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Potpourri on a Sunday Evening

OBSESSIVE SARAH PALIN STUFF For all that she’s the darling of the conservative set, Palin is being kept under wraps and away from interviews, despite earlier plans (FLASHBACK: In July,…

OBSESSIVE SARAH PALIN STUFF

  1. For all that she’s the darling of the conservative set, Palin is being kept under wraps and away from interviews, despite earlier plans (FLASHBACK: In July, McCain Promised His VP Pick Would…). This is apparently according to openly-admitted plan (McCain Campaign Plans To Keep Palin Away From The…, Sarah Palin has yet to meet the press – Michael Calderone…), since nobody cares about journalists along long as Our Ms. Sarah is talking (via speech-writers) direct to the American people who love her. That said, the GOP has finally realized that it seems kind of odd that she’s ostensibly fully qualified to stand up to the Russians, but not talk to the press, thus, Palin agrees to interview – Mike Allen – Politico.com.
  2. Jim Wallis: Palin Owes Some Good People An Apology. Yeah, the whole series of slams against “community organizers” was pretty low — esp. when you consider the whole “Thousand Points of Light” thang that Bush Sr. was all about.
  3. Letter from Wasilla – Not some distant Harvard elitist here, but someone who’s been around Ms. Palin since her early days. No wonder Karl Rove likes her.
  4. Do Democrats Need To Learn Some Respect? – Again, criticism about Palin (or any candidate, for that matter) has to be directed toward her, not toward the ideas and values and “lifestyles” of those to whom she appeals. 
  5. Happy Hour Discurso – On the other hand, don’t worry about all those back-home scandals haunting Gov. Palin — they’re being quashed by the Republicans.

SEMI-OBSESSIVE NON-PALIN POLITICAL BITS

  1. Words They Used – 2008 Political Conventions – Interactive… – Words mean things. The most amusing item here is that, despite Rudy’s rant, the Dems actually mentioned 9/11 more than the GOP folks tracked. And here’s some additional analysis of sentences, and who was displaying the most ego by talking about himself so much (Comparisons).
  2. John McCain Cancels Habitat For Humanity Event – Was it embarrassment about the whole “how many houses?” thing? Or the fact that the previous day his running mate (and crew) had spent the evening slamming community activists … like Habitat for Humanity?
  3. Out of Touch Watch Part 7 – The whole “elitist” taunt by the GOP toward the Dems is … pretty freaking weird, except as a desperate attempt to try and turn back criticism of their own wealth and prestige by making a demogogic populist appeal toward workers and small town folk.
  4. Rep. Chris Smith: ‘Our Students Must Find The God in Schools … – Goofball alert …
  5. McCain Winning Coveted “Stock Photos” Demographic? – It’s easy to find black people for your convention photomontages when you can just pick and choose them from stock photos.
  6. Heart Duo Furious Over Republicans’ Use of ‘Barracuda’… – Why do the Republicans keep getting in trouble with rock groups by using their tunes without asking permission? Where’s the RIAA when you need them?

JUST PLAIN WEIRD APOLITICAL STUFF

  1. Amazon will sell OLPC laptops – Buy one, get one sent to a Third World country. Cool.
  2. High Flight, 1960s TV sign-off shown on Mad Men – I remember this from those rare occasions when I was up to see a TV station shut down for the evening. Yes, they used to do that rather than cycle into reruns or infomercials.
  3. Construct Layout Generator – CSS layout system. Very cool idea. Flagged for future reference.
  4. How to Get Away with Buying a Playboy, circa 1970 – Kids are never quite as clever as they think they are. Cool parents realize that without taking advantage of it.
  5. 2008 NFL TV maps – Fascinating look at how the NFL breaks out its game telecasts based on regional interest, stadium sales, and what the rest of the country might be interested in.
  6.  Getting Started? The Answer is a Question – Interesting suggestion on how to get your gaming group to focus, either starting off, or (to my mind) mid-game. Cool.

Potpourri sans Palin

 Because, sooner or later, I have to stop talking about her. Dissent done right 2 – Very cool end (part 2 of the story) of an unpleasant tale. How do…

 Because, sooner or later, I have to stop talking about her.

  1. Dissent done right 2 – Very cool end (part 2 of the story) of an unpleasant tale. How do you deal with your kids being upset that someone’s stolen the campaign sign in front of your house?
  2. Stop worrying about mercury in compact fluorescent… – Okay, I mistrust the quick dismissal (even from a non-industry source) of the “received wisdom” about this. But …
  3. Roman Empire ‘raised HIV threat’ – Yeah, yeah, blame it on my ancestors …
  4. Make canned monstrosities – Very, very cool.
  5. Skimpy Peanut Butter — Part 1 – Just because it’s “natural” doesn’t mean it’s “real.”
  6. America’s 10 Most Confusing Traffic Signs [Signs,… – Well, maybe not, but most of them are pretty darned amusing.
  7. Five reasons why Chrome will crash and burn | Tech… – If you define “crash and burn” as “not dethrone IE as the browser champ.”
  8. Google Chrome EULA Claims Ownership of Everything… – I suspect this is not what was intended.
  9. Mr. G sends us a present while he’s away. – Neverwhere rocks. If you have not read it, now you can, for free. Do so.
  10. FREE BRISTOL PALIN – No, really, this isn’t political, nor directly about Sarah Palin. Well, no more than ordinary life is political, or how talk about Bristol’s pregnancy and teen pregnancy in general touches on the VP candidate. Regardless, my intent in posting it is to save it and share it with my daughter when she’s … well, appallingly soon.

Another Google Reader mystery

I post a fair number of pictures in my blog entries. Most are surrounded by a div element (for the drop shadow — thanks again, Ginny), which seems to work…

I post a fair number of pictures in my blog entries. Most are surrounded by a div element (for the drop shadow — thanks again, Ginny), which seems to work just fine.

But in Google Reader, strange things happen with the feed of my entries:

  • In Firefox 3, the picture shows up for a brief moment, then vanishes, causing the drop shadow to vanish (dwindle to zero dimensions).
  • In IE 6, the drop shadow box shows up, but the image inside is “broken” and doesn’t display. A view of the properties shows the URL is correct, and, when pasted on the address line, pulls up the picture.
  • In Chrome, just like IE 6. An inspection of the object looks okay.

The original pages show up okay (with images) in just the plain old browser.

Flickr objects, inside those same div elements, display fine.  The feed from my Blog of Heroes blog, which doesn’t use those divs, displays images fine.

So … anyone have any idea of what’s broken?

Google Reader, Feedburner, Firefox

So I was having a problem — have been having a problem for quite some time — with certain feeds in Google Reader. It appeared that most (though it…

So I was having a problem — have been having a problem for quite some time — with certain feeds in Google Reader. It appeared that most (though it wasn’t clear that it was all) feeds that came via Feedburner (which, annoyingly, included many from Google itself) were not working correctly. I’d click on the feed, GR would pause a bit, refresh the screen, and then just stay in a “Loading …” state, never giving me the feed.

Ugh.

The problem only occurred in Firefox (not in Chrome, nor in IE). I tried a few times to find the problem on the Google Reader forums, and in Firefox support, and even Feedburner’s pages, but got nowhere. 

I finally hit on the right search string in (ironically) Google — or at least where someone was having the same problem with Firefox a year ago. This was also ironic because last night I was trying to solve a problem that Margie has been having since her FF upgrade to 3.0.1 (YouTube videos play for about 2 seconds, then stop; that one’s still being worked on), and folks there were complaining about the problem back in the FF 2 days, too. (Another irony here is that Google owns Feedburner.)

At any rate, I tried the various things the post suggested trying (not much), until I spotted one little comment at the very end: “Adblock…that little beast!”

Adblock? Adblock? 

For those just coming in, Adblock is a faboo extension (I use the Adblock Plus version) to block ads on web pages. It’s really that simple. It looks (via various filters defined and subscribed to / updated) for certain strings embedded on web pages and blocks them. You have no idea how much visual cruft and advertisements are on web pages until it’s gone … or until you’re used to it being gone, and then go use another browser and it’s back. “Gah! My eyes!” No more animated banners, no more huge billboards in the sidebar … it’s quietly glorious. Or gloriously quiet.

At any rate, that seemed way too simple. Why would Adblock be blocking Feedburner stuff? But, sure as shooting, when I went in to see what Adblock was blocking (which is easy to do), there were eleventy-dozen Feedburner elements.

Well … golly. 

It was a matter of a few seconds to configure an exception and put it in place, and, hey-presto, Google Reader on Firefox is now reading and displaying all the Feedburner feeds.

After which, I found this thread, which resolves the one above. In the comments, it actually goes into where the problem was (and I’ve disabled the “Dutchblock” subscription, which explicitly had feeds.feedburner.com in it as a filter for unknown reasons). (And, yes, I’ve checked to see if this is Margie’s problem, but it’s not).

So problem solved, all’s right with the world. No less enamored of Adblock / Adblock Plus, but it is one more spot to do diagnoses on in the future (and a small cautionary note about environmental complexity and how it affects attempts to diagnose problems). 

(And I’m going into all this detail largely for anyone in the future who’s facing this same problem and trying to deal with it. Hope this helps someone else.)

Potpourri sans Politics

Look, Ma! No politics! Movie Poster Floating Heads « Posterwire.com « the movie poster weblog – This is pretty funny. (Especially since it’s my least favorite kind of poster.) Wizard 101…

Look, Ma! No politics!

  1. Movie Poster Floating Heads « Posterwire.com « the movie poster weblog – This is pretty funny. (Especially since it’s my least favorite kind of poster.)
  2. Wizard 101 Review – Hmmmm. Doyce was mentioning this the other evening. An MMO that Katherine might enjoy …
  3. TypePad AntiSpam: Four Months of Spam Freedom – Flagging this (again) for future consideration.
  4. Watchmen Trial Set For January – *HEAVY SIGH*. Swelp me, if this movie gets derailed …
  5. Dr. Horrible Soundtrack Available – On the other hand, glee! Or, alternately, BWAH-HA-HA!
  6. E-discovery woes – I’ve been involved with e-discovery for law suits (“give us every email from every person on this project or by anyone who they talked to or anything that has the following words in it for the last two years; oh, by the way, add another year to that now that you’ve put all the tapes away”), and it’s a huuuuge time sink.
  7. A Fly Went By – How do flies get away from swatters? Now we know. Plus, a tactic for nailing the buggers.
  8. What’s in a name? Spam. – People with email accounts that start with certain letters get more spam than others. 
  9. Gravestone motif analysis – Just plain ol’ geeky-Net-knowledge fun.
  10. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Footnotes, Endnotes,… – Some words of advice to students.
  11. South Carolina sheriff buys tank to conduct raids – Someone sure seems to be compensating for something!
  12. Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa… – Which would be keen, if I wasn’t already hip-deep in other tools
  13. Google Chrome and Browsing With Google Chrome – Yeah, I’m going to have to try this out. But I have some non-negotiables regarding some extensions I use.
  14. Poisonous recipe recalled – Yow. That makes up for all the tablespoon/teaspoon errors I’ve everr made.

Potpourri on Labor Day

IN OTHER POLTICAL(ISH) (AND NON-PALIN) NEWS Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. – NYTimes.com – It was inevitable, but it’s happening faster than expected due to investment decisions by US…

IN OTHER POLTICAL(ISH) (AND NON-PALIN) NEWS

  1. Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. – NYTimes.com – It was inevitable, but it’s happening faster than expected due to investment decisions by US telcos and by the US government taking advantage of that traffic flow to spy on folks.
  2. Massive, warrantless raids on peace protesters in… – For all the critiques of the Denver PD, this seems a bit more, um, robust than the sort of stuff that we saw here pre-DNC.
  3. Update1: NASA Considers Its Shuttle Options – It made no sense to approve a timeline that would have eliminated all US manned space flight capability for five years (plus however late Constellation turns out to be). The question now is how much of the decades-old shuttle technology and infrastructure has been compromised by those earlier Bush Administration plans, and how safe will the system be until Constellation is up and working? You can’t turn this sort of program on and off with a switch.

NON-POLITICAL SECTION (ASSUMING ANYTHING CAN BE CALLED NON-POLITICAL)

  1. Average Number Of Feet – This one’s for Margie.
  2. Credit-card companies killed Mythbusters segment on RFID… – Because heaven forbid the hackers should find out how insecure and risky RFID chips are … oh, wait, they already so. So, obviously, it’s more about the public not knowing about it.
  3. India’s underground CAPTCHA-breaking economy – Human ingenuity triumphs over technology. *sigh*
  4. 1736 thieves’ cant dictionary – Oh, very cool bits, esp. as a writing resource.
  5. Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs | Daily Cup of Tech – Not the funniest video of the last month … but damned funny.
  6. The Omnimvore’s Hundred – I had technical problems filling this out, but it’s a fascinating list.
  7. Margie Gras. – A drink recipe from De.
  8. Blogging ad at Richmond Station – Yeah, this is wrong on a lot of levels.
  9. Penny Arcade! – A Life Of Service – Nobody ever thinks about those left behind.
  10. The effect of effects – Roger Ebert on special effects, and why being spectacular isn’t always as important as being life-like.

Feeds and pictures

It’s educational looking at my own web feed via Google Reader. Given that I suspect the majority of my readers depend on an RSS/Atom feed of my blog (rather than browsing…

It’s educational looking at my own web feed via Google Reader. Given that I suspect the majority of my readers depend on an RSS/Atom feed of my blog (rather than browsing to my site regularly), it’s interesting to see what crops up there.

(I should also, in that case, embed a comment link in the RSS feed. Note to self.)

The one oddity I notice is that some images simply don’t show up. It doesn’t seem to be consistent. While all of the feeds from Flickr (or YouTube, etc.) show up, some images from my own page don’t show up, while others do (and they do all show up on the actual page). The Google Reader page showing them (or not) doesn’t lend itself to a View Source. 

So … any ideas from my loyal readers as to why? Do you get confused/frustrated by some images not coming through in Google Reader (or whatever RSS reader you use, if you use one), while others do?

Potpourri on a Warm Tuesday Night

POLITICAL Obama’s Likes and Dislikes – Hold the Mayo – NYTimes.com – He dislikes mayonnaise. He must be our next president. Sound familiar? – So why are the pundits not calling Ahnold…

POLITICAL

  1. Obama’s Likes and Dislikes – Hold the Mayo – NYTimes.com – He dislikes mayonnaise. He must be our next president.
  2. Sound familiar? – So why are the pundits not calling Ahnold a looney-tune for his ding-bat fuel economy suggestions? 
  3. Limbaugh Falsely Claims America Is A ‘Conservative Nation’ – Actually, I know some liberals who would argue the same thing. In my opinion, the nation, as a whole, is “conservative” in values, but progressive/liberal in desires and aspirations. The GOP keeps playing the values card, with healthy dollops of fear-mongering, and paper over the rest with promises of tax cuts (or accusations of tax increases).
  4. Video of attendees at AT&T’s “thank you for letting… – Which serves as a reminder that money knows no political party, and politicians are politicians no matter which party they hang their hat on.
  5. Will McCain Poke The Right in the Eye? – I actually think Lieberman is the most likely pick, and that the conservative Right’s posturing about whether or not they will back McCain is just that, posturing. They will no more stay home than the Clinton supporters will.
  6. Being a Former POW is No Excuse – Amen, sister.
  7. Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain – And amen, brother. Can we please put this “He’s a POW, thus he is instantly gifted with whatever insight we wish to give him and immune to any sort of criticism for anything he says” rhetoric away? Please?
  8. Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins tasked with ‘causing… – “Fair and Balanced,” right?
  9. Alan Fein: On The Amtrak To Wilmington With Joe Biden – Worth a read.
  10. Military Draft Required To Catch Bin Laden? – Is that really what McCain thinks? Or was it just another one of those off-the-cuff gaffes he seems to make on a regular basis? In either case … is that what we want from a president?

APOLITICAL

  1. Google’s File-Not-Found Helper Widget – Marking for future reference for my own custom 404 pages.
  2. USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable… – I’ve never had much need for living off a USB drive … but if I did, this would be a useful article.
  3. Adding reCAPTCHA to Movable Type – Marking for future reference. I like TinyTuring, but the concept behind reCAPTCHA is so incredibly cool, I can’t stand it.
  4. “A Free Thinker is Satan’s Slave” – And that is precisely why Christians are looked at askance by so many people.

Flickers

I’ve been seized by the Muse of Photography (Clio?) and been pounding on my long-lagging digital photo library, making some nice progress (though still constrained by tight disk space on…

I’ve been seized by the Muse of Photography (Clio?) and been pounding on my long-lagging digital photo library, making some nice progress (though still constrained by tight disk space on the machine).

One thing I’m playing with is, again, screwing around with where I actually post these things. Originally I was doing everything in Gallery on the web site, but the version there broke and was not amenable to easy fixing. Then I started doing other web page generators, and then …

… well, I haven’t actually posted anything for several months.

I’m now reevaluating using Flickr as the place to post my pics, once I’m done sifting and sorting and editing them in Photoshop Expressions. My biggest concerns over Flickr have been (and/or are) both the nature of a hosted service, and just how Flickr is.

First off, if I post them on Flickr, they’re not in my hot little hands. I still have a concern over relying on an external host who can abruptly go tits-up, or change their service agreement, or get bought by Microsoft, or something. When it comes to something like my photos, which I consider an historic archive (albeit only of personal value), I want them safe. 

Granted, residing on my ISP’s space isn’t 100% certain, either, but I have a lot of faith in Hosting Matters, more than in the various hosted services that have abruptly closed down and vanished from the face of the Net.

Well, I suspect Flickr won’t be one of those; its critical mass is such that I don’t expect it to collapse. It might be bought by Microsoft at some point (as part of Yahoo), or it might suffer a big change of service, but so much is currently on Flickr that I seriously doubt anyone would be willing to screw it up big time at this point. The same can’t be said for a lot of other photo sites, whether from big names or small. (How long will Kodak, or Adobe, or some other independent site, actually maintain the same business model and actually stick around?)

The only other I might consider as an alternative would be Google’s Picasa. But that’s got less critical mass than Flickr, and in this case I don’t trust Google to not get some new bright idea in their head and go hallooing off after it. Aside from Google integration, too, it doesn’t really seem to have any added advantages over Flickr.

Most importantly, I’m not relying on Flickr. All my photos will also be on my (backed up, right?) own machine, with the tags and dates and captions all embedded in their EXIF info. If, using this model, Flickr were to suddenly die, it would be an inconvenience, not a disaster.

Belt and suspenders, man …

So PSE will actually export directly to Flickr, which is nice (the more steps that are removed from this process, the more likely I am to keep things up to date(er)). I played around with it last night (way too late, I fear), and it seems to do more or less what I want.

I’m not thrilled on the other hand (and this was the other anti-Flickr factor) with the, um, limits of presentation on Flickr. You can have any interface and info on the screen, as long as it’s — well, the interface and info they provide. Which is kind of bare-bones, not to say ugly. And Flickr looks at the EXIF date to determine the date of the picture, rather than the ITPC codes (which is how PSE stores the date info), which means that the dates on picture will be incorrect. I can fix that in some of the captions, and it doesn’t hurt the picture, but it’s still annoying.

That said, my original aversion to Flickr has faded a bit, as I’ve used it both to host the cell phone snapshots I take for this blog, and as I’ve seen how it works for Doyce and Kate at their wedding site. I’m not 100% happy with it, but if it makes it easier and faster to get my pictures online, that pays for a lot of less-than-optimal.

I’ll “announce” it when the “new” site on Flickr is ready to go into production.

 

Potpourri of Happy Things

Taking a minute or three off to pull together a few Shared items. Hopefully this makes up a bit for the paucity of actual posts of late. Calories In -…

Taking a minute or three off to pull together a few Shared items. Hopefully this makes up a bit for the paucity of actual posts of late.

  1. Calories In – Calories Out: By and large, it’s just about that simple.
  2. Giz Explains: The Magic Behind Touchscreens [Giz Explains]: While there’s a long time before it’s altogether true, the touch screen will (IMO) become the dominant physical interface before too long, and having a bunch of buttons, or a “real” keyboard, on the high tech gear will make a lot of SF TV and movies of the past four decades look horribly and laughably dated.
  3. Contact lenses for “anime eyes”: Ooooh … pretttty … Yeah, it’d be creepy if we were talking about actual body mods, but contact lenses? That’s kind of cool.
  4. 7 Reasons Fringe Will Rule TV: Makes a note to put it on the DVR …
  5. Ruling Splits Star Wars Case: So … the copyright on Star Wars designs has lapsed in the UK? Awesome …
  6. Stopping Movable Type eating your database: Making a note of this one. I think I’m okay here, but …
  7. Movable Type Pro to meld blogging and social networking: Urg. 4.2, and I’m still struggling to get around to installing 4.1, let alone update my templates. Urg.
  8. Trek Online Game Developing: On the one hand, the Trek-verse has a huge potential for a shared gaming universe. On the other hand, intentionally pulling it “after” the “current” continuity, such that one won’t interact with any “name” talents, is going to seriously impair its popularity.
  9. Starlost, The: Release Date (The Correct One!), Extras,… : Sorry, as much as I have a perverse desire to see this childhood love (and famous train wreck of a series), I’m not going to pay that much for the privilege.
  10. I am one grain of sand: Hear me roar.
  11. Giant dog turd wreaks havoc at Swiss museum | World…: Oh, Modern Art, is there nothing you cannot do to make us laugh at you?
  12. 303 – World Government Plan: Aliens to Police USA: I don’t see a dot on the map for the underground slave labor camp out at Denver International … so it must be a fake.
  13. Awesome lightning pictures: Lightning is one of the most awesome — and utterly transient — natural phenomina. Coolness.

 

Firefox 3

Got tired of waiting for the FF2 auto-updater to tell me it was ready to download (which I supposed would be a cleaner way of doing it), and went…

Got tired of waiting for the FF2 auto-updater to tell me it was ready to download (which I supposed would be a cleaner way of doing it), and went ahead to the main Mozilla page and installed the new version of Firefox.

Well, so far, so good.  Nothing’s crashed or blown up or anything. I’m not particularly noting any lower memory, but neither is it crashing on me.

The trick is always, of course, the Add-Ons and Extensions that are obsoleted (or not yet updated) with a new version. So, courtesy of Extension List Dumper, here’s what I currently have loaded:

 


 

Application: Firefox 3.0 (2008052906)
Operating System: WINNT (x86-msvc)

June 23, 2008

Total number of items: 22

  • Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
    Ads were yesterday! — Almost required for any FF installation, this blocks ads on pages. Brilliant. I never realize how much it adds to my life until I have to load up IE.
  • Add Bookmark Here 3.0
    Add bookmark here in bookmarks menu — Very simple, but an excellent way to add a bookmark to the directory you want.
  • AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox 6.9.90
    Allows the use of Roboform in Firefox. — I haven’t tried the new password manager in FF — but Roboform spans both FF and IE, and does an excellent job of it. 
  • Clippings 3.0
    Save frequently-entered text for pasting later. — I don’t actively use this, but it’s been useful on occasion.
  • ColorZilla 1.9
    Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies — Again, not an everyday thing for me, but a couple of times it’s come in quite handy to see what the HTML color code is for something on a screen.
  • DownThemAll! 1.0.3
    The mass downloader for Firefox. — Useful for doing … well … mass downloads.
  • Extended Copy Menu 1.5
    Provides the option to copy selection as plain text or html. — I use this almost daily in conjunction with blogging.
  • Extension List Dumper 1.14.1
    Dumps a list of the installed extensions. — Generated this list (which I edited with these comments). The previous analog I used for this, ListZilla, is no longer supported. ELD’s output is a bit uglier, but more useful.
  • FireFTP 0.99.1
    FTP Client for Mozilla Firefox. — My FTP client of choice.
  • Flashblock 1.5.6
    Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them. — Nearly as useful as AdBlock.
  • Forecastfox 0.9.7.6
    Get international weather forecasts and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable extension. — Handy, especially before I step out for lunch.
  • IE View Lite 1.3.3
    Cut down version of IE View by Paul Roub. — Open the current page in IE, either as a one-off or forever after. This is useful, since a lot of my company’s intranet pages use ActiveX and other IE-specific crap.
  • ImgTag 0.3.2
    Generates img tags — Again, extremely useful for blogging. Rightclick on an image, choose ImgTag, paste in your post, hey-presto.
  • Make Link 8.06
    Make HTML or ForumCode links via the context menu — Nice for doing a quick link-by-title in a blog post.
  • Resizeable Textarea 0.1d
    Resize textareas to your needs. — Tired of dealing with too-small text input areas in web forms? This lets you expand them easily. Nice. This is an older program, updated to run with FF3; a parallel add-on I was using, Resizable Form Fields, is no longer supported.
  • Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6.1.080416
    Tab browsing with an added boost. — Adds many nice features to FF’s already-nice tabbed browsing experience.

There were a few extensions that I ended up not auto-updating or finding new versions for, or that just plain old aren’t (yet) available in FF3.

  • Bookmarks Synchronizer: I never actually made use of this, but in theory it does a backup of your bookmarks, so that you can access them from another machine. Or, alternately, as a backup in case your system blows up. Didn’t upgrade to FF3, though there are many add-ons that do this.
  • BugMeNot: I just never use this “get a dummy userid/password to registered sites” extension, though it’s very clever for all that.
  • ChromEdit Plus: Really don’t need to edit FF config files directly these days.
  • Google Pagerank Status: Don’t really need it.
  • Print Preview Toolbar Button: I can’t believe that FF doesn’t have a default button for the toolbar for Print Preview. I’m going to see, though, if I can do without for a while.
  • SnagIt Firefox Extension: I use SnagIt for grabbing screen graphics — but I don’t need something on the toolbar to do it, and it doesn’t update in a secure way, which makes FF3 cry.

So that’s my Firefox installation. What

Potpourri for a Tuesday morning

From my Google Reader shared items (formatted a bit better than the last installment): There He Goes Again, Again … from Obsidian Wings John McCain talks a lot about “cap and…

From my Google Reader shared items (formatted a bit better than the last installment):

Googly bits

I’m trying an experiment with the “Unblogged Bits” Google Reader Shared yadda-yadda that I’ve been displaying in the sidebar. I really like the convenience (esp. at the office) of…

  • I’m trying an experiment with the “Unblogged Bits” Google Reader Shared yadda-yadda that I’ve been displaying in the sidebar. I really like the convenience (esp. at the office) of being able to just click on something in Google Reader and have it show up in the sidebar. But despite having set up an RSS feed for these items, I suspect that most of my readers never see them — either because they fade into the sidebar, or else don’t show up in the main feed from my site — or get a chance to comment on them. Which is a shame.
  • So I’m experimenting with ways to easily get from the “Unblogged Bits” into real posts that folks can comment on, etc. Today’s attempt: cut and paste from the sidebar.

  •  

    First off: was a religious student in a philosophy class harrassed and threatened with a failing grade because she wouldn’t renounce her faith? Or was she not doing well because she wouldn’t expose her beliefs to critical thinking?: 

  • Religious Student vs. Philosophy Professor: Both Sides

    Next up — well at least the Democrats tax before they spend:

  • John McCain, credit-card debt victim

    I used to get seriously harassed by my fellow desktop gamers for my sound-alike elvish names, even though I used actual meaningful Tolkienesque morphemes:

  • Blogging into Mordor: Finding the perfect name for…

    Finally — all sorts of brouhaha over a gay marriage in the Church of England. Except it wasn’t a marriage, it wasn’t something that hasn’t happened before, and the folks who are kvetching loudest about it seem to have something else on their agenda.

  • UK Blessing Causing Quite the Buzz
  • Anger at Anglican gay ‘wedding’

 

 

Blogging from the Blackberry

SixApart has announced a native blogging module for RIM Blackberries. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it’s only for blogging to TypePad blogs. TypePad customers can now easily…

SixApart has announced a native blogging module for RIM Blackberries. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, it’s only for blogging to TypePad blogs.

TypePad customers can now easily capture and upload photos directly from their Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl phones to their blogs wirelessly. TypePad bloggers can also use their device to compose draft blog posts, store them for later editing or publish them from within the device’s trackball and keyboard interface. In creating and saving drafts for later editing, bloggers are able to use popular desktop publishing controls with the convenience of mobile blogging.

TypePad members who use any Blackberry model have always been able to post to their blogs via the mobile browser and the email-to-blog feature. The new native application for the Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl rounds out these offerings by making mobile blogging even easier.

 

Which is swell, for TypePad users, not-so-much for Movable Type users.

At the 6A news blog, there was an immediate (if not overwelming) set of requests for MT support for this. Anil said it sounded like a keen idea (duh). We’ll see what comes of it.

TypePad Anti-Spam (Akismet) for Movable Type

One of the new announcements from SixApart (aside from MT 4.2) is making the (beta) TypePad Anti-Spam service (based on Akismet) available to MT 3 and 4 users (and WP…

spam

One of the new announcements from SixApart (aside from MT 4.2) is making the (beta) TypePad Anti-Spam service (based on Akismet) available to MT 3 and 4 users (and WP 2.3/2.5).

Akismet is an external service that does various tests of the items (comments, trackbacks, etc.) as they come in, flagging them as good or not, but also accepting further feedback if someone reports something as spam that was accepted as good (or vice-versa). It’s been WordPress-oriented in the past.

Akismet has long been on my radar for anti-spam, but previous implementations for MT always looked a little problematic. Fact is, I don’t have a big spam problem here using the SpamLookup plugins that came with recent versions of MT. They tend to block out 99% of what’s out there (actually, from a Comment perspective, TinyTuring does the bulk of the job; most of what gets nailed / rejected — or inadverntely let through — is Trackback spam).

My questions:

  1. If it ain’t broke, should I fix it?
  2. Is the added traffic (checking items at the service site) a network/server burden or lag?
  3. Should I wait for it to get out of beta?

My inclination is to wait at least a bit to get some sense of the feedback on the Net about how it’s working (I’ve also subscribed to the blog 6A has put together for this). But I’m kind of pleased to see this new service being made available, and look forward to hearing more.

Back to ecto

So I really wanted WLW to work. It’s got a nice interface, some clever features (tables!), a plug-in community, etc. Just a few problems: It regularly times out while posting,…

So I really wanted WLW to work. It’s got a nice interface, some clever features (tables!), a plug-in community, etc. Just a few problems:

  1. It regularly times out while posting, throwing an error and never showing a post as finished and posted (even if it is). It may not fully be WLW’s fault — Flickr does the same thing when posting to my blog — but some applications don’t, which means it takes some blame (and it’s annoying).
  2. The image uploader doesn’t allow for any hand-crafted customization, only what MS has canned with it. In ecto, I can have the images wrapped with the drop shadow DIV stuff (and I can have drop shadows without actually modifying the image).
  3. There’s no native custom snippet/tag support. There are some plug-ins that will do custom snippets — but not tags (i.e., select some text, click on the tag, have it wrapped with something in front and behind). That’s a step backwards compared to what I have in ecto.
  4. Category support seems wonky — some things posted without (perhaps part of the time-out), others it wasn’t clear how I could designate a primary category. (Yes, I know that “categories” are so 1990s, while tags — esp. Technorati tags — are what all the cool kids do. Bah.)

Windows Live Writer would be a very nice desktop client if I were just starting off with one. The complaints I have above are more a matter of advanced features I’ve come to count on, rather than something that everyone is likely to use. I’ll be curious to see if MS does any significant improvements or push of WLW in the coming years.

Meantime, I’ll be heading back to ecto, until I find something better.

Posting from the Belly of the Beast

Been poking around (as previously discussed) with desktop blog clients.  My old standby, SharpMT, has essentially shut down.  W.bloggar is more powerful than ever, but I’ve grown fond of WYSIWYG…

Been poking around (as previously discussed) with desktop blog clients.  My old standby, SharpMT, has essentially shut down.  W.bloggar is more powerful than ever, but I’ve grown fond of WYSIWYG writing, and it only supports 12 snippets/tags/blocks.

So one tool I’ve often heard highly touted is Windows Live Writer.  Yes, working with the Evil Empire itself — or with its tools.

I will say that:

a.  The interface is pretty.

b.  There is a healthy number of plugins to play with.

I’m not sold yet, but I like what I see so far.

More later.

Ecto morph

*sigh*  I’ve been using Ecto as a blogging tool for a couple of years now. It’s a nice offline blogging client with some features I can’t imagine living without. In…

*sigh* 

I’ve been using Ecto as a blogging tool for a couple of years now. It’s a nice offline blogging client with some features I can’t imagine living without. In particular it has some great formatting tools, a versatile picture uploader, and a template/tag/snippet tool that makes my life huuuuugely easier.

But …

Ecto was originally created for the Mac, with a separate developer working on the Windows version. Upgrades of the Windows version have gotten slower of late, and now the two versions have reached a parting of the ways. While the developer says he’ll continue to support the Windows version, the signs aren’t promising:

  1. The announcement was the end of March.
  2. A new name, “by the end of next week,” hasn’t come up. Indeed, nothing has come up on the site about the product.
  3. The support forums have been moved to a new site — but empty. A promise to migrate the previous outstanding issues (including a few of mine) “some time next week” hasn’t happened.
  4. The product is no longer for sale (but still available for download). 
  5. The future of the product, moving into v.3, “remains to be decided.”

On the other hand, a new point version was posted at the beginning of April (first since January). And that fixed the one most annoying bug in the program. And I’ve always found the developer to be responsive until the last several months.

So I’m worried. And it’s not about whether the product is good (it is), or the developer isn’t well-meaning (he is), just whether he’s going to have enough time (so far, not), and whether the product will actually grow in the future (prognosis cloudy).

*sigh* 

I’ll stick with it for now, but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for a replacement, as well as considering whether it would make any sense to shift over to using the MT4 native input screen.

Irksome.

Drinking and feeding

Having recently re-added the books/movies I’ve seen recently (in the “***Recently” sidebar), I’m now also adding the most recent wines consumed via an RSS feed I get from CellarTracker and…

Having recently re-added the books/movies I’ve seen recently (in the “***Recently” sidebar), I’m now also adding the most recent wines consumed via an RSS feed I get from CellarTracker and a clever little sidebar RSS widget from  SpringWidgets, by way of FeedBurner (though it doesn’t require FeedBurner).

So now whenever I post a review of something I pull from my cellar, you can see it here, woo-woo. Click on the title (CellarTracker) to get summary reviews of all, or on any of the individual wines to see the details.

I’m not wild about the SpringWidgets Flash widget, but it looks a bit less unattractive than what Grazr offers, and even though I have the feed already showing up in the sidebar via Google Reader, I can’t quite figure out how to get Google Reader to display it.

It’s interesting — I’m trying to turn this page more and more into sort of an aggregation portal for what I browse, read, see, and now drink, rather than relying on static links and blog posts.  I have specialized ElseBlog items, the Google Reader shared items (Unblogged Bits), my Recently “wishlist” from Amazon via Dealazon, and now this feed via SpringWidgets. All of which are meant to save me having to write added blog posts about stuff if I don’t have the time or inclination — the Lazy Man’s way of blogging, I suppose.

I think SpringWidget is meant as either (a) an easy RSS feed aggregator for folks to post on their blog (or even their desktop), or (b) a cheap way to publicize one’s site (“Hey, get the SpringWidget for my site!”). I think it makes a reasonable aggregator for my own personal feeds.

Though … all this stuff has gotten a lot easier, but nobody has a complete model — something that will take any source and spit it out in any other format without wrapping all sorts of crap around it (as even SpringWidget does). The things I can do with Google Reader come close — but, as SpringWidget shows, even there I can’t easily grab the contents of a single feed and share them in my sidebar — and the shared “clip” like I do with Unblogged Bits has serious formatting limitations.

On the other hand … I can do a lot more of this sort of thing than I could when the blog started (both personally, in my level of “expertise,” and in what the Net provides in the way of services). Which is kinda cool …

Recently Read

I finally found a replacement for Blogfuel to show my “Recently” Read/Watched sidebar block. The Wishlist Badge creates a nice little dynamic set of cover images for items that I’ve…

I finally found a replacement for Blogfuel to show my “Recently” Read/Watched sidebar block. The Wishlist Badge creates a nice little dynamic set of cover images for items that I’ve put on my Amazon “Recently” Wish List (which is sort of a Post-Wish List, if you follow).

(In other words, it’s intended to point to an Amazon Wish List — but I have a second Wish List, that I use to track things I’ve been consuming.)

Not sure what happened to Blogfuel to make it not work, but now I can continue to show off what I have been/am reading/watching, for your edification or entertainment. Yay.