Disqus - Latest Comments for pB

Re: Software Review - NotePad Alternatives: NotePad++

pB — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:42:23 -0000

Nice review Bill. Good job.

Re: Software Review - NotePad Alternatives: NotePad++

pB — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:45:23 -0000

Gotta say that commenting experience was one of the worst ever. Don't like Disqus much.

Re: Software Review - NotePad Alternatives: NotePad++

pB — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:27:31 -0000

...and "1 point" WTF?

Re: Software Review - NotePad Alternatives: NotePad++

pB — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:44:14 -0000

Sorry, uncalled for. Been havin a bad week, and the comment frustration copped it. Thanks for letting me rant.

Hmm, seems a problem maybe once the commenting section is opened up the rh column is too wide, shrinking the comment box down, but that could just be coz I'm on IE6.

Sorry again.

Re: Windows Live Writer 2008 CTP – Live Blogging It … sorta

pB — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:11:49 -0000

I'd try it, except vista pages killed my blog....

:(

Re: Making a buck is cool – Pissing me off isn’t

pB — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:33:53 -0000

I think those ads are absolutely perfect. They show any potential purchaser just how obtrusive and annoying any app they install from symantec will be.

For the day I had my new laptop, until I could make time to get rid of that pre-installed crud, I was forever clicking symantec/norton pop-ups at the most inconvenient of times

This is what we need - more truth in advertising. ;)

Re: The Great Blog Weeding of 2008

pB — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:42:07 -0000

Twitter & friendfeed are easily enough mashed back to a blog running on the right platform, and the flickr api is flexible enough to deal with it too. These are web 2.0 to the core.

AFAIC FF will forever mean firefox, using it as an abbreviation for friendfeed confused the crap out of me for a moment.

PS while not a grammar/spelling nazi I found that post really difficult to read - had to concentrate hard and tried 3 times, worth it in the end though.

Re: Windows Live Writer 2008 CTP – Live Blogging It … sorta

pB — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:52:50 -0000

Vistapages appears to have unmelteddown now, so I'm eagerly awaiting that plugins post :)

Re: Notification Hell – leave my email out of it

pB — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:03:38 -0000

I've been looking at different types of aggregation recently, and I know pretty much zip about any of it, but it seems to me that sort of thing could be done using something like yahoo pipes, which could then generate an rss feed or something from all of the relevant sites that you are interested in.

Could be something worth trying at some point.

Re: How to tell PR jerks don’t have a clue who you are

pB — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:13:43 -0000

Just like if they asked my wife they would know that I have no need for their "herbal alternatives" - doesn't stop em spamming tho.

;)

Re: Originality doesn’t equal popularity

pB — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:47:15 -0000

I guess there are a number of issues rolled into one here:

1. Do true leaders do anything simply in order to be popular? No, most of them do their thing and public opinion be damned. If it is new and interesting and different it garners a following, at which point some sell out, cash in or monetise their popularity and continue in the same vein while others continue to innovate.

2. What is popularity anyway? As many have noticed, a lot of what goes on in the blogosphere these days is simply white noise, As I read on another blog recently, facebook status is a prime example, if you friend more than a couple of bloggers you will see your homepage fill up with "bobby macgee @ fredflinstone lol nice post". How many sites with dizzying numbers in their feedburner stats actually have their syndicated feeds actually read by humans, rather than just "one click catch up"? What does the technorati A list really mean? How many of the blogs I regularly read belong on the Alist? I have no idea, I go back to them because their content continues to be relevant to my interests. When it ceases to be relevant to my interests I just frequent it less often, not leave altogether.

3. The question of whether or not to write a short or long post? I guess it depends on the day and the author, as another commenter said, sometimes less is more. As a clever blogger not too far from here said, it's about the conversation. It will always be hard to know how something you have written will be received, and it is particularly important when trying to make a living from a blog. In all fields of human endeavour success never comes from doing things half-heartedly.

If you have something to say and you mean it with all your heart, then put all your heart into it, just as popularity doesn't mean quality, (how many "coming of age" movies have illustrated that?) neither does word count.

Show us your vision and take us there. Boingboing's vision/mission is to be a directory of wonderful things, it takes us there (not me, cos I have other sources for wonderful things like the ones you pointed out in your post - and even better) I imagine every contributor thinks to themselves "wow this is cool I need to add it to boinggboing"

I'll stop rambling now as this has gotten way too long.

Re: Just a quickie plug-in suggestion for Windows Live Writer

pB — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:05:37 -0000

I can has lolcat pix plzkthxbai?

Re: Rewarding screw-ups for being just that

pB — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:34:23 -0000

As the old saying goes: "Nothing succeeds like success". Success is the thing, and will always be the thing. Success is not the problem. The problem is in the measures that the majority of the population use to evaluate success.

Take you for example. Go on. You run your own blog, that is read and commented on by some very clever people, and some dumbasses like me me.

You have kept together a great community of highly opinionated, diverse, intelligent, crazy, international forum members over many many years who all respect you and what you have done, and will support you through thick and thin.

You have a great relationship with your wife who will also support you through thick and thin, as you will for her.

I'd go so far as to say if I showed this list (which is only the beginning) to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Robert Scoble (why not?), President Obama, or my Dad, and asked them "Would you consider this person successful?" They would all answer "Yes"

The reason being that they all know the value of things, and won't allow others to dictate to them wht success really means.

Success is yours. Take it., enjoy it, you deserve it.

{Just don't lose your crank ;) }

Re: Is it wrong to blog in your undies? Oh wait I’m not wearing any

pB — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:39:28 -0000

LMAO

Re: I hate to break it to you but Windows 7 has a killer feature

pB — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:40:32 -0000

Thanks Steven, this is a post I can use.

Re: I may be a lot of things but I am not a brand

pB — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:15:55 -0000

Changed your tune on this one recently?

I remember some advice to another blog start up not so long ago about using their personal pic as an avatar to make sure they got their "personal brand" out there, or do I misremember - to paraphrase a washed up ex-president?

Re: I may be a lot of things but I am not a brand

pB — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:19:46 -0000

Sorry, read it again and realised I pretty uch skipped over para 2. I guess that shows that I pay attention to what you say, at least most of the time.

Re: [WinExtra Rebranding] The Name game isn’t a game

pB — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:36:45 -0000

Just remember that 'naked' anything is likely to be blocked by corporate firewalls, raise suspicions in company IT depts, and probably get a lot of mail from any naked domain caught up in spam filters.

The naked leader site (which is about open and honest leadership in business had to change their newsletter to N. Leader, when suddenly over a weekend a whole bunch of folk with an outsourced mailserver failed to receive their newsletter.

Combine naked and social in the same domain and you are likely to run foul of all sorts of filters, thanks to the scourge of spammers and porn merchants even domain names have to be PC these days. Good Luck!

Re: Twitter fallout after the Oprah Effect

pB — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:07:15 -0000

LOL, right on.

I don't use twitter because, well I simply don't use twitter. To stop using twitter just because everybody else is seems kinda, well, dumb.

To stop using it because it no longer meets your needs is one thing, but to stop using it just to prove how much of a staunch non-conformist trailblazer you are is just stupid.

Clearly tho the internet is just chock full of stupid people.

Some people even spend time, energy and their celebrity status using twitter to convince the world that a narrow minded dumb bimbo is indeed an, albeit pretty, narrow minded dumb bimbo, just because their vested interest du jour got the smack down at a beauty pageant.

Using twitter to convince the world at large that all states shoud legalise gay marriage is kinda like using a beauty pageant to feed the hungry and promote world peace.

Re: A few bad eggs could kill Twitter

pB — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:50:55 -0000

Perhaps with the rise of the 140 character quote, we'll see the demise of words like methodology. ;)

Re: Widgetizing WordPress Themes

pB — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:59:01 -0000

I really like this post Larry, along with the others you've done illustrating how even those without advanced PHP skills can tweak things the way they like them, and build on the excellent work of others. Building a whole theme from scratch is fairly daunting to a lot of people, and these mods can really help.

Keep up the good work!

Re: The Sidebar Bog Down

pB — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:54:59 -0000

I hear you Larry! Over the holidays I was staying with my parents, who have a 33.6K connection - it's true!

Most of my daily "must read sites" went unread as I couldn't even stand to wait for the header image to load in many cases.

While we were staying my Mom got an invitation from one of her cousins to join facebook, she was curious - sounded good and so she clicked. I don't think she will ever join facebook and she will probably also never see the page load. She even misinterpreted the invitation which went something like "if you want to keep in touch with me join facebook". A couple of days later she said to me "If the only way to contact him is through that facebook thing then I guess we will lose touch." I had to explain to her that facebook was one *good* way to keep up with him, but not the only way. Still, the page took so damn long to load on her 36.6k connection that she would rather have lost contact with him than persevere, so what would that tell you about her chances of sticking around to read a blog that takes too long to load, even if it was on a subject dear to her heart?

Another good post, I wish other blogs I read would take it to heart.

Re: Clearing Up The Confusion

pB — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:13:38 -0000

Doh!

...and now by liberal use of the word thesis you have probably gone on to increase the likelihood of getting hit from a google search on the terms "diy themes thesis".

May I suggest to anyone that does by merry happenchance stumble across this site from such a search: add the RSS to your reader, and you might just learn enough from Larry to be able to one day not need any kind of support when it comes to custom themeing.

If you're here because you run diythemes and are wondering where all your thesis traffic went, then I suggest you offer Larry a super awesome consulting gig that he can't refuse. ;)

This guy knows his stuff, (and he likes tropical fish).

Re: Why United States will remain dominant in tech…

pB — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:06:19 -0000

What is the difference between Iran censoring Blogs, and you "moderating" comments?

Any way you cut it, it amounts to an attempt at shutting down criticism.

Saying that the US dominates Tech just goes to show how deluded and separated from reality you have become.

Even if your hypothesis is correct then for as long as your borders remain open you will remain at the forefront.

That is a rock solid plan for driving innovation & leadership.

Yeah right....

Re: Why United States will remain dominant in tech…

pB — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:57:02 -0000

W^L+:

I don't think there is any doubt that some people, under some governments face persecution, at some time. Iraq (both then and now), Iran, China etc are but few examples.

The moot point however; is the stated claim by Scoble, that this persecution leads to immigration to the USA, where there is no persecution, and that this eutopia leads the USA on to world dominance in tech matters.

The argument is as facile as saying that the USA dominates in Tech because it has been a nation at war for so long, and the military is driving investment in technology that has spin-off in civilian applications.

Re: Microsoft sending free computers to bloggers?

pB — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 04:02:18 -0000

The two immutable forces on earth eh?

Gravity & Greed. Look at all the gimmie gimmies clamouring for their free stuff even though they probably can't review for nuts.

Disclosure is a fine thing, but even so each occurence chips away at the credibility of the reviewer.

Would you rely on Kevin trudeau's medical advice?

Chuck Norris or Christie Brinkley's fitness equipment choices, knowing that their opinions were offered without fear or favour?

If so then what would that say about your credibility?

Re: Jake’s video of Edwards

pB — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:06:12 -0000

Of course "Citizen Journalists" will never resort to posting out of context sounbites in order to further their own political agendas.

Yeah right...

Re: The Zeitgeist of Scoble

pB — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 14:41:00 -0000

I bet the bard's average word was longer than 4 characters...

;o)

Re: Let’s get rid of sploggers

pB — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 03:32:46 -0000

Vanity search after the explosive burst onto the political scene?

;o)

Re: Things I learned

pB — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 16:09:22 -0000

I had a comment, but it was about as long as your original post :o)

http://yeahsurewhateverok.wordpress.com/2006/12/31/22/

Is Edwards a PC/Mac or linux guy?
etc

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

pB — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:40:38 -0000

Strangely enough, our household used to swear by XP, and now there isn't a single XP machine in our house, and life is honestly much simpler.

My wife got a new desktop at almost the exact same time they released the W7 beta, so it was a logical candidate, particularly since she was running win2k before that. She seems really happy with w7. My main leisure desktop that is used mostly for web email & multimedia etc, was an XP box, that ran into several issues, that i could never resolve. I'm now using a variant of linux for these tasks, and have done so since a few months before the w7 beta was released. Thanks to synaptic, and a helpful Open source community, life is a whole lot easier.

I have a laptop that ran vista, and had been toying with moving it to either W7 or Linux. I recently loaded W7 for one primary reason - Media player 12. That is the only UpnP media server I have been able to find that just works with my new TV, the setup hassles I was having with vista and some of the 3rd party apps, meant that after a lot of research I stopped with the first one that worked.

The other great thing is al of the games that used to work ok on XP and then refused to run on vista now work again on W7.

I think most Joe/Jane computer users are likely to be using vista rather XP as they will have gotten their computer at a discount from a big box retailer using easy credit with vista bundled and will come by w7 the same way.

For me, if w7 had been more of the same vista retardedness, I would have continued with linux. If my wife had disliked w7 i would have tried getting her to install linux - (I had already convinced her to give it a try when the w7 beta was released while the new desktop was being shipped).

The challenge for me now, is that up until now, the price of running w7 RC has been the same as running Linux, with a similar ease of use. I am prepared to bear a reasonable cost to use w7, as it is a really good OS, but if the cost becomes unreasonable (after all the laptop is simply an upgrade from a Vista home premium), then I'm likely to continue with linux.

I am actually amazed at how easy life is since changing to these 2 OSes

Re: RibbonBar mimicry from OpenOffice – too funny

pB — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:22:32 -0000

I think the ribbon *is* more efficient, it was a surprise to me when it showed up, and the learning curve was very short but rather steep. In my case it also coincided with a rapidly approaching deadline, an almost finished report and a quick switch to a computer using the new office.

Re: It’s not just American TV shows getting pirated

pB — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:22:40 -0000

In fact there are a number of torrent sites dedicated to only programming from specific countries, whether it be UK, SA, NZ, Aus, Fr etc.