Category Archives: Uncategorized

Vacationing Or Working, I’ll Decide

So I’ve been out and about, away and such, for a almost eight days, and I’m just now returning to the home where I lay my head to rest peacefully most nights.  I probably should have given some advanced notice, but I didn’t make time before venturing off to Portland for a bit of birthday bashing and celebrating, then making my way to a family camping trip in the Crystal Basin Recreation Area of Northern California, and rounding it all out with a four-day, out-of-town seminar for work.  You could try to imagine the fatigue, and whatever else, I’m experiencing at the moment, but I’d suggest not worrying about that.  (I’ll do that for all of us.)  Do know, though, that I have returned and I’m fully committed to getting this writing stuff back on schedule.  So let us be to rest, and we’ll meet again Wednesday.

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Monday Mashup – Olympics, Guest Author, TV, Twitter…

  • Olympics 2008 – It’s going full speed now in Beijing, and there just isn’t enough time in the day to keep up with watching all the events and happenings, so Google will undoubtedly play a large role in my staying up to date and not up to late.  Google has even included a handy summary box of the Top Three Medaling Countries in search results for “Beijing 2008 Olympic Games”.  They obviously know what’s important to those of us in a hurry.
  • Guest Authors – I’ve spent some time considering whether or not to allow guest authors to share in my blag space, and finally settled on the idea that it would be okay.  Or at least that it would be worth trying out.  So that guy Josh will take the first shot at it, writing as JoshGZ a column he calls “America, This is You”.  Look for his posts on Tuesdays at irregular intervals with the first one running tomorrow.  Be sure to let him know what you think in the comments.
  • Watching TV – I’ve been following HBO’s latest miniseries Generation Kill, which tells the true story about a group of US marines through the first 40 days of the Iraq war.  It’s based upon Evan Wright’s book that he wrote after joining this particular group of marines to write a collection of articles for Rolling Stone magazine as they invaded Iraq.  I’m half way through the seven-part series, and so far I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen.
  • Twittering – I’m still a fan of  Twitter, even if it has reduced the feature set in an effort to keep the service up and running.  However, I’m not nearly as active as I originally was, and I have to wonder if that’s because I’m spending more time blogging and emailing or because I’m just not as excited about the service.  It’s tough to cram everything into 140 characters, but it’s fun trying to share clear and concise messages that other people may find useful or interesting.  So keep an eye on my Twitter stream, and we’ll see about improving use.

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Monitor Web Text With ChangeDetection.com

In a continually changing and growing web world, you’re undoubtedly going to encounter web sites with information useful to you, but that are not regularly updated.  In these instances, you don’t want to spend a load of time remembering to check in periodically, or risk missing something great because you forgot to check in.  Even if you do remember to make the site visit, not all web site’s provide handy aggregation the way sites like Facebook or Myspace do for allowing a follower to keep up on what changes are being made to which pages.  Still, there are times when you want to know about a change and being late could cost you a bunch of money.  That’s where ChangeDetection.com comes in.

Change Detection Logo

Not too dissimilar from Google Alerts, ChangeDetection.com (CD) monitors specific web pages (not to be confused with entire web sites), rather than specific terms.  Once a day it makes a visit to each site you provide in a list along with specific change-monitoring criteria, compares the latest view with the previously cached view, and sends you an email if anything new has appeared or disappeared.  A major time saver.  Especially if you have more than two handfuls of pages you’re monitoring.

A couple of potential drawbacks, but by no means deal breakers: 1) CD does not monitor changes to images or flash, only text; and 2) You have to enter each frame of a frameset to be monitored, even if it’s all one page.  So you can see where you might need to do a bit of tweaking to get things working in a way that will prove useful.

I’m typically monitoring government agency sites for updates to program regulations, application announcements, and changes to lists of events.  ChangeDetection is awesome for this type of activity, and has again proved that there are time-saving uses for the Interweb.

Read the CD FAQ for more information.

CRC Foreclosure Crisis Documentary

The California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) sent an email earlier this week saying they’d updated and re-released a documentary they had on file.  Here’s a bit of what CRC had to say about the video titled Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money: How Greedy Corporations Destroy the American Dream

[The documentary] shows the crisis affects everyone. Mo’ Money tells the story of borrowers who were lied to and ignored by their mortgage loan servicers, and the people who are working to keep them in their homes. It also reveals how this disaster could have been avoided if regulators and government officials did not ignore predatory lending practices.

How has the foreclosure crisis affected you?  Have you had to deal with a difficult lender, or are you taking advantage of declining house prices?

Journey To Electronic Mailing List

For quite some time I’ve been looking for another/better way to maintain the list of folks I write to regularly on a group mail basis.  Then a few weeks ago that guy Josh said something in an email that really got me moving on the idea, because I needed a better way for the recipients to control whether or not they were part of the emailing nonsense.  So I set out on my path to investigate Dada Mail , Mailman , and PHPList .  That  same week, Jason Calacanis says he’s no longer going to blog, but he’s going to maintain an email list.  So, I signed up for his emails and noticed he was using Mailman.  This was a great place to start, but I wasn’t ready to commit.  Figured I should give a few of them a trial-run before committing to one specific list-serving software.  So that’s what I did.

I spent a few nights going back and forth between the few that seemed to be the most popular on the scene, and were also free to use.  Those being Dada Mail, Mailman, and PHPList.  PHPList did not last very long.  While it was relatively easy to install through my web hosts cPanel, it was not the most intuitive to maintain.  (I used four of my own email accounts to test each software.)  PHPList did have the coolest-looking logo, but that wasn’t a big enough selling point.

From there it was almost a tossup between Dada Mail and Mailman.  These two essentially accomplish the same tasks, and do so pretty well, so it comes down to just a few quirks.  (Mine or the software’s, I don’t know.)  I must have switched my mind three or four times after I’d thought for sure I’d settled on one or the other.  Ultimately, what irked me about Mailman was the difficulty in removing messages from the archive.  There is no web interface, that I could find, for doing what seems like should be a relatively simple enough task for a high-level piece of software.  Dada Mail had no problems with this task from its web panel.  However, the way that I was intending to use Dada Mail required a separate Perl script to run as a cron job that accessed a POP3 mail account.  I eventually decided this was a bad idea, as it was cubersome and slowed things down just a bit too much.

It could have gone either way, but I eventually loaded and launched with Mailman.  My first list post scheduled for August 1st.  And let’s be honest, if it’s good enough for Calacanis, it’s got to be good enough for everyone else, right?

Caribou Wilderness Camping/Backpacking

Well, we made it!  As I mentioned back in mid-June, Thompology and I made it out through the Caribou Wilderness.  (Our route is highlighted in the picture.)  Accompanied by my dad and Thompology’s cousin Jesse, we set out for several days of good times, and let me say — mission accomplished.

Just a few of the details:  We established base camp at Echo Lake, which is not in the Wilderness area (lower right of photo.)  We started the trail at the North end near Cone Lake, an elevation of 6,739 feet.  We made our way south, stopping to camp for a night on the West side of Long lake, where we set up camp, took a dip, and were visited by an unruly attack deer.  (We made it out alive.)  The next morning, we took off and made our way to Hay Meadow on the South end of the trail, an elevation of 6483 feet.

Overall, the trail is roughly twelve miles if you don’t wander off the trail, get turned around, and start off in a wrong direction, which we did on several occastions.  (We like to explore.)  The total elevation change is less than 700 feet, so it’s a mild walk.  Not too technical, and easy on the lungs and legs.  The path is very well marked, but for some reason we still found a need to consult the map at least seventeen times in the six hours it took us to make it from one end to the other.

Upon our return to base camp, the resident Ranger found us and said the Cypress Lake trail was the one to check out next time we made the trip.  “Some of the most gorgeous country.”  Perhaps we will check it out.  As for now, it’s time to settle back into the working world of daily life.  Maybe let the bug bites heal, as well as the sunburn, and get ready for the next adventure.  I think it rhymes with Portland.

Socialbrowse – Twitter For Firefox?

I’m a huge fan of using humans over computers and algorithms to filter search results.  Sure, information retrieval (IR) has come a long way, but it’s still missing something and the search folk know it.  Precisely why Google is attempting to incorporate a digg-like rating system in its search results .  (Rumor has it that Google is offering up to $200MM to acquire digg .)  And Google’s latest rival Mahalo, human powered search, is hear to help. Humans are still better interpreters than computers.  No Surprise.

Anyhow, the point being Socialbrowse, a Firefox addon , does just what you’d expect it to do if you can read the name — browse socially.  (Think StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, but more intrusive.)  Socialbrowse is similar to Twitter in that you select whose browses you want to follow.  It’s public information when someone tags a page into one of a variety of categories.  A notice pops up in the lower right of your browser every time a new page is tagged by someone you’re following.  (This is where it can get annoyingly distracting, so don’t install the addon to a work machine.)  You can click through to the page, or ignore it.  I typically ignore all the popups and use the sidebar option when I’m ready to see what folks have recently enjoyed.

The idea here is to let other people surf the web and filter through the trash.  You don’t have time for that.  And if you don’t like the pages someone is suggesting, unfollow him.  It’s as easy as that.  I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest at tagging pages  (last one was July 15th).  For some reason, knowing that people are going to know I approved the page makes me far more selective of the pages I’m willing to suggest.

Socialbrowse is beta and requires an invite code.  (I have a few left if any of you Firefox users are interested in giving it a try.)  They are still in the process of creating a logo for their product, which is why I’m missing a graphic for this post.  But you can win $125 by entering the create new Socialbrowse logo contest. If you’re a regular web surfer then this is an addon you’ll enjoy.  Get it early, get it often.  Socialbrowse!

I Am My Niche

This says more than it means just as much as it confuses the situation all together, so let me clarify, or maybe muddle it a bit more, whichever helps most, hopefully.  And it goes something like this:

There’s a lot of talk, or advice, going around about covering the topics with which you’re familiar but also that aren’t heavily covered already.  (A niche.)  So?  Ta-da!  Here I am, right?  I mean, there’s some sense to it.  Of course I’m going to know all about me, and understand why it is the factors that push me to and fro cause me to behave and respond the ways I do.  It just goes without saying, and it’s not as crazy as it sounds.  Not to mention, I’m pretty certain no one else is writing about me, and if someone is then I’d like to know about it.

Here is where it takes a turn for the better, though.  I’m not meaning to write about me as I would in diary form.  No, I have an email blog for that particular activity.  This here niche I’m intending to cover is all the goodness that comes about as a result of the stuff that happens to me which is written about in the email blog.  Simplified — A bunch of cryptic gibberish about the goings-on that are my life is what I write in emails to people I call at home; and whatever I can learn from those happenings, or whatever ideas pop into this oddly shaped head of mine, is what I aim to pen in this here space.

Whether you read me here, there, everywhere, or no where (which doesn’t work too well,) know that I’m always writing something somewhere for, or to, someone.  Today, here and now, it’s this and it’s for you.

Thanks for reading.

It’s Being Done Differently Now

It was time.  I had to do it.  I changed the site layout, or “theme” as it is referred to in the loop.  I’m announcing this obvious fact for the folks in the feed-readers; they can’t see a layout change.  For the most part, at least.

Anyhow, like I was saying.  It was time.  The previous layout was too dark and difficult to read (look at.)  I’m not a fan of sites that use light-colored text on dark backgrounds.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the _look_ of it, but it does not read well.  If you’re planning to have anyone read your stuff, it needs to be easy on the eyes.  I don’t want to get into a long UI discussion (although, maybe I should), but trust me when I say that this new layout is much better.

I’m not sure if the spark for change came from a talk I had with a fellow blogger, or a conversation I had with a colleague about her business’s web site.  Probably it was a combination of the two and, either way, it sent me out tinkering with all sorts of pre-developed WordPress themes.  (An added bonus to using WordPress is the many site layouts that are freely available for personal use.)  After several hours of working with Gimp and creating my own CSS from scratch, I decided it was a better idea, and also much quicker, to mash together a bunch of already existing lines of code.  (Why re-invent the wheel, just make it more round.  What?  I mean make it roll farther.)

This was only half my problem.  I spent a bit of time this evening, searching for a reason as to why my PHP was not working with WordPress 2.6, which I had hesitantly upgraded the site to late Monday evening after trying it on another site I host.  2.6 was working great everywhere I used it, with all my plugins in tact and new features working flawlessly.  But then I loaded up my new layout, which, silly me, I was testing locally on a linux box running WordPress 2.5.  (Imagine that!  It was working in one set of conditions, but not another.)  “Warning!”  “Error!”  “the function() requires a string at line 18.”  Oh my.

What I’m getting at, is that there are going to be some kinks for a few minutes, and I’m doing my best to work those out of the mix.  So, if you would be kind enough, bear with me a minute or two, and, if you notice any errors, please draw them to my attention so I can remedy the situation.  I’m just getting back into the old smell of PHP and, honestly, I was never a CSS fan.  However, it’s proving to make a whole lot of sense now that I’ve plopped myself in the world of web site development. (Is it still a client if you do the work for free?)

I’ll leave you with it so I can get back to it.  My next goal is to clean up the tags and categories.  Both of these are useful tools when used correctly, but we’ll have to let that sit a moment.

Focus Your Site Content

I have a tendency to wander around town from time to time, which often ends me up in some sort of new and strange conversation with another voice that results in a lot of time being used to talk about nothing.  While these experiences can be entertaining, they are not always the greatest use of my time.  (Not that I know what that is either.)  Sometimes, though, I have semi-useful conversations with folks I know better than others, and that is a good use of my time while still entertaining.  I recently ran into an editor friend from the Sacramento Business Journal and she gave me some feedback after viewing the site, essentially saying two things to me: 1) Write more, and; 2) Focus the content.  Sound advice, no doubt.

The first of the two is an easily reachable goal.  I have a habit of writing down whatever I can remember in whatever order it is remembered.  As time goes on, I’ll use more and more of that writing for the site and we’ll have plenty of entries.  This is the problem that makes difficult achieving number two.  (What?) As it stands now, the site has no real focus other than to humor me, possibly entertain you, and be not always nonsensical.  Not the clearest set of instructions, right?  It makes sense, but what does it mean.

I understand the need for focus.  People don’t like ambiguity.  They don’t want to be taken to wandering all over the place, essentially wasting a bunch of time to ultimately, probably, accomplish very little if nothing at all.  You’re going to want content with clarity that is concise.  That takes most of the fun out of it for me as the writer.  So the questions now are — Do I get focused?  How is it done? Possibly (I don’t want to rule it out completely,) and here’s how it’s done:

  • Clearly Defined Goal(s) Know what it is you want to accomplish with your content.  For example, “maximize revenue per unique visitor to the site through conversion”  Be specific.  Be clear.  Knowing exactly what you want to do will help you determine how you do it.
  • Know Your Topic It’s much easier to focus and be clear when you yourself are knowledgeable and interested in the topic you’re covering.
  • Get to the Point Quickly It’s a bad idea to fumble around in the first paragraph.  Say as much as possible as soon as possible about your topic.  Make sure the reader knows straight away what the rest of the post is going to be about and why he should continue reading.
  • Relevant Photos We tend to enjoy the visual, so include photos and be sure they have something to do with your topic, potentially aiding in the further explanation of what you’re trying to communicate.
  • Omit Needless Words Remember what William Strunk, Jr. taught in The Elements of Style, Rule 13 — Omit Needless Words.  It can’t be said enough.  Proofread your writing and remove fluff.  Don’t write about the writing.  Write about your topic.

That’s it.  There you have it.  A quick start guide to getting some focus.  It sounds easy enough.  Doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.

My editor friend suggested I write about Sacramento since I’m out and about so much.  It makes sense, and I have some Sacramento entries.  But I also want to write about “nerdy computer stuff” as she worded it.  I’ve been tinkering and hobbying around the computer world since the late 80s, and I studied Computer Science at Cal Poly.  I get a kick out of the latest developments to hardware and software, so I’m going to write about that stuff.  And let’s not forget that sometimes I just want to write and write and say nothing at all.  I’m sure you won’t mind.