Where the Sidewalk Begins ...

Feeling a Little Justified ...

Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm mostly micro-blogging anymore. Truth be told, I'm swamped with so many things - from work to wine to travel - as well as maintaining the Wine Blog and the Write Tech blog, that all I have time to do is Twitter.

Now I feel a bit better. It's not just me. According to this AFP article, microblogging fits into people's lives, and is taking off with the help of mobile devices.

"Blogging has evolved and become more formalized," said Yahoo Design Pattern Library curator Christian Crumlish, author of social networking book "The Tower of Many."

"A beautiful blog entry is an art form, and it takes time. So, micro-blogging fits into your life where you take a minute or two to see what's going on and go back to work."

I was originally afraid that Twitter was just a passing fad and would fade away. But it's been two years now, so I'm no longer doubting the staying power. I believe it has the same staying power of any Web 2.0 application (take that as you will). Lately, I've been worried that Twitter has hit critical mass, a "tipping point" if you will, with everyone joining up. But I also believe there are enough people out there (myself included) evangelizing microblogging to the masses. As people discover the neat uses of Twitter, such as Commuter Feed, then suddenly it doesn't seem quite as ridiculous.

I recommend that you take a moment and sign up for Twitter yourself. I'm amazed at the community I've discovered, locally and abroad, in wine and in social media. It's fantastic. Go ahead. Tell everyone "what are you doing right now?"

Twitter Humour

I love this cartoon from the prolific Hugh at the Gaping Void:

Click the image to view in full size.

Hugh posted this back in April. I think that's around when I first found Twitter, although it took a lot longer than that to allow my micro-blogging to often substitute for my real blogging. I do blame Twitter for my lack of blog posts. All my thoughts now get written, stream of consciousness style, to Twitter. The cartoon, however, is incredibly dead-on. Makes you wonder about 2008.

Ning and an Updated Site

I heard about Ning last week and got curious. I failed miserably at explaining it to Kevin because I used it, used it well, and yet used none of the really cool features.

I re-designed our family web site, KevinandShel.com, using Ning. For me, it was useful to bring in several of my blog feeds and my photos - all in one place for our family to see. That is really one of the minor benefits to Ning.

With Ning, you can build your own community. In a way, you're building your own Facebook.

If I ran a book club, or owned a small store, or had a knitting group or any sort of group, I'd want to build my site on Ning. First off, it's free. Second, they have amazing technical support. I got incredibly fast and personalized responses. (I found a bug, now fixed.)

What does it offer? Basically Ning is a content management system. You can build pages and sections for your actual web site. You can also have a forum. You can bring in RSS feeds. Your readers can join, becoming part of a community. They can comment on pages, on photos. Once someone is a member, they can then contribute their own information. You can create groups within your network. Each member gets their own blog. If you as an admin want to feature their blog or their photos, you can. Your own member profile can be used for whatever Ning community of which you are a part. You can customize your profile for each Ning community, pulling from your basic information, but changing the look and feel per network.

It's quick. It's easy. And I'm really impressed. It's an easy way to bring a Web 1.0 web site into Web 2.0. Ning specializes in customization/personalization for each user. And that is a huge part of Web 2.0.

The beauty of any social network is the ability to have your members/users interact not just with you, but with each other. Ning allows that through forums, comments, photos, and more. It's worth checking out.

Some great sites using Ning include the Wine Spies, Broadway Space, and Ask a Ninja.

Microblogging

For my friends who don't twitter: Twitter allows for microblogging, or nanoblogging. In other words, when I don't want to waste an entire blog post on a small, passing thought, but I still want to share - I can post it to Twitter, Jaiku, or another microblogging tool.

Put one day's  worth of Twitters (tweets) together and you get a look at what my day was like. A week's worth and you get more insight into my character, which is strange but true.

Which is one reason I'm posting the Twitter feeds to this blog. I know that as long as I tweet just once, there will be a post here the next day at 7 am-ish. Lately my mind is full of small things that aren't worthy of a big long post. Other times, like my organic trip to the grocery store yesterday, I need more than 140 characters to express my thoughts.

Whether a "true" blog post or a post of microblogs from Twitter, it's still blogging. You can comment on my Twitter Feeds that show up here just like you might  on a regular post. Lately it's hard for me to post here, on my Write Tech blog, and on the Wine Blog on a regular basis. Since the other two are slightly more lucrative, this one falls aside. Except for the Twitters. 

One thing I like about Twitter, and Facebook for that matter, is the number of virtual friends I've made. There's a group of us - mostly, I think, creative IT professionals, that keep running into each other on these platforms. Most of them are meeting up in a week, but I'll be at a wedding that day. It's a neat way to have met, and one reason I continue to Twitter.

If you're not on  Twitter yet, I invite you to join. I have two Twitter identities - shels (wine) and writegirl (which you read here).

Cheers!

Going Mobile

I found a couple fantastic technologies to play with, and mobilized my blogs and the Write Technology main site. It was incredibly quick and easy. I wrote a review of both applications on the Write Tech blog here and here.

Using MobiSiteGalore, I created a web site from scratch, using my own logo and colors. I then linked to a mobilized version of my Write Tech blog, created at Winksite. Winksite is excellent at repurposing RSS feeds for mobile use.

For the Wine-Girl site, I used my wine-related Twitter feed and blog feed to create a Winksite mobile site. I used the same for this site.

So visit me via your cell phone.

Write Technology: http://writetech.mobi

My Wine Education/Wine-Girl: http://winegirl.mobi

Where the Sidewalk Begins/Writegirl: http://winksite.com/writetech/writegirl

Frustration

I'm in the midst of working my ass off for the month of July. Tons of work. All on or around .Net-based programs.

TWICE this week I've had to completely re-install Windows. Why? Because Microsoft released all sorts of "fixes," including to .Net. I tried going back on a System Restore, only to discover that Windows doesn't really "restore" at all. Or rather, they restore as well as they fix. System restore does not actually restore my system to the specified point. It makes it look like it did. But it does two other things. It renames all the apps that are still there with things like app2.exe, ensuring that piece of software won't work. It also removes all the shortcuts from the desktop and Start menu, but leaves all the offending application files and registry entries. It's like you never restored at all.

If I wasn't tethered to .Net for both my clients and help development software, I'd ditch a PC altogether. I much prefer my Mac, although it's having it's own issues lately.

Testing BlogJet

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools).

I’m going to test it for a few days with my Sidewalk blog. My real intention is to use it for the wine blog. In particular, those crazy Friday listings will be much easier if I can work on them outside of the online blogging software.

So we’ll see. Bear with me for several posts.

Cheers!

Test 1

Seeing what the different options give me

There are a bunch of different options in BlogJet. I’m just fooling around seeing if they make a difference or not.

 

 

 

Tweet tweet (updated)

I finally broke down and now I have a Twitter account. Heck, I have 2 twitter accounts!
The first account - shels - is for wine notes only. Or at least that's my goal. See, Twitter seems like the perfect way to dash out a quick wine note on something and share it, without wasting an entire post. It's kinda cool for that purpose. Also, it's great if I'm in a restaurant - I can dash off a Twitter note about the wine I'm drinking and send it right to my wine blog.

But I also have a personal Twitter account. That could be fun too, right? It's writegirl. It's the one you see displayed in the sidebar on this blog.

So if you're twittering too, add me and myself to your friends. I'd love to tweet with you.

http://www.twitter.com/shels (wine)
http://www.twitter.com/writegirl (personal)

UPDATE: Not that he'll use it that much, but you may find Kevin has added you as a friend (Chuck & Jason). Kevin's curiousity has gotten the better of him and he's on twitter now too.

A deal I couldn't pass up

Kevin and I each got new monitors today. Yay! These are 19" Acer monitors, and they're awesome. No fancy stuff like USB ports, iPod docks, etc. But just a nice monitor. These things are on sale at Staples through Saturday for $150 each. That's it! We stumbled upon them while buying office supplies the other day. (Check out the deal here, but you'll have to enter your zip code.)

Since my motherboard died on my desktop machine last month, I've been using only my laptop. I don't like to use the monitor from the desktop with the laptop because that monitor isn't widescreen. My laptop is. Never the twain shall meet (and look pretty). This new Acer monitor is a widescreen. Not only that, we finally got the extended desktop function to work, which means my workspace has been expanded to two widescreen monitors. Much excitement!

Feature me!

My Write Technology blog will be a Typepad featured blog on April 30, starting at 10 am pst on the Typepad home page. (They feature several a day.) It's a great way to gain publicity and get some hits. I suppose I should probably UPDATE the blog before then though.
Yay!

Recording?

If you wanted to record a phone interview for a podcast/audio file, how would you go about it without spending an insane amount of money?

Wine & Technology

So in an effort to build some credibility as a wine person in this city, I've taken the advice of a columnist at the Dayton Daily News and began posting local wine events each Friday over on the Wine blog. Now, here's the thing. It's getting to be quite an unwieldy list, as there are tons of things going on. There's got to be an easier way than me just cutting and pasting from the previous week's blog entry and making the list even longer each week. We were originally thinking some sort of database, but I don't know if that is going to happen. What it is, it should export to HTML. I can't put it in Word or another Office product because of all the ridiculous coding MS products add.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!

Embedded Video on my Hard Drive

There are just times when you need to access a video that is embedded in a site, but you can't get to the Internet.

Every year, Kate & I choreograph a swing/lindy routine at my old high school. This year is our big year - our last year - and we're going out on top. We picked only 5 couples and they are excellent dancers. We're throwing some pretty hard stuff at them. Several of the moves we have added are variations on moves we've seen in online videos of professional dance groups. We want to show the kids the videos, but the school isn't set up for wireless. So I need to have these videos locally. Today I went on a little search to figure out how to do this.

First off, Firefox makes it easy when you're dealing with standard files like mpgs and avis. Get yourself to a page with an embedded video. Click Tools > Page Info > Media tab. Highlight the item listed as the Embed type. Click Save As... Voila! Just like that.

This isn't quite as simple with YouTube however. YouTube videos are embedded in an annoying Flash player format (.flv). There's an easy solution to this too, though. Vixy.net offers a free, online service that solves the issue. Go to the Vixy web site and enter the URL of the YouTube video you want to download. It will convert the video to a .avi file and then allow you to download the .avi.

Just thought I'd put this information out there for those of you who, for one reason or another, need that embedded video available locally. Enjoy!

The New Cookbook

Cool new tool for the blog

A few days ago, I installed Answer Tips on this blog. I've been playing with it, but hadn't yet announced it. However, Joel over at Vivi's was so dang excited, I thought I'd join the announcement party. So now you know: double-click any word in this blog (that's not a hyperlink) and a wonderful, AJAXxy-looking pop-up window appears, telling you everything you wanted to know about the word.
I could go on, but I'll save it for my other blog, on what sort of impact this can have on corporate education. Instead, I'll just mention that on a wine blog, where we often toss around words like tannic and terroir, it's a great little helper guide for those unfamiliar with the terms. On this blog? Well, it's just a fun cool tool.

Synching GMail with Outlook

(Cross-posted from blog.write-tech.com)

Problem solved? Last April, with the release of Google Calendar, I wondered if there was an easy way to automatically sync my Google Calendar with my Outlook Calendar. From there, I could sync my Blackberry with my Outlook. I never found a way.

Turns out there are a couple of solutions out there now. There's this brilliant solution for syncing many different items together, but it sort of gives me a headache.
Then I came across GSyncIt, on DavesWebSite.com. It's a freeware plug-in for Outlook (2003 or higher) that synchs both ways. I like this idea. I'm running it right now. Because it synchs 365 days out and 365 days past, this first synch is taking a while. But I think it's working, so that's a start. I fear I'm going to end up with duplicate Birthdays and such in Outlook though.

I'll let you know. This is, however, a good thing. And it's freeware, people!

- As an update, it worked wonderfully! Now, because I haven't used my GCal in ages (since I couldn't sync it), I had no problems going in and wiping out all the data. When I used GSyncIt to sync with Outlook, I had no duplicates. I do not know if this would have been a problem or not.

GSyncIt also allows for automatic or manual updating, which is nice. I'll probably remain on manual
until I get into the swing of using my GCal again.

Finally, I was also able to pull in my husband's data. It's not my primary calendar, so it's read-only. (I can't change his calendar from Outlook, but that's fine.) It's still great to see his schedule on my calendar. It looks like Programmer Dave is working on categorizing/color coding so that you can tell what event came from what calendar. I do believe that little upgrade would make this a perfect program.

I do want to note that GSyncIt does require you to run .Net 2.0. This isn't  an issue for most folks, and I'm always running the latest .Net due to a few apps I document. But some folks just won't go near .Net.

Hey Dave, if you need some help with the documentation/Help files. Let me know. It's what I do!

Wireless rocks

I'm at a dr's office right now, waiting patiently in the waiting room. There are plugs built into the floor and free wireless access as well. I brought my Mac to the dr's office with me and now I'm online. How much does that rock?

This is a Beta Test

I’m testing the Beta of Microsoft Office 2007. Talk about evolving software. It’s a lot more intuitive – once you figure it out. I know, that sounds contradictory. It’s just that everything we’re used to has been rearranged into a tabbed format. It’s a big difference. There are no menus – just tabs. I looked forever to find table formatting and the File menu. Once you adjust to the changes though, its incredibly easy to use. For people who haven’t been using Word since the beginning (and I have), this will seem simple. For the rest of us, it’s a huge change.

It has a built-in blogging feature that will, supposedly, automatically post this to my Typepad blog.  I do a lot of my blog posts in Word anyway because Typepad tends to crash on my longer posts. Word has autosave.  In theory, I can now write and post from the same location.

The changed tabbed interface is evident in everything I’ve looked at in the Office Suite thus far. I’ve played a little with Excel and OneNoteand am using Outlook and Word. I really like the new Outlook. It also builds RSS feeds into your InBox and polls them once an hour on a Send/Receive. Excel has a nifty new feature that I appreciate. Remember how when you edit a square in Excel you must edit up in the Editing line? Now you can edit directly in the square itself. Such a small change, but a big difference in ease of use.

That’s my brief overview of the Office Beta, but so far, I think Microsoft is really on the right track.

Technorati Tags: Office Beta, Office 2007

Don't Panic

"Don't panic," they say in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

8:14 am, 6/2/06: Everything is back up - email and site.

As we all know now, the Write-Tech site just randomly disappeared last night. As did the guy doing the hosting. He was a former colleague of Kevin’s and had run a web design business locally. He gave me a great deal back in 2003. The last few months the support had dwindled to nothing and last night I discovered that his phone numbers had been disconnected, no one knew where to find him, and that any other site he had hosted was also listed as “suspended.” Some digging showed that he had been posting to the Tampa area Craigslist in December and that’s the end of his trail. So much for the year of hosting I paid for … I’m now paying a couple hundred dollars more, but I’ll have support 24/7. I also have 150 GB of space and 1500 GB throughput. All for a very reasonable price.

If you decide you need a hosting company, I found some great ones for individuals (laughingsquid.com, dreamhost.com – thanks Jason!) but I needed an industrial strength package.  So I'm now at 1and1.com. They were very quick and their Control Panel is very intuitive, which is good at 2 am. I'm giving them a 90-day probationary period. I'm still shopping for a home for Write-tech.com, you could say, but I may chose to move in here permanently.

Don't know if I'll ever find my hosting guy again. Part of me thinks he'll pop up and apologize profusely, not realizing that I've even moved my site. Despite the unbelievable deal he offered me, I'm starting to think he was little than a small-time scam artist and that my "server" was little more than a computer in his house. Just suspicions on my part, but it would explain some things.

So that's where the story stands. I'm not sure what all I was hosting on the Write-Tech site, to be honest. A lot of photos from the early days of this blog, I'm sure, are now gone. Probably some of my Jamaica hurricane photos from Kevin and Shel.com, but I'm not sure on that. Regardless, I'll slowly get everything back together. Right now the business site and client courses are up and running, so that is what matters. Next I tackle CGI Forms and get those working. Then I'll worry about broken links and photos and the like. Whoo! I'm tired just thinking about it.

6:45 pm, 6/1/06: Right now, the Write-tech.com site is down. Completely. I don't know yet if I've been hacked or if the guy I entrusted with keeping the Write-Tech.com site maintained has headed for the hills with my cash. All of his other sites seem to be having the same issues and he is unreachable with phone numbers that are currently out of service.
While I figure this out - and it could be a few days - the blog at http://www.writetech.net will become my main busines home page.
Until otherwise noted, please do not use any of the write-tech.com email addresses.

Thank you for your patience and I will let you know when the problem is resolved.

NY Times, Colbert, and YouTube?

We all know that I was blown away by Stephen Colbert's ability (his cojones) to lampoon the President a few chairs over from where he was standing. Wow. Go Stephen! Some of that stuff really needed to be said, to those people, and he delivered it flawlessly, to a cold house. I really liked the line about glaciers not being around for the grandchildren.
I was also sort of irritated that the mainstream press pretty much ignored the whole speech. Today the NY Times finally decided to report on the speech - or rather, on reaction to the speech, mostly in the Blogosphere. (That's us!) I didn't think the article was really a shining example of journalism. The best thing, however, is that in order to show video of the event, the NY Times didn't go to C-Span or another substantial journalistic organization. The NY Times links to the YOU TUBE video of the clip. To me, that's an amazing endorsement of You Tube.

Technorati Tags: You Tube, New York Times, Stephen Colbert

A Bad Night for the Internets

So last night was a little rough on the techie side of things.
First, as many of you know, Typepad suffered a large DOS attack around 7 pm EST yesterday. Ouch! The poor techs at Typepad were apparently up all night trying to get things back in working order.
On top of that, our cable company (Insight) has decided to "upgrade" their Internet service. They were supposed to be doing work between 2 am and 6 pm, but I suspect they started around 5 pm and still haven't completely gotten back online. Last night our router was up and down a lot, knocking me offlines more times than I could count. Today the mail servers are non-existent. I use the Insight SMTP servers because its easier. Today I switched over to the Write Tech and .Mac SMTP servers for those accounts. All other accounts I've suspended for the day. I have to wonder if the improvements will be noticeable other than in something like increased charges. The cable company causes me no end of grief lately.

What you might lose if you're not looking

I posted this once and I crashed and lost everything. Let's try again. My point that no one saw is that I only post politcally anymore when its something too stupid to be believed (common in our current climate) or something that evokes my passion. I researched this before I posted. It's real. It's something we all need to be passionate about.

The GOP and the telecommunications companies are trying to take away our Internet. I swear I'm not over-reacting and making things up. This isn't reactionary - it's true.

Digital Glossary

To follow up my Tech Etiquette post the other day, here is a topic I posted to the Write Tech blog this morning on new language for our digital age. Think about it - in high school, did you ever dream you'd be reading a blog or loading music onto your iPod?

With technology advancing as fast as it is, new words and slang are inevitable. Ten years ago, who'd have thought "iPod" would be as ubiquitous as "Kleenex"?

Lisa Belkin tackles the new word order in two articles for the New York Times: Overly Wired (4/9/06) and Coming to Terms with a Wired Age (4/23/06). (Free registration req'd for the New York Times or just visit BugMeNot.)

Some of the terms she encounters/comes up with include

Screensucking: "wasting time engaging with any screen — for instance, computer, video game, television,Blackberry." He goes on to use his new word in a sentence: "I was supposed to write that article, but instead I spent the whole afternoon screensucking." That concept hits particularly close to home.
Logonorrhea: a related condition that renders you unable to use certain online accounts because you can remember neither your screen name nor your password.
Bluetooth fairy: a person who walks around with the blinking glow of a Bluetooth headset permanently in one ear.
Cylences: The long gaps in phone conversation that occur when a person is reading e-mail or cybershopping at the same time.
Stripped: The opposite of wired, when your computer tells you that there are wireless networks all around, but not one is accessible without a password, or when your computer tells you it has a signal, but won't connect for reasons it refuses to share.

Technorati Tags: digital language, digital slang, language

Tech Etiquette

I'm an etiquette freak. I admit it. So the changing world of technology has presented its challenges. The Christian Science Monitor has a good little article on this, though, and I think it covers a lot of good suggestions for handling Tech Etiquette in the work place.

For instance, even before my Blackberry, whenever I had a business meeting, I set my phone to vibrate or quiet. I think its rude for a cell phone to go off during a meeting. I was at a client site yesterday, talking about a potential contract, when the client's cell phone rang and he answered. On the other hand, I had received several emails during the same meeting, but because my phone was on vibrate, I didn't have to acknowledge the incoming messages until I was back in my car. No one heard my phone make its silent buzz. To be honest, the only reason I had my phone in my briefcase (I tend to leave my purse in the car to streamline things) was because its also my calendar.

Google Calendar

I imported some things into Google Calendar (Beta) today. Like any Beta proct, there are some pros and cons.

For a while, I was using iCal as a handy-dandy way to access my calendar anywhere/share my calendar. Then it got to be a pain. In order to update iCal, I had to sync with my Palm, which I Cthen had to sync with my Mac, which then sync'd with iCal. All my categories got messed up and it was just awful. (If I could figure out how, I'd just can my current iCal, but I have no idea how to remove everything, so its out there being hopelessly out of date.) Since I acquired my Blackberry, I have my latest calendar everywhere on my mobile device, but an online calendar allows me to share events and such with others.

Enter Google Calendar - I'm calling it gCal. It has all sorts of nifty features, not the least of which is the nice idea that Kevin and I can update each other's calendars with the right permissions and I can remind him of events via email or SMS. I like that I can selectively add people to view everything (who wants to see my doctor's app'ts, etc after all?) but I can allow people to see the details of specific events to which they are invited, even though the rest of the calendar just reads as free/busy.

Lost, Life, & Bluetooth

I've decided that I only ever need to watch the last 5 minutes of Lost. Seriously. I just caught the last 5 minutes, before Tivo flipped over to Law & Order. I'm pretty sure I figured out everything of consequence that had happened in the whole episode. Lost is moving so damned slow this season ... can anyone honestly think of any reason why I should watch more than the last 5 minutes? The big moments and big secrets are always revealed then.

Bluetooth headset #1 got sent back to Buy.com today. Buy.com makes it incredibly easy to return things - kudos to them. Bluetooth headset #2 arrived from Amazon.com. It's a Plantronics. It's not pink, sadly, and its larger than the other one. It tested really well in recorded tests and on C|Net. Again, it met my price range, which surprised me. I expected it to be more. I tested it out today, as did Kevin and we had no problems at all. Yay!

I'm substantially better after 24 hours on antibiotics. I have a voice again, sort of, and I'm only hit by wracking fits of coughing every now and then as opposed to every sentence or every breath. It's most definitely worse in the evenings. Today I tried to work (sort of failed) and finally faded out around 3:45 pm. We'll see how long I last tomorrow. I have to actually get things accomplished tomorrow ...

Technology Tidbits

• Free Flash tutorials! See, Flash isn't as scary as you thought. Just visit gotoandlearn.com and learn all about it, for free!
• It won't be long until you'll be dual-booting an Intel-based Mac with Windows. And Apple will be the one to provide you the means. Boot Camp is in beta and available for download now, with a possible release date on the next new Intel-based Macs.
• Eyespot allows you to upload, share, and edit your video clips online. No need to buy an expensive and complicated editor when you can just do it for free online. Remember, video clips are large and take time to upload and manipulate. There's a downside to this nifty new service. Don't forget to watch your copyrights!
• Cool Tool Alpha uses AJAX to let you interactively develop color schemes. It's a great way to see how your colors look together before dropping them into your courses or sites.

Cross-posted from the Write-Tech blog.

1st impression: IE7 Beta Release 2

Oh my god. I was just blogging about how I was using Internet Explorer 7 Beta Release 2 (available here, but not for the faint of heart). I was talking about how impressed I was with the improvements made to the user interface and the borrowed-from-Firefox-and-Safari features (such as RSS and Search on the toolbar), when IE decided that Typepad was a bad site. I said "No IE, Typepad is an okay site" and right-clicked.

It cleared my post. Bleh.

And such is why IE 7 will remain my browser for those sites that require me to use IE and Firefox remains my primary browser.

IE7 does have tabbed browsing, which I have a hard time living without and thus explaining my use of the beta for those sites that require IE. However, as far as I can tell, IE is not as customizable as Firefox. My Firefox browsers, on each machine, are so customized with various extensions that its ridiculous. But its also very much my own browser at this point, customized to my uses and needs. IE will never reach that point. But this is a good start.

Except for that deleting the whole post thing.

Technorati: IE7, IE7 Beta, tabbed browsing, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer Preview

Aha!

I've been trying to figure out the best method to clean my tablet PC. Since I am still putting a lot of Vitamin E lotion on the ol' scar on the left arm, my screen is getting a little less clean than I would like.
It's a glass screen, so I've been wondering - Windex wipes? Klear screen? I used Klear Screen on my LCD monitor upstairs and have regretted it ever since. It's left all sorts of smear-y marks. I obviously don't want to use a cheap glass cleaner on a pricey tablet screen either.

Feed Upgrade

I've switched my feed to FeedBurner. If you're already subscribed to this blog, you can either
a) not change anything, as the feed itself won't change, or
b) delete your subscription in your news reader and re-subscribe via that link over there to the right.

Why did I change? Well, it's an experiment for one. I tend to update my posts frequently because I forgot a period, had a comma splice, or hated my phrasing. I suspect that sends out a new article to some RSS Readers everytime, which can be annoying. FeedBurner should help with that, although it won't eliminate it completely. I'll still be fixing punctuation and grammar all the time. Especially now that my left-hand isn't typing as well as it used to.

Everything is possible

It may not be easy or convenient, but there's a hack for everything. That includes stripping the .tivo wrapper and making media files straight MPEGs and installing iPhoto and iWeb '06 on a G3. (I haven't made this last one work yet. If I can't, I have a backup plan.)

Software Irritants

I'm having an irritating day making the computers in my house do what I want. Grrr!

First, I tried to install iLife '06 on my iMac, which has a G3 processor. No go. It will only install itself on a G4 processor. WHY? All I want for this particular machine is the upgrade for iPhoto and the new iWeb. Why does that require the G4 processor? I have this great little machine that does nothing for me except store photos and churn out videos with its massive hard drive I installed. The good news is that iLife '06 runs on my iBook without a problem. It's just that my photos all live on my iMac. I'm highly irritated with Apple for this. (Actually, I'm irritated with Apple for a dozen things; this is just the highest on the list at the moment.)

Then I tried to pull a Scrubs episode off of my upstairs Tivo onto my desktop PC. No go. Remember how I mentioned that Tivo bridge we had to put together? It means that the Tivos are on a different subnet from our PCs. While the Tivos for some strange reason can see the PCs, the PCs cannot see the Tivos. In order to pull anything off of a Tivo and use Tivo2Go (or convert to MPG and burn to DVD), I need to hardwire a computer directly into the 802.11b router (the old one used as a bridge) and transfer the video to that machine. From there, I have to move the video to our Storage drive, which has empty space for video, similar to my iMac.

I'm frustrated and am going to go fool around with my taxes now. I meet with the accountant tomorrow - always fun.

I just want to speak to a human!

Recently, I had a tiff with UPS. They delivered an expensive and important package to the wrong address where a completely unknown-to-me human signed for it. Oops! It was the most frustrating conversation because it took me about 15 minutes just to get to a human. By the time I got to the human, I was seething mad. Really, customer service would benefit from eliminating all those stupid electronic voice systems - they just piss people off. I only ever call a customer service number if I'm desperate. I'm sure I'm not the only one. All that can now change - for many big firms you can now get directly to a human. There's a site out there for people like us called GetHuman. It has a database of the largest companies and tricks for getting directly to a human. It also has general guidelines to follow. It's a great little site!

Why I love MySpace

Seriously - I love it.
There are things that are awful though, as far as ease of use. You have to sneak code into your profile - fairly complex CSS with some HTML thrown in. The code is all messy too. And a lot of the pages out on MySpace give me a headache. I'm trying to keep my sort of classy looking.
Anyway, why do I love it?
1. Because it's given me a place to post all those crazy internet memes. I get them and now I have a place to put them! (The blog part of MySpace)
2. Because I've "found" a YaYa or two again. I've missed some of these ladies a lot!
3. Most importantly, I've "found" my Parker's kids. To be more accurate, they found me! It's so great hearing from them and seeing what they're up to! I'm trying not to pass judgement. I was a freshman in college once too. ;-)

Short Ends: Global Technology

Couple of technology tidbits have caught my attention:

• I thought I was the only one to notice that every time I saw Irina Slutskaya or Sasha Cohen before competing, they were jamming to their iPod. The snowboarders had jackets that had a spot for the iPod built right in. Turns out I'm late to the game. The Baltimore Sun noticed it first, and then tons of blogs/newspapers picked up on the story as well. It's true though - the iPod seems to be an integral part of training, and in some cases winning, for the global athlete.
• China isn't a fan of Roger Rabbit. They are banning all movies/shows that use human - cartoon interaction. That's right. No Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny buddy flicks in China. Worse, no Jessica Rabbit. Although, China also banned Babe because it didn't want to confuse people with the notion that animals can talk ...
• Finally, remember my fascination with MySpace and Social Networks? I'm not the only one. Danah Boyd is a PhD candidate at UC-Berkeley. She recently gave a talk on "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace." It's not too long, and an interesting read. Basically, kids don't really have any place to go any more that is theirs. When I was growing up, it was the mall. We always went to the mall to see people. Not so much anymore. Kids are left with very controlled - adult-controlled - environments. This causes them to start developing their personalities digitally, using MySpace.

Short Ends

Thank you for becoming my MySpace friends. The social networking thing fascinates me - the chain of people ... 6 degrees of separation will soon become too many I think. It's amazing the people I just found on MySpace with just a few clicks. High school, college, kids I've taught dance to, awesome women I've lost touch with ... all out there on MySpace with a click or two. And all connected in one way or another.
The MySpace tools? Still primitive.

I lost a second post on Cellar Tracker yesterday. Basically I discovered a "spirits" category, where our Bourbon, Brandy, and Kevin's Scotch now happily reside. I also discovered the abillity to download the entire cellar & reports into a "live" Excel spreadsheet. It's pretty cool to be able to access the cellar at any point in time, whether locally on on the web. I'm probably more excited about the tool than I am our wine.

Suffering from work-related avoidance issues again. The good news? The client liked the course outlines I put together. Now I have to put together the courses ...

One last thing before I'm off to the Land of Work - my sister emailed me today. She is doing a group project for Freshman English on Structural Criticism (which apparently sucks the fun out of literature). She needed help understanding it and ideas for a presentation. I sent her to Wikipedia and suggested she do a multimedia presentation comparing/contrasting scenes in West Side Story and Romeo + Juliet (the Wikipedia example) and throwing in some of those stupid formulas (I don't like this theory at all) as well. I also told her to verify that her prof will let her use Wikipedia as one of her sources. Anyway, if anyone else has ideas for resources or presentation ideas, leave them in the comments. I imagine this project is sort of scaring her.

MySpace

I spent some time this afternoon fooling around with MySpace. Granted, there's a part of me that feels slightly too old for MySpace, but I suspect that's due to the crazy publicity of teenage girls loving the site. Anyway, I'm thinking it's going to be around for a while, so I ought to be familiar with it. Plus, I'm fascinated by online social networks.

I'm having MySpace issues though. It won't let me in to my profile to edit things, make my page look less bland, etc, due to an "error". Repeatedly. Plus, the upload tool for photos won't work for me either. Also, an "error."  So my page is bland and boring right now. Their blog tools are also rather, um, primitive. I'm sticking right here as far as blogging goes.

My MySpace is also lonely. If you have a MySpace account (or want one), get your butt over there and become my "friend." I have none, other than the obligatory guy they give everyone when you sign up.

Shel's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/wrtgirl

Wikipedia & Gov't

I've been meaning to post about this for a few days and have managed to keep the Firefox tabs open with the links. I'm low on time right now though - so quick and simple.

Gov't staffers have been modifying Wikipedia entries. Now, on it's own, that's not a bad statement. It's that, among other things, they've been "vandalising" and using a negative or positive point of view in the modifications. Wikipedia insists (rightly so) on a neutral Point of View for entires. It is, after all, an encyclopedia.

Doin' the Loop-d-loop

Via Guy Kawasaki's blog, I've discovered a nifty little tool called Film Loop. Sort of Flickr-ish, sort of not. I'm intrigued by it. I do wish it didn't involve a quick little software installation, but such is life. Check it out here.

Welcome to FilmLoop™. Free software to broadcast, find, and share photos. Share photo Loops with all your friends. Link a Loop on your Blog or Web site. Drag and drop photos directly to the desktops of your entire social network in a live, continually updating Loop.     

There are a lot of potential uses for this, in both everyday internet life and in education. I need to play with it a little more, but it may make my photo albums much more streamlined in the future. We'll see.

The Slow RoboGoodbye

My anger at Macromedia/Adobe is slow but steady. RoboHelp is quirky, but it accomplishes a lot. The most recent release (about 2003 I think) had a million and one upgrades that made Help authoring much less cumbersome and available in many formats. Generating a layout of a word document, flash help, web help, or HTML help was easy all from the same content. That is a big time-saver for your average tech writer like me.

I'd been slightly worried about RoboHelp's future, and was unable to get information out of a contact of mine at Macromedia back in October. However, from reading a few articles today, I have learned two things:
1) RoboHelp has been may have been unofficially "sunset" by Macromedia/Adobe
and
2) The previous RoboHelp/Blue Sky/eHelp team (RoboHelp has had many incarnations in the last 13 years) has formed a new company, MadCap Software, which is very possibly the future in help authoring.
I know, this is boring to you all. But it's important for my job security. I've signed up for the last beta test of Madcap's Flare software, as well as a sneak peak that gets me a $350 discount (the initial offering will be priced at $850). After I play with it, I'll post more, but as of right now, I think it's got a lot of potential.
The Future of RoboHelp
Is RoboHelp Going Away?
Dear Help Authoring Professionals ...
Madcap Software

RoboFrustration

I am beyond frustrated with RoboHelp. My clients all request it - it's the industry standard. And there is very little competition out there for it. I need a legitimate copy of it and Macromedia/Adobe charges no less than $999.99! I could purchase the academic copy, at which point I pay $899.99.
I have yet to come across a piece of software, ever, that is worth a thousand dollars. Certainly not RoboHelp which is, to be kind, extra quirky on its best days. On eBay, you can only buy old (therefore useless thanks to Windows) versions, or purchase the current version (academic) for $500.00. While that is better than full price, it's still a large amount to pay for software.
I've searched for alternatives. But an alternative needs to create not just Windows help files, but HTML and Flash-based help files. (This enables the end-result Help to be run on any system.) Of course, there's also the "client requesting" thing. Anyway, it's all very frustrating, and expensive, and I'm holding off on the purchase a little while longer.

I Can Write on My PC!

I bought a convertible tablet PC. Er ... my company bought me a convertible tablet PC. (Same difference, when I am the company.) I've been excited about this particular PC ever since we took Kevin's brother to visit Morehead. This is the PC they offer to their students. I have to say that as far as education goes, the tablet PC certainly rocks. There are so many things you could do with it, from both the learner and the instructional sides. In fact, I'm so intrigued, I'm giving thought to attending an academic workshop at Purdue in April. I am an instructional designer/technologist, so this is really up my alley.

As for my tablet, it's a Gateway CX2610 and so far I love it. We uninstalled all the various CRAP that comes on new PCs (Earthlink, MSN, AOL, Norton, etc, etc, ) and popped on all the stuff we like, such as AVG, Firefox, and so on. And I started in on installing software. (BTW, I seem to have completely misplaced my copy of Lectora 2005. On the off chance anyone has a copy, I think I still have my own registration key. Argh! I have 2006, but my clients need 2005.)

The Gateway had all the extras that I really wanted. Not only is it convertible (it will be excellent when I teach training classes!), but it has a CD and DVD burner and a 5-in-1 memory stick reader, as well as a Firewire port and 802.11g. I couldn't be happier. I just wish my arm would hurry up and heal so that I can really start writing on the thing. Right now, I couldn't tell you how well the tablet works because my arm doesn't really work! ;-)

I've played around with Windows Journal, which I don't like, and OneNote, which I do. Or rather, I think OneNote has enormous potential in both an office and a classroom environment. I'm intrigued by what I've read about OneNote 12, to be released when they release the next version of Office.

I also like a lot of little tools (or toys) available for free from Microsoft for the tablet PC. MS seems to be 100% behind tablet PCs. There is a flash card maker, equation writer, dictionary, calculator - all tools that let you write on your PC. I also downloaded some awesome extensions for Firefox, including GeckoTIP, which integrates ink and tablet into Firefox as well. I also found a Clip to OneNote extension for Firefox that lets me send web site clippings directly into OneNote.

I started exploring what can only be called the Tablet PC community. It reminds me of the Mac community before Apple went mainstream. These are diehard folks who own 1 or more tablets and would never own anything else. They are chock full of useful and interesting information (except where in the world I can get a replacement pen for when I inevitably lose mine - Gateway seems to be permanently out of stock ).

So that's my new toy. Still working, slowly, on customizing the machine just the way i like it and transferring files (all hail USB sticks!).

I'm done for the day, as my fingers now ache. I miss blogging!

UPDATE 01/17: We upgraded the 512 MB of memory to 1 GB last night. Woohoo! This machine now officially rocks.

Cool Office Wizard

I bought a new PC (more on that in the next post) and have been banging my head against the wall trying to customize Outlook and Word. On my previous laptop, I had both of those programs scarily customized and cannot figure out how I did it. Today, I discovered this little blog post quite by accident.

Warner Crocker is a theatre guy in Virginia who also happens to be a tablet PC enthusiast and a Microsoft MVP. He mentioned the Office Save Your Settings Wizard:

The wizard can be found in Start/Microsoft Office/Microsoft Office Tools and saves your settings to a file that can then be used to restore them. This can come in really handy during a reinstallation/ flattening/paving a machine.

So, keep this in mind when you're transferring machines or restoring. I haven't finished using it yet, but I have high hopes it will will remove my Outlook headaches.

My Next Computer

Most likely, I won't be buying this until 2006 (unless there's a spectacular holiday sale or I land that gigantic client in Indiana). But this will definitely be my next machine (or one similar). I went to Best Buy and played with this one yesterday and was really blown away. Assuming I eventually buy it, it will most likely come from Best Buy so that I can get their replacement warranty as well. This laptop would replace my 2-year old Windows laptop that I love but is starting to show it's age. I'm extra hard on laptops...

I love that the screen on this laptop can be flipped around and used as a tablet. I love that it has a built-in digital pen, that it reads my handwriting, and that it has a built-in media reader and DVD-burner. It's so useful, as I could take notes on my machine at a client site. One of my documentation projects is for tablet-based software as well. I can't stress how much easier that software would be to understand if I had a tablet.

We went to Morehead with Steven on Friday. (Great school, by the way.) Morehead is now offering these computers to their students for $425/semester, including replacement, support, and software.

Flock

I'm exploring Flock, which is a new, very beta (almost alpha) browser that makes the Web As We Know It more accessible than ever. I'm still trying to learn what all you can do with Flock. Right now, I'm blogging straight from Flock, and the interface is nice, allowing me to do a few things Typepad doesn't provide options for, such as adding a target tag within my hyperlinks.

Flock also functions as an RSS Reader, although I haven't been able to activate that function just yet. Flock ties directly into your Flickr account and your del.icio.us account. I don't use my Flickr account, preferring SmugMug, but it would seem that I will eventually be able to access and pull things from my SmugMug account directly into a blog post using drag and drop. Eventually. I believe that function is currently there for Flickr, based on what I've seen others do.

I only acquired a del.icio.us account today. I admit that I was slow to adopt it, mainly because I can't see the advantages. My bookmarks are available to me anywhere thanks to .Mac, so that's not an advantage for me. I also have several bookmarks, such as banking, that I certainly can't post for the world to see. I understand the tagging of the world is cool and all, but I'm still slightly blind to the advantages of del.icio.us. Regardless, I now have an account so that I can test it with Flock.

Flock would appear to have dozens of functions I have yet to discover. I am testing it on my iBook, which is not my primary machine but which I will be using full-time in Florida at the conference. I intend to blog a lot from the conference (but not live-blog) to my Write Tech blog as well as this one. I'll also be exposed to a lot of new web sites, so it should be a good test run for my use of Flock.

**I'm now blogging directly in Typepad - my usual method. The above text was entered in Flock. I love the way it adds Technorati tags. I don't like the fact that I can't assign categories in Flock. But it's new - a problem will be that all blogging apps are different and Flock allows you to blog to whomever your provider is. Maybe Blogger doesn't have categories, but Typepad does. How will Flock handle the various discrepancies? It will be interesting to watch as this browser evolves.**

Technorati Tags: Flock, web/tech, blog

RSS Chaos

My apologies. If you read this blog via RSS feed, and depending on your reader settings, you may have gotten a bunch of old posts. I went through and updated some of my categories (since categories are now used as tags, I thought a few should be more detailed). By doing so, your reader may or may not have registered the associated posts as "New." Sorry!

Cool new things: Wikis, Learning 2005, Reading

Some cool new things to mention:

There's a cool little application (not sure if that's the right word) out there called EditMe, available for $4.95 and up per month from Editme.com. It's a flexible online writing tool. It works incredibly well for wikis, as well as an online notebook, blogs, and so on. I also think that it would work nicely as a Knowledge Base (Of course, I think Knowledge Bases should be Wikis.)

My upcoming conference now has a Wiki. This is fascinating to me. Each session and topic has a page in the Wiki. The facilitator and the users can all add comments and questions. This allows the discussions to start BEFORE the conference and allows the facilitators to direct the conference discussion in a direction that interests the participants. As a note, PPT presentations and darkened rooms are not in use at this conference. It's a "1-Pager" Model that enables discussion and interaction. My conference also built a social networking site that I've been using. It is built, interestingly, on the back of online dating software, yet re-purposed. You fill out a very interactive online profile and then you're presented with a giant pincushion (using ASP) that displays you as the center pin and everyone with similar interests around you. Every pin is clickable. You can send messages - through the site - to others, and add and delete contacts. Your email address is never given, so there's no outside-of-the-site stalking. I've already "met" several people that I hope to meet up with at the conference. The use of ramp-up technology for this conference is amazing, but I have to say - it's almost too much. I'm overwhelmed by the staggering amount of podcasts, blog posts, books, PDFs, Wikis, and so forth that have come at me, from this conference alone, since July. In fact, I'm sort of overwhelmed by the sheer number of sessions from which to choose and I'm not quite sure how to pick just one per hour.

Finally, I picked up two new books. I was interested in the books anyway, but the authors are keynote speakers at the conference. Maybe I can snag an autograph or two ... Anyway, I'm now reading Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Both of these books demonstrate new styes of learning that instructional designers need to acknowledge as technology changes the learning landscape.

Project Alternative/Bad Days

First off, I found an Open Source alternative to MS Project. Yay!  Check out Open Workbench. It's free. I haven't played with it yet, but it's definitely worth a look-see.

I've been fighting through a bad couple of days. I had my hair color done on Wednesday last week and it was bright. I've washed it and I had just started to like it. Then today I wore black and had 2 people tell me I looked like a Bengals fan in my black outfit and orange hair. Saturday night I had a waitress compliment my outfit because it looked comfortable, which wasn't exactly what I was going for.  So, minor self-esteem hits this week - I'll recover though.

Had to teach training sessions the last two days. Today couldn't have been worse.  I had one student who didn't remember anything, anything at all, from the pre-requisite class. I spent so much time with her that I had another student actually reading the paper. Why don't people read directions and show up with the necessary skills? Not paying attention like that hurts the entire class. I think even she got frustrated after lunch and stopped asking questions. I was frustrated to a point that although I suspected she was having problems, I forged on ahead with the rest of my well-prepared class. Probably not the best alternative, but I'd really lost patience with the whole situation (which was slightly  more in-depth than what I described here). I had one machine crash 3 different times during today's session. To top it all off, we had a fire drill and evacuation (all a test) at the absolute worst possible time. My entire class had to high-tail out to the evacuation point to be counted. The whole exercise ate about 45 minutes.

Argh! Bad day!

Project Mgmt Software

Basecamp, it turns out, is currently too rich for my blood for the items I require. This makes me sad.
So I'm currently sitting here with a library book called Microsoft Project 2003 for Dummies and a 60-day trial edition of Project. I'm not investing in it until I'm positive it fulfills my needs. My guess is that it won't and I'll have to work something else out ... Perhaps after 2 months with Project I'll be willing to pay around $50/month for Basecamp. We'll see. I do like that it's monthly - no contract. In the meantime, it's a fully functional trial of Project.
Oh, and tomorrow I head back to Indiana to the under-budgeted client that is a 3-hour+ drive away. I get to tour the first manufacturing facility tomorrow; this is the facility for which I will bid on creating eLearning. I think tomorrow I'll bring up my medium trumping the message concern and see exactly how computer literate these folks are. I guess I also need to add student computer literacy into my project assumptions in the proposal I've put together.
I'm still shocked that I am a successful small business, all on my own. I learned everything business-related from either my first real corporate job or my last real corporate job. To be honest, I also learned more about my field from those two jobs than any of the others.

Email Etiquette

I'm particularly bad at this - esp using the Subject Line effectively. Sometimes I even forget to enter the subject. Anyway, this email primer on How to Effectively Write Emails That Someone Will Answer is a handy-dandy guide for me and the tons of folks just like me. (Of course, it's from my organization gurus at 43 Folders, via Boing Boing.)

Google Toys

Toys ... fairly useful technological tidbits ... call them whatever you want. Regardless of the name, Google has created some incredible innovations for our everyday life.
A few weeks ago, Google introduced Google Talk. I played around with it and discovered that not only is it an easy-to-use IM program, it's also an easy to use telephone. A microphone (even that mic built into your laptop will suffice) and speakers are all you need to talk to anyone across the planet. For free. Who needs a telephone?
Yesterday, Google introduced an innovative new search engine tool for blogs. Google Blog Search differs from others, such as Technorati. Google Blog Search displays results based on relevance. Technorati, and others, display information based on most recent postings. Both of these search engines have their strong points. If I want to know how many people are posting on a given topic - such as Hurricane Katrina - I can easily pull that information from Technorati. But if I want to know what's going on with bloggers who have been directly hit by the hurricane, Google Blog Search might be a better tool.
Today I stumbled across Google College Life. It's basically a list of some of the greatest of Google Tools, as easy access for college students. It has links to GMail (which I think requires a secondary email address with a .edu extension but does not require an invite), Picasa (photo management), SMS (Google's SMS tools are amazing and if I could better cope with text messaging on my phone, I'd be all over it), Google Talk, Google Maps, and of course, Google Scholar, which I've mentioned in the past.
Finally, Google added another treat today. Many people, myself included, have a personalized MyYahoo! page.  Now you can have a personalized Google page as your home page.

The Google Talk Test

Emphasis on the talk.
Kevin signed up for Google Talk as well. His office is in the basement and mine is on the top floor of our home. He can't hear me if I yell. So I clicked the little phone icon next to his name in my Google Talk buddy list. I started typing, and talking. He could hear me talking. He didn't have a microphone, so he couldn't hear me, but obviously my Dell Laptop's built-in mic was strong enough. He said the sound quality was really good. This is an awesome way to talk to people long-distance. All you need is a microphone and speakers on both ends.
Again, you currently need a gmail account to use Google Talk and if you need one, let me know. I have several invites.
I'm pretty impressed. It was just so easy and required no knowledge and no setup. Cool!

Why I love Google

Today Google released another great product - Google Talk. I'm going to go sign up for Google Talk. I've always railed against AOL and MSN, and I never really knew too many people who used the Yahoo product. I'm going to have IM, but this time, it'll be Google. I'll probably even get a headset so that I can make Google Calls to other folks over Google Talk. That's so handy.(I still think Skype is the future, but Google Talk is handy.) For the beta run of Google Talk, you need a GMail account. If you need one, let me know. I've got 50 or so free invites.
When we were at JavaOne, we met a part of the Google Team. They were great, and I swore that in 5-10 years, we would move to California and work for them. It seemed such fun, and so full of passion. I remember when I worked at a company like that, in the early days of starting up. It was incredible, and Google seems to always have that passion behind them, and a love of R&D that also comes to fruition.
Oh, and Google has a sense of humor. Not just in their fun holiday logos, but in the various things they release. For instance, Google is now available in 116 different languages, as well as Klingon and (this is great) Swedish Chef! Bork! Bork! Bork!

More on Google: The NY Times has an article on Google today that I find interesting. Apparently Silicon Valley has decided to hate Google as much as they hate Microsoft. Why? Because Silicon Valley likes to believe (however inaccurately) that they are about the underdog. Google is well on its way to top dog, and the Valley doesn't like that. The article is almost funny, as people complain that Google is taking away talent and driving up the cost of programmers.  Yep, Google is hiring the best and the brightest and paying their employees a lot more. That plus perks like an on-site gym, free meals, and more. Damn them, those evil Google people.  :roll eyes: Kudos to them for paying computer programmers, who work long hours no matter where they work, what they are worth, and for inspiring loyalty and passion in their employees. How many companies actually do that anymore? Heck, if you're going to become a large, multi-national corporation and eventually take over the world, you might as well as have fun while you're doing it.

A New Technical Conundrum

A new technical puzzle for my techie readers:
Situation: http://blog.write-tech.com redirects you to http://writegirl.typepad.com/writetech (the Write Technology Weblog hosted here at Typepad.) This is fine and dandy except that once you land on the site, the actual typepad URL is displayed.
Enterprising readers can find their way to the weblog at which you are currently staring. While I never post anti-client sentiment or anything, I don't necessarily want them reading my struggle with Weight Watchers or my latest saga with my hair dresser. (Let's leave out the arguments that whatever I post on the web is public knowledge, and work on a technical solution.)

Solution #1: Leave it as it is. It's not that big of a deal (which I agree).  However, keeping it as blog.write-tech.com would just really be nice.
Solution #2: Install Word Press or something similar on my Write-Tech server and run it from there. Tried that last year and I wasn't very successful. There's something about the ease of use of Typepad that I'm too lazy to leave.
Solution #3: Use an invisible frameset that loads the Write Tech blog into an index page at blog.write-tech.com. I tried that today and it worked. But my euphoria was short-lived. I discovered that I was trapped within my own frameset. All the Typelist Links on the side opened within the frameset. I can't do that to my users. If I knew how to customize the Typelists on Typepad, this would be the ideal solution. But right now, I can't seem to add a target frame to Typelist links. 

Any other thoughts and ideas as to masking the typepad URL would be great.  Thanks to all my brainy readers!

Programming Woes No More

It is so nice to have a husband who is a computer guy. Last night, in about 20 minutes, he figured out my RSS feed to Javascript localization issue and now everything on write-tech.com is running on its own server. Yay! (I'm also able to use the same conversion engine for the script on kevinandshel.com!)
So, forms are local, RSS conversion is local - we are good. Yesterday I wiped the entire public HTML directory and re-built it from scratch. I no longer get a virus monster (I have amusing anti-virus software) when I load write-tech.com.
All is good in my computer world.

Virus! Programming Woes

So I've spent the entire day tracking a virus that attacked me from my own web site (write-tech.com). I think  it's gone. I know it's gone from my PC. I know it was Java based and seemed to have taken up residence in my J2EE files. The Java Development Environment is now removed from my PC. Can't remember why I installed it in the first place anyway, although I do remember installing it.
Now I can't decide if it has decided to leave write-tech.com alone. I've lost an entire day to this.
I'm currently trying to bring everything on write-tech.com internal, I just haven't figured out how yet. My two big issues:
-RSS Feed Display
-Forms

• I use Feed2JS, a nifty service from Maricopa County Community College (super-duper elearning resources!). It displays the RSS feed from my Write-Tech blog on the Write-Tech site. For another example of this (where you won't get a virus), go to http://www.kevinandshel.com. At the bottom of the page, you'll see the last few entries from the Kevin & Shel blog. Now, the Maricopa site explains how to host the whole deal on my own server, but I couldn't PHP my way out of a paper bag, so it's all greek to me.
• I use FormMail (matt's script archive), which is legendary, for my forms. It hits a perl script that I host, yet when I get the emails, they are from webmaster@jeep.websitewelcome.com. I haven't figured out why yet because Perl is slightly beyond me (I'm such the application geek - but not a programming geek. HTML really does not count.) Update: Actually, I think that may be the server I'm hosted on (it's a long story). However, I found tons of extra files hanging out in the CGI folder, and I killed those. Hopefully that helps with the whole "virus" thing. In theory, I'm not leaving my own server at all for forms. It's just the RSS feed now.

Any help on any of this, from any of you programmer folks out there, would be greatly appreciated. I'm at the end of my virtual rope today.

Everything Old is New Again

Well, I'm sick. I've been fighting it for a week, but I finally just decided to let myself be sick. While being sick, I had Kevin upgrade my old, old blueberry iMac (the kind that looks like a big old-fashioned blue tv) and now Ella is running 512 MB RAM and a 120 GB hard drive. I partitioned out the hard drive and started to install the operating system. As I did, I discovered the disc I was using for 10.4 was an upgrade and I had to have 10.3 installed in order to run 10.4. How ridiculous.  Anyway, I hunted down a version of 10.3 and installed it last night. All is running quite smootly now - it's like a new machine - one would never guess it was purchased in 2000! I plan on using this machine solely to manage my hundreds and hundreds of photos. It will run all the basic OS X stuff (like iPhoto) as well as the 2.0 version of Photoshop Elements. I can't believe it is running so well.  The downside of it all is that this machine will not support more than 512 MB of RAM (literally, it won't support more than two 256 sticks, period) and any more than a 120 GB hard drive. They made these old iMacs upgradeable only to a point. I guess it's worth pointing out, though, that Ella was originally running a 10.2 GB hard drive and - unbelievably - 64 MB of RAM. No wonder the performance is amazingly different!

Comments & Blog Makeover

I've made over the blog again. This time I used a pre-defined Typepad template that I liked. What I don't like is that I'm stuck with fixed width columns no matter what I do. Tha'ts annoying. If I could find a similar title graphic, I'd create a template from scratch. I rather like this one though - I wish they'd let me modify it. I figure the travel theme is fitting, at least through October (another trip to Orlando) or November (Chicago). By that point I'll need something a little more wintry. I've switched over to 2 columns. The fixed column width is annoying, so my preferred 3-column format then leaves very little space for content. Not sure how long I can handle the long continuous stuff column there to the left. So, we'll see how this design works out ...
Also, I've decided to activate authentication for comments. This means that you won't see your comment until I've authenticated it and approved it. This is because I was getting all sorts of crazy comment spam and this way I can stop it and report it before it even gets published. So just keep in mind that you might not see your comments immediately.

JavaOne

Last year Kevin didn't have trouble scoring me a free Pavilion-only pass for JavaOne. This was great - I got to see what the conference was about, score some swag, get a photo with Duke, and talk to a couple of different software firms whose products I use.

This year, I have searched high and low and have not been able to find a free Pavilion Pass. I really don't want to shell out $150 to buy one, but I wouldn't mind going. If anyone stumbles across one in their Internet or business wanderings, let me know!

Flickr vs SmugMug

I know that everyone who reads my blog is all about Flickr.  I know.  And Flickr is cool.  But I think I may end up with SmugMug.  You see, I'm getting lazy.  Rather, I take so many photos that creating individualized web pages is getting tedious, even through Photoshop's batch page automator. I still have to tweak everything in Dreamweaver. 
My one complaint with Flickr is that, although their mission is to cater to every customer, no matter what the level of privacy requested, they don't yet deliver on that promise. Yet. I'm sure they will. You see, I want to post my photos, but I don't want them public.  I don't want the whole world ogling my sisters or seeing my house. I know that's silly and retro of me, but it's true. 
Granted, the whole world can get there now.  If they know how. If they have the interest.  Seriously, it's not like our personal web site is popping up high on Google if you search for Niagara Falls.  But if I upload my Niagara Falls photos to Flickr, and tag them Niagara Falls, everyone can see them. Okay, I know that I can do the "friends and family" thing, but then my family has to log in, etc, etc, and really, that's too much for many of them. I want simple password protection. 
SmugMug allows me to password protect individual galleries or the entire site. I like that. I just post the password on our web site and folks can then view the photos.  Seriously, it takes just enough work that it deters folks who aren't interested and not enough work to deter my family.
I know it's not secure in any way - I get that, but it's exactly what I need.
I still think Flickr is cool though - I love the whole PhotoStream idea. I just don't want my photos as part of the stream. Although if I attended an event - say I went to a conference and took a lot of photos - Flickr would be a fantastic way for me to share and view photos with other conference attendees.
I've opened a free account with Flickr and a 7-day trial with SmugMug. I'll let you know in 7 days what I decide to go with ...

UPDATE 7/2/06: Because this post gets a lot of hits, I thought I'd update, one year later. I used a Pro SmugMug account for a year. However, SmugMug was cost prohibitive. I really liked that I could assign a password to the account to keep everyone  on the Web from perusing my photos. However, I've gotten past that. For $25/year, I can have unlimited storage, ease of uploading, and simple blog-from-photo posting from Flickr, among other things. I moved all 700 of my SmugMug photos over to Flickr in early June. I miss the password protection ability. But, I've sort of gotten a little more open about that stuff too, as I have been trying to embrace Web 2.0, tagging, and all the sharing that comes with the latest iteration of the Web.
Flickr wins.

Such a geek

Looking around my office, I have to wonder when I became such a geek. Starting to the right, we have an old iMac with actual memory sticks piled on top of it. On the floor by the iMac is the Seagate 120 GB hard drive that will soon go inside the iMac. Next to the iMac is my Dell laptop, which is huge. Once upon a time, the laptop was my favorite computer. Then it fell out of favor because, I now realize, it was uncomfortable to use. Now that it's sitting up on a podium pad and I have an attached and lower keyboard, it's back to being my favorite PC. Next we have the Seagate external drive that I'm using to religiously back up my work. I've had too many scares in the last year and am not willing to lose the items that my clients pay me for. The little Seagate isn't always on, but when it is, it's remarkably quiet. I also use Acronis as my back-up software - it's fantastic.
On the next desk over (I have them set up in an "L") I have my desktop Dell with the nifty flat monitor. On a shelf above my desktop machine is Keiko, my photo iPod, hooked up to speakers. There's also a bag of cases, cords, and cards, as well as my camera. Then finally, on a rolling cabinet, is Lily, my nifty little iBook that is currently sporting a Shag desktop and martini icons. I added a passport external drive to Lily, naming the external drive Winnie, where I'm storing big files and installing things like Photoshop. Lily is also on a podium pad, extremely angled so that typing is comfortable. I added an external mouse as well.
See - I'm a geek.  A gadget geek. I have no idea when or how this happened. I suppose the funniest part is all the stuffed animals peeking out from above and around the various gadgets.

Graffiti Media

Feeling rather crappy with some sort of stomach virus. Found this while browsing through Wired New Online.

Anyone can make grafedia, too. To do so, a user selects a rich media file (image, video or sound) and then chooses a word (say, "wirednews") to go along with that file. The user then uploads the file from a computer or sends it from a cell phone to, using this example, wirednews@grafedia.net. The user can then paint, draw or tattoo "wirednews" in public spaces in blue with an underline to identify it as grafedia. Viewers can interact with the grafedia by sending a message via their computer or certain cell phones addressed to "wirednews@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link.

Sounds fascinating, I think.

It's not Graffit, It's Grafedia (WiredNews)
Grafedia Web Site

Added RSS feed to personal site

This is just fun in a geeky sort of way. For a while now, I've had the RSS feed from the Write Tech blog feeding into the Write Tech site. It occurred to me that since I have the Kevinandshel site associated with its own blog, I should do the same thing there. I'm quite pleased with the results.
I directed the feed with the help of code from Maricopa. If you work in instructional design/eLearning at all, I highly recommend you check out the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. They have an unbelievable selection of free tools (such as Feed2JS that I used) as well as free online learning. I used  their online learning to help train other professors when I was at Miami University.

Email Machine for Grandma

I had it in my head that we would get Grandma an email machine for her birthday next week. Two or so years ago, I saw these internet appliances advertised anywhere, but no ISP supported Grandma's rural location. Now there are several ISPs, but there are no longer any internet appliances. I don't want to get her a full PC, no matter how low-end. Among other things, a full PC is intimidating to someone who has used a Selectric typewriter for 50+ years. Second, we don't live close enough to Grandma to provide technical support and we all know that a full computer, in the hands of a novice, will need support.

My New Mouse

I needed a full-size mouse for my laptop, as I was using a mini mouse and my hand was cramping. So I picked up this super-fun mouse from ThinkGeek. Of course I got the duck (I love ducks!) and now SurfDuck and I surf the web. It's a pretty good mouse too (I'm surprised) - it's optical and USB.

Why didn't I think of that?

Stumbled across a brilliant new business the other day. It's not only tempting to use, but makes you say "Why didn't I think of that?"

Rip Digital will rip all your CDs to mp3s. 100 CDs for $129. Once you hit 250 CDs, the price drops to $1/CD. They give you FedEx materials to ship your CDs and return your CDs to you along with the digital files. You can have the files sent to you on data DVD or you can purchase a portable hard drive from Rip Digital. They'll put the files on the portable hard drive and also send you data DVDs as a backup. The largest hard drive you may purchase is 200 gb and costs $250. I know that's actually too much to pay for a 200 gb drive (I was looking at them for $133 the other day) but I figure the extra money goes into the costs for materials - mostly DVDs and shipping costs, plus operating costs. Really, this is a brilliant little business.

(Also, any one who has a Mac will appreciate the site layout of Ripdigital.com.)

Due to price, Kevin & I won't use it, despite the fact that its our goal to remove those multiple and overflowing CD racks from our family room and offices and rip everything. We have no excuse to use a service when, at any given point, we have at least 4 working computers between the two of us.

ARGH!!!! Frickin' frackin' computers

Kevin and I had two drives running downstairs - one is a fairly new 160 GB (I think) drive that had all the videos I created in Premiere a month or so ago - roughly 60 GB in video files. We also had another  drive that had about 60 GB of music files, all my Write Technology backup files and financial files, as well as all my photos (about 30 GB in photos).

GONE.

Something happened; we haven't figured out what yet. All the file names on the smaller drive (with photos and music) read like gobbledygook. I can't even get to the larger drive that has videos on it.

The really annoying thing? We thought something was wrong with the smaller drive and started to back it up to the larger drive.  Oops.

I'm lucky in that I had the foresight to burn a data DVD of my Write Tech files & financials and my web sites. I will have lost some of my photos, but I'm pretty good at backing those up to CD-ROM, so I should be mostly covered. I also have backups of the wedding and reception photos in our fire safe (some things I don't want to lose). Basically I'll lose photos of Halloween, and such. But if they're on my web site, I'm good. They won't be full resolution, but at least its something.

But we've lost about 60 GB of music. In theory, there is a lot of that music on my iPod and Kevin's iPod. Using Copypod, we should be able to transfer a lot of it back onto a hard drive eventually. However, we've got a lot of overlap on our iPods, so that won't even be 30 GB of music.

GONE.

ARGH!!!!  At least I managed to back up the really important financial stuff. 

The moral of the story - always backup your hard drive(s) on a regular basis.

Google Yellow Pages

Actually its called Google Local and I have no idea when it got there. I just noticed it today. I do a lot of my searches from the Firefox branded Google start page, which is minus many of the many Google features.
Google Local is basically your phone book.  Kevin & I don't even keep phone books in the house anymore. This drives my parents crazy when they're over and want to look something up. "Well what do you use?"  "Yahoo! Yellow Pages," we say.  Yep - phone books get instantly recycled in this house.
I don't know what will make Google Local better than Yahoo! Yellow Pages yet, but I know that for some odd reason, I'm more willing to use Google.  Yahoo! started out hip and cool and has gradually become Microsoft-like. Google is also a corporation, but their constant innovation and occasional goofiness make them easier to like as they slowly take over the world.

Cancelled my Vaja

I was never comfortable with the cost of the Vaja flip case, especially since it didn't offer a screen protector (which is so odd - the other Vaja cases do), nor was there the option to buy or add one on.  I know, I know. Vaja cases are supposedly the best. I agree. They remind me a lot of my custom-made Bellagio case for my PDA. In fact, I think the only difference is that Vaja are Argentinian and Bellagio are Belgian. Seriously. Same wait time, custom designs, and options, and quality of workmanship.

Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time - everything from the Etch a Sketch to the iPod. 

Palm Case Hack

My own little life hack here. I ordered a Dooney & Burke leather case for my Palm from eBay. I ordered it for a number of reasons.  It's red leather and I've always wanted a red leather briefcase.  Call this a temporary fix.  It arrived quickly and my other Palm case is being hand made in Belgium or some such thing and won't arrive until mid-March, so I needed something other than the crappy and flimsy flippy lid that shipped with it (it's not even a hard lid, like the Palms of old).  Oh, and its Dooney & Burke. I've always wanted a Dooney purse but could never afford it.  Again, call this a temporary fix.  Okay, my red leather palm case is a temporary fix for everything I mentioned.

It doesn't fit my palm pilot. I thought it was a universal case, but now that its in my hands, I see its meant for a Palm with a stylus slot on the left side.  The case has a "unique rail system" that holds the Palm in the case.  It's a pretty neat idea.

I refuse to put Velcro on the back of my Palm, so I unearthed a little creativity. The Palm is held in by tight rubber bands.  It works better than you think - I shook it all over the place and the PDA didn't budge. I wrapped a rubber band around the top of the rail and top of the palm and repeated it at the bottom.  I also wrapped a band around the rail, securing the first two bands in place. I can't believe this works. Because my palm is blue, and the bands are blue, its not even overly noticeable. Like the whole deal, this is just a temporary fix.  But I'm happy with it.

BTW guys, I looked at the Vaja cases before I ordered my overpriced Belgian model. I prefer slim leather flip cases - for Palm and iPod.  Unfortunately, Vaja doesn't make a flip case that fits my particular Palm. Actually, they've only got one case that fits my Palm and I don't really like it because you have to remove the Palm from the case to use it. I prefer to keep my Palm in the case.  But I looked at Vaja first - I swear.

Palm Accessories are awesome!

I love my new Palm Pilot.  I love that its in color.  I realize Palms have been in color for a few years now, but my last Palm, the lousy i705 (Palm's first foray into overpriced wireless Palm.net) was still that grey-green screen of old. Anyway, I already use a 128 MB expansion card for photos and even some songs (just because I can).  I discovered over the weekend that I can also buy pre-loaded expansion cards.  From Palm they are incredibly expensive.  They are still expensive, but not as outrageously so, if I apply the Weight Watchers On-the-Go discount. Then I found them on eBay.
As a rule, I stay away from eBay because I tend to impulse shop. But on a lark, I searched for these pre-loaded expansion cards and there they were!  Really cheap and unopened! So I won the PalmPak Travel Card, which is like a guide book on my Palm for many int'l cities, as well as Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and more. I've bid on the Wine Enthusiast card, which would be like having a Wine Spectator in my pocket. I'm interested in the Speaking Language Translator card, which just sounds neat although I'm not travelling internationally anytime soon. 
I also ordered two cases for my Palm.  The first is a beautiful flip case (my preferred style) by Bellagio Designs in soft navy leather.  It will match my iPod case.  Then, on an impulse buy on eBay, I ordered a red Dooney & Bourke case as well. After that purchase, I logged off eBay for my own good.

Palm Pilot

So I broke down and bought a Palm Pilot last night.  Not a top of the line fancy one - just a glorified appointment book really.  That's all I need.  I rely heavily on my Outlook calendar.  Very heavily. Since that was only on my laptop, when I went to meetings sans computer, I had to scribble notes and appointments in a notebook.  No problem except that I take so many notes, the app't times sort of got lost. I was already an hour late for an app't with one client this year, and I kept forgetting to update the Outlook calendar with my scribbles.  I tried to fool myself into thinking that I could use my iPod as my calendar, but that didn't work so well since I can't enter data onto the iPod without a computer handy. It did carry my Outlook calendar & contacts though - I tried.
So I bought a Palm Zire 31.  Like I said, not top of the line, but since I'm using it for three things - appointments, contacts, and Weight Watchers, it suits me just fine. Plus it's color - that's nice. And it fits in my purse.
Oh yes - I said Weight Watchers. WW Online has a Palm program.  It's my points tracker, food journal, plus a database of restaurants and foods and their associated points, as well as a points calculator. It syncs with the WW web site. Overall, its just brilliant; a definite bonus for my little Palm.
I've had Palms ever since the first one came out, but I never used them.  I'd carry them around for the first couple months and then stop using them. Eventually they'd get handed down to someone else when I acquired a new one (I think I only ever purchased one - the rest were prizes, gifts, etc.)  They always gathered dust. However, I never had as many meetings and deadlines to manage as I do now.  I think I'm finally at a point where having my calendar with me, electronically, is a real benefit. It never really mattered much before.  We'll see how I do - both with Weight Watchers and with the Palm.

Tech Support

I spent the last two days fighting with my HP 1210 All-in-One Copier, Scanner, Printer. It wouldn't scan all of a sudden.  I scoured both HP and Microsoft's support sites, trying every possible fix I could find.  Nothing worked. So I contacted support for both HP and Microsoft.  While they were both very helpful, they treated me like a 5-year old (now touch this button, which is on your keyboard). Argh!  Over and over they told me to try the same things I'd already tried.  The HP folks finally decided it was my USB cable. I tried to explain that I could send  things to print just fine and that I could set the copy commands from the computer just fine and that if I could do those things, it wasn't the USB cable because IT'S AN ALL-IN-ONE MACHINE!  I did switch out the USB cable, just so I wouldn't be lying to them.  As predicted, it made no difference.
In the end, I moved the printer so that it is attached to my desktop machine instead of my laptop. It scans just fine.  I have no idea what the problem is.  OS speaking, the desktop is running XP SP2.  SP2 so screwed up this machine when I installed it that the laptop is still running XP SP1. But really, in December, I could scan when the machine was hooked up to my laptop.
Of course, now that it scans again, it won't share. (Must there always be something?)  I'm going to go searching to find if there is just a little something I'm not doing, but it shared fine before I moved it.
The HP tech support people, via email, were nice but rather moronic.  Just cutting and pasting from a script. I didn't call them, even though they encouraged me to.  First off, it ticks me off that I would be calling an 800 number and end up at the tech support center in India with "Steve" on the other end of the line. I'm anti-outsourcing, but that's another rant for another time. Second, I knew that they would just read the same scripts to me that had been emailed over the past two days. Why bother with it all again? As for Microsoft, I was pleasantly surprised. I spoke with "Seth" via a MS Support Chat environment.  He tried really hard to help me and has been following up with further solutions that he has found via email. Who knew? Microsoft seems to have not scary support!
Off to figure out how to make this thing appear on Kevin's desktop as a shared printer. (Actually, Kevin can no longer access my desktop machine on the network and I'm not sure what changed.)

Video Goddess Part II

Well, after spending way way way too many hours screwing around with Premiere Elements, I'm sort of getting the hang of it.  I broke down and skimmed the manual, but only after having created movies of our wedding, island reception, and my bridal shower, as well as Kevin's own tour of the island.  After reading the manual (well, the advanced portions at least), I'm excited over some more complex transitions and such that I can do. Right now I'm attempting to transfer the biggie - the local reception - to my PC.  We'll see.  It's around 53 minutes.  That's 10 GB of space, right off the bat, of raw footage.  There will be at least that much, plus effects, transitions, etc.  That's 20 GB.  Suddenly I've filled up our 80 GB hard drive in the last couple days ...
At least, once I burn these, I can get them off the machine. However, I'd like to keep the raw footage as data for future reference, which means I need something else. Can anyone recommend a free, DVD-burning app (for PC) that burns data? Our dvd burner doesn't seem to have affiliated software.
UPDATE: I found a copy of Roxio in my CD files and put that on Kevin's machine. I'm currently burning data dvds of all my raw footage.  All except the local wedding reception which is many many gigs (20 gb total of AVIs) and would require about 5 DVDs.  It doesn't get backed up. 
Now I have to figure out if Elements will let me burn one DVD with all my projects or if I need to plug them all into Sonic MyDVD.  I suspect that either way, I'll have to render each project to AVI first.  I wonder what the compression ratio is - ie, will it take 8 hours to render my 45 minute wedding reception?

Video Goddess

Well, I'm not quite a goddess. Not yet, anyway. But I'm working on it.
Yesterday I purchased Adobe Premiere Elements 1.0. It's a scaled down version of Adobe Premiere. I own Adobe Premiere and it frightens me. Even after some training and some reading, it still frightens me. That, my friends, is why the professionals use it. Premiere Elements 1.0, however, is the iMovie of the PC world, and its about time.
Off the top, I'll tell you that its still no where near as user friendly as iMovie. But I do prefer it to Pinnacle, Windows MovieMaker, and Sony Vegas. I didn't like any of those, and I compared them all to iMovie. (For those of you unfamiliar, iMovie is Mac only.)
In 4 hours I managed to create a small movie of my first bridal shower. It's a 3 minute/41 second movie, with music and transitions. My theory is that I'm never going to want to watch the whole bridal shower, which was 4 hours long. I'm most likely never going to want to watch the 2 hours that we caught on tape. I grabbed the highlights (some gifts, the toasts, the cake) and reduced it to 3 minutes with a soundtrack. It took me 4 hours because I didn't know what I was doing and I got bored with the tutorial about 1/4 of the way through. It was poorly written and illustrated. I opted to do it myself with the aid of the Help file.  (The music I used?  "State Fair" by the Los Strait Jackets. I set my shower to surf music.)
Now, I just need to do the wedding and the reception. Then I can package it all together on a Wedding DVD. My problem is that these things take hours and roughly 5 minutes of film takes up 1 GB on the hard drive (or so I've read). I knew there was a reason I needed a Mac Mini.  To be a dedicated video machine!

KevinandShel.com (the site) updated

Kevinandshel.com (the site, not the blog) has been updated with a new look to match the blog. It's a vineyard theme now. Because I'm not a glutton for punishment, the individual photo albums remained the same. Only the main pages have changed. However, the navigation menu has also been updated. If you go to the site and you see a beach or underlined links, hit the Refresh button on your browser.

(cross-posted on both blogs)

I knew I wasn't completely finished redecorating.

yum .. laptop pizza

This is just silly. I can't believe someone would waste their money on this, it's so silly.  The idea behind this is that thieves will steal your laptop if you are carrying it either in the open or in a laptop bag.  Here's my thing though - hungry thieves are going to steal your laptop when they think it's a pizza!

Power Pizza Laptop Box
  (via Slashdot)

UPDATE: On second thought, I think there is a very good chance that this is a fictional product. That "fictional products" heading at the top of the web page turned me on.  I suppose the humour now lies not only in the silliness of the product but the fact that hundreds of /.'ers have posted comments without noticing. And you know what? On the very off chance that it's real, let's pretend it's fictional anyway.

Go Faster Tweak for Firefox

From Boing Boing, there is a small little hack you can do to the Config of Firefox to make it go faster, provided you have a broadband connection.  Supposedly it makes Firefox multi-task better, allowing you to fly through the Internet.  I've done the hack (it's easy!) but haven't yet noticed a difference.

Go Faster Tweak for Firefox (Boing Boing)

UPDATE: Okay - the Boing Boing post was updated. Apparently there was a Reason these settings weren't in Firefox to begin with.  It can a) screw with Flash and b) screw with your pages on certain servers.  You can make the changes but beware that they may cause more problems, even if your load time is sliced in half. Your call.

GMail for the Holidays

By the way, is there anyone who would like a GMail email account? GMail is Google's email service that is web-based, by "invitation only," and gives you like 1 Gb of space.  I have a couple of invitations to spare and, in the spirit of the season, thought I'd offer them up!  Just email me if you're interested.

My name was in the NY Times ...

Well, my name along with 10,999 other names in very small black print. 

Firefox, that browser I so love, took out an ad sponsored by members of the open source community.  It listed names of sponsors - early adopters of the product - and informed readers that you're not stuck with IE. There are other free options and they're better.  It was a kick-ass two page ad in yesterday's New York Times. (I tried to post this yesterday, but opted to crash my computer instead ...)

I ordered a poster of the ad because I think it will look quite nifty in my office.  Assuming I can find a wall without a bookshelf.

You can read about the ad here, where you can also download a PDF of the ad.

Oh, and you can download Firefox here! ;-)  Did I mention it works on Macs and PCs?  And it imports all your IE settings, so you don't lose bookmarks or anything.

Something Wonky in IE

I just happened to view my blog in Windows Internet Explorer.  What the hell?  The pictures are all over the place.  FYI, the site views perfectly fine via Firefox.  Since it's all just standard HTML, I don't know what has happened.  Nor am I going to expend the time and energy to find out today.  Waaaaaaay too busy.  Maybe when I get back from Chicago.
Anyway, if you're using IE and the site looks all strange (photos appearing in strange places), my apologies.  If you're using Firefox (available for Mac AND PC), more power to you.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!  (And Happy Thursday if you're not in the U.S.!)

UPDATE: Here's a quick fix to the IE issue.  It's not a solution by any means.  I think something is up with the refresh rate on IE.  Or something. 
1. If photos are in strange places, such as the middle of this post or the like, use the Restore Up/Down button in the upper right-hand corner of your window. 
(Note: The button is the middle button.)
2. Click the Restore button to change your window size either larger or smaller.  It will do this automatically.
3. Restore back to your normal size.  The photos should have returned to their proper homes.

Taking back the web

Firefox, which I promote over in the side bar of this blog (Surf Happy), is getting ready to release version 1.0. I've been running the beta version for a few months, and earlier versions before that. When the browser is released in November, they're hoping for 10 million downloads in 10 days. And it's not unreasonable, according to an article in Business 2.0:

Firefox, a free open-source browser that loads twice as fast as Internet Explorer, has already been downloaded 2.7 million times, and it has siphoned off nearly 2 percent of Microsoft's browser market share, now at 93.7 percent. Along the way, Firefox is fast becoming the browser of choice for anyone fed up with all the nasty things polluting the Web (pop-ups and viruses and spyware, oh my!). Google (GOOG) is rumored to be building its own browser based on the Firefox framework, and entrepreneurs are churning out hundreds of microprograms for it (see "The Spawn of Firefox," within the linked article). A minister in Kentucky is even exhorting his flock to switch to Firefox because it blocks those pesky Viagra ads.

This quote is from an article in MIT's Technology Review:

Don’t expect Bill Gates to call an emergency meeting after he checks out release 1.0, or don’t expect Steve Ballmer to issue a Firefox-related revenue warning to analysts in Microsoft’s next earnings call. But release 1.0 is a landmark moment in the browser wars. “This is Mozilla’s most important release ever,” says Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox. “We have an opportunity to take market share from Microsoft. This is as good a chance as ever existed.” And the fact that its fans are paying for a full-page ad in the New York Times calling attention to the product will likely result in a few more stories such as this. The next thing you know, you’ll get a call from your elderly relative asking what you think of “this Fireflock thing.”

Write Technology is proud to support Firefox and to be involved in the NY Times ad. You can go here if you're also interested in help promoting Firefox.
By the way, if Kevin and I have worked on a computer for you anytime since June, chances are that you have Firefox on your machine. By using Firefox instead of IE, you'll reduce your risk of spyware and viruses. That means your computer will stay healthy. Take back the web - surf happy and safely using Firefox.

Microsoft's Worst Nightmare (Business 2.0)
MIT Technology Review
Spread Firefox!
Download Firefox

(cross-posted to the Write Technology blog)

Upgrading the Dog

What? You thought I was on a political bender? I've come down, I swear. My dear hubby found this and sent it to me. Imagine upgrading your furry companion. This article includes a photo gallery of pics taken by the dog, sort of, as well as all kinds of cool gadgets to tech out your dog.
Seriously. You have to read it.

You know, if you did this to a cat, you would get photos of a food dish, a litter box, and wherever the cat chose to sleep. Nothing else interesting. It's kind of interesting to see the dog's, uh, perspective - esp the dog's view of the cat.

Oh - the dog in the article is a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and is simply oozing the "I'm utterly adorable; please hug me" vibe.

Upgrade Your Organic Dog

About Moblogging

Well, I can successfully moblog from my phone. However, I just have a regular phone, not a Treo or Blackberry (yet). I find it unbelievably difficult to navigate the internet from my little Samsung and even more difficult to actually type on telephone keys. How do kids do it anyway? Once I acquire a Treo or Blackberry (within the year I'm betting), then I'll be moblogging all over I think. Those have thumb keys and watching a friend of mine use them, well - it's way easier than silly phone keys. So, that was just an experiment.

Firefox Upgrade to 1.0PR

The Firefox browser has been upgraded again to version 1.0 PR (Preview Release). According to the press release, the new enhancements include

* Improved pop-up blocker: new pop-up blocker blocks even more pop-ups while making it easy to view pop-ups when necessary.
* Security improvements: the new release provides additional protection to users against spoofing attacks, the practice of tricking users into believing they are on a trusted site when they are not. When a user visits a secure site, Firefox now highlights the web site address and clearly displays the name of the web site. Firefox also includes a number of other security improvements and fixes, several of which were identified as part of the Mozilla Foundation's new Security Bug Bounty Program.
* Live Bookmarks, which help users discover a new dimension to the web by allowing them to create bookmarks that display dynamically updated content such as news headlines. Live Bookmarks let users view RSS feeds, a technology that web content providers use to easily create and disseminate news headlines and summaries. RSS feeds are offered by thousands of sites, including Yahoo News, BBC.co.uk, CNET News.com and most weblogs.
* Plugin finder service: Firefox now includes a plugin finder service that makes it a breeze to install plugins, starting with the Macromedia Flash Player for Windows. Additional plugins will be added in the coming weeks.
* Improved searching within web pages: Firefox now highlights search terms when the user is looking for keywords within a page.

SP2 Update to Windows XP / Protect Your Machine for Free

The long awaited SP2 update to Windows XP was released today, although it will be a few days until it begins to appear on the Windows Update site. It sounds as if Microsoft has made some good decisions in implementing this particular update. It will serve to protect the folks who don't have an IT person in their family, and therefore probably aren't running Spybot, AVG, and ZoneAlarm on their machines. I, for one, will disable the automatic firewall, but for others, that firewall will be all that's standing between them and evil internet overlords. *wink* It sounds like Internet Explorer has some great updates too. I'm not going to return to IE from Firefox, but I'm glad my parents and non-Firefox-using friends will be further protected while surfing. I hope they release an update just for IE, so that folks - such as my in-laws - who haven't been upgraded to XP will be able to benefit from the new IE security features.
Here's a fantastic run-down of the changes, benefits, and not-so-greats of SP2: PC Magazine.

The way I see it, with these incredible applications available for free, there's no excuse for Joe Q Public's machine to not be protected. Protect yourself for free:
Spybot Search & Destroy: currently the best spyware detector and killer out there ... and it's free!
AVG Anti-Virus: Virus detection that runs a nightly check and monitors all your incoming and outgoing email. It catches spam-carried viruses for me all the time and instantly quarantines them ... and it's free!
ZoneAlarm: Your own easy-to-configure, simple-to-use firewall. Everyone should have one, especially if your machine is on all or most of the time ... did I mention it's free!

(This entry is cross-posted to the Write Technology blog.)

Argh!

My broadband connection went out today. It also went out on Tuesday. Really, this is quite annoying. It certainly keeps me from getting any significant amount of work done, and keeps me from getting files to and from my clients.
So I'm currently at the local library. Bless our library systems that they offer free internet to library card holders. Yay! So I'm hanging here until 5 pm, checking my email via alternate web mail accounts that I can access. Unbelievably, for every email account I have, I have a way to access it via web mail. Now if I could just access all of them from the same web mail client, that would be even better, but hey ... wishful thinking. Unfortunately, I can't send a file to one of my clients nor can I explain why. He doesn't know that I'm a [sub-]contractor and thinks I'm in a cube in an office somewhere in downtown Cincinnati. He doesn't know I work in my pjs from home and I'm not allowed to tell him. Anyway, the library won't let you access the actual Windows desktop or the hard drive, which means that when I plug in my USB key full of files to send, I can't access them. Argh! But at least I can get my email, right? 13 more minutes, then I'm going to hunt down the Joe Trippi book and head home. I'm quite frustrated. Wonder if I'll have email when I get back home?

Firefox point release

For those of you who have upgraded your browser to the tabbed-wonder that is Firefox (I'm so hooked), there was a release last night, to 0.9.3, that fixes some security issues. You have to download the whole browser again to upgrade - there isn't just an upgrade file. (If you're using the whole Mozilla suite, it was also upgraded.) It's pretty painless though and took me less than 2 minutes for download and install.

Free Politics via iTunes

I think this is rather neat:

Apple has thus far posted speeches made by Democratic luminaries during the first two nights of the convention, including former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites), former President Jimmy Carter, one-time Presidential candidate and former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (news - web sites), Illinois State Senator Barack Obama and others. The content has been culled from coverage produced by political news cable service C-SPAN and has been presented by Audible.com, creators of Audiobooks.

It's a good way to get the speeches out to the public. I'm assuming they'll do the same for the RNC.  Go iTunes! Apparently, last week they posted the content of the 9/11 report, also downloadable for free.  It's a good use of a commercial program as a public service.

Yahoo! News: Free DNC Speeches via iTunes

Write Tech site temporarily down

The Write-Technology site is temporarily down due to problems with our web hosting service. As soon as the glitches are fixed, the site will be functional again. This applies to all write-tech.com email addresses, weddings.write-tech.com, and www.lorianddave.com.
I'll update this as soon as my web host has their servers functional again. I do think the hosting company could stand to update their server error page, as right now it's quite misleading.

Update: The site, and email, are back online. In comparison to the one other outage we've experienced, this was fairly quick.

Using Win 2000 as a Remote Desktop Host?

Is it possible? Everything I've read is telling me that I must have Win XP installed on my machine to use it as a host in remote desktop. I want my Win 2000 machine to be the host, with my Win XP machine - my laptop - as the client. Why is this so difficult and why are there no directions on how to do this, but tons of directions on how to access XP remotely from 2000? I need the opposite. Please send suggestions. I'd hate to have to buy PC Anywhere or another similar product if I can do it without.

the 4G iPod - no! not yet!

I'm not ready.  I'm still discovering the wonders of my 3G iPod and they put out the 4G - and it's cheaper?  Aaaaa!  Apple - no! Not yet!  Of course, at the same time I'm practically salivating at the idea of a 4G iPod.  I will hold off though.  I havent filled up my 20 Gb 3G yet.  Plus, I use my iPod for my calendar and contacts, on top of everything else.  If I'm flying, the txt file of my eticket and itinerary can be found on my iPod.  I love the thing.
Read about the new iPod in Newsweek
Read about the effect the iPod has had on culture, also in Newsweek

Technical Difficulties

I would like to show headlines and the first 50 words of each post from my Write Tech blog on my Write Technology web site. I need an RSS-to-HTML-to-Javascript converter/parser. I've found a few but either they don't let me customize the resulting text to my existing CSS or they're too complicated and out of my league. Any suggestions? Customizable but not scary programming stuff. I don't want to see the word "array."

Also, I'm hoping to be able to access my Windows 2000 desktop machine remotely from my Windows XP laptop. Any suggestions there?

6 pm Update: After struggling for a while, I came up with a solution to the RSS feed-to-javascript issue. The Write Technology web site now shows the latest three headlines/descriptions from the Write Tech Blog. Yay! Kevin sent me a link for remote desktop or some such thing, but I'm not going to deal with it quite yet. Instead, I'm going to eat dinner and head to the gym.

Convertible Mini

I can't justify buying a mini-cooper, although I love them. When it comes down to it, I really require a bigger car. I still want a mini though.  Now I really want a mini as it's about to be released in my favorite flavor - Convertible!  We snuck into the Apple WWDC while at JavaOne in San Francisco and I took these photos.  The Convertible is due to be released in September. This particular Mini is iPod-enabled, meaning you can drive your car and your iPod from your steering wheel.  The playlists are displayed on the radio LED and the iPod hides safely away in the glove box. And btw, this officially qualifies as "The Cutest Car-  Ever!"

Office Depot Recycles Computers

Office Depot will recycle one old computer product a day, per customer, from July 18 - Sept 6. This includes computers, cell phones, scanners, etc, etc. Link
I can't part from Maxine, my very first Mac, but if some other stuff doesn't sell at a garage sale, I know where it's going now.
(via Slashdot)

Firefox

In a fit of insomnia this evening, I "upgraded" browsers, which is something I'd been meaning to do for a while. I was previously running IE and Opera, but quirks (or limitations, or features, or whatever you care to name them) in Opera caused me to primarily use IE. That always irked me in itself. As I ran IE, I also had a little subprogram from Spybot S&D running to stop the tons of excess downloads that most of you don't even realize are happening. Avenue A, for instance, is a little tracking cookie that gets planted by all kinds of supposedly harmless sites, including Tech TV (!), Yahoo!, Weight Watchers, and tons of others. Most likely, all your favorite sites are using Avenue A or something similar, and you don't even know it. I'm assuming that Firefox, along with doing all kinds of other neat stuff - like automatically preventing pop-ups and organizing my bookmarks in a much easier, nicer fashion - will also prevent Avenue A. The thing I liked best about Opera is also now in Firefox - the ability to accept cookies for a single session but have them all deleted when I close the browser. In IE, I have the browser ask me if I want to accept the cookie, and believe me, they're everywhere, and the asking is annoying. It is an interesting way to learn what is trying to lodge itself on my PC though. Anyway, if you have any interest in "upgrading" to a free, easy-to-use, open-source-and-therefore-not-microsoft browser, go with Firefox. Plus, the logo is really cute.

So it's official ...

This blog is offically http://www.writegirl.net - quite happy about that. Bookmark me, or subscribe, and come visit lots!

Firefly Web Site Launched; Comdex Cancelled

Okay, the two have nothing to do with each other, but here you go:
Firefly
The web site, complete with blog, for Joss Whedon's movie Firefly: Serenity, has been launched. Yay! A world without media by Joss just isn't right. And Firefly is awesome. (If you haven't seen the TV show, rent the DVD. It's terribly addictive.) Happily, the release date is set for April 22, 2005. That'll be Kevin and my 5th first date anniverary - I know where we're going.
Firefly web site
Comdex
In unrelated news, Comdex is cancelled this year, which is pretty big news.CNET News.com

Another reason I need a BMW convertible ...

Like I needed another reason.  Have I mentioned this week how cool Apple is?

Connect with music like never before behind the wheel of your BMW 3 Series, and X3 and X5 SAV, Z4 Roadster or MINI. With the installation of an integrated adapter developed by Apple and BMW, you can now control your iPod or iPod mini through the existing audio system and multi-function steering wheel. Which means no loss of power. No loss of sound quality. No loss of control.

Link

Spaceship One

I waited to see the results of this flight before posting on it, but it's been building all over the Internet for the last week. Yesterday, the first privately funded, privately built spaceship (Spaceship One) successfully launched from the Mojave Desert and crossed the int'l space boundary. The pilot floated M&Ms in his cockpit. As a note, the pilot is a brave brave man. I've seen this project called "Paul Allen's toy rocketship" and well, I wouldn't be the one to get in it.
However, this was built cheaply (in the scheme of spaceships) and is therefore leading the way to space travel for the rest of us. Anyone want to go to the moon on vacation? It's not that big of a longshot anymore, and we all won't have to be members of boy bands to afford a ride on a rocket ship.
Related Links:
Spaceship One Makes History - CNN
Mojave Prepares to Make History (Great Article)
Paul Allen - Space Travel's Financier
Blog from Mojave Launch

Some Notes on Cory's DRM Presentation

Cory Doctorow's DRM presentation, which I raved about here, has been posted to a wiki with annotations.
It has also been recorded (someone else reading - not Cory, but its the content that matters) and posted for download under a Creative Commons license. So download the MP3. It's 36 MB and 40 minutes long, but worth listening to on your iPod I would think. Or your computer. (There's also a BitTorrent file available from the same page.)
Enjoy!

FrontPage Wiki - DRM
Audio Version of Cory Doctorow's DRM Talk

Why DRM is bad: Cory talks to Microsoft

Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing (and mentioned here), is part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among other things. As a representative of the EFF, he was asked to speak at Microsoft yesterday and he did - in the process, he gave a wonderful talk on why Digital Rights Management is bad and why Microsoft should break out of the DRM business. This is not a hoity-toity academic paper - this is a talk that everyone can understand and relate to. It's a message that should, in my opinion, be spread far and wide.

Technology that disrupts copyright does so because it simplifies and cheapens creation, reproduction and distribution. The existing copyright businesses exploit inefficiencies in the old production, reproduction and distribution system, and they'll be weakened by the new technology. But new technology always gives us more art with a wider reach: that's what tech is *for*.

Link to the text of the talk
Boing Boing link to the text

Never Register Again ...

Okay, you know those annoying news sites (the Washington Post comes to mind) that make you register to read the news? Well now you don't have to. Just use Bug Me Not, a free service that already has a passle of user names and passwords. You can just add the Bookmarklet to your toolbar or just go to your site. It's all part of "Taking Back the Web."
Bug Me Not

Pretec 2 GB MMC 4: Digital Photography Review

Pretec 2 GB MMC 4 card: Digital Photography Review This thing holds 2 gigs. Yes indeedy, pop that into your camera or expandable MP3 player or anything else for that matter. Heck, that tiny little card holds exactly half as much as my original iBook. For that matter, my original tangerine iBook, which is still well-loved but not well-used anymore, holds only 4 GB. My tiny little iPod holds 20 GBs. Now there's a comparison ...

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci ... or Why I Love the Web

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci You can now read, by virtue of RSS feed, the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the rate of one page per day. It's quite the novel idea, and it would take four years to complete.

Murder on the Internet

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bizarre tale of boy who used internet to plot his own murder
Well thank goodness -- I thought Americans had cornered the market on craziness, but it looks like the Brits are fast trying to catch up.