I thought I’d scratch something out. It’s kind of ‘inside baseball’ - or “inside linux podcasting” so to speak, but what the hell. For J.C Hutchins - 7th Son fans, it’s not Kilroy 3.0 who is ‘everywhere’. It’s Verbal (from Chicago) who’s really everywhere… 
I see from Earl Moore’s blog (my sole connection to the world of Apple) that they’ve announced an ultra-thin laptop. Couple of questions:
1. Aren’t laptop keyboards bad enough already without being even thinner? Maybe the keys pop-up when the lid is opened? That would be nice.
2. What about all the papercuts? Who’s going to pay for all the sliced open laptop bags? The litigation will be horrendous.. Oh the humanity!!
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Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to automatically generate a timestamp in a Google Notebook entry?
More generally, it would be nice if there was a plugin/bookmarklet/url that could automatically generate these timestamps no matter what app (web-based or otherwise) I was using. Maybe there is something out there, if you know something I don’t - no big hurdle there - post it in the comments.
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When I first decided to purchase some hosting, create a new website and move my blog to WordPress, one of the things I wanted to do was create my own WordPress theme (rather than just tweak an existing one). Not because I’m a glutton for punishment, but because (as always) I love learning new things and figuring things out.
But after tackling the WordPress setup, blog migration and getting my static site up and running, creating my own WP theme (never mind learning how to do it) just seemed unnecessary in the short term. It just would have taken too long. Nonetheless it moved to the backburner but stayed on the ToDo list.
In the meantime, I subscribed and searched for good information on designing and creating WP themes. One great source has been wpdesigner.com. And a couple of days ago, I realized that Small Potato, the main author of that blog, has actually written a free three-part tutorial book on creating a WP theme from the ground up. The posts outlining the three parts are:
www.wpdesigner.com/2007/08/
www.wpdesigner.com/2007/
www.wpdesigner.com/2007/08/
In each post, you’ll find a zip file containing a pdf and some associated images and info files. Lots for me to chew on.
Incidentally, the problems I had with my embedding of YouTube videos in my previous post (or rather the way my current theming seemed to vomit it out) were not the impetus for this post, but man it sure gives me a good reason to pursue it.
Another great blog currently exploring this very process is Creative Curio. Some very inspiring and interesting information over there too.
I’m not entirely satisfied with the current theming of my blog anyway. It’s not exactly what I was looking for, but in the interest of maintaining progress it was simply good enough. Let’s see if I can create something more to my liking, and learn something new in the process too.
Update: Sorry if you got this post multiple times. But it appears the theme I’m using really fubars things when I embed a YouTube video in the post. So for now, I’m going to post the links to the YouTube videos (instead of embedding them) until I find out what the problem is.
Original Post:
When you think of “Photoshop” and “Screencasts”, then humour is something that doesn’t immediately spring to mind. At least not until you’ve checked out Donnie Hoyle’s hilarious ‘You Suck at Photoshop’ screencasts. Here are two of them: (caution: strong language)
All highly efficient and effective people keep reading lists. As proof of this, I don’t keep one and I’m highly inefficient and ineffective (just ask anybody who knows me). But trying out the Readeroo Firefox plugin described in Perwari’s post Need Something To Read? , I just might start using one!
This is a reading list for web sites. It’s a simple plugin that uses your del.icio.us account (sign up for one if you don’t have one already) to manage a list of web sites you’d like to mark for later reading. The plugin adds two buttons to your browser menu, one for marking pages ‘to read’ and the other one for pulling up one of these sites when you find some time to read.
So it’s a quick way to just file sites in a ‘to read’ file and makes it very easy to call them up when you have some time for reading, no muss, no fuss.
The options dialog for the plugin lets you modify the tags it uses for marking links as ‘toread’ and ‘donereading’, lets you choose whether the sites on your list are marked public or private (yes, you can save that blog post about unsightly elbow hair without fear of embarrassment), and you can also choose what order it sorts the links in (ie. in what order they’ll be pulled back out for you to read).
I’ve tried maintaining a reading list before pseudo-manually using bookmarks etc. but I never seem to keep up with it. The simplicity and automation of this solution might finally make it stick.
A little birdie told me that Launchpad (the free software development and hosting website run by Canonical) is holding a logo contest. It runs through the end of March, so there is plenty of time for generating ideas. I may enter a couple. Info about the contest can be found at: https://help.launchpad.net/logo
Welcome to the new blog! I’ve moved my old one over here to a properly hosted WordPress platform. With the task of getting this blog and the new website up and running over with, I’m hoping to post a little more often with a little more vim and vigor.
I’m not entirely happy with the blog as is, there’s plenty of tweaking still to do, but there’s ample time for that.
So it’s onwards and upwards for 2008.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the new feed (you’ll see the orange RSS icon up at the very top) and as always, thanks very much for reading.
Through absolutely no effort of my own, the screencasters site is now rolling all blog-style. Major kudos to heathenx for man-handling wordpress into service for both the main episode site and our screencasters blog. Check out his launch post about it. And also check out the new sites and report back any problems or suggestions. We’ve also got a nifty new contact page on the site (again through no effort of my own) so you can leave your valuable input over there. Make sure you update your feeds.
Trying to put some last minute scotch tape and binder twine on my site and blog lately, I’m wondering if I should hire on this heathenx guy to help me out. He almost seems to know what he’s doing! 
I hope everyone out there had a safe and happy holiday. Happy New Year to all.
I just got back from a 4 day mini-trek down to Lockport NY to celebrate my daughter’s 6th birthday and New Years as well. And while we had a laptop and high-speed connectivity at the hotel, it just never got plugged in. And you know what? It was kind of nice.
Of course it’s back to the proverbial grindstone/rat race tomorrow but I feel somewhat refreshed and I’m ready to start chipping away at everything once again.
I’m not big on New Years resolutions. I’m one of those people that figures if you want to make a change, then you just go ahead and make it no matter what time of year. But I guess it’s an excuse to at least pony up some ideas. One of mine is to scale back and simplify. No, I’m not selling my house and living in a mud-hut off the grid - although that actually sounds cathartic at times. But I’ve got several goals which I intend to chip away at. Even if the chipping is just a little more aggressive than last year, I’ll be a happy camper. If you set the bar low enough, you can succeed at anything.
Some of the goals floating around inside my graying noggin at the moment:
This post isn’t really meant as a goalpost or some highbrow social contract with myself. It’s just like most other blog posts, a brain dump just to get the process rolling.
Over the past week I also purchased a few interesting books and magazines. Whether they belong here in this post I don’t know. I may review a couple of them if I get the chance in the near term:
The Plenitude - Creativity, Innovation and Making Stuff by Rich Gold. This is a rather short, but interesting book. Rich Gold was a designer, inventor, writer, artist, and composer among other things. He worked at Xerox PARC and for Sega and Mattel. I’m halfway through this one and it’s very interesting reading. To me anyway.
Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm. This book is about improving the flexibility of web sites with XHTML and CSS. And while I’m very much an XHTML and CSS newbie, it seems to give some very valuable advice. Also, just going over the various sections, it seems like it will bolster my understanding of the basics as well.
Issue 100 of Linux Format magazine. I’ve read this mag in the past and quite like it, but the price is steep for me (around 20 bucks(!!) when purchased here). So I don’t buy a lot of these, but this one was special since it had an article on Linux related podcasts. I haven’t thoroughly read the article, but after skimming it I’m pretty sure I’m not entirely in agreement with their reviews on several fronts. Podcasts are highly subjective things. The review seems to read quite the opposite. We’ll see.
Design It Yourself edited by Ellen Lupton. This one is quite a nice inspiring book to browse through. It encourages creativity of the graphic design sort. There are lots of wonderful examples of practical projects and ideas. It’s far from a design reference and doesn’t pretend to be. It’s fun to read, and like I said, very inspiring for someone like me.
So there you have it, the first brain dump post for 2008. I hope everyone tries to make the most of the year ahead. Thanks to all for reading.
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