Lee McKusick

U.C. Berkeley student’s Twitter messages alerted world to his arrest in Egypt

A U.C Berkeley graduate journalism student was arrested while photographing a public demonstration. Fortunately for him, he was able to text the word “ARRESTED” to his Twitter account from his phone. By the next day, he had an Egyptian lawyer hired by UCB, and was out of jail.

His friends on Twitter saw the message and contacted the U.S. Embassy and the AP and other media. Unfortunately his interpreter is still being held, but the Internet is working to get him out too.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me love technology. This is its true purpose: to help people.

Tags: egypt, journalist, arrested, Twitter

So, I’m enjoying the new WordPress architecture. It’s a LOT more customizable than Blogger, and there’s just a lot more options, especially with plugins and all.

I still have a long way to go, including actually making the underlying site. (Although with the pages ability, I may not have to…)

You can definitely expect more updates to the site to come soon.

Cheers!

Tags: wordpress, blog

I’m working on migrating this blog from being hosted on Blogger to being run from a WordPress installation on my own hosting.

The new link will be http://leemckusick.com/blog, so for those of you with bookmarks, or RSS feeds, you may have to update those.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I think it’s better in the long run, and will serve  a higher purpose in the long run.

Thanks,
Lee

I’m not a fan of rap. But I’ll give this guy props, he knows his shizzle. Fo rizzle.
Alright, enough of my being “street”, here’s the Design Coding rap.

Thanks to iJustine for the heads up.

So. I’ve decided to give up the use of computers for life.

There will be no more Internet, no more Twitter, no more Facebook, Blogger, Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, Webcomics, Lifehacker,  IM, Firefox, so on and so forth.

I am eliminating computers from my life.

One more thing I forgot to mention:

If you use SMS (texting) on your cell phone, you can update Twitter from your phone. This is especially handy for those times when you see or overheard something that you want to let people know about, but aren’t near a computer.

Just go to Settings > Phone & IM and follow the instructions.

Just be sure your SMS plan is adequate. It’s nuts how addicting Twitter can be!

Here’s an email I sent to my brother, who just got a Twitter account, and I thought I’d share it cause it has some good info.

Hey, so you’ve been Twitter-ificated.

Couple pointers for you:

1. Personalize it. Add a profile picture, a background image (Something cool but unobtrusive) , and fill in the short “About Me” blurb. Twitter is all about extending your presence to the web, and personalizing your Twitter page will tell people that see it that you’re an actual interesting person and not just some faceless robot.

2. Check spelling. It’s paradoxical: for a forum where space is so limited, some space-saving shortcuts are not received well. For example, it’s generally a bad idea to use l33t speek on Twitter. I say generally, because if the situation allows it and you can do it with tact, that’s one thing, but most of the time, use reasonably correct spelling. (Grammar is just slightly less important, I’ve noticed, but people should still be able to read and understand what you’re saying.)

3. It’s been said in many places on the Internet, but never use Twitter as an IM client. It’s rude to broadcast your private conversations and keep the however-many other people who are following you out of the loop.

4. Find some people to follow. Twitter is all about interaction with people. One of the cool things is that it will import your Gmail contacts and look for people who are already there. It’s under find and follow. (Of course, that’s assuming you’ve added people as Gmail contacts.)

5. Some technical tricks in Twitter:

    a. @ - If you put an @ in front of a Twitter username, it references that name. For example, if     you put @leemckusick in you post, it creates a link to my page. If you put it at the beginning, that’s a reply.

    b. Favorites – Find a Tweet you love? Favorite it by clicking the star next to it.

6. Have fun! Twitter is meant to be fun and to facilitate social interaction. Enjoy yourself.

There’s much more advice that could be given about Twitter, and you can find it all over. This should be good to get started. Happy Tweeting!

The next incarnation of Internet Explorer is here, available in beta form for public download.

While I haven’t gotten a chance to mess around with it much, I did install it and set it up initially. One thing that intrigued me was the ability to import settings from other browsers, namely Firefox. It even detected the extensions, and had a little button to find similar ones for IE. Which brought this reaction:

“IE8 has extensions?! Niiice. (Even if they are behind the curve.)”

The main bad thing I did notice is that conditional comments are now going to be a bit screwy. Because of IE8’s new standards-compliant status, a lot of the “IE fixes” are no longer necessary. So if a conditional comment targets IE in general, then you have some “fixes” applied that shouldn’t be now that IE8 works like it should. For example, the layout on my current homepage for IE, Netflix, is somewhat messed up.

More on this and other IE8 issues to come, when I play and poke around with it some more.

It’s been an interesting day.

Woke up, and decided to head home today rather than tomorrow. So I packed up all my junk, and went to move my car, and I couldn’t get out of the parking lot. Of course, my roommates were all out, so after a number of failed attempts at getting traction, a guy (was wearing an orange vest, so I’m assuming either FMS or some form of security), and a Public Safety officer (remember that part, it’ll be relevant later) helped push me out of the snow. I then proceeded to load up my car for the drive.

So I drove up to C lot to grab some snacks for the drive, and to spend the last of my debit. I’d like to add here that for anybody who still has debit at the end of the quarter: you can use it to get $5 gift certificates at Ben & Jerry’s. I got 10. =)

Regardless of that tidbit, I came out of C lot with Doritos in hand, all set to go, and then found myself stuck in the parking lot. I went up to the Public Safety office, only to be told that Public Safety does not push cars, and that I’d have to talk to FMS. Basically, that even though my car is right outside of the Public Safety office, that I was shit out of luck.

Thank you, Public Safety. My respect for you has now become nil. (Except for Officer Miltsch. You’re still cool.)

So anyway, I called AAA, and their Rochester number is out of service. Another dead end. Good to know that they’re there if I ever do need them in a genuine emergency. Finally, I got in contact with FMS, who came right out, looked at it, mentioned something about my parking brake, and I felt like an idiot. But they solved the problem, and were totally cool about it.

FMS  >  Public Safety.

Anyway, ride home was uneventful which was good; I got caught up on podcasts. Mr. Manners and Grammar Girl, you make excellent travel companions.

So now I am home. People (and dogs) are happy to see me, and all is well.

Oh, and I got some of my grades back tonight, including the one course that I was worried about, Computer Crime. And I got an A. Like Statistics last quarter, I’m not sure hwo I pulled it off, but I managed it. So assuming I get an A in Web Design (which I doubt will not happen):

I have another 4.0.

It’s gonna be a good vacation. =)

I love this song. =)

Code Monkey - Jonathan Coulton

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
With boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very dilligent
But his output stink
His code not “functional” or “elegant”
What do Code Monkey think?
Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you

Code Monkey hang around at front desk
Tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
Bring you cup, bring you ice
You say no thank you for the soda cause
Soda make you fat
Anyway you busy with the telephone
No time for chat
Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle he sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you a lot

Code Monkey have every reason
To get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
See your soft pretty face
Much rather wake up, eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job “fulfilling in creative way”
Such a load of crap
Code Monkey think someday he have everything even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you