December 2007 Archives

It is one of those blogs occasionally mentioned in a NYT article, you visit it, browse around and then click the X and it is off your radar.  However, there was one and now there are two blogs put out by authors that I have added to the TO READ folder in my overloaded Google Reader.
The first belongs to Neil Gaiman.  

His blog has had many changes from feeling like an illustrated novel to becoming a more personable blog, with side features to add to it wealth of information.  Mr. Gaiman is one of the contemporary authors who cannot have a book published for very long before it is in my hands and read too quickly.

Now another author whose work finds itself into my hands as quickly is Stephen Fry.  His blog leans more to the fun he is having using computers and the Internet, but still, there are links to the fruit is labor handily weaved into the page design. 

Though the content of Mr. Fry's blog leans toward the Geek, I have placed it in the TO READ file, instead of the KNOWN GEEKS, where Amber MacArthur, Leo Laporte and the like are linked. 

With so much information constantly coming into our lives from so many sources, the need to characterize, compartmentalize and generally cope is becoming more and more a necessity. 

As an example, there is one book of Mr. Gaiman's I have yet to read is Revenge: A Novel

I am waiting for the arrival of my gifted Kindle and intend it to be my first online order/download.

Hogmanay !!
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If you haven't seen her perform or at least heard Patti DeRosa sing, there is a piece missing in your life.

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In an earlier article on BBC News, a mysterious object over 27 meters long had washed up on the shores of Stinky bay on the west of Benbecula.

The good news is it has been identified.  The very good news for our fellow Scots is that it is a fermentation device used to make beer.  Though it hasn't been claimed by the Colorado brewing company, the BBC News reports it is very similar to the type they used.

When I first saw the article, I was convinced it was of some sort of military creature right out of Dr. Who or its anagram spin-off Torchwood, where alien articles mysteriously appear on the British Isles, mostly around Cardiff.  But the more mundane use for brewing beer; now that's something I never would've guessed. 

Well, ye inhabitants of the Western Isles, Hogmanay!
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Back in the 80's when I took home my first 8080 PC, the program was on one five inch floppy while the OS ran on the other 360K disk.  Then came the 80286>80386 and the hard drive.
Soon after the introduction of the hard drive a 1200bps modem was added. 

Shareware came on floppies collected at monthly PCUG meetings.  Geeks Only!!!

Next was the 486 and the 5600 baud modem.  It was believed for a moment that we had plateaued in information sharing.  What fools!

This bit of nostalgia was brought about by a review of programs evaluated over the past year.  We kept all of the installation files on our backup 250 Gig back-up drive.  That being full, we are now moving the 2005-2007 files to the second 500 Gig back-up drive.

With the 160 Gig drive on the laptop, the total storage connected to this little laptop come to 960 Gig, or .96 Terabyte.

960,000,000K vs. 360K-X2 in twenty or so years.  There was no way I could've imagined making that leap in so short a time.  What more do we get out of this memory?  A great deal if managed rightly.  Too much to handle, if we don't.

Maybe I'll go back into politics...
Nah!
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This link found Lifehacker.com lists way to live longer.  We found the part about dark chocolate to be of the most interest.

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We're back in the States just in time for another winter storm.  Here in New England we call this watershed.  The more snow that accumulates during the winter, the higher the water tables will be underground for the summer rush on water usage. Also, the surface water in our lakes and ponds, of which there are many, will rise, probably overflow.  In most cases this is a good thing.  In others, not so much, but we hope for the best.

This cartoon demonstrates what happens to communities who don't think their water policy through.
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In a few of our blog entries we have complained about being overwhelmed by Google Reader.  This is no longer so.

We have made few modifications in the manner in which it is read, while simultaneously adding a dozen or so RSS links to blogs and other sites.

Whereas before we were reading each blog separately they are now grouped by general interest.  We have BLOGS, NEWS, SOFTWARE, HARDWARE and TO READ.  Each of the selected links are placed into the right group. 

Next we changed the default view from Expanded View to List View.   For a while we tried reading it by group.  Then we advanced to reading list with All Items (#) chosen.

The last, and most necessary of the settings is Show # New Items.

After perusing the  list, do not forget to Mark All As Read.  If you forget to do that, then the rest of the effort was in vain. 

We have recently added to Firefox the Read It Later extension.  Using this tool removed the last bit of pressure.  

Now we select an item from the list, right click to link and choose, Read It Later from the list.  Then the link is added to a list activated by the new icon in the top toolbar. 

Next,  it's onto the new Kindle from Amazon.

Information Overload.  Who would have thought it possible?
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 Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

The Miami Dolphins defeated The New England Patriots in the scoring for the 2nd half of today's game. Unfortunately, The Patriots won the first Half by a lot more points. 28-7. This makes them 15-0.

Just thought you might like to know.
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For the past 12 years, two dear friends of ours from "back in the day" have come up to visit us from the city.  Along with them came their growing family.  In totum now there are seven of them.

It saddens me deeply that this year, due to separate reasons, none of them will be visiting. 

Adapting to this news, we have decided to visit Maine and PEI for the holiday.  I know the Caribbean is the other way, but I have always wanted to visit the island, and we understand they do the season "Right."

Happy everything to all of you.
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Fans of the canon will be glad to hear of the recent discovery of a giant rat in Indonesia, of which Sumatra is a part. 

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The Telegraph as an online article saying The Queen will soon be older than Victoria was when she died. This will make her the oldest ever monarch, king or queen.  She still has a way to go to get the longest reign record.  They say she will have to live to 2015 to accomplish that.  Considering how old her mother was when she died, I wouldn't take odds on The Queen not breaking that record as well.

Along in the piece it says 11 Prime Ministers have served under her.  The first being Sir Winston Churchill KG OM CH TD FRS PC (Can).  It also goes on to say, nice bit of trivia this, she is the first monarch to have a PM that was born during her reign.

This living history so far has been fascinating.  She wasn't yet Queen when I was born.

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Fidel Castro, according to BBC News, is hinting at retirement.  Wants to make room for the younger generation.  I remember watching supportive newsreels of the Cuban Revolution between movies in my childhood, over a half a century ago.  It would appear Mr. Castro has a slightly warped idea of what moving over and the younger generation mean.

On a lighter note, the Earl and Countess of Wessex have announced the birth of a new son, Viscount Severn, first name so far undecided.  The file photo in the piece displays the Earl in a top hat and the Countess wearing a bird thingy on her head.  That's straight out of the 1930's representation of royalty! 

Rah for that!
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Here in balmy New England, I sit around thirty miles from Foxborough Stadium. I know there is a brand name attached to it, but we, being New Englanders, will always call it by its real name.
This goes for the Gimmell house in which we live. The Gimmells haven't lived here since the 1950's but when we tell people here-abouts where we live, "Oh, the Gimmell house." is aways the response.

On a dry Sunday, with no game in the forecast, it would take me less than 20 minutes to drive up Rte. 1 past the Stadium. Today, if I left right now, I might make it there by breakfast tomorrow. It the last Instant Snowstorm of a few days ago, I left Worcester at 1 in the afternoon and saw my front door around dinner time. My knuckles are still white from that driving. I don't intend to make them whiter today.

Our greatest fear at the moment is ice on the cable and power wires. News reports have a large portion of Pennsylvania without power. It would also shut down the heat, but we have fireplaces for back up. Power failure would mean we would have to rely on out Blackberries for the score. Or, there is that thing called a radio... I think we have one in the basement. Where are those batteries?

As far as the weather, three hours before the game, the foot or so of snow on our balcony is now being nicely coated with sleet. We understand there may even be a touch of freezing rain to add to the layering effect. Then, as it gets dark, more snow.

What fun!!!
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It was a matter of only putting the host with out the subdirectory in which Movable Type resides. Each one of these editors have their own little idiosyncrasies. This is the newer version of w::bloggar. If you go to the site you will see there is still work being done on the program. I am so glad to see a program supported by a dedicated author. -30-

We were able to get Zoundry to configure the editor to work with the Open Source version of Movable Type with no problem. It wasn't working before because of the layered password mystery that is now solved.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about w::bloggar. There we encountered one error after another. It is sad, because w::bloggar was the first offline editor that we used.

Oh well. Now it's back to watching the rain glaze the snow dumped on us last night. It's a good thing, weather commuting wise, this is a Sunday. We're watching the Pats game from home. (Assuming the wires don't come down with the weight of the ice building up.)

This will be the last editor to be configured to work with Movable Grazing. Now that they are set up, this will become a regular blog in search of a theme. Evolution will now apply rather that configuration.

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There was an error message when I chose Movable Grazing in ScribeFire after the setup seemed to run smoothly.  Let's see if the error will prohibit publishing this entry. -30-

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The problem was looking for API Password.  It isn't called that in the user profile.  It is called  Web Services Password.  I followed all of the directions to embed the .xml file in the root directory, etc. etc. It was using the wrong password.

For every other system the password you use to sign-in is the same as the one you use to allow an editor, such as this Live Writer to gain access.  The people at Movable Type decided you needed an extra layer of protection by providing a different password for "Third Party Access."

I told you I wouldn't quit that easily.  Now let's see if I can get this work in Scribe Fire and w::bloggar...

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We've tried LiveWriter, Zoundry, w::bloggar, OpenOffice, Zoho and Scribfire.  None of them were able to connect to this blog.  I am getting error 500, 400, wrong login name, wrong password.  I believe it's something in the settings of the blog itself that is screwing the around.  I may take the blog entirely down and reinstall it on a different server.  I may, but not yet.  I don't like things not to work and will do my best to find out what is wrong with this.
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There is a ton of information out there describing how to get Live Writer to work with Movable type.  So far, non of it is working.  Try again tomorrow.                                   
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Now that Movable Type is open source, we have loaded it onto our GoDaddy server with the hope this becomes one of the active Famous Grazing blogs.  The base Famous Grazing blog is Belltower News.  Read the entries there that go back to 2004 to get an idea of what Famous Grazing is all about.

For now we have to setup and design this blog to make it our own.

If you are going to set up a MovableType blog on GoDaddy.com read today's entry at Belltowernews.com to find out why "localhost" doesn't cut it during the set up.
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Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!