Category: computer

just in case you aren’t a part of flickr and haven’t heard form their blog i want to let you know that yahoo has started a limited beta run of their my web 2.0 social networking search engine. you can read the my web 2.0 blog to find out about it but basically it kind of like del.icio.us, only yahoo-style. if you want to be a part of the BETA test jump on it quick because it is a limited BETA.

as many of you know i’ve kind of gotten into this photography thing. i’m not saying i’m any good at it (there are several people who read this blog that are significantly better than i am – alan and brad just to name two). all i’m saying is that i really enjoy taking pictures. the more i take photos the more i want to take more of them.

according to pam i have proven that the “picture taking” is not just a phase and therefore she agrees with me moving up within the world of cameras. so i want to move up to a digital slr camera. unfortunately there are two problems with this situation: first, digital slr cameras cost a bundle, and second, i’m cheap. so right now all i am doing is researching and dreaming. i’ve been looking around to figure out which camera i should never actually spend the money to buy. everything seems to be pointing toward the nikon d70. it’s a really nice camera to never actually buy.

so here’s my plan for overcoming my cheapness and raising the money to buy the nikon d70. i need one of my faithful readers to volunteer to work and give me the money he/she gets paid. i know for one of you this will be a difficult thing … but that is a sacrifice that i am willing to make. remember it’s for a worthy cause. all i need now is for one of you to volunteer.

the polaroid-o-nizer is cool. it takes any digital picture that you have and converts it into a polaroid-looking image. as you know everyone wants to take their high-tech digital photo and make it look like a very low-tech polaroid image. there are other ways of doing this but the polaroid-o-nizer is a web based program for doing it and it’s free (yippee).

from the above description of the polaroid-o-nizer you should be able to figure out what is important about it … it is yet another thing on the internet that previously i didn’t know or even care about but i am now no longer able to live with out. that’s the beauty of the web – it makes stupid things a necessary part of life.

how cool is this? i just posted this picture automatically from flickr. i’m able to do this on my blogger site (a ministry blog that discusses the details of what we do within the youth ministry) but until now i haven’t been able to do it on this blog. yet, another cool advantage of the new bblog code. again, how cool is that.

btw, the picture is the photo on my flickr site that has been “favorited” the most (in other words, it’s the top picture from all my photos that has been marked the most as one they want to remember).

well i still haven’t figured out how to import my previous 397 posts into the new database for the new blog but i have at least figured out how to access the old database and manually transfer each separate post from the previous blog. this means that if i transfer 4 old posts a day then in 100 days i would have transfered all my previous posts. of course, that leaves out all the old comments and insightful statements that some of you made. there has to be an easier way to do this.

yes i know everything looks different. there is a reason for it looking different. the reason for it looking different is that i have upgraded to a newer version of bblog and as of right now i can’t figure out how to import my old entries. for those of you are mysql literate here’s the issue (for everyone else just skip to the next paragraph) – from what i was able to figure out i had to start a new mysql database in order to use the new bblog code. the old code used an 11 table database and the new code uses a 10 code dbase. so i still have the old database with the old entries in it but i don’t know how to import them into the new table. if any of you know enough code to figure out a way for me to import my old entries i would greatly appreciate it.

to everyone else, i decided to change to newer blog code because my old software doesn’t allow me to control my comments (it won’t send me an email when i receive a comment or hold a comment until i say its okay). based on a few experiences i figured it was best to move to some new code that has some improvements. the sum of this is that the blog will look different from awhile and hopefully become better (the style of it not the content – there’s no hope for the content).

anyway here are some of the advantages of the new bblog code:

• email notification of new comments
• rss 2.0 and atom site feeds
• the ability to disable new comments on a post after certain amount of elapsed time (i.e 1 week, 2 weeks, 2 months, etc).
• the ability to edit the time stamp on a post.
• the ability to actually edit comments rather than just deleting them, as was done in the previous version.
• the ability to place html within a comment.

there are other benefits to the new code but these were the main incentives for me.

i know that i have talked about this before but it seems that a bunch of you don’t understand how amazing del.icio.us is. so if you still haven’t figured out what is so cool about del.icio.us and are wondering \”what’s the big deal\” about it you might want to look at the following links. they describe what the big deal is about \”tagging\”:

• here’s a blog entry by vc
• here’s a screencast (a video of some one using del.icio.us and documentary on it) by john udell

if you ever do any research at all (i.e. school, business, etc.) you need to be using del.icio.us.

SIDE NOTE – i just accidentlally kicked the computer and bent the toenail on my pink toe backwards. it is amazing how much pain such a little thing can produce.

i know that i have talked about this before but it seems that a bunch of you don’t understand how amazing del.icio.us is. so if you still haven’t figured out what is so cool about del.icio.us and are wondering “what’s the big deal” about it you might want to look at the following links. they describe what the big deal is about “tagging“:

• here’s a blog entry by vc
• here’s a screencast (a video of some one using del.icio.us and documentary on it) by john udell

if you ever do any research at all (i.e. school, business, etc.) you need to be using del.icio.us.

SIDE NOTE – i just accidentlally kicked the computer and bent the toenail on my pink toe backwards. it is amazing how much pain such a little thing can produce.