Has anyone else noticed that blo.gs seems to be reporting erroneous site updates? Over the last day or so, it keeps reporting site updates, and yet, when I visit the sites, most of them have not updated. I know that some of these update reports are bogus, because I’ve even seen my own site show bogus updates (I was still in bed at 7:08 a.m. today, and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t update my site in my sleep).
Has the blo.gs server gone haywire, or is some prankster flooding it with bogus pings?
Last night, I had a dream where I was visiting somebody else’s house (I don’t know who, and apparently it wasn’t important). On a small table were some leather-bound books. As I examined them, one stood out, partly because it was slightly larger than the rest, and also because the binding was a little different. I realized that the owner of the house had created the book cover by hand (a hobby of his, I guessed).
When I examined it more closely, I saw that it had a title something like “The Essence of Romance” or words to that effect. And then I realized that it wasn’t actually a book at all. When I picked it up and opened it, I found that the inside actually contained a pocket on each side, stuffed with smaller articles. It was mainly pocket-sized books of poetry, but also I recall a silver flask of brandy or cognac, and a few other knicknacks (candles and matches?).
I’m not sure where that idea came from (especially since the other pieces of dreams that I remember from last night had no relation), but it stuck out in my mind after I woke up. That item just seems like a really cool idea, like something that James Bond would have on his bookshelf when wooing some female enemy agent. Except that his version would include knockout pills to slip in to her drink and a hidden miniature laser gun.
Anyhow, if anybody ever sees anything like this in the future, just remember that I thought of it first!
I’m looking for advice on two seperate but related projects.
First of all, I want a good way to manage images for right here on my blog. Obviously, I want something that integrates into WordPress. Ideally, it should allow me to organize pictures in some sort of hierarchical directory structure, annotate pictures with metadata (title, date, place, categories/tags, etc), browse pictures in various ways, generate multiple sizes, and so forth.
The second one will be a standalone site for family members to share photos with each other, so it doesn’t necessarily have to integrate with WordPress. However, it should be multi-user, and super user-friendly for the non-techs. I was looking at Coppermine Photo Gallery, but I’m not very happy with the interface. I could also just point everybody at Flickr, but I think it would be too overwhelming for some of our family members.
Any recommendations?
I’m interested in coming up with a good metadata system for describing various sorts of media. Obviously, this ties in to my recent work on my “now playing” feature, and also into my interest in microformats. And I plan to expand this with links to books, DVDs, and perhaps other media or products. I asked about it on the microformats-discuss mailing list, and they pointed me to a page on the wiki about media-metadata.
This seems to be primarily aimed at electronic media, but I’m hoping that the primary authors might be willing to expand the scope a bit. I’ve already contributed a couple of links on that page and added an “Offline Media” section, which I hope others might fill in. If things move too slowly, maybe I’ll just go ahead and come up with some individual microformats that cover what I think I might need, toss them out there, and see what evolves.
Oh, dear Lord. Somebody please kill this weed before it grows: Lawmakers move to extend daylight-saving time
House and Senate negotiators on an energy bill agreed to begin daylight-saving time three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and extend it by one week to the first Sunday in November.
I. Hate. Daylight. Savings. Time.
First of all, it’s an outmoded idea. Second of all, am I the only one that’s annoyed by the idea of it still being light outside at 9:00 p.m.? Or by it being dark outside at 7:00 a.m.? (at least, that’s how it is here on the western edge of the Eastern timezone).
On the bright side (no pun intended), I suppose it could fuel another surge of programming work, a la Y2K, whereby corporations are forced to spend billions of dollars in order to update all their software to accomodate the new schedule for time changes. Hurray for job security. I think.
I usually try to post something every couple of days, but as a few of you may have noticed, I’ve been absent for over a week. And if you really follow along here, you might have guessed why.
Claire Virginia Campbell
Earlier this year, I announced Peppermint version 0.3. Susan and I are pround to announce that after several months of work, we now have a finished product, and we present Claire version 1.0!
Claire Virginia Campbell was born on July 18 at 8:07 a.m. She weighed 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and she was 19.5 inches long. Claire and her mom and dad are all doing well, though sleep is still a bit sporadic at this point. Jamie and Mary are very excited about their new baby sister.
We only have a few digital photos right now. I’ve got some more on film, but haven’t had a chance to get them developed yet. I’ve also got some pics from my brother-in-law’s camera on my jumpdrive, which I hope to upload pretty soon. And obviously, we’ll be boring you all with even more photographs later. Eventually, I’ll decide on a photo gallery system to use here on my own server, but for now, it was easier to just use Flickr.
Has your blog been spammed with ads for a Popup Blocker for Internet Explorer?
If you are getting here through a search on Popup Blockers or for Pop-Up Blocker or Pop Up Blocker Internet Explorer, please do not buy from pop-upblocker dot org They are spammers and unethical. ADB Popup Blocker and ANB Pop Up Blocker are from the same company and you should not buy their product. Any SEO people want to help me get this post up on top on the SEs?
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The FeedLounge team is looking for some browser developers to help with testing. This is to help distinguish better between bugs that may be in the FeedLounge application or in the browser itself. By getting some browser programmers on-board, they may be able to get problems fixed at both ends.
We feel that this will be a mutually beneficial arrangement:
- We push the limits of the browser and potentially find bugs that don’t normally get surfaced, report them to you (the browser developer) and provide test and use cases.
- Bugs that affect FeedLounge get fixed (or we get work-arounds for them) which is a great thing for our users.
Alpha testing is going pretty good so far. They recently moved things onto a beefier server, and the system response times are nice and snappy now. There are still a few little quirks to be worked out, but it’s really shaping up to be an awesome service.
Prompted by some recent comments, I have made a minor update to my HeadMeta Plugin. There are now links to the color-coded PHP source, a plaintext version, a .ZIP file, and a .tar.gz tarball.
The new version adds automatic generation of a standard <meta/> tag for posts which have a custom ‘keyword’ or ‘keywords’ field. I often tag my posts with a ‘keyword’ field for use with the Related Posts plugin, so I figured I might as well re-use and expose that data in some fashion.
I’ve also updated it to use the is_single() function instead of the global $single variable. Visit the original post for the updates.
Black & Decker Mega Mouse 4-In-1 Sander Polisher
Susan and I have spent the last several weeks refinishing some furniture for our kids’ rooms. It’s been taking a lot longer than we had expected, but we’re finally reaching a point where it’s going to pay off. Tonight, I should be able to put the final coat of polyurethane on Jamie’s chest of drawers. Later this week, I should be able to get the final coats on his dresser.
Next, I’ll need to finish stripping the old finish off of the furniture for Mary’s room. Once I get it stripped and sanded, hers will go much quicker than Jamie’s did, because we’re just painting it, rather than staining. Staining took forever, because we had to apply two coats of stain, and three coats of polyurethane finish on each side of the two pieces. The stain dried pretty quickly, so that wasn’t too bad, but the finish has to dry for three hours between coats. Three coats per side, four sides to be finished (per piece), plus the drawers, which I could do in batches, but still added a couple of extra time slots.
The main reason it took so long, besides just the drying time, was that I had limited time windows to work on it. Since Susan is pregnant, she couldn’t work with the furniture stripper or the polyurethane. She was, however, able to work with the water-based stain, so she stained everything during the day while I was at work. But I could only work on it in the evenings and on weekends. And sometimes there were just other things that had to get done, so we lost opportunities to progress with the furniture. But now, the end is in sight.
Some of my family was visiting this weekend for a baby shower. When Susan’s mom told my mother that I had been working on refinishing furniture, my mom said, “My son?!?” Heh. I was never much of a handyman as a teenager. I preferred to spend my time reading books, working on the computer, and playing games. Of course, that’s still what I’d prefer to be doing. But I have different responsibilities and priorities now. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Power tools can be pretty fun, too. 😉