Month: January 2010
Refocusing on my blog and trying new tools
When I spent some time with Chris Brogan in December, we talked about blogs and sharing tools like Posterous, and the different ways people use them. Chris thinks people are diluting their web presences by posting in too many places. “You can watch him say this yourself.” “Home is where the web page is,” he summed up nicely.
I had a blog on Typepad for many years. When I finally decided to move to this self-hosted WordPress blog you’re looking at, I realized I could import all my old posts, but all my photos were stuck. I looked into methods for bringing them over and found one small company that will do it for you, but admits it’s such a massive pain that they charge a lot, since they don’t really want to do it. “They even provide the step-by-step instructions, which run to about 50 steps.”
I really like Posterous, its simple interface, the web-based tools that allow you to share pictures and videos quickly, and the ability to post by email to multiple places. But I’m afraid that if I get too tied in to Posterous, one day I might have the same issue that I had with Typepad.
So here I am once again, using precious toddler napping time to mess with my blog. I just installed the TweetMe plugin, which should send out a tweet announcing this post once it goes up. “This whole post started out as a test of that function, but I got carried away.”
I like this blog. I like the idea that it will continue to grow, and that it will continue to be my home base as new tools emerge, rather than just another outpost I used for a while and abandoned when something more exciting came along.
By the way, my thanks once again to my friend Jeff Cohen from socialmediaB2B.com. I posted on Twitter that I was looking for the right tools to do this, and he called me within a few minutes to talk me through it. Good man.
I almost miss cable. But only today.
A few months ago we turned in our cable boxes to Time Warner and went completely to Internet TV. I bought a Mac Mini to be the HTPC or media server or whatever you want to call it: the computer that stays plugged in to the TV and stereo all the time. “I pretty much killed an older HP laptop trying to make it do that.”
We’ve been watching a lot less TV, which was certainly a big reason we did it, along with saving a hundred bucks a month. Most of the shows we like are streamed via the network Web site or Hulu. The one exception was Mad Men, and we bought that per episode from iTunes, which I will probably do with Top Gear, the BBC car show, once the new season is available. All in all, apart from some glitchy periods “possibly due to the fact that we live in an unusually-high-bandwidth-using neighborhood”, it’s worked well. Until the snow.
We’ve been stuck inside the house for almost 48 hours. We’ve watched everything in our Hulu queue. We watched the Netflix DVDs we had in the house and, cruelly, discovered that the copy of “The Hangover”; we received is unplayable for some reason. Last night, desperate for some form of mindless entertainment after a long day trying to keep The Boy amused, I delved deeper into the Netflix and Hulu archives.
Let’s just say there isn’t a lot of deep there to delve in. There’s a reason you haven’t heard a lot of people standing around the water cooler talking about most of these shows. A lot of them have that quasi-Euro crossover look that means they were probably filmed in Vancouver by a director who was shortlisted but ultimately rejected for a series on The WB. I’m sure a lot of them have cult followings. That may sound like a good thing to you. It may not.
The sun is out and the snow is thinking about melting, but I’m not optimistic we’ll be going to work tomorrow. Which means I may soon be catching up on old episodes of “McMillan and Wife.”
The Boy in the Snow
We got about six inches of snow overnight Friday, which is a heck of a lot for North Carolina. I was hoping Conrad would enjoy it, but so far, not so much. I think it’s the uncertainty of the footing that bothers him. We went out yesterday and he immediately fell over about five times, then wanted to be carried. Can’t say as I blame him. It’s no fun feeling like you’re not in control of your feet.
We tried it again today and he was over it after about five minutes “so today’s time-getting-dressed-to-time-in-the-snow ration was more like 6:1”. I think he only humored me for the promise of hot chocolate.
Life with a two-year old
“Hey, it’s gonna snow.”
“No.”
“Do you remember snow from last year?”
“No.”
“We can go outside and play in the snow.”
“No. No snow.”
“No.”
“Do you remember snow from last year?”
“No.”
“We can go outside and play in the snow.”
“No. No snow.”
