I enjoy old movies, particularly film noir. Dead Reckoning (1947) is a very, very good one. Bogart is good in an unusual role as a back from Europe soldier struggling to find out what happened to his missing buddy. It's dark and almost randomly violent, though not by today's standards. But the reason to see this film is Lizabeth Scott. No other actress now or then holds a candle to her in the femme fatale category. With her looks, voice and attitude, if she were in her prime today, she'd be the biggest thing in Hollywood.

5 Star Rating: ****

Technorati Tags:
movie review, film noir

One of the things we did successfully with a number of the websites I have developed is create a sense of community. With websites, community means that communication is a two (or multi-way) way process, with more than one party providing input, expressing opinions, etc. That's easier to do with message board sites like ACCBoards.Com and The Cat's Domain. It's harder to do with other sorts of websites, including blogs. But it's just as important.

One reason I changed Newsome.Org from a traditional website, which looked and worked something like a newspaper- content was here, but it flowed one way, to the current blog format is because the new format makes it easier to create conversations and connections. Conversations via the Comments feature and connections via links I include in my posts and the Trackback feature.

Another reason I made those changes is to reconnect with old friends and meet new friends. Over the past few years a lot of people have told me that they visit Newsome.Org from time to time. Many of these people know each other. Until now, there was no way other than email for these people to communicate with me and no way at all for them to communicate with each other.

I know from my stats reports that there is a good amount of traffic here, and I know from my age and that of most of my friends that the internet as a two way proposition and blogs in particular are relatively new concepts. So here's a short primer on how these features work.

Most posts have several links at the bottom, and here's what those links do. The "Permalink" is a link to a separate page (called a "post page") that contains only the post in question. This allows people to link to a particular post as opposed to the main Newsome.Org page, where the posts that are here today will be pushed to the Archives pages (see the list in the left hand column) by new posts. A few posts which are mainly family news and photo items don't provide for comments, but that is the exception

The "Post a Comment" link is a way for visitors to respond to, comment on, agree with or disagree with anything in a topic or post. When you click on that link, a box pops up where you can type a comment, opinion, etc. and have that comment added to the bottom of the post. One thing to remember: the text of the comments appears only on the post pages. On the main Newsome.Org page, you'll merely see the number of comments made at the very bottom where it says:

X Comments
Y Trackbacks.

There are three ways to access the post page, and the full text of all comments. Click on the title of a post, click on the Permalink or click on the "X Comments" link. Each of these links leads to the same place- the post page containing only the post and the full text of the comments.

The Del.icio.us and Furl links allow visitors to easily bookmark the post on one of those social bookmarking sites. If you don't already use those sites, you can ignore those links for now, but I would suggest you check them out. Those sites are great ways to share links and find other interesting pages, posts, etc.

The Trackback feature allows visitors who have blogs themselves to link back to a post on their site that refers to the post. For example, if I post about my problems with Technorati, a visitor who has similar problems may want to post a topic on his or her website and link to it from here via a Trackback. It's a way to create natural connections about related content over multiple websites.

That's about the sum of it. If you're here, have your say. It's much more fun to discuss things that to read things. Don't you agree?

Technorati Tags:
blogging

A lot of smart guys I know tell me that I should be browsing the net with Firefox, instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I attribute some of this to a counterculture, anti-Microsoft philosophy, but enough people whose opinions I respect have sung the praises of Firefox that I decided to give it a try.

Warning: I'm fixing to aggravate a lot of other geeks.

So I went to the Firefox download page and installed it. The program installed easily. The first time I opened it, Firefox offered to import a lot of my settings from Internet Explorer. The settings were quickly imported (other than, curiously, my Home Page setting). So far, so good.

I decided to surf around with Firefox a little to see how it works, and to make sure the Newsome.Org pages display correctly in Firefox (they do). All was well, and I admit that I really like the tabbed browsing feature.

Then a problem. I went to The Home Place, which has a flash-based Flickr badge. A helpful message at the top of the Firefox window informed me that "Additional plugins are needed to display all of the media on this page." To the right was a promising button inviting me to "Install Missing Plugins." So I clicked it. A box popped up telling me that a Flash Player 7.0 plugin was available- just what I needed. I selected it and clicked the Next button. A license screen popped up and I agreed to the user license and clicked the Next button again. Nothing. Nada. Only this, for a long, long time:



I tried many times. I rebooted and tried many more times. I tried a manual install. I googled the problem and found quite a few links. This one looked promising, but didn't work for me.

Could I get this plugin installed? Almost certainly. I am a geek, myself. But a whole lot of potential users don't have the time, inclination and ability to do so (all 3 are required). So I run straight back to my soapbox and once again shout my mantra: if you want people to adopt something that is (supposedly) only incrimentally better that something they already have, make it easy. Make it painless. Otherwise, you have something created by geeks only for geeks. As I said, I'm a geek, so I'll use it (along with Internet Explorer, but not as my default browser). But I'll never get my wife, family or friends to do it.

We're all better off with 2 significant options (think what satellite TV has done for cable users). I want Firefox to put some competitive pressure on Microsoft. In order to do that, it has to become the browser of choice for geeks and non-geeks alike.

Bottom Line: The basic software (as opposed to the plugins) was easy to install. It didn't seem any faster than Internet Explorer. I like the tabbed browsing, and I'm sure (because I've read it so many times) that it's more secure. Otherwise, it seems a lot like Internet Explorer, only without the Flickr badges.

Bonus thought: If I liked it better, would they use my song by a similar name in a commercial?

Technorati Tags:
firefox

Hurricane Katrina (Wikipedia just keeps getting more and more integral to my information needs) is one scary storm. Two families that we are close to have relatives in New Orleans. Both families have houses full of refugees.

Here's a Google Maps hack that shows its location. When the photo loads, click on "Hybrid" in the upper right hand corner for the best view.

Here are some blogs from people in the affected areas:

Hattie's Blog: Hattiesburg, MS
Mark Kraft: Not local, but good collection of info.
Zelda Kitty: New Orleans
Bobbysan: New Orleans

If you know of others, please add them to the Comments and I'll put a link here.

Updates from the Comments:

Flickr Photos
Support New Orleans
Blog from Baton Rouge

Monday Update:

Lots of good stuff on this blog.

Technorati Tags:
hurricane katrina

Aunt Anne (my sister) came to visit us this weekend. We had a fun time, as we always do. The girls have a blast hanging out with their "Aunt Ants." We went to Joe's Crab Shack with the Friday night dinner crew on Friday, saw a great movie on Saturday, shopped unsuccessfully for patio furniture and went to Tokyohana for dinner tonight. We played Contract Rum last night, and Anne won again. We quit playing Trivial Pursuit with her because she always won that too. Now she always wins at cards. We're going to think of a new game before her next visit.

Anne lives in Tennessee. We love to spend time with her and wish that she could come see us more often. She is a social worker and raises thoroughbred horses. Best of all, she is a great sister, sister-in-law and aunt.

We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today. It is perhaps the best family film (meaning one that is generally as enjoyable to grown-ups as it is to kids) I have ever seen. I truly loved it, as did the kids. A little darker than the original, but not in a bad way. And it sends a good message to kids about the importance of family.

Technorati Tags:
movie review

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play. Each week, I add a little commentary about some of the artists, songs, albums, etc.

Jealous Guy - John Lennon (Imagine) (1)
See Rock City - Kate Campbell (The Portable) (2)
Midnight Rider - Waylon Jennings (The Ramblin' Man) (3)
Satisfaction - Otis Redding (Stax Box) (4)
Waiting for Sara - Cheri Knight (The Knitter) (5)
If You Were a Bluebird - Joe Ely (Joe Ely) (6)
Daylight - Dillon Fence (Rosemary) (7)
Greensboro Woman - Townes Van Zandt (8)
Margaritas - Ronnie Jeffrey & Kent Newsome (Demo) (9)
People's Parties - Joni Mitchell (Court and Spark) (10)

(1) Good song on a good record. I like some, but not all, of his solo stuff. Of course I am a Beatles fan, but I don't have the extreme reverence for him that a lot of folks do. I think a lot of his stuff post-Yoko was lame. Sorry.

(2) Kate is currently on my friend Brad's Compadre Records label. Compadre provides an outlet for a lot of great artists, and Kate is one of them (along with Billy Joe Shaver and James McMurtry). I like this song, but I like the Kentucky Headhunters song by the same name better.

(3) Decent version of a good but overplayed song by one of the fathers of the outlaw country movement. Waylon has a lot better songs and nobody does this one like the Allmans. It's a very good album that really started the outlaw country movement.

(4) Lots of covers and similar names this week. Otis sang everything good, but again, the Stones do it better. To hear Otis at his best, try In Person at the Whisky a Go Go.

(5) I liked about two thirds of the songs made by the Blood Oranges, Cheri's previous band. I feel the same way about her solo work. The good songs are very, very good. Some of the rock numbers feel like toss-ins. This is one of the very, very good songs on a very good album, her first solo effort.

(6) Another excellent number off of Joe Ely's first record, released in 1977. This one and a lot of the other songs on this record became Americana classics. This remains one of my favorite Joe Ely records.

(7) I missed Dillon Fence when they were active, but I learned about them via music-related posts at ACCBoards.Com. They were/are based in Winston-Salem, NC, where I went to college.

(8) Townes has always been one of my favorite songwriters. I was fortunate enough to meet him a couple of times and he was an interesting guy to say the least. One of the magical concert moments I've experienced was Townes, Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson sharing the stage at Fitzgeralds back in the early nineties. This was the first TVZ record I ever bought and it's a good one.

(9) I usually violate the Jukebox rules by skipping over my songs when they pop up. I'll let this one slide because I had forgotten about it altogether. It's a song I wrote about the night one of my friends met his wife. Cool people, but not one of my better songs.

(10) One of my favorite records of all time. I've listened to this record hundreds of time and it never gets old. Unlike many Joni Mitchell records, there's not a bad song on it. Some so called purists have argued that it's too pop/rock, but whatever it is, it works for me.

Technorati Tags:
music reviews

As those of you who listen to Rancho Radio know, I like all sorts of music. I have spent more money on music than I ever did on whiskey and women combined. At the moment I have 26,138 songs on my music server. I bought 8 track tapes, I bought LPs, I bought cassettes and I buy CDs. I listen to everything from country, to rock, to blues and everything in between. I've played in bands and I've listened to bands. I've written country, rock and blues songs. Basically, music has been the one constant passion in my life. Others come and go, but music has been there as long as I can remember.

So I decided it would be fun to identify, list and discuss my all-time favorite records, and here's how I am going to do it. I'll work through my music library from A to Z, listing and discussing my favorite records. I don't know how many records will be on the list when I finish, but I am shooting for between 50 and 75.

So without further adieu, the first record on the list.

5 Chinese Brothers are/were a five piece alternative country band based in New York. Their music is on the folk rock side of the alternative country spectrum. All of their records are very good, but their first one, Singer, Songwriter, Beggarman, Thief is my favorite. By the time this record was released in 1992, the band (who are neither Chinese nor brothers) had been playing together for 10 years. The quality of the songwriting and the playing shows it.

If I Ain't Falling, the lead off track, is an unapologetic rocker about the need to find your own path, even if there are wrong turns along the way:

"You're getting bored when you're living fast
You can only be sure when your time is past
A well laid plan is all right if
You're a dying man or a working stiff."

Baltimore is an accordion driven, almost Cajun influenced number about the loss and rediscovery of a hometown. She's a Waitress is the first fine example of the band's Loudon Wainwright-like ability to make songs that are equally funny and affecting. Who hasn't fallen for a waitress at some point? I certainly have my own waitress story.

Don't Regret is a stripped down ode to the moment:

"Please don't promise to be true
With words that you'll forget
You don't need to believe in me
When all you know is that I haven't hurt you yet
Don't know about tomorrow so just let tomorrow be
Don't regret, don't regret."

I could go into great detail about the virtues of every other song on the record, such as the hilarious ode to Paul Cezanne. In sum, this is one of those rare albums that have no average songs on it. Every song on this record is at least very, very good and most are excellent.

This record is a fine start to my list.

Technorati Tags:
top 50 albums, new music

Friday's Link for this week is the Graphical User Interface Gallery. This interesting site has descriptions and screen shots of many old and nearly forgotten GUIs and operating systems.

There are pages with descriptions and screen shots of Apple Lisa, At Ease (alternate Mac desktop), Amiga, OS/2, all versions of Windows, Norton Desktop for Windows, and my favorite, Microsoft Bob. I remember having a copy of Bob in my hands back in 1995 and wondering if I should buy it. I didn't and, but for this web site, I would never have had the pleasure of seeing Bob and the original Rover (who is still running around in the seach boxes in Windows XP).

The GUI Gallery is a neat trip down memory lane for anyone who has used computers for any length of time. Seeing the Apple II desktop again reminded me of the many hours I spent back in the mid-eighties playing Island Apventure, a game my brother in law had on his Apple II.

Island Apventure was the first of 4 computer games that have captivated me over the years. The others are Starflight (still my all time favorite game), Sim City and Civilization. Civ IV is coming out soon and I am trying to decide if I am too old to play computer games. I hope not, because there's no way I will be able to resist buying it.

Technorati Tags:
favorite links

This is the second in a two part series. Part 1 is here.

In Part 1 I talked about redesigning Newsome.Org and shared some things I learned in the process.

Here, also in no particular order, are some other things I have learned.

5) While a nice, functional design is important (for example, I love to read John Dvorak's blog, but I find the layout and design, particularly the middle part where the primary content is, to be distracting), content is king. Content can be many things: new or helpful information, humor, or just your thoughts on the latest episode of Lost. In fact, several of the blogs I read regularly are primarily online diaries where the blogger discusses whatever happened that day. I used to have a friend (where are you Steve Garner?) who could tell a story about taking out the trash and keep the whole room enrapt. If you provide useful and interesting content, you will eventually get readers. Granted, it's hard to think of something useful to say every day (much less several times a day), and post shrinkage is a common traffic killer. The saving grace is that every post does not have to be a full length article. People like to connect and maintain a connection. Even a short comment or interesting link will keep me coming back to the blogs I read.

6) Make it a 2-way street. I learned when developing ACCBoards.Com that you can get a click or two pretty easily. The trick is to create and encourage conversations. Once people start conversing, a community begins to form and people will spend more than a few seconds on the site. The so called "A-List" bloggers understand this, and they often carry on discussions about common topics spread over their sites. Once you get used to "talking" via trackbacks, comments and common topics, other people will join in. People turn into a group which turns into a crowd, etc.

7) Use media to enhance what you're saying and doing. Castpost is an excellent site that will host video, currently for free. I have posted one old and one new video project here via Castpost and will post more shortly. Radio Blog is a free program that allows you to post audio files on your site.

8) Get indexed by Technorati even if its hard to get set up. If you keep trying, it will happen. Other sites like del.icio.us , PubSub and Bloglines can help add features and spread the word about your site.

9) Give love to get love. I always link back to sites that inspire me to write about a topic. I always link in my post to a site that I trackback to. If people comment on my posts, I try to comment on their site when I have something to add. Over time, other bloggers will come to recognize your name and be more likely to give you a link or two in return.

10) Have fun and don't take yourself too seriously. Nothing turns me off more than someone who feels the need to tell me how smart or clever they are. Just be yourself and write about something you find interesting- if you're smart and clever people will figure that out on their own. Few of us get paid for writing these blogs, so it needs to be fun or it's a misuse of our precious free time.

Technorati Tags:Website Creation, Blog Add-Ons

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, the PC Doctor, agrees with me that RSS is fighting an uphill battle for acceptance by the masses.

He cites this survey by Nielson/Netratings that found that most blog readers have no idea what RSS is. If blog readers don't know what it is, imagine how few occasional internet surfers know. Adrian talks a little about the "chrome" and how the users are hooked on the "shiny stuff." I think there's a lot of truth to that, but my take on RSS is that it has two things working against it: that most non-geeks don't know what it is, much less how to use it (a position supported by the survey), and that a lot of the ancillary content on a web site is left out of the RSS feeds. Many of the hacks on Tom Evslin's excellent site are designed to address this problem by bringing this extra content into RSS feeds.

One we get the extra content into the feeds, then we have to educate the world about RSS (or whatever we ultimately decide to call it), then we have to teach the average web surfer how to use an aggregator, then we have to.... You get the picture.

Technorati Tags:
RSS

Business Week is reporting that Google is reaching out to the other IM players in an effort to provide interconnectivity:

"Georges Harik, Google's director of product management, says the company has opened communications with AOL and Yahoo, offering them interoperability on the Google Talk network free, and it will soon contact Microsoft."

For the reasons I described last night, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft don't want interconnectivity. This is another brilliant move by Google. One of two things will happen:

(1) these companies will begrudgingly agree to interconnect, fearing the bad press they will get if they say no. In the scenario, Google wins because it seems, based on early reviews, to have a clutter and ad-free interface that people will like.

(2) these companies will say no and continue the battle for the user base. In this scenario, Google wins because there will be a lot of bad press painting the other companies as bad citizens and Google as the great uniter.

Either way Google wins.

Bonus thought: Google would own the internet now if it had bought Flickr before Yahoo did.

Technorati Tags:IM, google talk

The web is in a tither about the pending release of Google Talk, an IM program by everyone's favorite company. IM, or instant messaging, programs allow users to text message and share files over the internet more or less instantly. Increasingly, these programs are expanding their features to add audio chat, video chat and even VOIP telephone calls.

I've used IM programs a little. I started out with ICQ a few years ago, then migrated to AOL IM (or AIM for short), and ended up using Windows Messenger (now called MSN Messenger to fool the feds into thinking that it's not embedded in Windows). Yahoo also has a widely used program. Now there's a new player in the game, and anything by Google will quickly become a force to be reckoned with.

Why did I keep changing IM programs? It's simple, I was chasing the user base. Since these programs do not communicate with each other, I kept changing programs based on which one I thought most people I wanted to communicate with were using. Let me be clear about this: generally speaking, these programs use proprietary protocols that only allow you to communicate with other users of the same program. If you're using MSN Messenger, you can't send an IM to someone who uses AIM, etc. This is why these programs have not and will not be widely accepted by adults and businesses. Some businesses use security risks are the reason not to implement IM, but companies said the same thing about email back in the day.

Why don't they allow interconnectivity? Because they are competing based on user base and not on features and reliability. AIM has most of the AOL users (though you do not have to be an AOL customer to use it) and a large base of other users. Yahoo (the only company that can compete head to head with Google based on anything other than a large war chest of dollars) has a big user base. Microsoft has a program that is embedded into Windows, a large user base and a war chest of billions it can use to remain in the game. Each of these companies wants to win the user base war. Sharing protocols and allowing interconnectivity would turn IM programs into a commodity. These companies who are competing to become the one-stop internet shop for the masses do not want IM programs to become a commodity.

Kids are better at technology than adults and will go to great lengths to communicate away from the ears and eyes of adults. While this creates headaches for parents, it ensures a regular supply of users for all of the major IM programs. If a kid has to install 2 or 3 IM programs to communicate with her friends, she'll do it. If the IT department at my firm has to do that, forget it. I'll be told to use email and forget about the 2 minutes that I might save if I could use an IM program.

Then there's the over-40 problem. For most people over 40 sending an email attachment or uploading a photo to Flickr is a major technological accomplishment. Trying to get these same people to understand and install an IM program and then to deal with it when they can't communicate with Aunt Jane, who uses a different program? That's a recipe for failure.

Until IM programs become like telephones, where the provider and the manufacturer of the telephone have nothing to do with who you can and can't call, IM will simply not be adopted by grown-ups and businesses. At least not until today's teenagers grow up and run companies or, more importantly, IT Departments.

So I may install Google Talk when it's released tomorrow. But if I do, it's only because I am curious. It won't be because I think I'll be able to communicate with anyone I know. To do that, I'll have to use the telephone.

Dwight Silverman is blogging about Google Talk and Download Squad has a review and some screen shots.

Technorati Tags:IM, google talk

My friend Duncan Wells has a new website. Duncan is a songwriter, playwright, performer and actor. My kids know him as "daddy's friend who sent us the CD we listen to all the time." His Love & Safety Club CD has been in the regular rotation in my wife's car for years. Duncan has written and recorded some of the best children's music I have ever heard, and I have heard a lot. In fact, I would rank Duncan and Dan Zanes at the very top of the genre. Duncan also writes and performs great music for grown-ups and is active in the theatre.

The web site is new, and is a bit of a work in progress, but Duncan is an incredibly talented guy who makes great music for the whole family.

Technorati Tags:
children's music

At long last our landcaping project is finished. We bought the house next door in May. It took us weeks and weeks to get a demolition permit from the City of Bellaire. Then we demolished the house, brought in some fill to level the ground and hired a landscaper to build two play areas, a deck, a fence, a sprinkler system, lights, flower beds and grass. The job was finished earlier this week. We are looking forward to enjoying the new yard, and it is a treat to look out of the kitchen window and see grass and plantings instead of a fence and the top of an old house.

Pictures of the work in progress and the final result on my Flickr Page.


Technorati Tags:
landscaping

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play.

Starting this week, I am going to add a little commentary about some of the artist, songs, albums, etc.

With Every Wish - Bruce Springsteen (Human Touch) (1)
Walk in the Sunshine - Bob Weir (Ace) (2)
Three Days Straight - Ray Wylie Hubbard (Eternal & Lowdown) (3)
Blue - Lucinda Williams (Essence) (4)
Tonight's the Night - Neil Young (Tonight's the Night) (5)
We Won't Dance - Vince Gill (When I Call Your Name) (6)
Angelita - The Backsliders (Southern Lines) (7)
Already Broken - Hadacol (All in Your Head) (8)
The Hurting Business - Chuch Prophet (The Hurting Business) (9)
Bad Night at the Whiskey - The Byrds (Box Set) (10)

(1) I more or less agree with the horde of reviewers that found this album lacking by Bruce's standards. The album Lucky Town, released at the same time, is a better bet.

(2) Really a Grateful Dead record released as a solo record as part of the Dead's Warner Brothers record deal. A fine record with some great songs, including the best studio version of Playing in the Band, Looks Like Rain and the song Cassidy is named after.

(3) Probably my favorite song on one of my favorite Ray Wylie records. I hung out with Ray Wylie many years ago between sets at a long gone in favor of more yuppie townhouses Houston bar. He is a good guy and impressed me as a deep thinker, even though we were totally liquored up by the beginning of the third set (during which I prevailed upon him to play his awesome version of Driving Wheel 3 times in a row). It is both pleasing and not surprising that he has become one of the main voices in the Americana philosophy-in-songwriting movement.

(4) Lucinda recently completed her Nanci Griffith cycle: immense love upon discovery; loyalty through questionable changes in musical direction; frustration; abandonment. I loved her first 4 records. Car Wheels was a much anticipated disappointment. I didn't like Essence at all. World Without Tears was better, giving me hope that she can avoid a Nanci-like fall into the abyss of artsy-fartsy self-importance.

(5) An almost perfect record by one of the greatest songwriters of our time. If I ever do a Top 25 Albums list, this one would be near the top.

(6) I'm sort of over him now, but Vince and Travis Tritt led the much needed country music resurgence of the late 1980s.

(7) Throwin' Rocks at the Moon was better, and the live EP From Raleigh, NC (which contains Lexington Avenue, one of my favorite songs) is best. But this is a good record by the last standing member of a NC band that was once compared to Gram Parsons.

(8) Hadacol plays a good, hard-edged version of alternative country. The band is a regular on Rancho Radio.

(9) I was somewhat of a fan of Green on Red, sometimes credited as a forefather of the No Depression movement that spawned Uncle Tupelo and most of my other favorite bands. His solo work is much more mellow and introspective, but it works. This record is perhaps the least accessible of his solo records (start with Homemade Blood), but it's still a good listen.

(10) Every band I like, every band I ever played in and every song I write is influenced in some way by The Byrds (I Know Better Now, being one example where I strived for their sound). Roger McGuinn has a blog.

Technorati Tags:
music reviews

Friday's Link for this week is ReligionFacts.com. I love the idea of an unbiased site where I can read and learn about the world's religions. This site was created as part of the author's preparation for a doctoral program in the history of religion. I love this quote from the FAQ:

What religion are you, if any?

I'm not telling and it's not relevant anyway. ReligionFacts.com is not intended to promote or support any one religion and I have done my best to keep any and all personal biases out of it.

In addition to a lot of factual information about various religions, the site contains links to news stories involving religion and some very well written original articles. I am going to spend a lot of time reading this site. I hope the author writes a lot!

I found out about this web site from Eamonn Sullivan's web site, which I enjoy and read regularly.

Technorati Tags:
religion, favorite links

The Camping Crew made the front page of American Camping magazine. Click the photo to see a larger copy.

Gigi and Jumpy at
Star City in Moscow with
Astronaut Doug Wheelock

Cassidy and Delaney's grandparents, Gigi and Papa, are world travelers. They recently went to London and Moscow. Jumpy, one of Cassidy's bunnies, went along with them and had a great time. Jumpy got to see some neat places and even got to visit Star City and hang out with Doug Wheelock, one of America's top astronauts! You can see some more photos of Jumpy's trip here.

Jumpy is the newest in a long line of Cassidy's "Traveling Bunnies." Here's a picture of the original Traveling Bunny on the cover of Money Magazine.

I am a huge college sports fan. I watch a lot of college basketball and football. On the other hand, I am not a pro sports fan, as I find the idea of watching a bunch of greedy rich guys playing for teams owned by other rich guys generally unappealing. I am, however, a member of a fantasy football league. We are about to enter our third year.

When the younger guys in my office approached me about starting a league, I wasn't interested. I haven't followed NFL football since the Snake was throwing passes to Fred Biletnikoff. But they persisted and I gave in. I spent a couple of hours learning the players the night before our first draft. I went to the Super Bowl the first year, and lost to the other old guy in the league. Last year I scored more points than any other team, but lost in the first round of the playoffs.

This year the league is expanding to allow two new guys in. The members have been fighting like only a bunch of lawyers can about how to structure the expansion draft. The new guys think that the expansion draft is designed to put them in the cellar for years (it's a partial keeper league). Some of the old members think the expansion draft will result in two new dynasties. One guy is threatening to Kip-out (a term named after one of the founding team owners who left the league last year to play in another league with his "real friends").

Until today, I have stayed out of the debate, saying only that I will abide by whatever the majority decides. But after reading a few email bombs and a set of proposed rules that make css seem simple, I decided to come up with a set of rules that would be equally ludicrous and brilliant. I think I hit both; the other league members think I only achieved the first. So since my league won't enact it, here is the Newsome Fairness in Football Plan (the "NFFP"). It is designed for the expansion or revamping of an existing league, but could be modified for use with a new league. It assumes a 10 member league.

1) Put the 30 highest paid players (assuming a league salary cap) in a hat and draw them out randomly, 3 for each team. If you don't have a salary cap, you could use some other criteria to identify the best players.

2) Then have a 5 round straight draft for 5 of the other players. The order of the draft should be randomized before each round.

3) Then have a four round auction draft with each team owner to have a randomly generated number of points to spend between 60 and 80. This assumes that the typical league salary cap would be 100. You can adjust the number if necessary.

4) Then give each team owner the right to take one player from every other team, with each team to lose no more than one player. Players that have been taken from a team already could not be taken again.

5) Then every player on each roster is randomly assigned a salary of either 5, 10, 15 or 20 points, for use during next year's draft. Again, this assumes a typical salary cap of 100.

6) After the following season, the league would be a modified keeper league where any player whose total fantasy points for the prior season is an odd number can be kept at the prior year salary plus a number equal to positive difference, if any, between, the last digit of the then current year minus 3 (for example next year it would be 6-3 for a 3 point bump). Any player whose total points for the prior season is even cannot be kept and must be placed back in the draft pool. This ensures that some good players get returned to the draft pool and adds an element of luck in rebuilding that would give the owners of bad teams more incentive to stay active.

7) Prior to future drafts, one team owner to be determined in the same manner as the NBA lottery (worst team gets 10 balls in the bucket, next worst 9, etc.) would have the right to pick one player off of any other team's roster and keep that player at the same salary as the prior year, plus or minus 5 points to be determined by a coin flip by the commissioner or, if the commissioner is one of the teams involved, by any other team owner. The coin flip would occur after the player has been selected and immediately prior to the draft.

Ludicrous on its face, yes. But if you think about it, it sounds incredibly fun to me.

Too bad my league won't enact it. If anyone wants to start a league with these rules, let me know. Maybe I'll Kip-out too.

Technorati Tags:
fantasy football

This is a perfect example of what makes Flickr such a phenomenal tool. I've always been a interested in birds. When I see an unusual bird, I like to find out what kind it is and learn a little about it. My mom was a devoted bird watcher and I inherited a little of her love of birds. I used to keep a list of the birds I have seen in the yard.

This interesting and useful Flickr group contains photos of birds from all over the world. I wish the tags were more organized (i.e., by type of bird and location). Otherwise this is a great collaborative effort by bird watchers from all over the world.

Just another reason to love Flickr.

Technorati Tags:
birds

Here's a happy cure for my Technorati Blues. This page, which granted contains a lot of XHTML errors, was not getting indexed and I wanted it to be indexed so my posts would show up on Technorati. I don't know if it was my pleading emails or some changes I made to the HTML on this page, but Newsome.Org is now being indexed by Technorati.

I approached the problem in 2 very different ways:

First, I sent a bunch of pleading emails to Technorati support. I got a response to my first one as mentioned in the prior post, but no response to my fiollow-ups. Nevertheless, there may have been a fix on the Technorati end that kick-started the indexing of this page. If so, thanks Technorati.

Second, I did a little research and added some tags to the html on this page that were designed to make it easier for the Technorati spider to find and index my posts. Immediately after I made these changes my posts started showing up on Technorati, but that may have been a coincidence (though I tend to think not).

Here's what I did.

While searching for an answer to my indexing problems, I found the Publisher Guide in the Technorati help pages. It contains this paragraph:

How can I better identify each post?

Technorati breaks up your weblog's home page into smaller sections such as posts and sidebars. You can help Technorati's spiders properly identify a unique post and its proper link destination by adding a link with a defined relationship of "bookmark" for each post. For example:

<a href="http://blog.bloghost.com/post1" rel="bookmark">Post title</a>.

That sounded promising so I found the BlogItemTitle section in my Blogger template:

<blogitemtitle><h2><$BlogItemTitle$><a name="">">/a></h2></blogitemtitle>and replaced it with the following text that does three things: makes my title a link to the post page for the particular post in question; adds the above referenced bookmark tag; and includes a second tag for the post title:

<blogitemtitle><span class="PostTitle"><a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$">" rel="bookmark"title="<$BlogItemTitle$>"><h2><$BlogItemTitle$></h2></a></span></blogitemtitle>.Within minutes of pinging Technorati, my posts began showing up.

Technorati Tags:
technorati, getting indexed

About 8 weeks ago I decided to try to drag my friends and family into the 21st century by sending them invitations to join Flickr and share photos. The friend group consisted of our close friends who we see several times a week. We do stuff together all the time, so the pictures I take of my kids generally include a few of their kids. The prospect of seeing and downloading my "friends and family" photos sounded like good incentive. The family group consisted of Raina, my sister and my cousin Janet. These are the only family members I know of that meet the requirements: (a) they have a computer and (b) I have their email address.

Part One (signing up): I sent out "friend" invitations to Arnie (I didn't have his wife Christina's separate email at the time), Greg, Yvette, Ray, Sharon, Kyle, Martha, Dave and Lenora and "family" invitations to Raina, Anne and cousin Janet. I figured all the moms would sign up and the other dads (except for Arnie, who is fairly tech-savy and always willing to try new things) would blow me off. I figured 2 out of the 3 family members would sign up.

The results were a little surprising. Arnie signed up right away, as predicted, but so did the rest of the friend group. Greg and Yvette (spouses), Ray and Sharon (spouses) and Kyle and Martha (spouses) each signed up separately and Dave and Lenora (spouses) signed up together. Raina signed up right away, but Anne and cousin Janet ignored multiple invitations. At last count, I had sent Anne 12 invitations. I suppose they are paying me back for many years as a poor correspondent family-wise.

Part Two (uploading photos): Here's where the pack started to separate. In a big surprise, Ray was the first one to upload photos, uploading 5 shots from Russia right away. Ray travels on business a lot, so this is not all that surprising. Ray is also a guy, however, and my theory (perhaps now disproved) was that the moms would do the heavy lifting photo-wise. Arnie put a bunch of vacation photos up right away, and of course I have uploaded a lot of photos. So far the only mom to break into the scoring column is Yvette with 5 photos from the hottest (temperature wise) swim meet in recorded history. Nada for all of the other folks, demonstrating once again that you can lead a horse to water and all that.

Part Three (adding friends to your contacts): Because the invitations came from me, everyone who signed up became one of my contacts automatically, either as friend or family, as the case may be. One of the many wonderful features of Flickr is that you can upload photos that can only be seen by people in the category (family, friend, public, etc.) you select. So in order for our group to share photos, everyone else has to manually add the other group members as a contact (family for spouses; friend for everyone else). I sent out an email with instructions on how and why to do this. A few people tried. One or two succeeded, but based on the questions I got, most were either actually or conveniently confused about the process. These are 40 something year old professionals with graduate degrees. I can't imagine how hard it would be with parents or grandparents (as an orphan, I am sadly exempt from that hair-pulling experience).

Part Four (where do I go from here): I would say that my Flickr experiment has been, at best, only a partial success. Raina and our friends can now view my photos (including many from our recent camping trip). Arnie and maybe a few others will explore and enjoy the wonder that is Flickr. But the fact is that most people my age and probably everyone older still think of photos as paper things- not digital things (more on our transition from paper to digital in a forthcoming post). You can teach grown-ups technology, but it's not easy (watching the older lawyers in my office wage war with email attachments is further proof of this). My little group will probably use Flickr, at least a little, if I keep hounding them. But it won't be easy for me or for them.

Technorati Tags:
flickr, digital photography

I added a new A-Z installment on the Err Bear Music page. It's a hard rocker called Jack's Blues.

In a little over 2 months since we relaunched Rancho Radio, it has moved steadily up the charts. Yesterday it cracked the Top 20, becoming the 20th most popular Americana station in the Live365 family.

Americana is a broad category, covering basic Americana, bluegrass, folk, alternative country and more. Since I wrote the script that selects the weekly playlist automatically out of our 26,000 song library, the number of listeners has grown significantly. My guess is that is because we are playing a lot of deep album cuts from our extensive alternative country catalog.

Give Rancho Radio a listen. If you like it, tell your friends about it. We'd love to see it move up the number 1!

Technorati Tags:
alternative country

Tomorrow (August 14) is my sister Anne's Birthday. She is a great sister and a wonderful aunt to Cassidy and Delaney. Everyone at Rancho DeNada wishes her a happy, happy birthday and we can't wait until her next visit.

Come see us soon, Sis. We love you!

One more very cool Google Maps hack. Sign by finding your place in the world (you can drag the map around with your mouse and zoom in and out) and clicking on it.

Perhaps this one won't be killed by spam the way our old guestbook was.

John Walkenbach is doing an experiment to see how easy it is to find blog references.

Given my extreme difficulty getting Technorati to index this page (no response to my last pleading email), I'm in.

I'm getting tired of my self-imposed TIVO deathwatch, but I simply can't help myself. PVR Wire confirms that DirecTV will soon stop marketing TIVO.

DirecTV says people who ask will still be able to get a TIVO. Of course it also says "if you don't have a (digital video recorder) from us, you won't be getting the DirecTV experience." You can also still get an 8-Track tape player if you want.

The bottom line is that this is going to end up either:

Crappy: DirecTV pushes some lesser box on its subscribers, but at least switches out existing HDTV TIVOs at no cost to the customer. Then all we have to do is pay Weaknees to upgrade that box like we did for the TIVO.

Really Crappy: DirecTV pushes some lesser box on its subscribers and makes us pay for it. This would be really stupid because it would lead to the loss of a bunch of subscribers, myself included.

My prediction: They will switch out the boxes if you agree to a one or two year contract.

Technorati Tags:
TIVO, DirecTV

Steve Rubel has written an interesting post about the future of web design in the face of the