I’m having a bit of fun today coming up with a playlist of “Halloween” tunes. The caveat: tunes you won’t find on your standard set list (i.e.: no Monster Mash or Thriller…nothing against them, but I grow weary of the over-played). So, here’s what I’ve crafted on Spotify for your listening pleasure. Let me know if there’s anything I should consider adding.
Month: October 2013
WordPress vs. Blogger, Porting Between Platforms and Other Fun Thoughts
I’ve been exploring WordPress over the last few months (see my blog NotJustSeattle.com). I really, really like the platform and have found so many benefits over Blogger. Plus, watching the demise of Google Reader a few months back makes me wonder about the long-term status of this. With Google+ garnering the lion’s share of Google attention and public focus, I wonder how long they’ll continue to support the platform. Blogger seems like a neglected stepchild.
With all this, I commenced planning out my migration. It’s not appearing as clean as I’d hoped, but the research is pretty early on. It seems my URL might be the biggest challenge. Plus, I need to decide if I will just move this to a site hosted by WordPress.com, or pony up for something hosted by BlueHost or GoDaddy (or….).
So, taking a thoughtful and well planned approach on this. It’ll be interesting to see where it leads.
Any ideas, hints or tips? Just leave me a comment. I’d be quite happy for advice.
The Difference Between Organized and Micromanaging Life
I work hard to make sure all my tasks have been captured, either in my calendar or my to-do list. Everything. Now, I’ve had several folks give me a hard time about that, basically accusing me of a lack of creativity, or paranoia. They seem to view this as a sign of being rigid, inflexible and unable to adjust. All those give me a good chuckle. No, the reason I capture everything that needs to get done (in an electronic tool…this is important): it makes me agile. I KNOW everything that needs to be done, thus, it’s easy to re-prioritize and address whatever comes up, whether another opportunity, or the need to respond some crisis or another.
It’s my way of both honoring my commitments and yet maintaining an ability to respond. Nothing craps on a sense of accomplishment like missing a key deadline in the midst of “responding”.
Having my life solidly organized, and in an easy to access tool helps me to live in the moment. I’m not trying to retain all those tasks, their deadlines and who I’m doing them for. And that’s freeing. Amen!
A Sci-Fi Geek Confession
One key weakness of mine of late has been time. Time for such things as film watching. Though I watched such gems as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I must admit to a key geek failure. One that might strain my geek-cred to a near breaking level. So, here goes: I hadn’t watched the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot until yesterday. Yep; took me 4 years. FOUR! Sigh…I hang my head in geek shame.
That said, I actually like the film. [Spoiler Alert: (Ok, come on, if you haven’t seen it by now, you really shouldn’t be put off by plot revelations)] I know that will annoy some, and delight others. I liked the way the characters were recrafted. The time-continuum disruption theme was pretty cool. I wondered how they would reconcile the story-line when they killed Spock’s mother. Clever. I particularly like the edgier, closer to human Spock.
I admit that the lens-flare business was a bit distracting at times. However, it’s hard to extract Heisenberg from this (I was familiar with this before seeing the film. I’m sure awareness impacted my attention.) Didn’t negatively impact the film for me, just provided a bit of distraction.
What really caught me, though, was the Leonard Nimoy role. I didn’t know. DIDN’T KNOW!!!! Nope, no idea he was in the film. Yes, that would’ve made me see it sooner. And I’m sure I just missed some obvious marketing message somewhere. But I’m quite disconnected from the mainstream media stream at this point.
I shan’t wait so long to watch “Into Darkness”.
Was iOS 7 Created with Word?
I knew that Word had some solid image editing tools, but no idea they were of this caliber.
Twitter Follower Culls and Other Delights
I keep hitting Twitter’s 2k follower limit. Perhaps I need to garner a massive number of followers and achieve uber-Twitter status. At this point, though, I need to sort through my lists and drop a few. Some choices will be easy. No tweets in an extended period of time? Gone! A topic I lost my interest in? Likewise. Just a few of my criteria.
So, I hope nobody takes being unfollowed personally. I find myself trapped by my technology’s limits, just like most folks.
The Untapped Potential Of The Tablet
Last night I read, as I often do, a Kindle book on my Nexus (The Manga Gen, if you care). The app magnified the particular frame I to be read. “Clever”, I thought to myself. Yet, as I also do often, I wondered “what else can we do with these?” How can the devices transform the reading experience? Some ideas: animation, links within the document, perhaps an audio track? All kinds of quick, off the cuff possibilities. What would be wrought with a focused, detailed analysis? I know there are myriad opportunities, and think it would be grand to be part of that innovation. Who knows…
Webrings and the History of the Web
My random web thought of the day: remembering the webring. For it’s time, a very powerful tool for finding related content. I spent many an hour perusing sites under a variety of topics: fantasy literature, science, science fiction, politics….the possibilities were extensive. Seems they still exist, but connecting to them a lot less critical. Seems few people drift through webrings now. Rather, they move through Google search results. I wonder, though, if webrings provide any SEO benefit? That would be my expectation, at least.
So, the point? Tastes change, behaviors follow, culture modulates and we both find ourselves reacting, as well as leading.
Rockets and Other Goodies
Just saw this on iO9. Squeee!!!!
