Archive for January, 2007Tonight, on Fresh Air, Terri Gross interviewed Colin Meloy of Decemberists fame. {edit} yipee! Fresh Air is now available in Podcast form, via iTunes I have to confess, today hasn’t gone too well. The website nightmare is yet unresolved, although it is finally coming back together. This fact might have accentuated my pleasure to see this week’s podcast of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” in iTunes, waiting to be heard. Missing from the list, because they don’t podcast: Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion It was supposed to be so simple: update to Wordpress 2.1. I updated a couple of weeks ago - nobody even noticed. That’s a good thing. {edit, Sunday Night} This has been a nightmare. I have now completely re-installed wordpress, and am working on updating / reinstalling all of the plugins. Then on to the theme: this is only temporary. I have to say: I will rejoice on the day when I can have blogging software that works well (and wordpress’s blogging software does) and also have a great photo gallery system. {edit, Monday evening} Okay, framework that holds the sidebar together, and allowed for some of content - Netflix info, Twitter, del.icio.us, etc - is broken and awaiting a fix by the developer. The Gallery program I was using is also being updated, but since it is such a massive program, and not properly a part of Wordpress, I am looking for a Photo Gallery replacement. So far, I have tested a few options, and have been dissatisfied. And his Snow-Art What a beautiful day for a bike ride, I thought. The last post covered the software I use the most, this one will cover the software - and also services - I think are worth shouting about. All of these are FREE!!
Wordpress: Wordpress is free. Wordpress is blogging software - this blog runs on Wordpress. Many others do to: The New York Times’ blogs do, as do the Wall Street Journal’s blogs and Willamette Week’s blog, so does Stephen Colbert’s blog. So: Wordpress is free and robust enough to handle massive amounts of traffic. Its also easy to use, and easy to customize. Oh, and its also open source, so you can feel good about using it. del.icio.us: del.icio.us is a service for storing your web bookmarks online. The advantages are plenti-fold (yes, I made that word up): 1. your bookmarks are searchable using keywords, this becomes more helpful as we amass more and more bookmarks. 2. your bookmarks are accessible on any computer, because they are not stored on your computer, but on the web. and, 3. your bookmarks are public, you can see your friends’ bookmarks, and they can see yours. My bookmarks are here, or you can see my most recent bookmarks listed in this site’s sidebar. Google Analytics: If you have a website (and most of my visitors do), then you probably want to know how many people visit, where they come from, and what they are interested in seeing when they visit. There are many “site statistics” solutions that give you that information - I think Google’s is better. And, as with most things, there is a plug-in for Wordpress sites. Twitter: Another “social web service” - heavy on the social. Here’s the gist of it: Sign up and create a few ways to let Twitter know what you are doing - via SMS, IM, or the web (or use Twitterific on the Mac) - the updates are limited to 160 characters, which encourages (requires) brief messages. Then, subscribe to your friend’s feeds. Here’s mine. Twitter is my best guess for the “next big web phenomena.” Flickr: Chances are, you’ve heard of Flickr, but I’ve got to get to Five and Flickr is still very cool If you haven’t, get with the program. Perhaps under-realized are the many ways in which Flickr’s database and services can be accessed without going through the website: Uploading tools (even for Aperture!), RSS feeds, and widgets galore! Growl / Quicksilver: I know, these are the sixth and seventh items, but until now I’ve only listed items than can by used by anybody - these are Mac only. Still, they are free. If you use a Mac, you owe it to yourself to check these out. Neither one is easily explainable, and both do seemingly mundane things - Growl is a notification system, quicksilver is an application launcher, but in both cases they do so much more. What else should be added to this list? A list my ten most used applications, roughly in order of use: 1: Safari. 2: Mail.
21
01
2007
The structure of political speech in AmericaPosted by: chris_layton in Grammar Patrol, Political MusingTonight I watched Al Gore’s, “An Inconvenant Truth,” and after watching it I declare that you should also watch it. His presentation is convincing and interesting: I can see why people have reacted favorably to the movie, and the version of Al Gore contained within. This, certainly, is not the same person that we saw as a politician. Uh, Acquiring a SUV doesn’t automatically make one a person who can drive in the snow. Apparently, this video was taken in the West Hills, today {edit: oops, the link is gone. Given the popularity of the video clip - being on national news and all - you’ve undoubtedly seen it anyway}  It is funny (and others) to me how quickly the city of Portland shuts down at just a hint of snow. Still, as rarely as snow happens, its probably not bad to have a snow day now and again. The snow does give me an excuse to use my camera, as if I needed one. |
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