Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

28
Jul

Moving into the Cloud

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging, Life and Wordpress
Tags: , , , , , ,

After making the argument a while back with several of my friends to use Site5 to host their blog and other web services, I am moving my blog to wordpress.com.  Nothing against Site5, it is just a change of life and priorities that is creating the move more than anything else.  Hosting your own blog software requires geek time to review and update from time to time, and at the point in time, I need something that requires no maintenance.  WordPress.com fits the bill.  So as you will start to see, all my online services and life will be moving into the Web 2.0 cloud.

Also created a new blog for Anita and I to share stories, comments and opinions during our travels.  For those wanting to now where we just came back from, what happened or where we are planning to go, or what unique food we had - this is the place we will capture all this.

I have to say I have been plessantly surprised how well WordPress.com works.  The advanced fucntions on the GUI editor are nice, and I do not have to struggle with inserting pictures, etc.  ScribeFire (blogging plugin for Firefox) works well with it too.  You will see me changing themes for a bit until I find one that works for me.  I may just have to break down and do some CSS editing…but I am not there just yet.

13
Jan

To Tweet or to Pownce, that is the question…

By justisengard 1 Comment
Categories: Blogging, Life and Technology
Tags: , ,

Many know that I tinker in the social networking side of the Web 2.0 technology extravaganza. I have introduced several friends to Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, etc. In return a couple of these friends have introduced me to other things as well, which is part of the idea behind social networking. However, with all these sites and applications popping up everywhere, one only has but so much time in the day. For anyone who knows me, over the past several months my time as been a wee bit occupied. ;-) So to better organize my ‘geektime’ it would seem that I wil have to prioritize my activities. As you will notice, I have been blogging a bit more, and I plan to keep this up. I typically keep my Facebook account updated - it is just fun. However, the microbloging with Pownce and Twitter seem to be a bit redundant. So I have come to the conclusion that I need to pick one.

Twitter.com

Twitter came first, and basically started the whole craze. It is centered around a webpage, multiple Twitter apps and getting updates to your mobile phone. I never really got into the mobile phone part and neither did any of my Twitter friends. So I found Twitterific (application), updated this blog with a nice little Tweet update box, and discovered PocketTweets for my iPhone. At times however, I wanted to do things a bit more, post more than 140 characters, or reply more easily to friends, or even post a picture I just took spontaneously with my iPhone to say look at this. Twitter really did not provide this experience and really it did not seem if the developers wanted it to either. But it would seem that I was not the only person thinking this. Kevin Rose and Leah Culver evidently were thinking similar thoughts, because along came Pownce.

http://www.appscout.com/images/Pownce_Logo.jpg
Pownce builds on Twitter and takes it into a new direction. It is a web page, just like Twitter, and there is a desktop app based on Adobe Air. The best part is that you can create groups for your friends, you can send pictures, files, etc., links and even create events. So now when I want to say, checkout this website or look at this picture i can easily post it on Pownce. I can also limit to message or all or a subset of friends, and they can reply to just me with comments. So immediately signed up.

Well, it seems a bit redundant to post the same thing to both, and unlike others I do not see any different between what I would post to one or the other. I have noticed Veronica Belmont seems to differentiate between the two a bit. On the other hand it comes back to time, which is limited. So given this limitation, I have decided to Pownce rather the Tweet. If anyone has any other opinions on the difference between the two, please feel free to comment.

Powered by ScribeFire.

15
Apr

Viper’s Video Quicktags for WordPress

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging and Wordpress

Tired of copying and pasting the embed HTML from sites like YouTube into posts on your site? Well then this plugin is for you.Just simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box — easy as that. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed (width, height, alignment on the page) and much more. Best of all, it won’t break your page’s (X)HTML validation.

Currently supports these video sites:

  • YouTube
  • Google Video
  • IFILM
  • Metacafe
  • MySpace

As well as these file types:

  • QuickTime (MOV, etc.)
  • Generic video files (AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc.)
  • Flash Video Files (FLV)

Viper’s Video Quicktags « Extend › Plugins

Not sure is anyone else rean into this problem, but after the last WordPress upgrade, embeding Youtube video just did not work. Quick Google search, and wham, WP-Plugin solution. Talk about nice, the buttons and everything are right there in the Write Post window. Very nice!

Blogged with Flock

01
Apr

Twitter - what the hell is that?

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging and Technology

Twitter Logo 2You may have noticed this new little area on my blog that has seemingly random comments and happenings in it. These are my Tweets on Twitter. So you ask, what the hell is Twitter. Well I shall use the words of Amber Mac to describe it.

“For folks who don’t know what Twitter is, it’s a service that let’s you share what you’re doing right now on the web (via your computer or phone). ” For more info on this from Amber: Twitter Addicts, on cartoons, on maps, on badges.

For more info on Twitter apps, etc, check out this article.

Oh, and drop me an email or a comment if you wanna add me as a friend. ;-)

27
Dec

Sociable - WordPress Plugin

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging and Wordpress

While experiencing some Christmas vacation, I have had time to add some improvement to the blog. Just added the WP Plugin Sociable. I have seen several blog with the cool digg and del.icoi.us icons at the bottom of each post and though it would be cool to have them, just in case, one of posts every gets dugg. Now wouldn’t that be something. After installing the plugin, I discovered during the configuration that it included buttons for a lot more bookmarking/commenting/etc sites than I knew existed - other than the normal digg, del.icio.us, and Newsvine. Soo, I have been going through the list and checking them out.

Below are some comments on a one minute checkout of the websites for each and whether they will enabled on each blog article.

Continue reading ‘Sociable - WordPress Plugin’

15
Oct

The Blog

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging

As some of you know, I have gone back and forth for some time now, over a year with where and how to develop my blog. The choices range from Blogger logo Blogger, LiveJournal Logo Livejournal, WordPress.com LogoWordPress.com, and Vox LogoVox (a new comer from Typepad - the folks that have not screwed up LJ, yet.). These were the choices for the simply just have it done and move on part of me. The part of me that repeatedly says, “printing should just work”, although after 20+ years, how surprisingly it does not. Because there is this other side, the geek side that will tinker with three seemingly cool plugin for half a day, only to discover that two never work from the start, and the third, once installed and working, is not as cool as it sounded over a day ago when you first saw it. Yeah, it is a problem…I am working on it. ;-) However, that is just it, I love doing that. I love tinkering with WordPress and all the option, plugin, etc. …and what was my last post about….

WordPress Logo

So that being said, going with the WordPress from scratch solution, with all it various options glory and frustrations. Which means if you are browsing this site over the course of a week or maybe even a day, or if it is late a night, maybe even a hour, you just might see the theme change, new features appear and others disappear only to reappear minutes ot days later. That is just me, tinkering.

14
Oct

Starting anew…

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging and Life

Some times you just have to start over from the beginning and come at things from a completely different perspective. I have been away from my blog as well as reading others for several months now. For many reasons, some seemingly justified and others not so much, I simply did not find the time. Just one of those things that you mean to do, you actually want to do, but somehow, the time never really materializes. It is funny that the older you get, time seems to become shorter and short. An hour use to be a long time…

Well, about a month ago, my perspective on some of this changed while I was up in Canada. Up there for a good friend of mine’s wedding. A little over a year ago, he and his girlfriend decided that they wanted to take six months off, and travel literally around the world. It was important to them and they made it happen. They traveled the world and had experiences that will stay with them a life time. Now you ask, how can you take six months off from work - well depending on the company, it is referred to as a leave of absence. If you work in the US, it pretty much means you roll the dice on if you have a job when you come back. Whose life it is though? What is important to you? Too many times, in fact most everyone I know, lets others dictate the priorities in their lives. Not so for my friend. He returned, and the company he worked for said, sorry. Oh well, looks like I will have to find another job…and he did.

It seems over-simplistic, but there was living proof of how to take control of your life and do the things you wanted to. Set your mind to it and make it happen, and deal with things as they come. It was just that simple. Rather than fear the unknown, take control. Rather than let others, work, etc. control the direction and priorities in your life, take them back. You only get one life and it is infinite. Live it while you have the time…”seize the day”.

Soo, as a result, acting upon one of the little things I have enjoyed in the past, I have started this blog. It is not something I have to do, it is not something I need to find time to do; it is something I enjoy and will do. ;-)

04
Sep

Starting anew…

By justisengard 0 Comments
Categories: Blogging and Life

Well, it has been some time since I have made any blog posts.  In fact the last ones were back in May.  Back in May I ran into some issues with several things.  After fighting with then for a couple weeks, I simply decided to abandon that implementation.  one of those wind out of sails kind of thing.  Soo, after missing blogging for a couple of months, I started to think just how to start again.  My last blog was hosted on an ISP and I maintained the WordPress installation.  This was very cool from a geek perspective, and allowed for a lot of freedom and experimentation.  I however, found myself more consumed with this flexibility that actually using the blog itself.  I am one of the types that, if in the right mood of geekdom, can spend hours and possibly days experimenting with plugins, themes, and new cool features.  That being said, i started to look around at what other blogging mechanisms were available.  Some of the ones that are familiar to most, Blogger, Livejournal, Typepad, Xanga, etc.  Even discovered a new one by the folks that do Typepad and Livejournal (well, the people that bought Livejournal, and have not messed it up yet.), called Vox.  I can hear the thoughts in your head right now - why not just use the hosted server space you have on Site5 to host it and be done with it?  The short answer - convenience.  I want a place that I am not tempted to geek out with.  One that simply provides the tool to create and develop my blog.  Since i am a huge fan of WordPress (used for all previous blogs), wordpress.com seemed like a natural solution.  The lack of complete control over the site was a bit challenging at first, but that squelched the tendency to geek out rather that blog.  It was wordpress, which I was already familiar with, and after reviewing some of the features, https was standard.  Soo, here we are.  I am not saying that at sometime in the future I will not deem it necessary to move this blog to a wordpress installation completed maintained and developed by myself, or to another blog site for that matter - what I am saying is this was the right decision for the moment.  ;-)