CogBlogged from ‘May, 2006’

Cocomment is an interesting web technology that does some neat things but perhaps is not so wide it used to reach a next level of progress. It acts as a service of sorts, to tackle the age old (or 3 year old) problem of not knowing what happens to the “conversations” you leave as comments distributed on other blogs. It aims to register your commenting in a way that allows you to track it. On first iteration, it required you to click a JavaScript bookmark tool for every new comment you posted. ( forgot to do this 9 out of 10 times. Then I got clued into a Firefox Greasemonkey script that automated it. I worked well for a few weeks, then Cocomment changed and the script got more wonky. Then following a clue from Amy G, I found coComment has developed its own Firefox extension that sits in the [...]

By sheer acts of curious link following, I ended up today learning about Warnock’s Dilemma via Classy’s Kitchen: Warnock’s Dilemma is the situation you face when people don’t comment on your postings: The problem with no response is that there are five possible interpretations: 1. The post is correct, well-written information that needs no follow-up commentary. There’s nothing more to say except “Yeah, what he said.” 2. The post is complete and utter nonsense, and no one wants to waste the energy or bandwidth to even point this out. 3. No one read the post, for whatever reason. 4. No one understood the post, but won’t ask for clarification, for whatever reason. 5. No one cares about the post, for whatever reason. The origin of the dilemma is this post to a perl developers list, and Bryan Warnock provides further historical commentary in this later post to another perl list. [...]

Well, not exactly true. I made it up for the purposes of sensationalism. I have a fair idea what Technorati does at a conceptual level, and used it in the past for things like conferences where bloggers may actually use the same tag. Their data lets us know the blogosphere is expanding at a rate that will soon encompass the edge of the universe where the lingua franca is not English. I cannot say I use it on much of a regular basis, but shyly admit I have my own vanity feed as it is rather interesting when a blogger you never heard of is writing about to linking to you. For all the blogging effort, our egos need regular feeding, I admit it. Actually I like checking in on these remote connections, as it is a social network capability that did not exist BB (before blogging). But mostly, my [...]

I thought it was longer, but it was only a bit over a year ago I switched from my MovableTyle CogDogBlog over to its incarnation in WordPress. Having rolled out perhaps 5 or 6 other WP blogs I was thinking of blogging out my strategy for dealing with some of the coolest aspects of Wp, the flexibility of its templates. Like many people, I stayed for a whole with the familiar default Kubrick template, the blue banner with curved corners that you still find all over the web. There are many similar variations, toss a different color in the banner, or a custom graphic. I began my tinkering by slowly customizing the sidebar before doing my own overhaul in November 2005. There are likely a few different camps on how bloggers deal with the templates. Most folks likely just want to pluck something that looks nice in a preview off [...]

flickr foto Window Vignettesavailable on my flickr There is some sort of story told in these window reflections, I am just not sure what they are. I’m in San Francisco for 2 days of NMC meetings… if time allows, I am eager to get out on the streets with my camera. My memories roll back to my first visit here in the late 1980s as a graduate student for a GSA conference (no, not the organization that sells cookies– that is the Geological Society of America). I was so taken my the city here, I spent my first day just walking– every darn hill and sight. I walked Nob Hill, Coit Tower, Chinatown, Market St, out the Golden Gate… I walked until my leg hurt and I walked more. But that amount of free time is not happeninf this trip, so I am left to taking reflection shots out of [...]

While checking out some office supply items, the first bulleted one made me take a second look: Yeah, you could pay for the change but what actually arrives in the brown package left on your doorstep?

I am just scraping the surface with a first experience creating an enhanced podcast in GarageBand, but software designers take note– this is the way podcast editing should happen. Drag and drop your mp3 music into a sound track. drop or record your voide in a voice track, drop image files into the podcast track where you want them, synch to music or voice, and publish. It is sweet. The first one I did was for the opening of the NMC Second Life Campus. The music was provided by our SL performing guitarist, “Johnyy99 Gumshoe”, a song her performed into our LS space during the launch on April 20. I had some recorded audio from our speakers, recorded using WireTapPro (on my iBook) and the TeamSpeak audio server we used (quality was less than wonderful). The enhanced cast is at the bottom of the article or directly as a 6.4 [...]

It was bound to happen, the first Blue Screen Of Death on the Bootcamped XP side of my MacBookPro (wow, I might order the T-shirt). I was trying to install Skype– well it did install, but running it brought me BSOD. The first time, on reboot, XP did its repair job; the second time it did the repair again (more flying lines of white text on blue background), but Windows never came up- it was the Black Screen of Nothingness for about 5 minutes. From there was a familiar routine- yank the A/C and disconnect the battery. On reboot, Windows was able to “return to a previous working configuration”. The Apple forums suggest it is a conflict with XP expecting to use the MacBookPro built in iSight camera with IM clients that use video, and the iSight device is not (yet?) avaiable under Windows. Well, the two OS-es are not [...]

I’m doing occasional forays into Windows XP on my MacBookPro. A glaring omission, perhaps on my part, is figuring out how the heck to do those right mouse clicks needed to configure stuff. The control-click that works on the OS X side does not. I thought I might have to buy a 2 button mouse. I did not find an answer in the Apple Support area (actually I never looked), I went straight to the user dicussions where I nearly always get the answer. And I did find 2 solutions by searching “right mouse click” in the Boot Camp talks- both of them downloads that give you a key combo to do the right mouse dance step. Apple Mouse Utility is one, but it maps it to the ctrl key, which you sometimes need to do Windows stuff as it is. I opted for Input Remapper, which gives me the [...]

The Ritz Camera folks had no ability to let me now which month, year, or century the iRiver I ordered might arrive, so at least they were nice enough to cancel the order (I was a bit over barking as they would not charge my credit card until the item shipped). I opted for Miguel’s advice and ordered an iAudio U3 which looks promising on the user reviews for good quality in audio recording, and as a bigger feature, works with OS X, Windows, Linux, as it mounts as a drive, rather than calling on special software to move files. Even better, I ordered it from Amazon. Still better, it is shipping today and will arrive in 3-5 days. Thanks again, Miguel, for the tip I (and sorry if my early iRiver ravings led you astray).