I just upgraded this site to the new version of WordPress. It went surprisingly smooth. Now I can post from my iPod. I keep thinking I should resurrect this now that I’m working on my dissertation.
I’m hoping this doesn’t get sent to facebook.
I signed up for Google Wave the day they announced it. I’ve been patiently waiting. Friday, I finally received my invitation.
From my limited exposure to it, I would say it is a service I want to use, but I’m not sure why. I can think of several collaborative projects where it would be helpful, but I keep finding issues with it. Of course this is still in the early stages and as Wave progresses I’m sure I will find more potential.
If you find yourself on Wave, look me up!
I have been a Twitter user since February 2007. At first I did not use Twitter too much. But after I found TweetDeck I discovered that Twitter could be a very useful too. I was able to connect with people, get news stories, and ended up discovering new things on the internet. Some of the webpages others pointed me to were of great help. Some of the conversations were good too. Yet, as of late, I am cooling toward Twitter.
I am not sure how long I have been using Facebook . It is a great service. I have been able to keep in touch with friends, family, and various church members. Yet, I am cooling toward Facebook too.
Why am I cooling to these services? One word: Distractions. Over time I began to realize how distracting these tools can be. While I believe there is a place for these tools, I am also finding that for much of what I need to be doing distractions are a killer. There have been various studies reporting that multitasking is a pipe dream. Even though we believe we are multitasking, the tasks we are working on all suffer.
So, I have decided to cool it on Twitter and Facebook. I am still trying to find a place for them in my life and from time to time I will check in with both services, but for the time being, I am going to focus…on focus.
Kevin Watson at http://deeplycommitted.com has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.
If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.
Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methodist bloggers are often an underused resource.
I’m a podcast fanatic. I listen to several (mostly tech) podcasts each week. Since I find myself in the car way more than I want, at least a podcast makes the time seem more productive and interesting.
I’ve tried several different tools and/or combination of tools to automatically download and sync my podcasts to my mp3 player (Sansa Fuse). RSSRadio was my tool of choice for quite a while. It would download the podcasts and save them to the computer and then I would use Windows Media Player to sync them to my mp3 player. This was not the best setup. While RSSRadio did a wonderful job, I would have to manage my podcasts more than I wanted to. I would have to figure out which ones I had listened to and delete them so there would be room for the new ones.
Enter in Mediafly. Mediaflyis an web 2.0 app. It is a combination of podcast directory, podcast manager, and podcast catcher/syncer. I love it. I choose several podcasts (about 10 or 12), subscribed to the feeds and then let Mediafly‘s sync software take care of the rest. There are other options for downloading and syncing, but Mediafly‘s sync software, in my opinion, is by far the coolest. After setting it up I didn’t have to think about my podcasts. I hook up my fuse to the computer and Mediafly deletes the old podcasts and adds the new ones. No more thinking!
There are plenty of options for each podcast (feed). I can choose to keep the podcast for a specific amount of time (days, weeks, months,), or keep it until I delete it. The advantage is if you have daily podcasts you download, but you might not listen to everyday. So, you tell Mediafly you only want to keep them for a certain number of days. If you don’t listen to them, then they automatically disappear.
You can also say you want a certain number of a certain podcast. So, some podcasts I might only want one episode whether I listen or not, for others I might want to allow more because I will want to ‘catch up’ listening to them when I have time. Mediafly allows this and even other options.
These are just a few reasons why I love Mediafly. I believe they are adding more features and I know I’ve missed some. One down side is with how the Fuse does things. The Fuse only uses bookmarks on podcasts and audiobooks. In order for the Fuse to know that a file is a podcast and/or audiobook is that it is placed in the correct directory, or tagged in the mp3 info tag. Mediafly doesn’t have the functionality yet. I emailed them and within an hour I received a response telling me they were aware of the issue and working on it for a future version of the sync software.
If you love podcasts, but don’t want to have to think about the whole sync process, check out Mediafly!
I’ve heard it called “bit rot.” There is a tendency for Windows machines to slow down after a while. When you first purchase your computer it is nice, new, and pretty fast. Then, as you add programs, remove programs, load updates, and use it, slowly, but surely, the computer that seemed so fast is…well…slowing down. Not only that, but from time to time it does ‘odd’ things.
That’s where I found myself. Each day ended up being an excise in frustration. Programs would take a long time to load. Every time I put my laptop into sleep or hibernate mode it would crash (and reboot) when I tried to wake it up (I do the same things when awaken though…hmmm….). When I would shut it down or reboot it, it would take about 5 minutes (I timed it) or longer to get to a state where I could finally use it. I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were times when it took 10 minutes to reboot! Not fun at all.
The only solution I know to bit rot is to wipe everything clean, reinstall the OS and start from scratch. It is amazing how fast your computer runs when you do this. Of course, this is a last resort. The first thing is to try to uninstall what you don’t need, go into msconfig.exe and take out all the junk that is loading on start up (that you don’t use anymore) or some other less drastic solution.
I had tried everything and came to the conclusion I need a fresh start. So, after backing up all my important files, I took the plunge, ran the recovery program, had it reformat, reinstall, etc. Now I have a laptop that feels like it should! Of course I’m going to be spending hours reinstalling all the software and such, but at least the laptop is running faster now!
I don’t suggest this because it takes a while getting your system back to where you want it. Although, if you are moving to ‘cloud computing’ and putting a lot of your stuff online and using online services (Gmail, Google calendar, flickr, etc), there are a less programs to re-install. Just make sure you know what your passwords are, you’ve backed up your data directories and have thought through what programs you will need (making sure you have your registration numbers) before wiping your hard drive! If everything goes well, when it is all over, your PC is running as if you just brought it home…now it’s time to gunk it up again.
I really like Windows Live Writer to do offline composition for blogs. However, since moving to Drupal I haven’t been able to get WLW to work. Well, if this post shows up, then WLW is working with Drupal. The main thing that I had failed to do is go to the Blog API module in Drupal and enable the API to work with “Stories.” Duh… Well, hopefully it is working now. Looks like I will have to do something about the categories since they are not working ;(
I’ve decided to switch my site over to Drupal from WordPress. I had several reasons. I’ll see how this goes. Right now I have this linked to both http://fuzzythinking.davidmullens.com and http://www.davidmullens.com. Hopefully I will be able to add other types of content.
Found this link about a particle accelerator project that is being sued on the grounds that it could destroy the planet. I have no idea if it will or not, but I would think these are pretty good grounds. Although, how does one prove it will not destroy the planet????
I’m not sure what is happening. Perhaps it is too much internet use or something. I just found myself being impatient while watching a 3 minute video on YouTube! For some reason I wanted to start clicking stuff on the page and scrolling through other things. The video was only 3 minutes long! Perhaps that explains why I’m having so much difficulty working on other things. Before I wrote this blog post I spent about 4 minutes reading a book…..I guess now it is time to get back to the book 