Gnorb.NET » Web Tools

Blogging Software (Mostly) for the Mac

Gnorb — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:30:00 +0000

As someone who runs multiple blogs, one of the most annoying aspects of my work is having to log into various sites when writing. That means I have to keep track of multiple lists of published and unpublished posts and be online if I want to get something ready for publication. Sure, I could use a text editing application and just write the stuff there, then transfer it over, but then I’m dealing with a bunch of little files, editing issues (particularly regarding links and images), formatting issues… It’s a mess. Being a visual person, this is not only annoying, but completely detrimental to productivity.

With that in mind, I figured it was time to find out about blogging software. I did some research, grabbed a bunch of packages I found and reviewed them. During the tests, here’s what I was looking for:

Ease of use/Design
Cost
The ability to write while off-line (then again, this one’s a given)
The ability to upload pictures
If my blog’s backend can do it, this should be able to as well.
The ability to edit uploaded posts.
Code produced must be clean enough to be easily readable/editable.

While this comparison review won’t focus strictly on these criteria (because most of them satisfy it to some extent), they’ll serve the primary determinant factor in what I end up using. Of course, every one of the software packages I tried had its own distinctive features outside of this, and while I’m not necessarily looking for these extras, I’ll be looking at them for the sake of the review.

This review includes the following applications:

MarsEdit
Ecto
MacJournal (and vicariously, WinJournal)
ScribeFire for Firefox
Flock

Of course, if you just want to go ahead and skip to the conclusion, by all means do so.

First up…MarsEdit

Rebooting My RSS Reader

Gnorb — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:36:37 +0000

I’m starting to feel “not-so-fresh,” you know? Starting to feel the bloat, starting to feel the… well, you know. It’s that time of the month. Or year. Whatever. Time for me to update my RSS reader, eliminate some of the feeds gathering unread posts like dust on my monitor and add in some new, fresh bits. Mostly eliminating old feeds, since I have something like… well, hell, I’ve lost count. But there are a lot, some of which no longer interest me (I’ve moved on), and others which simply haven’t updated in forever and a half.

It should be noted that, to me, not updating for a while is fine. In fact,the world would be a better place if people only spoke when they actually had something to say. But do your readers a favor and tell us when you’re planning to go on hiatus, alright? Even when you’re a few weeks into it, just put up a short post saying “Hey, I’m on vacation. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’ll be back,” or something along those lines. When your last post looks like everything else, it’s hard to tell whether you’re vacationing, have given up blogging, or are dead. If you haven’t updated in six months and not told your readers why, we’ll presume the worst: that you died a horrible, painful, lonely and ultimately meaningless death. I mean, why else would anyone stop blogging? Seriously.

Anyway, what follows is a list of my old feeds. (Why my old feeds, you ask? Because I still haven’t finished putting up my new ones, so this gives you more to look at.)

(By the way, did you know the CIA doesn’t publish an RSS feed? Neither does the NSA. How weird is that?!)

Sidenote: You know, going through his list and visiting these sites, I get to see just how much work people put toward their site’s look. Don’t get me wrong, I do the same. But I see some of their sites now (LifeHack, for example), and think to myself, “My site must look like it was designed by retarded monkeys. Football-loving, retarded monkeys.”

It should be noted that this was from my Netvibes account. My Bloglines account was considerably larger. Frankly, It was too large to post here, but it included a lot more variety. Even with the Netvibes, there were others, but I deleted them before I got the idea to publish this post. Oops. Anyway, out of these, I’ll keep some, I’ll delete some, and I’ll probably add a bunch more, since I’m using Google Reader now, and it has a couple of very interesting features which allow me do more easily do the one-site only thing. (See, I have this dream of never having to surf to more than one page, but being able to get all my news, info, and entertainment there.)

Anyway, if you want to know/guess at which sites I’ll keep, here are my basic rules. You’re in my reader if:

we’re friends in meatspace
we’ve chatted over email and are friends in cyberspace
you’ve commented on my site in the past 6 months
you’re a 9Rules member with something remotely interesting to me
I like your site enough to keep going back.

Actually, come to think of it, I think I’ll end up keeping a large majority of my sites. Damn my pack rat instincts!

And for the record, yes, I tend to be a lurker. While I do comment in some sites regularly, normally I just sort of sit back and enjoy what you people write. This is mostly because if I don’t have anything more to say than “wow, this was a [good/bad] post”, I won’t. Of course, if I see a picture on your site about someone driving around in a Louis Vuitton-branded SUV, I’ll likely comment once I can stop telling myself “WTH?!”

So that’s it. I’ll do a post on my thoughts regarding Google Reader later. It’ll probably include a link to my OPML file, though I’d be surprised if it gets a download. (Of course, internet habits are highly individual, so while dumping some stranger’s OPML file in my reader may not be what I’d do, what you do is your own thing.) And, of course, if you have any RSS reader Mac Apps you’d recommend — I love the idea of, you know, being able to read my feeds sans an internet connection — I’m more than happy to take a look at them.

Introducing Microfiction

Gnorb — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:36:57 +0000

I haven’t talked about this here because, frankly, I didn’t know how far it would go. In fact, I’m still not sure how far it will, although it seems to be taking me in a rather desirable direction.

A few weeks ago I finally started using Twitter, a Web 2.0 application which allows users to send out messages to which no one can really reply. Think of them as status reports you put out for your friends. The thing is, these little messages must be under 140 characters. Not exactly a lot of room.

After the excitement over Pownce died down, a large number of ex-Twitter users became ex-Pownce users, and returned to their Twitter roots. I decided to follow the pack and open up a Twitter account, just so I could keep in touch with people. (I didn’t drop Pownce, mind you, since I still use it on this site. Notice the short blurbs on the sidebar? Yep, that’s all on Pownce.)

Well, as it turns out, Twitter doesn’t exactly have the features I like, mostly features which Pownce has, like comments to posts. What it did have, however, was opportunity. See, with a 140 limit, there wasn’t much I could do, and as I mentioned there, I wasn’t exactly crazy about holding a terse, one-way conversation with the ether to which I would deny it the dignity of a response. I was, however, looking for a new writing challenge, and after a while, I figured I could use this to meet that need.

Welcome to the scene “Microfiction”, the art of creating complete, self contained stories within 140 characters.

I started a few days ago writing these microfiction stories, and frankly, I love them! I’ve also received a number of comments about them from various people, so I guess I’m onto something good here.

Anyway, since I hadn’t before mentioned by Twitter account, I figured I’d go ahead and post the Microfiction stories here. Enjoy:

Once, in a little house, there lived a boy and his dog. And like all stories that begin with a boy and a dog, you know this won’t end well. (To this one I got replies indicating that Lassie usually ended well. I guess they missed that last episode, where Timmy died in the well and Lassie got rabies and had to be put down.)
In the spring I met her. By fall I’d lost her. We laughed and loved and lived. But she matured. And I didn’t. Never even got the chance.
In space no one can hear you scream? Wrong. When the Vong attacked our ships, everyone heard the screams. Their screams. We won the battle.
He waited alone on the icy shelf for the rescue ship to appear. As it did, he shed a tear. His seven years of solitude would soon conclude.
The end of the world wasn’t at all what anyone expected. Indeed, those who even bothered to notice it found that it was akin to birth.
Last week: zombies. This week: More zombies, though that second wave took out the reanimation machine’s inventor. Now we can’t turn it off.
An antediluvian apocalypse attracted Artemis’s attention. Amazingly, as Artemis attested afterward, alien apocalypses always annihilate all. (Someone tried to reply to this using all A’s, but couldn’t, so I replied to him as such: “*acknowledging acclamation* Attempting an artful answer at an alliterative anomaly acts as an allegorical applause at an author.”
Cow tipping was always fun, ’til last time. The field empty, all we heard was “Y’all boys done tip’d your last cow,” then mooing laughs.
“So,you came to Key West, fought a ninja army, cloned Jimmy Buffet, and transferred his soul into the new body? You’re our contest winners!”
We called him the Gray Man. He wasn’t with the captors, but he wasn’t one of us. And he took everything away. Starting with our shackles.
He waited anxiously for the sunshine, a once-a-life event in the planet Rain. He napped, dreamed of seeing it, and awoke in time to miss it.

By the way, feel free to friend me on Twitter if you want to keep reading more of these. I try to update them at least once a day. And if you feel like doing some of your own, even better!

Sometimes I Hate Firefox

Gnorb — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:03:11 +0000

I know, I know… probably has to do more with the extensions than with the browser.

Odds and Ends: Life, Rebooted

Gnorb — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:41:16 +0000

The title doesn’t really mean anything. I haven’t rebooted my life, though I have rebooted my eating patterns. (It comforts me little to know that if I were a caveman I would have a genetic advantage over my skinnier counterparts.) “Life, Rebooted” sounds kind of cool, though, in a “oh hey, Windows crashed again!” sort of way. Anyway, here are few odds and ends:

First and foremost, my apologies for not writing any long, insightful articles recently. Right now I’m in the middle of a rather tight deadline at work and business has been picking up (as expected due to the season), so long insightful posts are few and far between. Also, my recent addiction to the TV show Firefily, which I received as a gift from The Wife, hasn’t helped any. (Damn you, Joss Whedon!) In any case, I should be back into the swing of things by next week, Firefly permitting.
If youâ€™re wondering about whether I’m going to write about my vacation, the answer is “barely”. I’ll be writing about the part of the trip where I spent time in Southern Pines with Third-Child and Peacecraft. Combine the beauty of North Carolina with great friends in the state and the temptation to move there is pretty high. Except for Charlotte, which I would only live in if I had to choose between it, Mogadishu, Bagdad, and Detroit.
For those of you sickos who, like me, incessantly look at the FeedBurner box, you may have noticed a sudden drop in the RSS counts. It seems that for some reason, the Rojo RSS reader hasn’t been showing up in the FeedBurner stats lately. Yes, there are that many readers using Rojo to read this blog. I love every single one of them. Even if they don’t show up in the stats.
Remember that little giveaway I was running? Yeah, well it’s over. Due to (a) nobody responding to it, (b) annoying requirements, and (c) nobody responding to it because I totally screwed up the advertising part of it, Junior wins the contest. Why? because he covered for me while I was gone with a few rather good articles. Also, because he actually commented on the article. Finally, because he’ll be writing some more and that’s all I can really afford to pay him. So, congratulations, Junior!
A few days ago I found out that Gnorb.NET has been listed in the Commentary category of the 9Rules Network. I’m not sure I totally agree with the decision, but I don’t disagree with it, which I guess is what matters. Heck, I’m the one that suggested it. Didn’t think Tyme would take me seriously, though. I thought this would be more of a Personal blog, you know? I even though it might classify as Humor, but after having read other 9Rules sites like Internet Zillionaire I realize I’m fairly… unfunny. Don’t tell that to The Wife, though. Keeping her laughing is one of my favorite things to do, so let’s keep the “Gnorb’s not funny” thing under our collective hats, ok? At any rate, the Personal category is way too full anyway, so Commentary’s just fine. Besides, I’m in good company.
While we’re on the topic of 9Rules, I’ve been discovering a ton of spectacular blogs recently. Not surprisingly, the Business, Anime, and Writing categories have caught the bulk of my attention. If you’re looking for good reading, for the love of all that is bloggy, check out 9Rules. Also, Firefox users may be interested in the 9Rules Search plug-in available, which adds the 9Rules search to the Firefox search options. I’ve been using it since I discovered it a couple days back and it keeps leading me to amazing sites I would have otherwise ignored.
Speaking of sites, check out Melissa’s Little Wool Gatherings. Honestly, I can’t believe I’m actually recommending a site like this. It’s a frigg’n CRAFTS site, for bloggy’s sake! Still, Melissa is a very talented writer who obviously loves what she does, and that comes out in her writing very nicely. Heck, she even delves into Gnorbesque topics like finances once in a while. Anyway, go check out her blog. For another blog along those lines — sorta — check out BlogLily, who’s also a member of 9Rules (admitted, like me, during round 5). Again, I’m pretty surprised I’m actually recommending these blogs, considering their content. Along with the pottery shopping I did recently (and you’ll hear more about that soon), it seems my world is opening up to the more pansy things of life.
By the way, Melissa: talk more about finances, yoga, and granola recipes. Youâ€™re great at that. Also, next time 9Rules has a submissions round, enter your site. I think — and Iâ€™m talking pretty speculatively here — you stand a fair chance at making it, even if you do use Blogger. (Ever thought of upgrading to Wordpress? It’s much better, really.)

Alright, that about does it for the updates. Any questions or suggestions? Put ‘em in the comments section.

From $10 a Week to $800 a Week Using AdSense

Gnorb — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:55:20 +0000

I just caught this incredible story from Entrepreneur’s Journey: a guy down in Brisbane details how he grew his AdSense revenue from US$10 per week using a group of sites to over $120 per day. (Full story here. EJ’s take on it is in the first link.)

Considering the recent issues with getting my checks on time from Google, I’m glad at least someone is doing good with them. Almost makes me re-think my decision to move over to other forms of advertising, starting with other affiliate programs and text link ads. Almost.

Le Linkage #11

Gnorb — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:30:30 +0000

Ok, so the election has passed and I can now get back to regular blogging, right? Actually, the election’s been over for a while and I’ve just needed a break from real blogging (as if I’ve ever actually done any of that before). At any rate, it’s (about darn) time for another episode of Le Linkage! Today’s episode features all sorts of stuff, random bits I’ve been saving for the past few weeks. Like all Le Linkage episodes, I recommend you bookmark this then visit it whenever you’re bored or (hopefully) when you need something useful.

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Download Online Streaming Videos:As you can probably tell, I love watching videos on YouTube. Yes, I’ll admit, I tend to watch more bits of copyrighted material (like The Colbert Report and South Park) than I do stupid people tricks (with the exception of the Angry German Kid and the Numa Numa guy). Once in a while, however, I run into videos I’d like to keep, videos I can’t really purchase, like Chihiro Onitsuka’s Little Beat Rifle music video. KeepVid exists for times like that, by allowing users to download the FLV (Flash Video) file and play it like any other video. You’ll need to download an FLV player to view the videos, but you can find those just about anywhere (including KeepVid.com) for Windows, Mac, or Linux. For you Firefox users, however, there are also extensions that will allow you to download all sorts of media content.

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Comic Book Loving Political Junkies Rejoice! The Slate Online has published a comic book version of the entire 9/11 Report. Unlike just about every other comic out there, this one features real world situations, with very real heroes and villains. And unlike the ABC docudrama on the matter, this one actually sticks to the facts. Very well worth reading, especially if you want to read the 9/11 Report, but don’t care to slush through a thousand pages of government documents. More government documents should come in the form of comic books. Think about it, how much easier would doing taxes be if your forms featured Batman, simplifying the efforts The Confuser and TheObfuscator while keeping Mr. FreezeYourAssets at bay?

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Super Hero Thanksgiving: Speaking of comics, ever wonder what your favorite super heroes were thankful for during Thanksgiving? Probably not. Someone out there did, however. If you need a cheap laugh, this will probably do.

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Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple: In this series of audio and video lectures, theoretical physicist Hans Bethe explains quantum theory and makes it simple enough for just about anyone to understand. These lectures were originally intended for the residents of his neighbors at the Kendal of Ithaca retirement community, but now you too can learn about the physics of the very small, even if you don’t have a full grasp of higher level mathematics.

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China and Copyright law: Ever wonder why the Chinese seem to take such a flippant attitude towards copyrights? Here’s a hint: a large part of it is cultural. AsiaBizBlog is a great resource for anyone planning to do business in China, and this particular podcast covers the issue of copyright in a way we in the west can easily understand. (Not that it’s a hard issue, but rather because it is very nuanced.)

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5000 Years of Middle Eastern History in 90 Seconds: No wonder these people are always fighting! This flash video goes through 5000 years of history, from the Sumerians to the current day political situation in the middle east. Very interesting video.

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Language Roots of Indo-European Languages: Most of us know that English came from a combination of Germanic and French dialects, and that Romantic languages all came from Latin, but did you know that Latin was a subset of something called Latino-Faliscan, and that this language had the same roots as Celtic and Indo-Iranian? This language map shows all of that and more. Very interesting for those into language philosophy and linguistics.

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Imagine Earth without People: There’s a saying that goes something like this: Get rid of all ants and parasites in the world and in 50 years everything dies. Get rid of all humans in the world and in 50 years everything flourishes. The sad part is that, for the most part, that’s true. But what if suddenly, tomorrow, every human on Earth disappeared (as in “off the planet” not as in “dead”)? What would the planet look like? What would happen to the bridges and buildings? How long would things last? Very interesting reading for anyone who likes to think about alternate realities.

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Lots of Classic Games in FLASH! Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pacman, Snake, Frogger, Simon and other classic games, all in flash. Like the classics? Get ‘em here.

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PlanetQuest: Help Discover New Planets: How thrilling would it be to discover a new planet? More than 100 planets having been discovered outside our Solar system. Why not get in on the fun? Using distributed computing — like what the SETI@Home project uses — PlanetQuest hopes to help discover even more planets, some of which may even hold life and be habitable for humans. The project isn’t done, so no software can be downloaded yet. Still, how cool would it be to someday have your descendants travel to a planet you helped discover?

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Google Reader: These days, it seems as if you can’t go more than ten steps without reading about what Google is doing. The problem is that, other than search, most of their efforts have met with little fanfare. That may not be the case for long, if Google Reader is any indication. If you’re looking for an RSS reader, especially if you’re looking to replace your current account, check out Google’s newest tool. Robert Scoble did, and it looks like he liked it. After seeing it in action for myself, I may jump the Bloglines ship and do the same. (I’d like to thank Roy for sending this tip.)

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Fark Search Engine: While Fark started out being nothing more than a site featuring a picture of a squirrel with giant testicles, it has quickly become one of the Internet’s most interesting “news” sites. Unfortunately, using their search functionality sucks. That’s why someone has come up with the idea of creating a Fark-specific search engine. Now, you don’t have to search the archives or tackle the thoroughness of Google to find that funny headline you saw three or four months back.

Web Hosting Services From Fort Onion

Gnorb — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:49:43 +0000

This is a not-paid and not-even-requested-but-what-the-heck-I’ll-do-it-anyway advertisement about Web hosting:

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may remember Nate, the Administrator (He was the guy who admirably administered Gnorb.NET until about a couple of weeks ago, when an article showing up on LifeHack, Del.icio.us, and Digg baslically destroyed the “ghetto server” the site was running on and I decided to sign up with a BlueHost). Well, Nate’s gone all wacky and decided — a couple of weeks too late, in my humble opinion — to start up a full-fledged hosting franchise: Fort Onion.

Having mooched off of Nate from about 2004, I know full-well of his capabilities as an administrator, so I won’t hessitate for a second to recommend that anyone give him a shot. So, if you or someone you know needs website hosting services (including dedicated servers), needs email to fax services, wants to start a blog, wants to start a podcast, wants to buy a domain name, wants hosted email or other like
services, go ahead and check out FortOnion.com. You can also be secure in the knowledge that this isn’t a fly-by operation: even if Nate decides years from now to get out of the hosting business, you can be comfortable in the knowledge that all accounts will always be serviced with top-notch quality customer care.

Again, that’s FortOnion.com.

(Nate: If you don’t have a tag line yet, how about “Layers of services so good they’ll make you cry”?)

Attribution and Plagiarism

Gnorb — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:58:47 +0000

The following clip is from a post featured in the Weblog Tools Collection, dealing with the lack of attribution and problem of plaigiarism on the Web today. It’s something any even remotely successful site has to deal with at some point. As for me, I’ve only had to deal with it a couple of times, but most of the time the issues have been resolved without much confrontation.

I really like the word attribution and I find the lack of attribution disturbing. I bring this up because there are thousands of websites that absorb and regurgitate information published elsewhere for monetary gain without so much as a line stating where the original item was published. I used to have a major problem with them until I realized that there were just too many to deal with. There are lots of very good resources on how to deal with content theft. I applaud and support Lorelle and everyone conrcerned in their efforts.

By the way, when you read the article, also check out the comments, which just bring the point home (and are more than simple “right on, brother!” replies).

Fun With Web Content Management Software

Gnorb — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 19:26:00 +0000

Installing software can sometimes be fun, especially when it’s easy. In the short time after my move, I’ve started to play around with other software for possible later uses. You can check out what I’ve just now started to work with at the following locations

I haven’t done much with these, so what you see is pretty much what you’ll get after installing these.

From the back end, my favorites up to now are Xoops and Joomla. With Xoops I like the built-in banner-tracking features (which can be used for personal banners for featured articles or advertisers). With Joomla I like the robustness. That said, all of these packages look like they’re very well built and I’m looking forward to learning more about them, although it looks like I’ll really have to hunker down and learn me some PHP.

Anyway, check them out and if you’ve used any of these, I’d like to hear what you think.

Google Analytics

Gnorb — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:36:16 +0000

Ok, 2005 tapped me on the shoulder last night and told me to check out the Google Analytics page. Basically, if you own a site, Google Analytics will help you see where your traffic is coming from, where it’s leaving from, and will generally help you optimize your site for your audience. From everything I see, my audience is mostly made up of horny males who find me via Google by looking for the term “Elita Loresca”, which of course takes them to the Elita Loresca Pics and Info page I put up a while back. (Never did I guess that page would end up becoming so popular. Behold the power of sex, I guess.) That aside, it seems people enjoy the Bloody Penguin Baseball game an awful (and I do mean “awful”) lot. I guess violence sells, too.

Hmm… sex and violence… Interesting that while I work pretty hard not to include any of those things in most of my posts, in the end, those end up being the most popular. Maybe I should take a hint…?

Nah. Unless she did the weather every morning. “Today, it will rain… BLOOD!” *bites cameraman*. Then it’d be different. Somehow.

I plan to keep playing around with that tool (uhm… Google Analytics… not what you’re thinking… after seeing that picture…) to make the site better, but in the mean time you may have to “pardon my dust” to turn a phrase. If you see strange things happening with the RSS feeds and the site layout you’ll know what’s happening and why. I’ll keep off the whole “sex and violence” thing, though. Unless Square-Enix changes their formula for Final Fantasy, in which case… well, I’ll get off of that subject.

(By the way, for those of you not familiar with the image above, that’s the main character of the BloodRayne video game.)

Le Linkage #9

Gnorb — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:43:02 +0000

Alright, too much car talk, as was recently pointed out by a reader. Time for another edition of Le Linkage to move things in another direction! (Actually it was moving in another direction anyway, and there are another couple of car posts coming up. My sister’s car was just stolen, so I’m helping her find a car. Not that I’ll be discussing that, but I have a few more bits of info I think would be helpful for people looking to buy a used car. Now I’ll shut up and start this episode of Le Linkage.)

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Searching for Free Music with Google: Using this page, look for any artist or any song and with the help of a special a Google search query, this site may well just find it for you. Heck, I even found stuff by Sun Yan Zi, which is almost impossible to come by in this side of the world.

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Strangest grammatically correct English sentence: Really, if you’re into grammar and the weirdness of the English language then you’ll love this short article on the strangest grammatically correct sentence in English. After reading that, I thought of my own: “Dogs dogs dog dog dogs dogs dog,” which translates to “Dogs other dogs chase, chase dogs other dogs chase.” Can you come up with others?

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Drivers! Glorious Windows Drivers!: There’s nothing I hate more about software than having to find drivers. The problem is especially bad if you’re using Windows, since the OS is pretty much useless unless you have the drivers needed for it to work properly with your computer. (In Linux this isn’t much of a problem.) Anyway, if you’re stuck for drivers, this site may just have what you need.

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Hope, Despair and Memory: An essay by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel discusses why for him, hope without memory is like memory without hope. “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” This essay is especially powerful given recent world events.

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Ubuntu System on a Memory Drive: The coolest thing about CD-based Linux distributions is the fact that you can have your Linux distro just about anywhere. The bad part is that with those distros, you really can’t save anything so you’re pretty much relegated to single session computing. Sure, you can set up printers, have programs load up at lightning speed, and even download stuff off the Web. But if you’re the type to tote your OS around on a CD for use in different places, you’re also probably the type that likes to customize his environment, and that’s where the problem is: one reboot and it’s all over. Well now, if you use Ubuntu, you can save your system settings (and other items) on a memory drive! Just plug this baby in and you have YOUR computer with YOUR stuff back, with just a CD and a memory card. How cool is that?!

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Alan Watts MP3’s and Podcasts: If you enjoy eastern philosophy, but don’t have the time to read a bunch of texts, then the downloadable Alan Watts lessons are definitely for you. If you know who Watts is you’ll know the value of these recordings. If you’ve never heard of the guy, click on one of the links and find out a bit about him.

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Online Game: Proximity: This game’s pretty simple: Place your pieces in such a way as to make most of the board yours. What gets complicated is the strategy involved in order to make it happen. Very addicting, fun game.

How to Keep Your MySpace Page from Scrolling Horizontally

Gnorb — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:28:50 +0000

(I would have posted this only on my MySpace blog, but it seems MySpace doesn’t take kindly to Linux systems, even those running Firefox. If you’re here from there, my apologies for not making it easier on you. Trust me, I tried. I’ll be adding this to over there later.)

Don’t you just hate it when someone adds a pic or something on your coment’s section that makes your page so huge you have to scroll horizontally? I know I do. (Well, seeing it. I haven’t actually gotten images that big yet, but I see them all the time in people’s pages.)

To solve this, I deviced the following little bit of code. Just copy it (not including the demarcation lines) and paste it to the top or bottom of your “About Me” section. (Don’t worry, the code won’t be displayed on the page.)

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(You can go ahead and just do a copy/paste.) This resizes all images inserted using either the “embed” or “img” tags to 250 pixels in width. To make that larger or smaller, change the “250px” part of the code to whatever size you want (300px is pretty good). The images are also automatically centered. (I added that just because I think centered images look better.) If you don’t want your images centered, remove the following code from both: “display:block; margin-left: auto; margin-right:auto;”

I hope you find this useful. If you like it, drop me a line. If you don’t, feel free to ignore this message. Feel free to pass this info on to your firends, but if you could, tell ‘em where you got the code from.

The Gnorb.NET Browser: Like Wearing Internet-handling Gloves

Gnorb — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:00:42 +0000

Tell me this isn’t cool: having the ability to go to one site and from there view all the other websites you want to read. No, I’m not talking about an RSS reader, I’m talking about Bitty, the browser which allows you to browse the Internet from within a Web page. I know, it sounds like it came from the Department of Redundancy Department, but seriously, it’s pretty cool.

Bitty Browser (iframes required)

What you see in the browser is my Bloglines blogroll. Click around to see all the stories and read the feeds. If you want, type in a Web page address in the navigation bar to see that page via the tiny browser. It’s not as good as a full-blown browser, but it’s perfect for all those times you’re at a seriously great page you don’t ever want to leave (like now), but still want to browse the Web.

Think about it: now you can make Gnorb.NET your homepage and never have to leave it again! It’s like wearing Internet-handling gloves!

Now, where can I put this…? Any suggestions? By the way, feel free to Add the Gnorb.NET Bitty Browser to your site.

bbPress Warning Message

Gnorb — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:07:38 +0000

I’m currently in the process of installing bbPress into a test server (for possible later use on Gnorb.NET). How’s this for a “don’t say we didn’t tell you” warning message?

bbPress is alpha software. That means it will

1. eat all your data,
2. crush your dreams,
3. and stab you in the eye

all after

1. claiming ownership of your firstborn,
2. serving you your own computer… with a delicious sauce flambÃ©,
3. and urinating on your car door handle (just ’cause it can).

You’ve been warned.

Yikes!

Edit: The question is, why do I need a forum? The short of it is that I’m planning on starting a second site, one which cates to a specific community. A blog really won’t do when it comes to that, though it is part of the equation. I’ll get more into it later. Maybe.

By the way, I just noticed it’s past midnight. That means this post can be entered into the Subnixus Las Vegas giveaway!