Archive for August, 2005
· August 24, 2005 at 9:00 am · Odds & Ends
Red Dwarf is simply the best space comedy ever produced. I have been a big fan for a while, but just recently picked up the first two seasons’ DVDs from Amazon. I was a little afraid the quality of the DVDs might suck, since this show isn’t exactly very well known, but I was wrong. So far I have been pretty happy with the quality of the disks.
If you haven’t ever seen an episode of Red Dwarf, here is pretty much the outline of the show (via the IMDB):
Three million years ago, a radiation leak killed the crew of the mining ship, Red Dwarf. The only survivor was Dave Lister, the chicken soup machine repairman. He spends his time on the ship with a holographic projection of Arnold Rimmer (his dead bunkmate), Cat (a life-form that evolved from Dave’s cat), Holly (the ship’s senile computer), and Kryten (a service mechanoid).
I never was much of a Star Wars or Star Trek fan, but in my opinion Red Dwarf beats them both hands down. Now I just have to order the six other DVDs.
· August 23, 2005 at 1:39 pm · Odds & Ends
Poderator looks to be a free podcast production solution. The catch? Well you have to come up with hosting for your audio files on your own. I guess it is one more fix for folks out there, but personally I don’t think I’d like having to run to several different places to get a podcast published. There are better ways of getting it done that will cost you little to no money at all.
· August 23, 2005 at 12:38 pm · Odds & Ends
Everybody needs help with CSS from one time to another. I have yet to meet the man or woman who can say they have memorized all of the CSS code lingo by heart. There is just too much there to remember. Then you can’t just memorize it. You have to know it, and know how to do it right.
That is where this article I found this morning comes into play…
Learning how to use CSS for creating web sites is a pain in the ass. It’s not easy and it will hurt you. Over the last several years I’ve been asked by many web designers and developers about how to best get started with building web sites using CSS and standards. Usually, I’ll just send them 300 links and wish them a lot of luck. This overview is sort of my penance.
When it comes to understanding the world of standards based design, you have to think medieval. Creating a web site in CSS is like building a manor. You are a lord, setting aside land for specific purposes, hoping the user rotates their content appropriately. Most of you will build villages attracting only a few peasants to comment on various decrees, some of you will build castles and a very small number will build what I can only describe as cathedrals—structures that warrant pilgrimages from thousands across the globe.
Feel free to check out the rest of the article over at particletree! It is one of the best CSS layout technique articles I have found in a long time.
· August 23, 2005 at 10:00 am · Odds & Ends
This movie has to be one of the best ones I have seen in about the past ten years. I swear up and down to you that this movie is that damn good. Shaun of the Dead has the perfect mix of offbeat comedy with zombie blood and gore. It is like a marriage made in heaven! I picked up the DVD after seeing it on Cinemax late one night. The DVD is just as awesome as the entire movie. Loads of extras, commentary and fun things to play around with.
Lots of the camera angles and cinematography reminds me of the Evil Dead trilogy, more specifically Sam Rami’s work. So if you haven’t seen a good zombie movie in a while, I can highly recommend that you go check out Shaun of the Dead.
· August 22, 2005 at 3:13 pm · Odds & Ends
Blogbeat offers blog analytics and stats for your own corner of the Internet for free. So, what is new with that? Well the best part about Blogbeat is that there are no ads at all. No two dozen flashing boxes wanting me to beat up monkeys on this Web site.
Still have questions? Here are a few answers from Blogbeat’s FAQ Web page:
What is Blogbeat?
Blogbeat is an online service that can tell you all sorts of cool things about your blog, like who’s reading it, what posts they’re reading, what posts are your most popular, what other blogs are talking about you, how people find you, even what links people click on when they visit your blog. Simply register with us in a few simple steps, and you instantly get tons of cool stats on your blog! Everything is done in real-time, so as soon as someone reads a post on your blog, you will know about it.
How does Blogbeat work?
It’s not exactly special sauce, but we’ll skimp on the exact details of how we make the magic happen. But basically it’s the same as if you were adding Google’s AdSense ads to your blog. You add one line of Javascript code into the HTML of your blog software, and we get notified when someone visits your site.
All you have to do is cut and paste some Javascript into your Web site. No banners or little badges here.
There were only 167 spots left open in the beta when I wrote this, so if you want to try this out, you had better act quick.
· August 22, 2005 at 3:04 pm · Odds & Ends
There is a new search engine on the block! Well there is nothing new with starting a search engine, there are thousands out there today. Well this one searches RSS feeds! Okay, so that narrows it down some. This one also searches podcasts! Okay, now you have my attention.
I have to say Feedzie has a lot to love. It reminds me of Odeo a little when you are “searching audio”. Here are a few of the goals Feedzie wants to achieve:
Enabling you to find feeds and podcasts with the best quality
There are millions of feeds out there. Showing the ones that make you read or listen with pleasure is the real problem for us. By labeling and updating our search indexes, we are trying to do everything we can to help us locate the feeds of your taste.
Labelling to make the real content visible
Tagging enables you to navigate qualified feeds. The advantage of labelling over searching is its ability to guide you based on what is available other than what you expect what is available.
Creating web-based back end for Newzie and Ziepod
Feedzie has two sisters; Newzie, information aggregator, and Ziepod, podcast receiver and player. These two software applications are high quality toolkits with state-of-art feature sets. Both have connection with Feedzie so that users, that is, you, can easily subscribe to feeds.
Check it out, and let me know what you think!
