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Twitter Tips

Thursday, March 13th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments

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!

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

Thursday, March 6th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

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.

On The Road Again

Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

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. =)

Code Monkey

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

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

Sweet Spaceship to the Blogosphere

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Ok, so I stand corrected.

Firefox extensions will work with Flock. AdBlock, Greasemonkey, FoxyTunes, HTML Validator; all can be loaded into Flock. Toolbars are a little weird though, so you might want to not get them, or at least hide them unless you need them.

And it seems the blogging function works, even better than Contribute, actually, since it puts tags in the area with the author and date, and not in the post itself. I’m excited; this is gonna make blogging a lot more accessible and convenient. And I just noticed the spell checker is in here too. Excitedness!

Flock.com

Flock Test #001

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Jonathon Coulton - Shop Vac

Testing out the Flock Blog Editor in conjuction with the Web Clipboard to see how well it all works. Enjoy the song. =)

Freeeeeeeeedooooooom!

Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I feel very weird right now.

After the past seven weeks of working my ass off (oddly enough it’s still there, but that’s another post), I’m finally done with Winter quarter. I have a presentation on Wednesday, but that should go fine, I’m not worried at all. And I will say this:

GOOD RIDDANCE!

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, there were some parts that weren’t bad. Working on the final web design project was cool, and having something to show for it was sweet. (http://vega.it.rit.edu/~409team3 is the URL for our project.)

But the dreariness of winter, combined with the stressfulness of the thousand nations of the Persian Empire many different projects due within a relatively short window just made for a really crappy quarter. I’m definitely looking forward to break, and being able to focus on relaxing, maybe do some work on my personal web site, maybe even redesign this thing and get it off a standard template. Yes, shocking, I know, but it must be done.

Plus I’m glad my car is fixed after the driver’s window got smashed and my GPS unit got stolen. Apparently, I’m not the only one either: 3 other people in Perkins, UC and Colony had the same thing happen, all in the same night, and another guy in Perkins had his GPS stolen last Wednesday. What is this campus coming to? I will say though, that Public Safety was really nice about the whole situation. I don’t know how useful it was, but my thanks go to Officer Drew Miltsch for being a good man and helping me out. Kudos.

 

So anyway, the future of this blog. I recently switched from Firefox (Now before anyone reading this has a heart attack, let me explain…) to the new browser Flock. Flock is based off of Firefox, but adds a lot of great functionality. There’s an RSS feed reader built-in, a Photo-Uploader for Flickr, Facebook, etc., but the best part are it’s sidebars. Flock integrates with 18 (for now) social media sites, like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Youtube, and provides an interface with them in the People sidebar. Get a Facebook message? It notifies you in the Facebook tab on the sidebar. Friend updates their Twitter? It’ll update in the sidebar. The handy thing is the All tab, which combines all the updates into a single column of socialness.

Plus, the Media bar is awesome, and lets you view photos in an Apple Cover Flow sort of way while browsing.

It’s awesome, you should try it. Flock.com

The only thing I don’t like is that Firefox extensions aren’t compatible with Flock, at least as far as I can tell, so if you’re extension heavy, Flock may not be for you. I’m not sure though, I’d have to look into it more.

So yeah, it also has a blog posting feature, so I’ll be testing that out to see how well it works, and if I like it and it works well, then you can expect a lot more posts, probably highlighting things I find out on the interwebs.

Anyway, I’m going to go finish my book and return it to the library.

 

Peace out,

Lee

Alas, HD-DVD, We Knew Ye Well

Saturday, February 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

It seems the format wars have been won.

Toshiba has announced that they will cease production of HD-DVD devices. After Wal-Mart said Friday that they would be going Blu-ray exclusive, among the other HD-DVD setback recently, i.e. Warner Bros., it seemed inevitable.

I wonder how long it’ll take for the XBox 360 to get a Blu-Ray drive?

 

For those of you who want HD content on for a PC, or use a PC as a media machine, here’s a combo HD-DVD/Bluu-ray drive for $229 from Newegg: LG GGC-H20L.

Here’s TekZillka’s review:

The LG GGC-H20L is a combo format Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive for your PC. It lists for $299 online. While the drive does not support burning of either HD disc format it will support the following (taken from the NewEgg website)

LG Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 5X DVD-RAM DVD-ROM: 16X Blu-ray DVD-ROM: 6X HD DVD-ROM: 3X DVD-ROM 40X CD-R 24X CD-RW 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD

Basically everything you’re standard dual-layer DVD burner will. The primary reason to own one of course the ability to play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. However, you’ll still the software component which in Pat’s case was provided by CyberLink. The one that ships with the drive is a limited version so you digital audio output options are a bit sparse. You’ll need to be running XP w/ SP2 or Vista installed on a machine with at least a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 X2 3800+ , of course the more the better. Unfortunately there is no OS X Blu-Ray/HD-DVD that we know of. Other issues include HDCP support. You’ll need to have a video card that supports HDCP if you’re running non analog VGA. Although Pat’s 8300 card, non HDCP ready, still managed to play our the video. Finally some movies won’t play correctly do to the lack of support for Blu-Ray profile 1.1 support by CyberLink for the playback software. When this is released this problem should be rectified, we hope.

Hey, Quick Question

Sunday, February 10th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

For you guys over at the College Blog Network:

Is there a way to update the screenshot of the blog on the info page? I mean, I don’t mind what’s up there now, but I’ve noticed that it hasn’t changed since I signed up, and while there hasn’t been any major changes so far, that’ll probably change sometime in the near future, and it’d be nice if it could reflect that.

Just wondering if that functionality’s built in somehow.

 

P.S. You guys have a great site, nice work. =)

Curse You, Network Television

Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Heroes.

CSI.

Dexter.

and now LOST.

Why is it that there are so many good shows out there that just seem to suck you in and devour your soul (not to mention your free time)?

It’s a good thing Netflix doesn’t carry Lost in their Watch Instantly lineup. Yet. Cause that’ll be a sad day when that changes…Heck, my queue is already backed up beyond belief. (Of course, half of it I’m probably not going to watch, but hey, who cares?)

…

Wow, I’m writing this while watching TV, which was a big mistake. After Lost was Eli Stone, a new series about a lawyer who has a brain aneurysm and starts seeing visions like a modern-day prophet (which help him help people). Just what I need, another hour-a-week occupied…

 

What are your favorite TV time-sinks?

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