GPS network that monitor tectonic plate movements in Haiti. These three groups have sent geodesists with GPS equipment, to Haiti where they gather data that will reveal the crustal movements caused by the quake. You can follow this National Science Foundation funded team via their blog.

Ass. Prof. William Hammond from University of Nevada in Reno: Explains how they use GPS to monitor plate movements – and earthquake swarms. Bill Hammond also appears in National Geographic’s Naked Science: Earthquake Swarms.

Dr. Amir Kaynia from the International Centre for Geohazards in Oslo, Norway: Talks about the difference between predictions and early warning and discuss other geohazards connected to earthquakes.” More on this

This month’s Star Stumbler Pick is Stellare an Earth science expert and astrophysicist interested in Earth observation, geodesy, climate change, geohazards, water cycle and other science related topics.

Check out her Flickr photostream, its worth it, she has  some really cool pictures of the moon and skies. She resides in Åsa, Norway so there are some pretty neat pictures of areas near where she lives and works as well as shots from her travels such as her most recent trip to San Francisco but don’t stop there, make sure to thoroughly comb her SU blog so you don’t miss out on all the wonderful links to incredibly cool science and astronomy websites and  links to her other blogs!

Oh and by the way, hers is the voice you hear in the video at the top of this post!