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Category: Site-Related

  • twitter feature wish – linkable tweet collections

    just a quick thought here, but it was too long for a tweet.

    anyway, I want to be able to select tweets for a group (like the lists feature for people) and then twitter assigns a link to a page with all/only those tweets. for instance, when we went to balloon fiesta – a timeline of tweets wouldn’t suffice, I want to be able have not only all tweets from that day on a single page but to selectively add certain tweets that lead up to it, were after it or whatever.
    ALSO you’d have to be able to add tweets by other users. so, you could bookmark a conversation or just certain replies/mentions/RTs.

    sure, this is all what hashtags are for, but a grouping like I want would be exclusive and also doesn’t take up any of those precious 140 characters 🙂

    OR maybe this should be a lifestream software request 🙂 a group of ALL lifestream events would be awesome. (though, mine is broke at the moment so all you see on my website right now are twitter posts. that will hopefully be fixed soon.)

  • LifeStream issues

    just when i think i have it just the way i want it, it does something new…
    for some reason, it is posting everything with a timestamp that is 7 hours late, so, if it says an event happened at 7pm, it actually happened at noon… and, since it wraps everything up at around midnight and posts the digest for the day, some events from one day aren’t showing up until the next… very annoying…
    on the digest for the 20th, i fixed the times manually, but entries from that night still showed up in the digest for the 21st… rather than cut and paste and then fix the times manually on the 21st, i am just making this post to let people know it is all screwed up… this post will be a sticky and stay at the top of the list – when the issue is fixed, i will let it drop from the top…
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    UPDATE – sept 28th

    the problem is still there and i have had no reply from the author, so, i just now went back and manually fixed all the daily posts from the last week (the titles have had “[fixed]” added to them)… i am hoping that something will change – perhaps when the new version comes out or i don’t know what… until then, i will complain loudly 😛
    (click that link if you want to know the details…)
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    UPDATE – october 6th

    for some reason, the post for oct3 came out perfect, even covering the cross over past midnight… why would it suddenly do it flawlessly right in the middle of posts it did wrong??? i am very confused…
    anyway, there is still no word from the guy who wrote it – he hasn’t posted at his message board where questions are asked since sept27… so, i have been going back every few days and hand-editing the posts… and complaining 😛

  • update about the site changes

    as mentioned in this post, i am making big changes around here…
    and some of them are working better than others… i am endeavoring to make regular posts of a favorite photo and there have been a small handful of those, but the big thing i am trying to work out that isn’t working so well is this whole “LifeStream” thing… for those who haven’t heard the term a lifestream is just a feed or list or aggregation of everything i do online, so to speak… i am trying to get a set-up that will post a daily lifestream every night… you can see a few examples on the blog already – it has the twitters i’ve made, links i’ve added to del.icio.us, items i’ve shared in google reader, pics i’ve posted to flickr or twitpic, etc… i just haven’t found the perfect arrangement…
    the best i’ve seen is the layout here – the oddly named Profilactic… the main thing being that it properly displays items from all the sites i use and it even shows the pics i post… BUT, there is no way to put it on my site that i can find… they do have a wordpress plugin, but it looks very different than the way it displays on their site… most importantly, it doesn’t show the pics… (temporary example here, if it’s working…)

    so, for the moment, i am sticking with the lifestream that you see already being used on the site…
    however, i am still testing some things with it – there is no way to do an on-demand post (!!!!), so i have to make changes and then wait until it auto-posts to see how it looks… that REALLY sucks… plus, it keeps double posting each time and i have no idea why… and, it is just far from perfect… if i could get profilactic to post the pics, i’d probably use that…
    though, i cannot figure out a way to get it to post the day’s stuff every night (i may have to learn to do cron jobs), so, i would be setting a lifestream page as the homepage, rather than the home page being the main page of the blog… though, i do hate using external services to provide content on my site…
    anyway, you will also notice i’ve still been using the twitter update, so those posts are also there and there is often repeated info in the two kinds of posts… and, of course, the right sidebar has a lot of this info, but i’m not removing those widgets until i get the lifestream thing figured out…

    anyway, it will all level out eventually and hopefully i will find some ideal solutions… until then, the site will probably be cluttered and confusing… (kinda’ like this hurriedly written post 😛 )

  • changes to my blog very soon

    [this post will be bumped up to the top every day for the next week or so, but it was originally posted august 18, 2008… if you have read this announcement already, just scroll down to see new posts…]

    beginning asap, my blog is going to get updated a lot more frequently – i am going to start aggregating my twitter, flickr, etc. into this one spot…

    two things have triggered this:
    one – finding out that twitter is not keeping a long-term archive of my posts… and they weren’t searchable anyway… if only i had started archiving long ago 🙁
    and two – having a dslr and being able to view the pics on my psp and now realizing i can upload to flickr from my psp (and flickr will then post them to my blog), i think i will start finally using flickr more… i hope…

    but, my blog has never been a frequent-update kinda’ place… this has always mostly been just a place to put links to everything and all my contact info… so, for the last five or more years, i have used the service offered by changedetection.com to notify, via email, those who wanted to be notified when something changed on the site even before it was a blog… this has been handy for the less-tech-saavy in my life who don’t use rss, etc. to keep updated… well, since the blog will be updated daily (i have already turned on the service to daily make a blog post containing all the day’s twitters), i am going to discontinue the use of the changedetection.com service… i know this will be a bummer for some, but there is no sense in having an email go out every day…
    the real problem is that changedetection is anonymous… i don’t know who is subscribed to me… so, i will leave the service up for a few days and hopefully you will read this post…

    i look forward to my blog becoming something that gets updated regularly, and to using flickr more – i have quite a few photos i want to show off 🙂 and there will be a few tweaks to the sidebars of the site, and i may even bring back the chatbox so people can comment in general on the site, rather than commenting on a specific post or photo or whatever… and i will probably integrate dashwire to some extent, maybe this shozu thingy i’ve been playing with…

    either way, big changes are a-comin’… maybe i’ll change the version number of my blog to 5.1 😛

    [posted from my mint metallic green Moto Q9c]

  • new “best of” folder on flickr

    even i get tired of sifting through so many of my photos, hoping to bump into a good one, so i finally made a “best of” folder…

    you can peruse it here…

    it is the stuff i think is best, not just sentimental value…
    i have long wanted to separate the “photography” from the “snapshots” but can never think of a way to work that out in a way i like, so, i did this instead… i also changed my flickr badge over there on the right to only show pics from this set and added a direct link to it in my “all my online stuff” section on the side bar (which also has undergone a major change itself, in case you hadn’t noticed)…

    as i say in the collection, i need to seriously whittle down – it was put together kind of hurriedly… here is the description on the set “i really need to whittle these down… maybe HALF this many… anyway, these are arranged from newest to oldest – as time has gone by, i have learned a bit more about photography techniques and have gotten better cameras, so i say the newer stuff is the best of the best, but, your taste may vary…”

    anyway, the changes to my various online stuff continues…

  • new pics

    those of you i stay i contact with know the new developments in my life lately, the rest of you can get in touch with me if you want to know…

    anyway, since it has been since may that i uploaded any pics, i quickly went through the last 5 or 6 months of photos and quickly grabbed some of my favorites… they are uploading as i write this… most are final, edited pics (see, i make prints these days and don’t upload as much) and some are just unfinished product… but, go have a look, i really love some of them in there and there are a few i am very proud of…
    and, btw, billy, christine, catherine, jennifer, and dana, there are pics of you in there…

    btw, i must once again apologize to those who get the email notification of changes to my site… that bug has once again started up that causes my blog to revert back to the default style and, every time that happens, it sends out an email… and then, it is sometimes days until i notice and fix it…

    anyway, i hope to hear from any and all of you, this is a lonely place…
    right now, email is best…

    as always, top right of the page under “my stuff” is the link to flickr, where the new pics are, and all my contact info is right above that…

  • photo page updated

    i had created that photo page a few months ago as a gateway to all my online photo collections and i have now updated it, with a bit more explanation and notes, as well as adding links to the collections i have on flickr…
    if you have never taken a look through my photos, this is a chance to have it be easier to get an overview of than ever…

    the link is always over there on the right in the sidebar, near the top, under “My Stuff” (it says “photos”), but, here is a direct link…

    and, in case you hadn’t noticed, my webcam is back online, now new and somewhat improved…

  • a couple site-related notes

    i know, i know, it seems impossible, but, i actually did a thing or two to the site…
    i noticed that i have had a blog for nearly four years now, in one form or another (and a non-blog site or two for a couple years before that, btw), and it got me thinking about it…

    so, for one, i finally fixed the chat box… after a year or so of my old flooble chatterbox thingy being expired (it was an externally hosted script), i finally installed my own – namely, SmileTAG, an ajax shoutbox gadget… i have gotten some good use out of it for the last year or so over on our local disc golf site, so, i finally added it here…
    since the old chatterbox expired, i lost every message ever left in it 🙁 so, you can try to make me feel a little better by leaving a note and letting me know you stopped by!

    i also added my good friend chris dunn to my “twinners” links – which is the last category in the my links list – and i did a long overdue update to my “Apps I Can’t Live Without” list – which is the first category in my links list…

    also, i have been putting my flickr photostream to much more use and i may continue to do so… if you haven’t been to it lately, you will see i have added a lot of pics and made a few changes…

    i really do want to get caught up on all my photo albums, but, i may just go ahead and start posting current pics and not worry about posting past pics just yet… i don’t know… i spend so little time doing stuff like making albums and updating websites and such anymore… however, i did create a nice-ish page as a starting point for all the photos a while back… it even tells you if the pics are in an album or it is just a directory of files…

    anyway – are there any more updates coming?

    i have no idea… if there are, i will post about them…

    i would, for instance, like to get the webcam/screencast going again…

    we’ll see what happens…

  • John Hevener from the 3rd St. ministry

    i wanted to post this here so i can point people to it…

    Google News Search – “John Hevener”
    you can bookmark that and keep checking it for updates or subscribe to the rss feed…
    and if anyone sees this story mentioned on local blogs, etc., let me know, or just leave the link in the comments…

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    and, yes, i know, i vanished… and the pics haven’t been updated in months for the first time in years… and there are a couple things broken on the site…
    yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever…
    i have just been too busy living my life to blog about it or something… and a couple months ago, Truman‘s mother board gave out, so, i am using this piece of junk on my desk in my bedroom that i cobbled together from spare parts…

    i do apologize to those who get email notification of updates to this site…  i know that, for some reason, it has sent a few out when there was no actual update…

  • feb pics posted and more new stuff

    ok, firstly, the pics from february are up…
    i did sort of a rush job, so, some should have been touched up, and i chose the wrong skin color scheme, so, it isn’t pretty, but, meh, at least they’re finally online…
    anyway, no autostitch pics from feb (march has a few to look forward to, though), but, there are a few webcam shots… also, this set finally has some pics of “Truman“, my new computer, so, everyone can see what i’ve been describing…
    enjoy…

    ok, next, since i get a lot of comments/questions about it, i would like to publicly let everyone know that my webcam sucks (hey, it was $15, you get watcha pay for)… it freezes up quite a bit, so, yes, when you view my webcam image, it might not be live… the program that uploads the images does just fine, so, it will have a current timestamp, but, it doesn’t realize the cam has frozen, so, it just keeps uploading the last image the cam provided before it froze…
    the way it usually works is that after a few hours, the cam just freezes… so, while i’m at work, or when i am out for the day, at some point or another, the cam stops giving new images, and i don’t fix it until i get home…
    BUT FOR THAT MATTER, keep in mind that, when i have it off, i have it set to just leave up the last image it took… i like that better than something that says “cam currently offline”… but, you can tell by the timestamp when i’ve done that…
    anyway, maybe i’ll buy a new cam soon… buuuuuuut, the cam software i use is a bit of a resource hog, so, sometimes i shut it down intentionally when i have several progs open at once… if anyone wants to recommend a lightweight cam app that has ftp, feel free to hit that comment link below and lemme’ know…

    and speaking of new progs, i am now playing around with SCWebCam and am lovin’ it…
    it does something a little different… it takes a snapshot of my monitors and uploads them… soooo, when you look at my sidebar over there, you will see a new image below the webcam thumb and that is a live shot of my computer monitors… click on it and i have a full page set up for it like my webcam page, with the chatterbox and everything… plus, the two pages are also now cross-linked to each other…
    since i am running two monitors and am letting the image be at 80% of actual size, it is pretty large… it may be a problem for those on dial-up… but, i have it auto-refreshing once a minute, so, that will hopefully be enough time for it to download completely…
    (oh, and, in case someone might point it out, yes, SCWebCam also provides webcam features, BUT, it doesn’t have a feature or two i love on ConquerCam, like the dynamic caption that i can change in seconds from a button in the system tray (it’s the blue text at the top of the webcam image)…)

    anyway, that’s it for now… oh, except that i was graciously donated a scanner by manuel, so, perhaps i will start uploading scans of photos from the old days…
    we’ll see…