Technological Manic Depression
Some days, I seek hyper-technology. I want to engage folks on Twitter, post on my blogs, and clean up every broken link on my websites. The online world feels so vibrant and interesting. On other days, I want to give up everything more advanced than a clock/radio. I want to sit down with a big stack of books and a hot mug of tea, or throw wide my kitchen cabinet doors and fire up the stove. The online world feels so shallow […]
Can’t Get Technoooo Satis-fack-shuuuuun
I’ve been dissatisfied with my blog for weeks now. During one of my long IM conversations (does anyone else have IM conversations any more?) with Saalon a couple weeks ago, I complained that blogs assume uniformity of content. That each entry will need to be formatted the same way. I also dislike the constant draw of a blog, the siren song that says, “You should be posting every day.” […]
The iPad, Revisited
When the iPad was first released, early adopters rushed to post their initial impressions. Now that I’ve been using an iPad for a few months, I think it’s important to come back and provide some more experienced impressions. Here are the apps I use: Daily WSJ (Wall Street Journal). I even bought the subscription, so I don’t have to lug my Kindle around with me. GoodReader, a fantastic PDF viewer that […]
Updating your WordPress Blog from WP 2.x to 3.0
I’ve successfully migrated two WordPress 2.9 blogs to WordPress 3.0. No issues. Here are steps to follow to do so safely: Phase 1: Backup Click on Tools > Export. The “Export” page is displayed. Click the Download Export File button. A “Save as” dialog is displayed. Save the file on your desktop. Click on Dashboard. Note the version of WordPress that you are running. The version number is […]
Em-U-Late
Context: I built a vintage video arcade cabinet about two years ago. It ran Ubuntu Linux and the MAME arcade emulator on an old off-the-shelf PC I had laying around. About six months ago, that PC died. To be fair, it was at least a decade old. I bought a new PC and set it up with Windows XP. Using Windows presented several challenges, the primary one being Windows’ […]
Everybody Wave!
Last week, the Google Wave team announced that Wave is now open to everyone. It’s out of beta. Just head over to http://wave.google.com and sign in. This is a good time to go over what Wave is and how I’ve been using it. What Wave Is Wave is a collaborative communication platform. The creators started by wondering, “What would email look like if it were created […]
Why I started using LinkedIn again
In a Fortune article published in March, a representative of management consulting firm Accenture revealed that he expects up to 20,000 of Accenture’s new hires this year to come from social media. 20,000. And knowing the social media landscape, when it comes to professionals using social media, you know that this doesn’t mean hiring through Facebook. The vast majority of those will come through LinkedIn, since that’s by far […]
Well That Was Easy
As mentioned in my previous entry, I downloaded the iPad/iPhone SDK Thursday night, and played around with it. I now have a simple text adventure for the iPad, complete with four rooms and an inventory. In less than 24 hours. I struggled with a few things. One has to go through several steps to wire up a UI element like a button or text view. Each module and model has its own role to play, and their interactions […]
Wet Toes
In a fit of curiosity and a desire to seriously research a new field of programming, tonight I downloaded the iPad SDK and built a trivial iPad app. As expected, Apple made development relatively easy. The free development tools are comprehensive and easy to use. Also as expected, I’m still confused by all the files that go into an app. There are nibs, and Resources, and all sorts of things that simply don’t have obvious functions. I decided to read […]
15 Thoughts on the iPad (updated)
A dry description of the iPad’s actual features and usability will not sell anyone who doesn’t want one. Nevertheless, here’s a list of my impressions: It’s slick. This is what Apple can do: make something we’ve all seen demos of feel not only practical, but sexy. Every basic part of the device works well, and the hardware feels more solid than the iPhone’s. The accelerometer feels more sensitive and the screen […]