I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas to all who read this! Nancy and I will be leaving for Duluth in the morning and we are very excited to see our kids. Christmas at Nick and Scotts then Back to Bemidji.
Nancy and I each have 10 total days off so we gotta make the best of them! Maybe we will see some of you over the holidays.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Top 10 lists
It's that time of year again, when everybody and their brother makes a Best Of list for the year that only has a week or two to go. I've managed to find one that was actually worth the time to read and made me laugh. It's a list of the best movie trailer mash-ups of 2006. For those not familiar with the genre, ordinary folks from the internets who have video editing software and no life recut bits of movies to make a trailer that is completely unlike the original movie, or they combine two movies to make one new movie. Probably the most well known example of this is the mash-up of Brokeback Mountain and Back to the Future, appropriately titled Brokeback to the Future. So, without further ado here's the list. Get a beverage and visit the restroom, because each of these vids is about 2 minutes long. 2 minutes times 11 videos (Why don't you just make 10 louder?) = you wanna be comfy.
10 best trailers
My favorites:
Must Love Jaws (a mash-up of Must Love Dogs in concept and the classic Jaws)
Office Space Recut (really, can you go wrong with this movie in any form?)
Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets (f*$&!)
Shining (finally, a Stephen King movie with a happy ending)
10 best trailers
My favorites:
Must Love Jaws (a mash-up of Must Love Dogs in concept and the classic Jaws)
Office Space Recut (really, can you go wrong with this movie in any form?)
Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets (f*$&!)
Shining (finally, a Stephen King movie with a happy ending)
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Blog management
I'm not sure how many of you are aware of something called RSS. If you're like me and you read more than one or two blogs, RSS has the potential to make your life much easier. When I first started reading blogs, and blogging, I would log onto blogger once per day and check each of the links in my sidebar. This was a gigantic waste of time, because on any given day only about one third of the people I linked to had a new post. Then I learned that there is a better way. Enter RSS.
RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication. Simple, huh? You may have noticed a little orange symbol with white curved lines on many websites that you visit. That's a symbol that the site has an RSS feed.
Blogger doesn't seem to have this feed symbol, but that's OK because the feed still exists. Here's how to make RSS work for you. First, you need an RSS aggregator. This is a tool that will go out and check all the blogs you tell it to, on a minute by minute basis, and see if there's anything new there. Kind of like what I was doing in the old days, but without all that manual checking nonsense. I personally use bloglines.com but there are many choices out there. Once you log on to bloglines (the process is similar for other sites) it will ask you to create an account. You'll need to complete some basic info, much like any other site.
Once you have your account set up, you're ready to start using the service. On the left half of the screen you'll see the bloglines logo and some tabbed folders. Start with the folder titled Feeds. Beneath Feeds you'll see a link titled Add. Click this and you will see the following:
Now, open another browser window and go to the blog you want to subscribe to. Copy the URL from the address bar and go back to the bloglines page. Paste the URL into the box labelled Blog Feed or URL and click Subscribe. You may get more than one choice of feeds or you may just get one. If you get multiple feeds, the first one listed should be fine. Select the feed by putting a check in the box. If there is only one then this step isn't required. Skip all the other settings such as folder, display settings, etc. For me anyway, the default ones work fine. And you can always change them later if you choose. Click the subscribe button at the bottom.
You should now see the name of the blog you subscribed to over on the left underneath the Add link where you started. Click the name of the blog, and all the new content will be displayed in the main portion of your window. It's as simple as that. Now you can continue to add other blogs as well. But it's not just about blogs. Many sites have RSS feeds that can be tracked in bloglines. I track flickr accounts of friends and get notified whenever they upload new pictures. I also track various newspaper columnists (you'll see James Lileks' feed in the example above) and even some news sites. The world, or at least the RSS-enabled world, is now your oyster. Enjoy.
RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication. Simple, huh? You may have noticed a little orange symbol with white curved lines on many websites that you visit. That's a symbol that the site has an RSS feed.
Blogger doesn't seem to have this feed symbol, but that's OK because the feed still exists. Here's how to make RSS work for you. First, you need an RSS aggregator. This is a tool that will go out and check all the blogs you tell it to, on a minute by minute basis, and see if there's anything new there. Kind of like what I was doing in the old days, but without all that manual checking nonsense. I personally use bloglines.com but there are many choices out there. Once you log on to bloglines (the process is similar for other sites) it will ask you to create an account. You'll need to complete some basic info, much like any other site.Once you have your account set up, you're ready to start using the service. On the left half of the screen you'll see the bloglines logo and some tabbed folders. Start with the folder titled Feeds. Beneath Feeds you'll see a link titled Add. Click this and you will see the following:
Now, open another browser window and go to the blog you want to subscribe to. Copy the URL from the address bar and go back to the bloglines page. Paste the URL into the box labelled Blog Feed or URL and click Subscribe. You may get more than one choice of feeds or you may just get one. If you get multiple feeds, the first one listed should be fine. Select the feed by putting a check in the box. If there is only one then this step isn't required. Skip all the other settings such as folder, display settings, etc. For me anyway, the default ones work fine. And you can always change them later if you choose. Click the subscribe button at the bottom.
You should now see the name of the blog you subscribed to over on the left underneath the Add link where you started. Click the name of the blog, and all the new content will be displayed in the main portion of your window. It's as simple as that. Now you can continue to add other blogs as well. But it's not just about blogs. Many sites have RSS feeds that can be tracked in bloglines. I track flickr accounts of friends and get notified whenever they upload new pictures. I also track various newspaper columnists (you'll see James Lileks' feed in the example above) and even some news sites. The world, or at least the RSS-enabled world, is now your oyster. Enjoy.
Our Christmas Plans
I saw Lois' post and I thought I would give you an update on what we are doing also.
Nick and Scott have decided to host Christmas for our family this year. This will be the first time we are not hosting our family. Because we are going to Duluth over Christmas we decided not to put up a tree. That's a first also! Less stress for us.
Randee is flying into Duluth on Christmas eve and we will leave for Duluth that day also. We are very excited to spend a few days at Nick and Scott's house alone with our kids.
Nancy and I are taking the week off between Christmas and New Years this year. We should be returning to Bemidji on Tuesday evening with Randee (we think). I don't know for sure but I think Nick and Scott will be coming to Bemidji on Friday evening for the weekend. I believe Randee will go back to Duluth with Nick on Monday or Tuesday and then she fly's back to California on Wednesday.
Nick and Scott have decided to host Christmas for our family this year. This will be the first time we are not hosting our family. Because we are going to Duluth over Christmas we decided not to put up a tree. That's a first also! Less stress for us.
Randee is flying into Duluth on Christmas eve and we will leave for Duluth that day also. We are very excited to spend a few days at Nick and Scott's house alone with our kids.
Nancy and I are taking the week off between Christmas and New Years this year. We should be returning to Bemidji on Tuesday evening with Randee (we think). I don't know for sure but I think Nick and Scott will be coming to Bemidji on Friday evening for the weekend. I believe Randee will go back to Duluth with Nick on Monday or Tuesday and then she fly's back to California on Wednesday.
Our 30th
As some of you may remember, it was 30 years ago yesterday that Nancy and I were married. We had a pretty nice day together but just a bit busier than I like. We started off by having coffee in the hot tub and just having a relaxing for the first couple of hours. Then things got busy. Nancy had a hair appointment, and I had some things on the "honey do" list while she was at her appointment. We then went out for lunch at about 11:30 at T-Juan's and had an early cocktail knowing it would be a full day of Christmas shopping. We must have hit every major store in Bemidji. We finally quite about 5:30 and stopped by the Northwood Steak House, had some appetizers and a beer. I was glad the shopping was mostly over. We had a light dinner at home and called it a night!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)