FedEx Tracking, RSS style
Ben Hammersley put together a script that will convert FedEx tracking information to RSS: Track! Your! Packages! (in RSS) [via code: the WebSocket]
Catching up is hard to do
I've been bitten by the anti-blogging bug. Or I haven't been bitten by the blogging bug in a while. Had a great 4th of July weekend with canoing, grilling, and catching glimpses of fireworks from far away. The 4th is also sk's birthday, and we had a very relaxing day filled with ice cream cake and Curb Your Enthusiasm. We saw Spider-Man 2 over the weekend, and here's my four word review: don't believe the hype. We saw it at the brand new Carmike Theater in Corvallis. The theater is nice and new, but sterile and lacking personality. I'm looking forward to The Darkside.
I updated the design of ORblogs last Friday. Though it looks basically the same, there was quite a bit of CSS tinkering that went on. The texture for the sidebars is a modified Squidfingers 62. And I was inspired by the subtle use of shadows to offset the sidebars by ShaunInman.com. I suddenly have a bunch of ideas I'd like to pursue for ORblogs—a new design has helped shake up my sense of what's possible there. I continue to be impressed by the quality of writing and coverage of all things Oregon by Oregonians. I learn something new about my state every day from local bloggers.
Webvisions is coming up in Portland on July 16th, and I'll see you there. I'm going to be speaking somewhere, sometime during the Open Source Convention coming up in Portland the week of July 26th. And an event at which I'd like to be a former-audience member—Dan Gillmor is going to be speaking about weblogs and Journalism at Powell's Tech on July 28th. The talk is called Grassroots Journalism By and For the People. Right on.
I updated the design of ORblogs last Friday. Though it looks basically the same, there was quite a bit of CSS tinkering that went on. The texture for the sidebars is a modified Squidfingers 62. And I was inspired by the subtle use of shadows to offset the sidebars by ShaunInman.com. I suddenly have a bunch of ideas I'd like to pursue for ORblogs—a new design has helped shake up my sense of what's possible there. I continue to be impressed by the quality of writing and coverage of all things Oregon by Oregonians. I learn something new about my state every day from local bloggers.
Webvisions is coming up in Portland on July 16th, and I'll see you there. I'm going to be speaking somewhere, sometime during the Open Source Convention coming up in Portland the week of July 26th. And an event at which I'd like to be a former-audience member—Dan Gillmor is going to be speaking about weblogs and Journalism at Powell's Tech on July 28th. The talk is called Grassroots Journalism By and For the People. Right on.
Bookwatch in NYT
Weblog Bookwatch was mentioned briefly in the NYT today: How to Please a Critic under A Summer Book Tour: "Last summer I suggested trawling for beach reading ideas at automated recommendation sites..." Check out the article to find out what's happening this summer. (She mentions the LOC's One Book project.)
Pupdate
For those of you who have been sending cards and letters asking for more pics of the puppy (you know who you are), here's a recent photo.
She's pretty much done growing now at six months, and we thought she would be much bigger when we got her. It's hard to tell from this picture, but she's very tiny. (About 13 inches at the shoulder. That means she would need the extra-extra small lifejacket for a boat trip, unlike rafting eddie.) We're very happy with her—she's a great dog.
She's pretty much done growing now at six months, and we thought she would be much bigger when we got her. It's hard to tell from this picture, but she's very tiny. (About 13 inches at the shoulder. That means she would need the extra-extra small lifejacket for a boat trip, unlike rafting eddie.) We're very happy with her—she's a great dog.
Heatvision and Jack
Hurry over to Waxy's Bandwidth Blowout and download the TV pilot you were never meant to see. It has Owen Wilson as a talking motorcycle and Jack Black as a man who is three times smarter than the world's smartest man. For real.
Away Message
Posting has stopped because I'm on vacation. I'll be back in front of a computer on Thursday.
The blog demographic
MediaDailyNews: Blog readers defy stereotypes : "It turns out that 61 percent of blog readers who participated in the survey are over 30 years of age. Almost 30 percent are between the ages of 31 and 40, while over 37 percent span the ages of 41-60. And nearly 40 percent have a household income of $90K and above." [via anil]
Me and Boris
The article about weblogs was in the paper this weekend, Adventures in blogging: "Hundreds of people know that Paul Bausch has a dog named Luna, likes photography and technology, and went for a hike at Silver Creek Falls a couple weeks ago. He told them all about it without ever leaving his home in Corvallis."
On the local weblogs front, I got an email from the laboratory of Dr. Boris Thinky announcing his new weblog: Thinkum: The Boris Blog. (Another great Bigha production.) They're giving away gmail accounts over there.
Further on the local weblogs front, I helped Julie Flanery put up a website for her dog training business: Wonder Dogs. We've been working with her to train Luna, and it's amazing to watch Julie in action with dogs. She started a weblog as part of her site, Wonder Dogs News & Updates.
On the local weblogs front, I got an email from the laboratory of Dr. Boris Thinky announcing his new weblog: Thinkum: The Boris Blog. (Another great Bigha production.) They're giving away gmail accounts over there.
Further on the local weblogs front, I helped Julie Flanery put up a website for her dog training business: Wonder Dogs. We've been working with her to train Luna, and it's amazing to watch Julie in action with dogs. She started a weblog as part of her site, Wonder Dogs News & Updates.
blog talkin'
Last week I chatted with Jenn Rouse from the Corvallis Gazette Times. We talked about weblogs, what they mean, my time at Blogger, a site I run called ORblogs, and where weblogs may be headed. When she mentioned to her editors that she was going to do a story on "blogging", they said, "what specifically about logging?" So it seems there's still some work to do to get people to understand what weblogs are.
As research for her article she started her own weblog—Jen's Notes—with Blogger to see how it all works. One of her first posts, Interview with pb, summarized some things we talked about that didn't make it into her article. (A great reason journalists should keep weblogs on the side—more depth!) Her article about weblogs should be in Sunday's Gazette-Times.
As research for her article she started her own weblog—Jen's Notes—with Blogger to see how it all works. One of her first posts, Interview with pb, summarized some things we talked about that didn't make it into her article. (A great reason journalists should keep weblogs on the side—more depth!) Her article about weblogs should be in Sunday's Gazette-Times.
Linus Torvalds Portland Bound
I heard through the Portland Bloggers grapevine that Linus Torvalds is moving to Portland in a couple weeks. He said, "The plan was to try to acclimatize and have time to grow webbed feet (although I'm told there are implants available) by moving during the summer." Given enough webbed feet, all puddles are shallow. More on Linus Torvalds.
photolog update
This weekend I made some changes to my photolog. On the backend there's now a database keeping some meta-info about each picture. (Previously, it was using the filesystem only.) On the frontend, some of the photos now have a
[details] link after the title that leads to a page with the meta info for that particular photo. For example:
I'm adding some of the metadata like title and keywords by hand. But some of it is automatically included by parsing the exif data embedded within the image. Exif data includes technical details about the shot: exposure time, focal length, aperture setting, etc. To get the exif info I'm using a program called exiftags. (jhead is another good exif data extractor that I found while putting this together.) I'm hoping that having this technical data about the shot a click away from each photo will help me remember what works and what doesn't.Improving News Sites
101 Ways to Improve Your News Site. This is full of great ideas.