So, I’m waiting for the lovely Mishka to bring me my new laptop, since DHL can’t read and apparently none of them own a cell phone. So I’m kicking around the internet and I happened upon an article called 12 essential blogwriting tips for building a successful blog - and it got me thinking. I halfass update my main site for my photography. I have an entire domain for that, so I don’t think I need to keep it there.
Maybe it’s time I drop the photo site and instead drop in something helpful - I’ve been messing around with a few ideas, and I think I’ll just go with them and see what happens.
See, I’ve owned Pavleck.Com for 11 years now (Even though the registry says 8. I accidentally let it drop for a few months around 2000, then got it back) and I’ve been changing it here there and everywhere. I think I should see if I can’t do something interesting with it - something that takes my hobbies and puts em out there. But I dunno. We’ll see.
Some people have to re-arrange the furniture every year or so to keep things interesting, I seem to have to re-write my website every year.
Ah, the internet, what can you teach us today? HowCast, started by several ex-googlers who worked on YouTube and Google Video, aim to show us the how to on all kinds of things - string em together and you get a complete weekend - check it out!
First, how to make yourself irresistible to women:
Then, how to make a killer dirty martini:
After that, go and get yourself laid:
If that was successful, then the next morning you’ll probably need to figure out how to get rid of her:
Or, if that didn’t work, you might need to take some ‘drastic’ measures:
This weekend in St. Paul will be cold. Bitterly cold. How cold is it? Look for yourself - Saturday’s high is expected to be -5 to 0. The high isn’t even going to hit one! Oi! Combine that with the fact my beloved Mishka will be away at some conference or another most of the time and I have a nice chunk of time to dedicate to myself.
So what to do? Play Team Fortress 2 the entire time while eating pizza from Pizza Luce? Only half right! The pizza I shall have, the video game though - I think I’ll be taking a break.
Most people know about the website/blog called PostSecret. Post Secret takes in postcards you send them with your secrets written down and publishes it to the world. It’s a way of getting things off your chest and being a bit of a voyeur into the deep dark secrets help by people. I check it out every Sunday to see the new ones.
But, I thought to myself, I’d love to see a site about breakups. A site that contains letters of anger, hurt, fear, regret and all that negativity that is contained within the human condition. And to that answer, I registered a website called LoatheLetters.Com. Loathe as in “To find repugnant“. Letters as in “Something one person left for another person with writing on it”. I bought the domains, and have been sitting on them for awhile, this weekend I’ll see if I can’t develop them into something.1
I’ve been mulling over a few things design wise and have settled on something I think will be simplistic, but intuitive. And instead of taking a blog engine, I’ll see if I can’t write the entire system myself in something like ASP.Net. Why? Because it’s what I know - I’m sure Robert will be chastising me soon for not using RoR but hey, he’s the expert on that, not me. So that’s what I’ll be messing with this weekend - trying to get the backend written.
And, if I can find the proper number of layers required to stave off the arctic like cold hanging around I might head out to Medicine Lake to see this years Art Shantys.2I hope you can join me! Or, even better, go instead of me and film it and let me know what it’s like.
Footnotes listed in the above post:
I also need to work on my DIY Electronic Engineer portal ShadeTreeEE.Com, too [↩]
On Sunday Shanty from Misfit Toys will be having a soup kitchen - woot! [↩]
Yesterday I received an email accepting me into the private beta phase of Skribit.
What’s Skribit? Created during the Atlanta Startup Event, Paul Stamatiou’s software is a way to let people have more control over topics that are talked about in a blog. You suggest topics, and others vote on them - the ones that make it to the top are the ones I’ll write about - usually.
I’ve embedded the widget front and center - you will see it to your right. Right now, there isn’t much in the way of suggestions - how about adding something you’d like to see written about? Simply click in the widget where it says “Click here to suggest a topic”, type in something that interests you, and hit submit - that’s all there is to it!
So how about it? What would you like to see me talk about? I’d love some suggestions so I can properly test drive this bad boy of Web 2.0.
Go to Google maps, enter in the address “1272 17th Avenue North Minneapolis, MN” click on “Street View” and look around and you’ll see the following - a Mercedes E-class that met a tree. Or just click this link. Via Jalopnik.
I wanted to blog about how Google maps now has Street View for the Twin Cities, but all my friends have beaten me to it. Screw them and their promptness. Anyway, it’s true. Yay. Look - it’s our place!
As has been reported time and time again today, you can now edit photos inside of Flickr. The online photo editing suite Picnik has been integrated within Flickr. To access it, just hit the new ‘Edit Photo’ button. Picnik will ask for permission to access your photos, click ‘Ok’ and you’re in!
Once inside you have a fairly impressive suite of tools available to help edit your photos - the initial ‘Edit’ screen lets you fix things and features options such as “Auto-Fix”, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, etc and a Fun tab called Create that allows you to play with your photos by converting them into black and white, sepia, night vision, creating a heat map and other fun options. It definitely won’t replace a heavier editing suite such as Light Room1 or Photoshop, but if you’re looking for a simple fix to remove red-eye or to make it look like your photo is a sketch, this is a perfect choice!
Footnotes listed in the above post:
Light Room is my new Go To tool for photo editing - it has a few quirks you need to get used to, but it rocks! [↩]
Parents, please pay attention to what your kids want - and the specifics, not just a basic overview. If you wonder why, well, Tscully’s tale will help put it all into perspective:
<Tscully> It’s Christmas. We show up at my grandmas house. I’m 14.
<Tscully> It comes time to open the presents, she brings out this little square-shaped flat present, wrapped in christmas paper.
<Tscully> I wonder what it is, what joyous gift from grandma could be so small in volume?
<Tscully> I open it, and see the words “AOL Internet Trial CD” on the cover of a cardboard disc holder, with a 14-day AOL trial CD inside.
<Tscully> Confused, I asked her what it was.
<Tscully> She proudly proclaimed “I’ve bought you fourteen days of free internet!”
<Tscully> And that’s why I hate christmas.
Personally1 , I wish I could find out where to buy multiple copies of this book - because with a title this great, who could resist?
So I’ve tidied up the blog a bit and streamlined some things1.
I removed the tag cloud because, well, they’re stupid and no one really uses them like they should, anyway. In its place sits a new blogroll of TC people. Blogs of people in the area I come across, I’ll just keep adding them to it. If you want yours added to the list, just leave a comment. I don’t really like how there isn’t really a definitive separation between individual links, I’ll have to see if I can’t fix that later.
I’ve also added a new “Minnesota Links” page - just a set of URLs I like to hit up that involves my home state. I’ll add to that as well when I come across new resources.
I went to bed last night seeing a dusting of snow outside. Thought I’d have a picture of the snowfall for you today, but when I woke up it was all gone. Though supposedly we’ll have up to an inch of snow tonight, so maybe tomorrow I’ll have the picture2
Also, I’m working on a long term story now. In my quest to prove “You can never really hide yourself on the internet” I’ve created a second blog. I’m using a completely new login ID, one that has nothing to do with me. I’m writing posts about things that are more out of scope then I normally do, and I’m rewording things currently happening or not writing about it at all. Nevertheless, in 6 months time or so, I will have an exhaustive article on performing internet forensics. Read the rest of this entry »
Footnotes listed in the above post:
Plus added a sweet footnotes plugin so I can do this [↩]
Damn, I remember trick or treating in the snow [↩]
