marcus

I know I bill myself as a techy blog but holy crap! The weather this summer has been horrible the entire summer. This is what we saw rolling over the island of Montreal yesterday!

August 18, 2008 5:30pm - Cloud of doom

It is starting to get a little tired with all the rain. At our cottage one of the local retailers was saying that they were on their 49th strait day of rain up there. Not that we have been blessed with good weather here, we only missed that by 2 days apparently.

This is our current forecast… everyone please wish us luck. I can only hope that things are on the upswing.

Montreal Forecast

How is the weather in your neck of the woods? Are you experiencing what feels like the end of the world as well?

I was looking to add some RSS feeds to my sidebars for popular news sites that I view daily, or close to daily. I looked at using the RSS widget that is included in Wordpress but it is very limited and I wanted something more customizable, which I found on KB Advanced RSS Widget.

Adam R. Brown is the author of this widget and I am pleased with what he has done. He has added features to allow you to list certain portions of the RSS feed coming in. Some of the other features include:

• Decide which RSS fields to display (as opposed to the default RSS widget, which limits you to link and title), and
• Decide how to format the fields (it doesn’t have to be a list if you don’t want it to be).

You are also able to add titles to each feed so that it is clear to your readers what they are looking at. With some work you can limit the title to a certain number of character or parse the first X amount of characters off the beginning. This is handy if your feed has a static lead in that you want to remove.

He also mentions that this is called an advanced product for a reason:

Be aware that it’s called “advanced” for a reason. You need to know some basic HTML, and possibly a little PHP, to use this fully.

I am sure most people who know how to install an widget on their own hosted Wordpress will be able to get this in there and working.

As you can see for now I have added feeds from Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo because they are a couple of my favorites. I think that I will eventually move towards putting a news service, or a more current events type blog on there. That seems to make more sense to me for my blog.

If you are looking to add RSS feeds to your site go take a look!

Of course when you log into the dashboard for your Wordpress installation it will scream at you to update if you are not already at the newest version. After looking at that message for a few weeks, I thought it was time.

The easiest way to upgrade your installation is to follow their installation/upgrade instructions. They are very simple and easy to follow. I however went one step further and read through their comprehensive upgrade instructions. I recommend these for anyone who has installed a plugin or theme that wasn’t part of the original installation. I am pretty sure that means most of us running Wordpress to host our own blog.

One of the most important steps that they talk about is to backup. This is truly a must! I recommend before starting your upgrade that you install a plugin called Backup Wordpress. Most of the Wordpress backup plugins that exist are designed to do database backups and not file backups. The upgrade of Wordpress will touch the database but only at the end of the procedure. This backup plugin will backup both the files and the database so you are safe.

Once you are sure you have a complete backup, then proceed with the upgrade. There is a lot of manual file manipulation so I recommend that you use an FTP client to connect to your server unless you have a very good web host interface.

Watch their steps carefully. The only one that I would recommend against is their suggestion to use a plugin called Maintenance Mode. This is a good plugin for when you are performing some tasks on the site, but in this case you are deleting so many supporting files the site will go down anyhow.

After the upgrade you will find some new features. Although they don’t seem huge, they are nice touches and typical of a sub-version release.

• Version/revision saves a copy of a post every time you edit it, allows you to view (not edit) each of those copies (revisions), Shows forward (in time) diffs between any two revisions.
• Display captions of images alongside them in posts and pages.
• Add paging of Themes in Design panel
• Word Count displayed when writing and editing posts and pages
• Press This bookmarklet
• Add sorting to gallery
• Export/import post excerpts
• Theme Previewer
• Check (assigned) Categories at top Category box in Write/Manage Post
• Show when a term is both a tag and a category
• Wider Profile fields
• TinyMCE 3.1
• Two categories can have sub-categories with the same name

Have fun blogging!

I have been poking around for some time looking for marketing tips for my blog while also trying to come up with my own ideas. I follow a ton of people and noticed a post on twitter the other day from Chris Brogan, 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media. Chris is definitely an expert in this area so I and going to work on trying to follow the majority of his ideas. Increased viability will for sure drive first time readers. Then all I have to do is keep them coming with my outstanding whit! Woohoo! Crap, this might be harder than I thought.

It looks like a lot of work. I am up for it, the only issue I have is the lack of sleep. I still work at a 9-5 job to pay the bills but it gets in the way of my progress online. The Sleepy Geek really comes from me being tired. Two small kids and my wife also works and we are always on the go.

I want to try and get my work out there. I have started to blog and really what I want is to develop a good sized readership. I thought it best to get some content on the site before I really started to push at branding my name. I intend to use some of Chris’ ideas such as reading other blogs and commenting as much as possible with intelligent information. I want to also concentrate on building a community.

So here goes Chris, a wealth of knowledge and nothing but time to get it done. Thank you for your help and if I apply it correctly I can’t see it NOT working.

I am a hardcore geek but unlike the stereotype “geek” I am a huge hockey fan and love to play golf. I went out for the first round of the year yesterday and I had a great time. My brother any I were adventurous enough to battle the weather which was supposed to rain most of the morning.

We had a good round. I think he was more frustrated than I was about some shots but I guess I had low expectations due to the lack of frequency of my play and this being the first of the year. I ended up shooting a 98. I should be in the low 90’s by the 2nd or 3rd round of the year. Next time will be father’s day with some guys from work.

I have wanted to try OSX for such a long time now. I remember seeing the first versions at a friends house when it was still not cool among my PC geek buddies to use a Mac. I was still intrigued with the interface. I am not sure what it was at the time but it just looked polished.

I am in the IT field and need to use a PC at work simply because I am troubleshooting problems on them and writing scripts on them. It doesn’t leave me with much of a choice really, and it doesn’t bother me either. For work purposes I understand why corporations use Windows based machines and quite frankly they do their job very well.

That being said about work, at home I have always felt that something was lacking with my computer. I am always trying a different Linux distro or another Windows add-on to try something new. So when I first heard that Apple was going to release Intel based Mac’s, I was excited! Here is the first opportunity for me to get a system that was able to run both OSX and Windows. This is an exciting proposition. The problem with that is I already have many computers and they are all working. It is very hard to justify buying a new computer just to change OSs.

This lead me to wish that Apple would release OSX for the masses. I would definitely use it. Many people already are with hacked versions of the OS calling them Hackintosh’s or labeling the practice the “OSX86 project”. That means that there are some people out there wanting to try OSX but most likely financial reasons are holding them from buying a Mac.

Let’s look at this financially. Take the MacBook Pro from the Apple Store, which sells for $1999 and compare it to the Dell XPS which sells for $1049.99 on Bestbuy.com. The Dell has more memory, a larger hard drive and it also comes with an OS, Windows Vista. So when we are comparing apples to apples here (no pun intended :)) the Dell seems to win the battle. My conclusion to the money battle is that even if Apple charged $300 for OSX, it seems like you would be better off with the Dell. Or would you?

Apple has always been in complete control of their entire product. This is the OS on the hardware they are manufacturing. By only using certain components and in certain situations, Apple has managed to keep their product pretty sound. There are many arguments from Windows fans that OSX has many of the same shortcomings as Windows, but I feel that some of Windows shortcomings affect the day to day experience.

Apple has had the Mac vs. PC ad campaign for quite some time now and one of the ads that still catches my attention is the ad that pokes at the need for a major upgrade for you to run Windows Vista. It’s funny because Apple has stopped support for legacy hardware on a number of occations. There were many systems that were left behind when OSX first was released. Where as some people in the Windows community think that is a negative point and now even Apple has brought it up, I think that ties into the polish of the product.

Let’s look at this another way. Apple doesn’t release OSX because it is not in the OS business. Maybe people would disagree, but I feel that they have written an OS to put on their hardware so that the user is offered a complete solution which is sound due to control.

So would I run OSX on my PC? Only for the geek factor. Really what I want is a Mac and I think my next computer will be one.

I am in the office, working on some computers. Of course I check twitter to see what’s doing. I land on a twit from Chris Pirillo linking to an artist by the name of Geoff Smith. First I don’t want to limit his talent to techy geeky stuff, he really is bigger than that. But he really has a cool repertoire of songs about tech. He has a new album coming out called One’s and O’s. That’s obviously a binary reference but his songs say so much more. One I have heard is about the link or relationship that blog or website owners have with their readers, more importantly how to deal with their possible negative comments.

I listened to a “concert” that he put on for his fans on uStream.tv. In fact I am listening to it now, because he seems to have gone on for about 3 hours. He is a very talented singer and guitarist. He is currently playing the Beatles as I am typing this.

I encourage all of you to check out his ustream link here, or his website here or a commercial venture he involved in here.

Thanks for the great music Geoff!

Today is one of those days. We had a busy weekend. It was a great weekend and I am not complaining at all. But even though the cottage is a place of relaxation and peace, it still takes a lot of work to get it up and running. Saturday I woke up to the sound of the water pump running. Still in a daze in the wee hours of the morning, I went downstairs to find that the pipe connecting the pump to the tank was blown. Time for a trip into town. We got the docks in and the boat in after lunch. The boat ran well but by the time it was in and parked the rain moved in. It wasn’t a big problem because it was time to cook supper, one of my favorite things to do.

Sunday was a slower day but by the end of the day our daughter of 17 months was not feeling so well. We decided to stay the night up north and see if it was maybe something she ate, but no luck. So we headed home early on Monday morning.

Last night was long. My wife gets the worst of it though, babies always want mommy when they are sick. Can’t blame them really

So I am at work, sleepy… doing geeky stuff. I believe that when I get home it will be supper and then get the kids to sleep. Then I will probably have to work on some repairs I have.

I have had a hard and fast rule about disconnecting when going to the cottage in the past. We are lucky enough to be able to go up when we like as my father-in-law doesn’t go up very often. It’s a summer place and we try to spend as many weekends up there and I try to remind myself how lucky I am to have that privilege.

Technology and computers have been work for me for quite some time. I have been in IT and before that in break and fix. The cottage for me was always a place to refresh my geek batteries by totally disconnecting. I even go to the extreme of taking off my watch as soon as I arrive so as to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it.

I find my writing for TheSleepyGeek a more and more rewarding and enjoyable experience. I am challenged to conceive of a meaningful topic daily and then write useful content for it. It’s been fun since I have put a real effort into it and I am trying to make sure that I have at least one article per day.

So what’s the dilemma you ask? Simple… I actually want to be connected at the cottage now. I am very sensitive to the possibilities that might open up. My wife is a hard worker and likes to check her email to keep on top of things for her job. I understand why; if you get an email about a problem today and answer today, the problem is easily fixed. Wait until Monday and then you have a headache. But I still feel that the disconnection from work is very important.

I think that wireless data (I mean through cellular companies) is still too expensive. I have seen a corporate deal through one of the Canadian providers at around $100 unlimited. Never mind a one person show.

Possibly one day I will go that route and pursue a sponsorship.
I will see you all on Tuesday. Monday is a holiday here in Canada.
Have a great weekend!

Aaaackk, what a question! This one is a thinker folks. I was in the midst of computer anarchy; what with three systems on the repair list. Then there is my eternally incomplete computer which resides near to where the repairs take place. In this middle of all this I was thinking about how difficult it is to come up with new and exciting marterial to write about on the blog and *BLAM*; it came to me.

I am surrounded by the technology that I love for myself and love to share with others. My reason for blogging is just that. My desire to share any knowledge or insight that I may have with those interested in hearing about it in my own particular style. SO! This is where the subject of normalcy or regularity comes about. I am in the middle of a pile (literally) of computer junk and techy parts and I find it so ‘normal’.

Is that just me? Do we as a society think of technology as normal? I guess we can point a finger at the computer if we like. If we need to define technology we can go there first. I know people still to this day that do not know how to even power on a machine, much less use it.

Am I so imersed in my own garb that I don’t see that most people are still on the other side of the fence on this one? There is so much technology in everything that we do, every day! It stands to think that most people would be used to it by now. I remember back in the day when people were afraid to make a mistake on a computer for the fear of corrupting something or having it stop working.

So I ask you! Do you feel like the computer is still this cloud in the room that is used out of preassure? Or do you embrace this tool as a part of everyday life.

I hope it’s the latter because then, and only then can you appreciate what it really can do.

Connect people!
Think about it, feel free to comment.