Tag: tools

Categories
technology

Twitter

It seems that I can’t help but hear about Twitter. I’ve been hearing about it for a while from a number of people who’s technology opinions I respect. Again today I read more from Alan about Twitter. Twitter is one of those things I have not picked up but eventually I have to ask myself “why not?” Thankfully Alan’s post pointed me to an analysis of Twitter that explained why I have not touched it yet. Besides talking about what Twitter is (which I knew, and it’s fine even though I have not touched it) there is a comparison of what it’s like. It is compared to instant messaging, which is also fine, but I don’t use it much – it does not suit me as well as other tools. (By the way, someone ought to make a Web 2.0 version of Twitter, they could call it Warblr – I can’t believe the audacity of people who would leave all the vowels intact 😉 )

After reading the analysis I thought I should see if Twitter does have some use for me, even if it never consumes me. I decided that it might suit for the many articles that I come across which are worthy of a blog post but which I often never get back to posting about. I created a Twitter profile an then thought about what I was doing. I remembered del.icio.us which is for bookmarking pages like I was thinking. When I first heard about del.icio.us my thoughts were much like Twitter – fine, but it does not suit my patterns. Now my patterns have changed enough that it might be a good fit. I created an account and I am starting to mark pages that I might want to post about later. When I get time I will get that list displayed in my sidebar in case anyone out there cares to read the things that I’d like to post about but never do.

Categories
life technology

Technology and Gardening

So I could be posting about national news items, but instead I spent my spare time today working on a gardening wiki. Laura wanted to keep notes on the plants that we have planted with some of the more vital statistics such as when to prune them and how well they thrive for us. I decided that a TiddlyWiki was a very good format to keep such notes because these wikis are very portable, the entire site is in a single file, and they allow you to cross reference notes and link between notes so that it becomes a very versatile note-taking system. I have actually started using TiddlyWikis for a variety of note-taking projects at home and at work.

After I got started on the project I thought it would be fun to put it on my website so that I could access it and update it from anywhere. To do that I used MiniTiddlyServer (MTS) which allows makes a server environment for TiddlyWikis. Normally they are displayable on the web but not they can’t be updated online without some help. I think that MTS is the best tool to give that help that I have seen. Admittedly I work with Sean Hess, who created MTS, but even if I didn’t know him I would consider this to be a fine piece of work. The first version of MTS that I used was only 9 files zipped up to less than 100Kb. The version I am using now is much bigger (over 500Kb – still very small) and much more powerful.

This opens up a world of future possibilities. For the present, anyone can see what I am planting in my gardens (flower and vegetable). Later I may choose to allow others to contribute to the wiki by invitation. Eventually I could choose to open parts of it up for general comment and contribution. MTS can do that kind of thing, the question is, “will I want to try it?” The answer is, “time will tell.”

Categories
life meta

Lunar Day

I enjoyed watching the full moon set this morning as I was out running. I watched as the last wisp of the moon fell behind the mountains in the west. This evening I was driving to the store with my kids and we all watched the moon rise in the east from the first tiny slice of the moon until it was fully risen. How’s that for bookends on the day.

As I came here to post on that and share with my hordes of readers that we got a new tree and many of our flowers in for this year I discovered that the spam bots had discovered my site today.

Thanks to Akismet, nobody had to suffer through anything – not the porn, the dubious pharmaceutical products, nor the offers to lose real money in virtual casinos. What surprised me was that before today only about 10 spam comments had been caught by Akismet (and none missed) and none of them were of the variety mentioned above. Tonight there were over 60 comments that had been caught by Akismet and all of them, unless my skimming missed an anomaly, were of the types listed above. This is much easier to maintain than the blacklists etc. that I was relying on two years ago.

Categories
technology

Online Genealogy

I stumbled upon a site called Geni today that was supposed to be a tool for online genealogy collaboration. What I found was not exactly what I had expected. It seems to be more heavily focused on the living generations and making connections. If I had been trying to describe its function with no knowledge of what they say they are trying to do I would have compared it to friendster, myspace, or facebook – a way of making connections online with people, in this case with those to whom you are related.

I had always seen genealogy as more interested in finding and connecting with generations past. Obviously this can lead to making connections with other relatives further from your immediate family. I found Geni through a post by Paul Allen who is actually working on an online genealogy collaboration site called FamilyLink. Based on what I could see I thought that FamilyLink might be more what I would have expected.

I am curious to know what other people think of Geni. Is it what you imagine when you think of genealogy, or could it be used for genealogical purposes? Does it look like something you would want to use? I am, as yet, undecided.

Categories
meta technology

Plugin Bug Fix

I was so excited by the plugin “Blogger RSS Import” that I failed to notice that it got all the dates wrong on comments (they were all set to midnight of the day I did the import). Thankfully, and very professionally, I got an email from the developer (sent to everyone who commented on the plugin between the applicable dates) that the error existed and had been fixed in the new version. I now have the correct dates on my comments, which is good because all the conversations looked wierd with the comments for each post in random order.

Categories
meta

My Theme

I am making my theme available for anyone to download. The reason for this is that I would be very flattered to see another site that looked like mine. Realistically this was also an excuse for me to test the File Upload feature of WordPress to see how simple it was.

Categories
meta technology

Fixed for IE

Thanks to Arve Bersvendsen I found a solution (once I discovered there was a problem) to the atrocious rendering of my site by Internet Explorer. I apologize to anyone who had to look at that after I claimed the site was complete. Go get Firefox so that you can see the web as it was meant to be seen. (And while you’re at it you might want to ask Microsoft for an apology as well.)

Users of IE will not see all the beautiful effects of my style, but they will get a functional page now and see a button to get Firefox. People without IE will miss the extra button, but I prefer that they see my site with no extras.

Categories
meta technology

All Here

Well, my move from blogger is complete thanks to a WordPress plugin: Import New Blogger To WordPress. It was exceptionally smooth and I have all posts, comments, and categories from blogger. I had recreated all but one category already, but that one got moved as well. Once the plugin had done its work I took the time to move my few pictures over to my site rather than linking to their google-hosted space.

Categories
life meta technology

Functionally Complete

As of now I consider my site to be functionally complete. I do not currently anticipate substantial changes to the style or structure of the site. At some point I will post my style in case anyone is interested in using or modifying it for their own site. I would like to acknowledge the people who have provided some of the resources which I have found very useful in this design.

I learned how to do the rounded corner effects with CSS from: Arve Bersvendsen @ virtuelvis.com. Once I understood his code I was able to create the scalloped tab effect for my menu options. Who would have thought that my left-brained self could wax creative like that.

My header image is: “Ripples” by Jeremy Stanley @ www.flickr.com/photos/jpstanley. This image is licensed under a Creative Commons – Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. I was thus able to crop it to fit my header. When I share my theme I will include the cropped version and the original version of the image under that same license. All other parts of my theme will be shared under a simple Creative Commons – Attribution license.

I wanted a cohesive color scheme for my site and I found the Color Palette Generator by Steve DeGraeve @ DeGraeve.com. I used my header image to generate the original palette and then used the color picker to generate further colors from that palette. Steve has many other useful programs available on his site as well.

Categories
meta politics technology

Code for Old Blog Tools

I thought I would add the html code from some blog elements that I am putting away but which I may want to use again.

Here is the html code for the election projections:

<a href=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/”><img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /> <img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small-house.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /></a>