Disqus - Latest Comments for engtech

Re: comparison of coComment, co.comments and commentful - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:09:05 -0000

I'll have to give co.mments a try. When I wanted to do this before, the frigging extension was so slow I never used it.

Which I should have, because it's by my internet-friend Assaf: http://blog.labnotes.org/

I love how all the services have the same name.

Re: from WordPress.com to WordPress.org - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 01:56:24 -0000

Found ya.

How's the weather over on the non-WP side of things?

You switched just to get access to Barthelme, didn't you?

Re: flowery twats - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 22:12:37 -0000

Post the address / telephone number so that this will show up in google searches.

The power of the internet makes complaining actually hurt businesses.

Re: how to display Google shared items on WordPress - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:12:06 -0000

And this is why I use del.icio.us instead of Google Reader Shared Items for sharing stuff like that. :)

http://del.icio.us/engtech/linkblog

Re: people are strange - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:55:53 -0000

always put your money on "complete idiot"

you'll never go broke

Re: sync, sync, sync - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:22:41 -0000

You can add contacts to your address book even if they don't have email addresses.

I'm storing ALL of my addresses in one place this way. Even if it's only a phone number, only an email address, only a *gasp* street address.. or a mix of the three.

Re: am I a Google whore yet ? - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:38:49 -0000

I started playing around with new blogger on the weekend (http://techilicious.blogspot.com) and I'm struck by one thing -- lack of XMLRPC support.

Sure, you can post by email but that means running everything through an RSS to email gateway of some such. Kind of frustrating.

Re: FAC51 - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:19:53 -0000

I'm guess you've watched 24 Hour Party People?

Re: Google Reader gets revamp - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 01:59:40 -0000

That's pretty funny.

Re: partial versus full fe… - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:21:15 -0000

hey, I found a search term you're #4 on google for

"partial feeds" vs "full feeds" statistics

Re: helping people write things down - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:56:29 -0000

Moleskin notebooks are handy and pocketsized.

I have the handwriting problem as well.

Re: Facebook versus LinkedIn - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:48:02 -0000

I'm kind of doing a Facebook week for the next bit. It is highly overrated. It can be good when you have a lot of real friends on it... event planning, group private messages and photo sharing are all very well done.

Re: migration of photo blog - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:24:59 -0000

You can resurrect it, you just have to create a Yahoo Id.

That's what I did.

Re: goodbye last.fm - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:18:24 -0000

I've had a lot of trouble with it lately as well.

back to itunes.

I think by using the rating systems and playlists you can get last.fm like functionality in itunes.

Re: Vista installation complete - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:39:06 -0000

How's VPN? I've heard they've cut out some VP support that was present in XP and that's causing issues with firewalls.

Re: Vista installation complete - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:34:50 -0000

heh, I totally missed that it was for your son. :)

Re: don't believe the truth - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 01:09:24 -0000

Never trust anyone.

I've gotten burned so many times from trusting that what people I work with were telling me was a fact, rather than their assumption.

Re: Web 2.0 - am I infected ? - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:13:28 -0000

Outlook work / Gmail everywhere else.

XEmacs.

Gave up on newsgroups.

Blank homepage.

Furefix 2.0.0.1.

WinXP -- although you've just convinced me to use Vista.

Emacs / Wiki / Word / Wordpress hybrid.

Employment: http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/how-to-...

Re: questions and answers - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:25:48 -0000

re: #1

I wish the rest of the world adhered to this as much as I do.

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/07/27/there-i...

Re: thin line between truth and humour - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:58:53 -0000

:)

(a single comment with :) breaks 1, but covers 2 and 3)

((the aside to explain the comment clearly breaks 2 and 3 though))

Re: power dressing in reverse - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:54:06 -0000

Surprising.

I don't usually wear the dress until after the Christmas party is in full swing.

Re: my new job - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:48:01 -0000

Congratz on the new job! We'd love to have to back at the old job. :)

Re: browser upgrades - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:02:56 -0000

I can't believe the debian guys are forking Firefox because of the friggin' logo.

Re: blog editors - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:38:55 -0000

Hit Shift-Enter on the lines where that starts happening.

Re: my head hurts - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:11:26 -0000

He's not missing much.

The B&W games are kind fun, but horribly, horribly written. They'll put your system into tailspins even when you're massively over the specifications.

Re: my worst nightmare - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:02:36 -0000

I think you'll enjoy this.

http://ninjapants.org/files/index.php?image=air...

Re: How to get dugg, increase readership and earn lots of money - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:15:01 -0000

I didn't really explain why the title is important, but one reason is search. Your title is transformed into your post slug, and having the keywords you're looking for show up in the title/url is the easiest way for search engines to find stuff.

Re: 8 things - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:28:18 -0000

re: one stone

I think I've got it.

want it back?

Re: 4 Things I Hope the FriendFeed API Enables | Charles Hudson's Weblog

engtech — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:42:38 -0000

I want me some friendfeed.com/popular real bad.

Re: My Technorati Favorites Exchange Program

engtech — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:42:07 -0000

I thought I'd make everyone's life a little bit easier:

Here is a program that will automatically favorite back everyone who has favorited you

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/technor...

Re: My Technorati Favorites Exchange Program

engtech — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:00:06 -0000

username = engtech

http://www.technorati.com/faves/?add=http://eng...

Re: http://laughingsquid.com/open-source-project-hosting-via-google-code/

engtech — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:40:21 -0000

I put together a list of the Google Code Project Hosting features here:
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/07/28/google-...

Re: Who killed Dead 2.0? It’s a mystery

engtech — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:53:14 -0000

I'd say it's bandwidth.

Enough sites picked up the story and threw links at him that he could have had a traffic spike.

Re: in which it becomes clear that scoble is, in fact, a freeloader.

engtech — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:14:03 -0000

Hi Adam, you might find this interesting.

I'm playing around to see if the wordpress.com community is interested in a post-voting/promotion feature like digg/reddit/etc. I've got a test site set up at FanPop, feel free to try it out/submit your posts.

Re: Ten Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made

engtech — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 06:34:31 -0000

I hear ya on #3, last week I wrote an unresearched rant that made it onto Slashdot. Whoops.

Re: News flash: Andrew Keen still a moron

engtech — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:38:32 -0000

Thanks for pointing Andrew Keen out. Makes for a fun read. :)

Re: cementing my place in blog history - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:50:02 -0000

Want to hear my dirty little secret?

My blog shows on techmeme if I comment on a story. So sometimes I post a really inane comment on a story just to show up on techmeme.

Examples:

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/10/17/paul-gr...
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/10/12/iceweas...

Re: Is Robert Scoble stealing or marketing?

engtech — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 05:49:20 -0000

"(mine is here)" -- missing link

---

I was very tempted to go on a nastyrant when I read this one at Scobles blog. If you are putting out an RSS feed with no ads, and someone shares it, then IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHO THE SOURCE WAS. The only way this could be an issue is:

- if they're taking a feed with embedded ads and removing the ads then sharing
- adding ads to a feed

Neither is the case. (I've yet to see Google embedding adwords in Google Reader shared feeds)

The only reason I can see for Andy Beard's initial post is either
a) it's an attempt to link-bait/generate contraversy for Feed Magic (Read this an tell me that doesn't seem the most likely case: http://andybeard.eu/Recommends/Feed_Magic.html)
b) He's pissed he spend money on FeedMagic that is inherently flawed.

With FeedMagic every subscriber gets a unique RSS feed -- but that's just an RSS feed with a unique address. All someone has to do is mark that feed as public in their Bloglines/Google Reader and it is accessible. This is what the hoopla about Bloglines exposing Gmail accounts was about -- people were using Bloglines for their Gmail as RSS but not realizing that they had it publically shared so anyone could read it.

The real issue in this story is that whoever is selling FeedMagic (that Andy Beard recommends) is misdirecting their potential customers to the public nature of RSS feeds.

"Now you can charge your subscribers for your RSS feeds on a recurring basis!" -- FeedMagic promo on Andy Beard's site

Funny, I didn't think the protocol allowed for that.

Re: Is Robert Scoble stealing or marketing?

engtech — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:19:45 -0000

Andy and I are discussing this via email at the moment, but one of the things I was looking at is this post on RSS Authentication and a paid subscriber only feed (Daring Fireball)

[post is here]

It looks like if RSS Authentication is used then that blocks out Bloglines/Google Reader which ensures that the content isn\'t shared... so there\'s no issue here so long as a proper copyright protection mechanism is used?

Re: Is Robert Scoble stealing or marketing?

engtech — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:53:44 -0000

Matt - you might want to edit that last comment to show that it's from Andy

I'm impressed with the dialog Andy is generating on this subject.

I feel like a real idiot for my first comment. :)

Andy, I think contacting the Daring Fireball guys for their POV might be another good source for your argument. They've been effectively selling RSS subscription for a while.

http://daringfireball.net/

Re: Me on a “future of media” panel

engtech — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:24:23 -0000

Mark Evans link is missing a "c" (.om instead of .com)

Re: … and advertise with me, Mark Cuban

engtech — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:37:16 -0000

I wonder what Mark thinks of the XBox Live announcement bringing Videos over the Internet to TV?

Re: Warning: this is off the geek-o-meter

engtech — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:49:21 -0000

We will burn down your White House and crash your Slashdot. Fear us.

Re: Oh yeah, and the food sucks too

engtech — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:34:18 -0000

Ignorance is bliss.

Very, very smart people have a tendency to be unhappy.

Re: PikSpot wants to help tame the Wild West

engtech — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:28:38 -0000

Have you seen fanpop? http://fanpop.com

Re: PikSpot wants to help tame the Wild West

engtech — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 22:27:20 -0000

fanpop is a well done site, there's just a distinct lack of traffic.

Re: TV is dead — long live TV

engtech — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:18:14 -0000

my only problem with Heroes (the only show I watch on TV, too) is that they've created too many characters and that is slowing the plot to a standstill as they try to give face time to everyone.

Re: Verizon: Stupid, stupid, stupid

engtech — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:11:23 -0000

The cellphone industry has their head up their arses in an amazing way when it comes to everything.

Case in point: rogers.com still charged by the KILOBYTE for data usage. With EDGE phones.

Re: Andy Rutledge thinks you’re a moron

engtech — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:05:50 -0000

I haven't read the link, but I'm starting to become more of a believer about the mediocrity of crowds. Some startups like cambrianhouse.com are trying to get into crowd-sourcing as a business model and I'm not sure if it's going to work (disclosure: I won a $400 prize in a contest from them).

The probs with "social web" are:

- Tagging is useless if it's from a single source. It only starts to become a relevant way of adding semantic information to documents if crowds can tag a document (this is a key point that some people have missed when they add tagging support to their apps).
- User voting is meaningless if people can see how other users have voted before them. More info on the game theory behind it: http://www.shmula.com/197/digg-as-a-game

Re: Why newspapers are like CDs

engtech — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 05:21:05 -0000

Good thing you're diversifying with this blog :-)

Re: Linked In just doesn’t get it

engtech — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:15:36 -0000

I liked linkedin except for two things:

- results were searchable via API from other sites
(IE: Internet Address Book lets someone find your information on myspace, flickr, linkedin, etc -- http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/interne...)

- recruiters phoning me by looking up my company phone number and then looking up my name instead of trying to contact me through linkedin.

Re: Linked In just doesn’t get it

engtech — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:44:21 -0000

That's a very good point. I'm not a linkedin power user, but it is very useful for keeping track of old co-workers who I would otherwise lose contact with.

That's pretty much my only use for it. :)

Re: TV networks should take Google’s money

engtech — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:04:15 -0000

engtech's simple guide to starting a content network:

If there already is an existing hugely popular service in that space then you're going to have to treat your customers better, not worse than them to succeed.

Re: Digg — worthless, or just misunderstood?

engtech — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:10:11 -0000

Yup, it's all about finding good filters. Is Digg a good filter? Not really. Is Digg a good source of traffic? Yes and no. I find that both Digg and Slashdot can bring in a swarm of commenters who are there for a flamewar more than anything else. The only time I didn't get a bad taste from comments was that Great Firewall of Canada post. Maybe it's me. :)

The traffic is great, and blog links that come afterwards are great... but maybe it's a good idea to turn comments off for the initial part of the flood. I find the later commenters are much more respectful than the initial wave.

Re: Garland: A Chronology in Point Form

engtech — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:27:04 -0000

Quite the story there.

Re: Remaking the charity biz, Web 2.0-style

engtech — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:40:46 -0000

Those Cambrian House guys have the best ideas. I really hope things pan out for them in the future.

Re: Is Digg getting better, or worse?

engtech — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:47:19 -0000

My biggest issue is the commenters. I like the quote from the lifehacker people that describes online communities:

“Also, netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of oneupmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it right back in the comments. Karma’s a boomerang.”

but I can't help but notice that Lifehacker also restricts who can comment. :)

I wrote on the subject of trolls today, nothing that insightful although I did find interesting foreshadowing on the Natali del Conte / TechCrunch split.
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/the-int...

Re: How do I get into these things?

engtech — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:26:59 -0000

In order to win I think you need to chose an animal mascot that could defeat a horse, pig or cow.

Re: Okay, I want one — are you happy now?

engtech — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:39:16 -0000

It just hit me. Steve Jobs doesn't have finger prints.

All of a sudden everything makes sense.

Re: Blog payola, round three (or four)

engtech — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:24:22 -0000

I'd love to see Tony write a "week in the life of Tony" blog post.

I'm *really* curious as to how he manages his time. :)

Re: Exposing the Lurkers

engtech — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:22:42 -0000

It actually looks pretty good without the CSS at all.

I'm just using the raw codes at http://beatsentropy.com

Re: Newspapers and local - who owns who?

engtech — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 04:38:33 -0000

I don't think anyone can compete with Google for search. So far their local searches haven't taken off as well as would be hoped, but I think they still do more local search traffic than any independent site could hope.

I know I routinely use maps.google.com with Find Businesses to find restaurants or stores.

Re: Digg Destroys Webomatica

engtech — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:17:48 -0000

Same thing happened to me last December. Those diggers sure do love their movies:
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/12/09/81-movi...

I find you get better results if you don't submit your own content to digg. People are really anti-blog (understandably).

Re: Is streaming Netflix TV good enough?

engtech — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:51:30 -0000

Much like with YouTube it will be the customers who decide who wins this one.

They have to come up with an alternative that can compete with piracy. DRM will always be cracked eventually. Give people something useful and gain enough mindshare are the only ways to compete.

Re: Akismet Excerpts

engtech — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:10:31 -0000

Wow, that is simple. :)

I still haven't gotten my head around CSS enough that I think "oh, I'll just do that in CSS".

Re: Akismet Excerpts

engtech — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:12:16 -0000

I think the optimal solution is the CSS hack above with an additional link of javascript to toggle the overflow setting.

Re: Exposing the Lurkers

engtech — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:34:26 -0000

I think this code might be required for tracking to work properly:

<img src="http://ipub.mybloglog.com/i/vUNIQUEID_req.jpg" alt="View My Profile" title=""View My Profile">

Re: Interesting: Techmeme

engtech — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:21:16 -0000

I started showing up on TechMeme once I got a Technorati ranking of under 20,000 and had appeared on Digg once.

There's some human filtering going on as well...

Re: Be careful what you Facebook

engtech — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 06:07:22 -0000

Yup, this is the 21st century. I think it'll be quite a while before people get it in their heads that the Internet is a permanent, easily searchable archive.

Re: Return Of The Tech Coffee Mug

engtech — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:00:42 -0000

I find I have a high turn over rate for this swag. T-shirts seem to do well if they're high quality, interesting, and not-white-with-company-logo-on-left-breast-and-slogan-on-back.

Re: Does Google need more fiber in its diet?

engtech — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:46:49 -0000

Spot on.

Google is very smart about details like power and bandwidth that other companies that don't deal with data centers of that size would never even think of.

Re: How To Not Compete With Free

engtech — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:58:33 -0000

DRM has 10 more years before they realize it's causing them to lose customers.

Re: Jonathan Schwartz, up close and personal

engtech — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:57:45 -0000

I still have huge issues trying to get into watching vlogs.

I keep hitting fast forward if I don't see something interesting.

Too used to speed reading, I guess.

Re: Second Life Parting Thoughts (And Shots)

engtech — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:13:08 -0000

I've been planning to start a web comic for about a month now, but I'm not a good artist.

I was thinking that Second Life might be a good tool, but after trying it I came to the same conclusion that it was a much wiser investment of my time to pick a medium where the designs had more value. It wasn't like I'd be able to pick up all the various objects I'd need for each strip for free in SL... they all have to be designed or bought.

Re: 1,000 Spam Comments

engtech — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 21:24:45 -0000

Technorati Rank is really easy to acquire until the sub-10,000 range. Once you get beyond 5,000 you pretty much stop checking since it changes in a positive fashion so infrequently.

I have some old stat pages from when I started. Kind of funny, looking back. http://engtech.wordpress.com/tag/stats

I'm up to 4000 akismet spams a month now. The !@#$ers.

One solution to slow MyBlogLog loads is to use the image mechanism instead of javascript... since it will just show empty space until they're loaded. http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/myblogl...

Re: Webomatica in VOX Talk Podcast

engtech — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:55:50 -0000

For some reason I think the plot line of Ferrets has something to do with gerbiling.

Richard Gear for lead?

Re: 1,000 Spam Comments

engtech — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:07:16 -0000

I deal with the spam by using Akismet and outright blocking .info and .biz. Have to check comments once a day, but not that bad. Real popular sites get like 100,000s a day.

I have no doubt that you'll do well on Technorati. You've got a really good blog going on here.

Re: fun with disaster recovery - Digging in a Habari sandpit

engtech — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:01:04 -0000

This is why I stick with wordpress.com :)

Re: Digg, Stumble and the madness of crowds

engtech — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:09:12 -0000

I do like me some StumbleUpon.

Digg can really establish a blog though. pronetadvertising and violentacres come to mind as two sites I saw go from zero to an audience by writing content that got Dugg.

Re: A Peek At My RSS Reader

engtech — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:46:28 -0000

"I havenâ€™t found the â€œAAAAAAAAAATechblogâ€ trying to get top listing as in the Yellow Pages."

What are you talking about? I'm right there.

//engtech

:)

sure, it's supposed to be a code comment but it is also a fully function jump to the head of the line

Re: A Peek At My RSS Reader

engtech — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:51:39 -0000

That's ok. We'll form a blogging network of "Tech Bloggers With Cat Icons" and all their links will belong to us.

Re: Just Upgraded to WordPress 2.1

engtech — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 22:53:16 -0000

The visual editor can be a complete bitch with paragraphs sometimes and trying to prevent orphan sentences.

Re: Scoble’s Achilles heel is video

engtech — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:30:15 -0000

Like I've said before, I don't watch a lot of video online.

What would make video more attractive to me?

- Integrated table of contents
- Searchable transcript that links directly to clipmarks
- Pop-ups to more info

I have to agree on the attention span thing that I'm much more like to watch a 3 minute video than a 10 minute video. Even if I'm looking at a photoshop tutorial video I have a tendency to skip forward through it because I find it's going too slow.

Re: Blogging About Blogs, The Bloggers That Blog Them, And Gaming

engtech — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:56:20 -0000

I think most people have been in Robert's shoes before... this argument would have been much better served if he'd used an example OTHER than himself.

I know I've seen a story on TechCrunch/Scoble before where I was thinking "I covered that a month ago!" and wishing I'd gotten a juicy link. But all you have to do to restore humility is do a little digging and find the guys who had the scoop a month before you did, and realize that you're being hypocritical because you didn't go through the extra effort to find previous links either.

Re: Microsoft still wants to control your wallet

engtech — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:22:11 -0000

So true.

This is one way Microsoft burned their bridges with their cut-throat business practices... you know that if there was a business advantage to them, they'd do something with the points system to steal business from you without a second thought.

Re: Scoble’s Achilles heel is video

engtech — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:24:03 -0000

Maybe Robert needs to do trailers for his video :)

Re: 3 Ways To Make Akismet Even Better

engtech — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:05:55 -0000

I sent the same feedback to the Akismet team about trackbacks.

One thing I've made is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that let's you see 5x as much info in your Akismet spambox per screen of text.

http://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/ak...

Re: Full Article Feeds Vs. Excerpts

engtech — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:16:52 -0000

There's only a few partial feed sites I stick with... actually, lorelle.wordpress.com might be the only one now.

I had to give up on Nicholas Carr's roughtype because I found myself saving it until last all the time because of the partial feeds.

Re: Bloggers Blogging, Negativity, and Disclosure

engtech — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:07:29 -0000

That link to my About Me usually works, except wordpress.com is having a major hiccup right now and 404ing all Pages.

http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=7298&a...

Re: Bloggers Blogging, Negativity, and Disclosure

engtech — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:07:53 -0000

Yay, bleeding edge :)

Re: 3 Ways To Make Akismet Even Better

engtech — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:11:36 -0000

Yup, that's correct.

The first link should work as well, except Wordpress.com has a bug at the moment where all pages are 404-ing (just started tonight).

The joy of running on the bleeding edge :)

Re: Trying A Different Front Page Design

engtech — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:16:19 -0000

Putting a word count before the more would be good as well.

This is essentially what I do with posts that fall off the front page:
http://engtech.wordpress.com/page/3/

Making the read more obnoxiously big helped as well.

Re: Scoble says he’s biased — does it matter?

engtech — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:50:48 -0000

I think that's a very good point ^^^^ that everyone is biased, and it is more about the audience becoming more aware of that.

At what level does disclosure kick in?

If I had a bad experience with Windows 3.1 to Windows 2000 do I have to mention that when ever I talk about Windows Vista? I

If I mention Marshall Kirkpatrick and TechCrunch in a post do I have to say how excited I was that Michael Arrlington comments on one of my posts the week before that?

We're all biased, and sometimes we don't realize it. It is obvious that you're biased when money (or items of monetary value) have changed hands... but there are plenty of other influencers that can come into play... do I mention when covering a start-up/software application that they put a prominent link to my blog on their site? I made no money of it (I don't have ads) but it definitely influenced my opinion of them.

Re: Blogging About Blogs, The Bloggers That Blog Them, And Gaming

engtech — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:58:17 -0000

Humility is always a hard target for blogging though because blogging by nature is an egotistical activity. What I found help me was when I realized that if you write crap about someone they'll usually end up reading it[1]... it isn't a soapbox into nothingness.

Now I try to at least make good points if I'm going to rant into something...

[1] If only because they're searching what people are saying about them / their product.

Re: Yahoo! Annoying Its Flickr Users

engtech — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:28:17 -0000

The other thing is the "squeeky wheel" syndrome. The most vocal users don't mean they're the majority. Take a look at Snap Preview -- I hate it but I don't know that I'm in the majority of people.

There are a couple of perfectly valid reasons for the Flickr switch, one of which is to stop having to support a small anomaly in the user base (the other of course is to get people using Yahoo IDs).

What I really hate about this though is my every day Yahoo ID is tied to another flickr account -- so I'm going to have to create a specific one. Argh.

Re: Music Notes: Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah!

engtech — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:57:46 -0000

I couldn't listen to the entire album... there are a lot of very choice remixes out there though.

Re: Should I Sign Up With Blogcritics?

engtech — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:11:37 -0000

I'm part of blogcritics. In terms of getting review material they are top notch, in terms of getting traffic to your blog, not so much. It's hard to get the really popular review material, for the obscure stuff that no one else is interested in it's good.

Being part of blogcritics will keep you out of 9rules.

In terms of getting the free review material -- library + bit torrent works much better. :)

Re: Tailrank Indexes Webomatica

engtech — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:39:20 -0000

Using a fading nofollow would be a great way to encourage commenters.

Basically, if the comment has stayed live for a week or so then they get a real link to their website on their comment.

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-01-22-...

Spamming won't be any more of an issue than otherwise... spammers absolutely don't care about filtering sites based on issues like these. They are completely indiscriminate and lazy.

Re: Should I Sign Up With Blogcritics?

engtech — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:40:51 -0000

I don't remember seeing comics/graphic novels on Blog Critics.

I've had really good luck getting graphic novels from my local library or by downloading CBZ/CBR files off of bit torrent and then using CDisplay to view them.

Re: Movie Notes: Art School Confidential

engtech — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:42:20 -0000

I saw this last weekend and I couldn't get over how horrible it was. The plot was so stupid, which was too bad because they had a very good concept in the beginning.

Re: Opting Out Of 2000 Bloggers

engtech — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:53:11 -0000

What's funny is that I joined the 2000 bloggers project. :)

//el punta de linkos

Re: Disclosure Policy Plugin (WordPress)

engtech — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:31:06 -0000

You know, this could be a lot of fun.

Keyword: Avatar

Disclosure: That's not even my cat.

Keyword: Digg

Disclosure: Digg commenters are a bunch of morons. It's wisdom of the mobs at it's finest.

Keyword: Sex

Disclosure: It's been months. They were right about marriage.

Re: Paris Hilton Finds MyBlogLog

engtech — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:09:17 -0000

She's one of my more popular posts as well...

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/09/19/chartre...

Re: Everyone wants a “Google killer”

engtech — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:09:25 -0000

I would immediately switch to whatever search engine is powered by the guy in the photo.

Without even stopping for a second to think about it.

Re: MyCatBlogLog Public Alpha

engtech — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 06:22:33 -0000

Sweet!

Re: MyCatBlogLog Public Alpha

engtech — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 06:28:43 -0000

I am so impressed that you did this.

This is excellent.

Re: Added Polls, Stock Photography

engtech — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:26:47 -0000

I've been using flickr CC and wikimedia commons for Harold. Followed up with a Google Image search for something more obscure.

I have to accept the fact that Harold will never legally be a book. :)

There was another stock photo site I tried that had free images but after using it for a week I never found anything good from it.

Re: “Beme” Inspires Some New Blog Vocabulary

engtech — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:15:17 -0000

clog - as in the sink is clogged
IE: http://catsinsinks.com/

masterbating: me thinks you meant to include an i between the ba and t?

One I coined was blogamaggedon.

That's when we hit the full tail swing of push button content publishing... everyone who wants to try blogging has tried it, but most people have given it up because it's too hard to try to get an audience when attention is split so narrowly amongst all the bloggers.

Re: “Beme” Inspires Some New Blog Vocabulary

engtech — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:16:53 -0000

Sorry. I meant to write "Blogamageddon"

I guess you can't take credit for a beme if you can't spell it properly.

Re: Webomatica’s Top Love Movies

engtech — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:36:42 -0000

You just knew I would post my list in a comment: http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/02/08/top-rom...

I'm surprised we didn't have more movies lining up. I think that might be because of my personal prejudice against Julia though.

Maybe I'll watch Roman Holiday tonight.

My only strong disagreement was Room with a View, but I have a trouble with staying awake for all period movies other than Dangerous Liaisons.

Re: Cat News Via Google Reader

engtech — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:38:07 -0000

Before I started Harold is a Robot my girlfriend and I were seriously considering writing a photocomic about our two cats called "A Tale of Two Kitties".

Then we realized that was the name of the Garfield 2 movie.

Re: Webomatica’s Top Love Movies

engtech — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:39:07 -0000

I'm going to have to see the P&P remake then as well.

Re: Link Sharing: 2/15/07

engtech — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:33:25 -0000

Have you seen Mega 64? http://www.mega64.com/

Re: Questioning NoFollow

engtech — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:40:46 -0000

nofollow tag is only good for the search engines... doesn't do anything to prevent spam, it's just an attempt to prevent spam from contributing to search.

The Wordpress guys were some of the early proponents of it 2 years ago, but Matt says now that it doesn't do anything: http://photomatt.net/2007/01/22/wikipedia-nofol...

Re: Webomatica’s Top Love Movies

engtech — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:41:50 -0000

It's a long story that I can't go into, but that would get me into more trouble than if I fell asleep during the movie. :)

nice Paris Hilton disclaimer, btw

Re: Are Canadians copyright pirates?

engtech — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:26:59 -0000

I'm waiting until having a 56" tv is considered showing the movie for public display and I'll have to get a licensing agreement to have friends over to watch rented movies.

Re: Battlestar Galactica: The Woman King

engtech — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:56:14 -0000

*covers hands over ears*

I'M NOT LISTENING

*waits until Season 3 is complete to watch it*

Re: “Beme” Inspires Some New Blog Vocabulary

engtech — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:11:12 -0000

Some good ones here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/16/dell-pays-...

wypo - web typo
weblogism - new web neologism

Re: Strange World Of Website Reselling

engtech — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:24:58 -0000

When buying sites you're usually doing it for the backlinks, but if you get all the content as well it can be a great deal.

What's interesting is the metrics provided on the auctions that do well:
existing revenue / month
uniques / month
page views / month

so $50,000 for around 750,000 page views a month.

I think I'm in the range of 100,000 to 350,000 page views a month. I did 61,000 views on Valentine's Day -- but that was my highest day ever (previous was 44,000 in a day).

Re: Strange World Of Website Reselling

engtech — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:25:59 -0000

the first comment could be nuked. I don't get uniques listed in my stats so I have no idea what a high number of uniques is.

Re: Strange World Of Website Reselling

engtech — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:43:33 -0000

I can't use Google Analytics with Wordpress.com because they use it globally... so I get a watered down version of it.

Kinda sucks.

Re: Strange World Of Website Reselling

engtech — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:50:17 -0000

Psst. She'll sell it for a Nikon D200.

I've got the inside scoop.

Re: Movie Notes: Ten Must-Haves in Any Romantic Comedy

engtech — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:51:44 -0000

Have you seen Stranger than Fiction?

There is a good part where they try to figure out if it's a romantic comedy or a romantic tragedy.

Re: Webomatica Dugg: The Aftermath (Die Another Day)

engtech — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:05:21 -0000

I really want to find out how to quit smoking with Kirk and Spock.

Titles are 80% of writing a good post. You could write anything about Kirk and Spock, include some references of satiating your oral fixation with green-skinned aliens, and it would be gold.

Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock and I toured Thailand with Steve Jobs.

Re: MyBlogLog goes after spammers

engtech — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:44:21 -0000

I really enjoy the service and I think it's a great idea to have a centralized avatar system like that.

If they thought about it they could easily compete with OpenID.

But I wish they were a little more security minded. They need to hire some good testers who break stuff like this before lunch.

Re: New Blog Vocabulary: Fatblogging

engtech — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:38:17 -0000

Yeah, I do a 15 lbs swing ever two years or so and I'm on the fatblogging side of the scale now.

I've been thinking of writing a fatblogging how-to and an anti-fatblogging how-to based on my previous experience.

So many ideas, so little time.

Let's do a "You Know You're a Fatblogger When..." post!

You know you're a fatblogger when you buy a Nintendo Wii for exercise.

You know you're a fatblogger when you install the "One Click Pizza Delivery" plugin for Wordpress.

Re: I Have To Get A Wii

engtech — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:08:26 -0000

Ok, that's funny. I hadn't read this before I left that comment on "fatbloggers want to buy a Nintendo Wii" http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2007/02/20/...

I've been enjoying the 360, but overall there's a big issue with lack of games.

Re: I Have To Get A Wii

engtech — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:09:05 -0000

Wii blogging where you have to type out all your posts using 5lb weights.

Re: New Blog Vocabulary: Fatblogging

engtech — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:11:22 -0000

I've been thinking about it and I should order groceries on the Internet. I had going to the grocery store, so I never have any food in the house, so I always end up eating out. It's a vicious cycle.

The Google 15 widget is a good / simple weight to track weight.

Re: 7 Ways To Avoid Pointless Meetings

engtech — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:41:48 -0000

Thought you might like this post that sums up the kind of people who inhabit meetings:

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/11/1...

Re: The Prisoner: I’m Hooked

engtech — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:11:50 -0000

I quite liked the first season of this one: http://imdb.com/title/tt0112104/

Re: Strange Search Phrases

engtech — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:28:59 -0000

This is from another blog I co-author:

gong show popsicle twins 4
popsicle twins 3
suck my balls 2
gridhouse 2
celebrity video scandal 2
scandal sex tape celebrity 1
suck my balls video 1
strathcona art park 1
celebrity sex tape 1
Celebrity scandal 1
3-D model trains by abacus 1
lose battle with entropy 1
what movies were released on the 29th Se 1
Abacus 3d model trains 1
"Popsicle twins" 1
inurl:2006 released erotic movies 1
potter twins video 1
national holidays of the year 1
south park suck my balls 1
silvercity gloucester map to 1
bring-your-kid-to-work day 1
uganda rising imdb 1
pans labyrinth trailer 1
sex sat .coc 1
view celebrity sex tape 1
The Popsicle Twins 1
jetsons cartoons 1
Harry potter and south park 1
gridhouse movie 1
Art in Strathcona 1
bring your children to work days 1
bring your kid to work day 1
twins video 1
pan's labyrinth trailer 1
what kind of food would bring to the par 1
Bring your kid to work day 1
celebrity video sex scandal 1
bikini fight video 1
you can suck my balls mr. garrison 1
south park & harry potter 1
best song ever made 1
the popsicle boy 1
"cool chicks" 1
the popsicle twins 1
THE MAIL OF DAY 1
kane and abel real story 1
postal mail bag straps 1
aj sex tape 1
doa bikini movie 1
confused man cartoon 1

Re: Strange Search Phrases

engtech — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:37:50 -0000

@web: it's a group blog I do with some real life friends (http://beatsentropy.com)

I think this post got in the top ten on google for Scooby Doo Mystery Van Bestiality searches at one point.

Re: Buying Yourself A Front Page Digg

engtech — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:57:54 -0000

Conversely, setting the scale to be ten pounds heavier and completely forgetting about it works even better for weight loss.

Re: The Future Of Computing: Brains In A Jar?

engtech — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:33:43 -0000

I call this "reality challenged".

Re: Comic Book Hunt At Wondercon

engtech — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:03:48 -0000

Heh.

My take is completely different, those are the kind of comics I can't stand.

I read around 10-15 of the various Darkhorse Star Wars series and I couldn't stand how awful the writing was. There were a couple of almost decent series like Knights of the Old Republic and the Crimson Guard one... but most of them.. ugh.

Re: 6 Steps To Getting Back Into The Blog Saddle

engtech — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:06:25 -0000

That's a hard one, but there truly is something to be said for having less/better content. There are some great blogs I subscribe to that only post once a month or so...

Re: How To Use The Computer To Do Absolutely Nothing

engtech — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:36:06 -0000

#1 - RSS

:)

Re: My Digg Link-Bait History

engtech — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:08:49 -0000

What's funny is the catchy headline aspect is so important to everything.

People judge books by their covers.

The headline doesn't even have to be correct... I've gotten good traction from inflammatory headlines when the post wasn't that bad.

If I look at the five posts that were made popular, four of them were digg-bait. And the 5th was Slashdot bait. :)

Engtech's Dugg History

Re: Calvin Klein: R U Technosexual?

engtech — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:02:25 -0000

I was given one of those jinx.com technosexual t-shirts as a gift last year.

I'm wearing "there's no place like /~" right now that I got free from dirtymicrobe.com

Re: Calvin Klein: R U Technosexual?

engtech — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:03:31 -0000

Also, what's funny about this is most tech-types fall into the same symptoms as mild autistics which includes an aversion to scented products.

Re: Music Notes: The Polish Ambassador, Diplomatic Immunity

engtech — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:24:47 -0000

Give the Katamari Damacy soundtrack a download for some video game music you'll never be able to get out of your head, ever.

More fun music videos:
http://beatsentropy.com/2006/11/12/never-trust-...

Re: Link Sharing: 3/8/07

engtech — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:28:52 -0000

On the subject of Milli Vanilli -- check this out:

http://beatsentropy.com/2006/12/03/kenjis-art-s...

Re: Is Digg the future or just a feature?

engtech — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:45:42 -0000

I think we'll see more and more nichification as it becomes easier and easier to create sites like digg.

I saw a great post a while back that interviewed some of the people who create these social web20 apps and they were all only using 3-5 different sites themselves... so with further nichification it'll get to the point where the rate of new users is greatly diluted by the amount of competition for their attention.

Re: What’s In Those Snacks and How Are They Made?

engtech — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:04:44 -0000

I always thought Twinkis begat themselves through some paradox in the space time continuum?

You eat a Twinki, it goes through your digestive system and ends up in some kind of land fill, where it eventually reconstitutes itself. A hostile alien race that has taken over the earth sends them back through time as a declaration of war.

That's why they have such a long shelf life.

*goes back to watching Dr. Who*

Re: Bedouins In San Francisco

engtech — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:34:24 -0000

It's all about having the right kind of cubicle.

I have a coffee machine beside my desk that lets me make lattes and cappuccinos.

Re: Web Design Tips From Eyetracking

engtech — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:35:28 -0000

Brings new meaning to the term 'hairball'

Re: Narcissism: Apex of Web 2.0?

engtech — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:18:45 -0000

I'm pretty sure the woman in that picture is looking at a photo of herself she just took with her cellphone.

re: BlogOMatic

Blog Herald: The Future Of Blogging: Computer Generated Or Human Generated Blogs

Re: We Is Takin Over Der Feed

engtech — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:22:25 -0000

Ack!

they're on yur intertubes writin yur blogz!

Re: We Is Takin Over Der Feed

engtech — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:22:04 -0000

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

Re: Why Geeks Should Live In Japan

engtech — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:23:51 -0000

I've been meaning to ask if the tentacle sex anime references ever have any basis:

http://beatsentropy.com/2007/03/22/passive-depr...

Re: Japan Trip: First Day In Tokyo

engtech — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:38:32 -0000

photos!

Re: Japanophilia: Four Japanese Albums You Should Have In Your Collection

engtech — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:39:25 -0000

I heartily recommend Fantastic Plastic Machine

http://www.fpmnet.com/

Re: For Yet Another Perspective On Blogging Class Warfare…

engtech — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:10:40 -0000

So true about technical know how. I've done a fair share of free wordpress.com support on the forums and there's so much stuff I take for granted as common knowledge that isn't. People freaking out because someone sent them a trackback and how do they stop that. Not understanding that if a post isn't password protected it can get indexed by search engines (without getting into robots.txt). Not understanding that your IP address is tracked by every web page you read.

And those are the fairly complex ones that I take for granted after using the net for 14 some years.

Re: Muvie Notz: Cat Filmz

engtech — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 03:17:23 -0000

Don't get artistocats and artistocrates confused.

Re: Link Sharing: Feed Reader Evisceration

engtech — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:47:03 -0000

don't forget http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

Re: Link Sharing: Feed Reader Evisceration

engtech — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:16:59 -0000

I like how the Paris Hilton disclosure shows up when you mention Paris Lemon.

Re: Getting Philisophical On Blogging

engtech — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:22:57 -0000

I hit this a while back (probably just around when I found out about your blog). The echo chamber thing is fun, but if I want to write about Yahoo Pipes it'll be after spending 20 hours using it to build some application I really want, like displaying my Technorati rank as an RSS widget... not because a press release came out on TechCrunch 5 minutes ago.

Chasing traffic is always annoying in the long term because you end up with crap posts.

Re: My Fluffy Side

engtech — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 07:54:33 -0000

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/01/how-to-...

Re: Today’s interesting link: the Mundaneum

engtech — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:51:31 -0000

the idea was to collect all of the world’s knowledge on 3″ x 5″ index cards organized by topic.

Just like Wikipedia!

it eventually wound up being housed in a refurbished parking garage in Belgium, and closed in 1934.

Just like Wikipedia!

Re: 412 Precondition Failed, Technorati, Twitter, and Bad Behavior

engtech — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:52:57 -0000

pffft.

I think it's a great domain name.

Re: 412 Precondition Failed, Technorati, Twitter, and Bad Behavior

engtech — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:24:38 -0000

*seriously considers how many organic searches 412preconditionfailed gets*

Re: Link Sharing: 4/5/07

engtech — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:23:43 -0000

Ah, BBSes. I used to be part of iCE in the day.

Re: A very Canuck PC case-mod

engtech — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:59:08 -0000

How often do you get to mention your psycho girlfriend and a stuffed beaver without having your wife kill you?

Re: Kurt Vonnegut — so it goes

engtech — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:00:37 -0000

Strange coincidence -- I was in Victoria on vacation, completely disconnected from any news and buying several used Vonnegut paperbacks at exactly the time this happened.

Re: Technorati = Nice Folks

engtech — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:42:21 -0000

I 100% agree that they are nice folks. But I've still find I get a lot of headaches from their service. It used to be 1-2 weeks before you'd hear back from support (since fixed with their support forums).

I'm particularly displeased with how they lock you in to your blog URL. I screwed up my Technorati rank about a month ago when I changed the front page of my blog into a landing page and put my blog posts in /blog. Changing my domain name would mean looking my rank of 2000 and having to build it up again with new content.

Re: Technorati = Nice Folks

engtech — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:43:15 -0000

(to be fair, they helped me fix my blog rank once I realized there was a problem and switch my blog settings back to the way they were)

Re: Rubel vs. PC Mag — bizarre

engtech — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:56:59 -0000

The sad thing is that it's always little comments like this that get blown out of proportion. Whenever I've had internet postings come back and bite me it was over something as inconsequential as Steve's remark.

Re: MySpace Party: The Wisdomless Crowd Shows Up

engtech — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:41:21 -0000

I've seen this before on regional message boards long before MySpace was around... there's even a cellphone commercial alluding to the phenomina (one of those walkie talkie things).

Great analogy with getting the Digg commenters to visit though.

Re: The Complex World Of HD TV And Ensuing Confusion

engtech — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:14:26 -0000

I got a 56" 1080p Samsung HD over the xmas holidays. Came with an upconverting DVD player.

The biggest consideration for size is your viewing distances when seated. I should have gone for max 48" because of the size of that room.

I rip DVDs with DVD Decrypter + DVD Shrink (old school) and they all look fine (I usually got for ripping out all of the extras + non-english audio tracks to have minimum impact on video quality).

Watching XViD is a little wonky when it comes to action sequences.

Normal analog cable signals are unwatchable because of noise and distortion.

Re: Google Reader + Twitter + MyBlogLog + This Blog + Your Blog = Social Network Site?

engtech — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:52:11 -0000

My twitter "check this link out" feed is available at http://twitter.com/et for anyone looking to subscribe.

Re: Develop Your Productivity Rhythm For Success

engtech — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:50:08 -0000

Another good tip is to leave email/RSS/etc until after you've achieve some goals. They can be distracting to your mental process and lead you off on tangents and down windy passage ways.

Re: Movie Notes: Movies Based On Non-Superhero Comics

engtech — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:10:55 -0000

Would be a great entry for this contest:

Engtech: Contest For Bloggers: Group Writing Project :Tshirts, Movies

:)

Re: Movie Notes: Movies Based On Non-Superhero Comics

engtech — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:14:43 -0000

You left out History of Violence

From this list

Favs: Constantine, Sin City, 300, V for Vendeta, Tales from the Crypt, From Hell

God that was horrible: Art School Confidential, Popeye, Howard the Duck, Josie and the Pussycats, Fritz the Cat, Dick Tracy, Tank Girl

Want to see: Ghost World, American Splendor

Re: Movie Notes: Movies Based On Non-Superhero Comics

engtech — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:19:40 -0000

I have a dirty little secret.. I can't stand Robert Crumb. I've tried to get into his books again and a again, but it's just a no go.

Found another post on the same subject:
12-days of cinematicalmas 7 comic book movies for people who hate comic books

Re: Meme: What’s Your Web 2.0?

engtech — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:59:51 -0000

Thanks for tagging Baron and Corey, I meant to add them when I started this!

Re: Media bites: fewer words, same great taste

engtech — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:19:30 -0000

What's interesting about the new media is that it offers all kinds of positions in becoming one of the new gatekeepers/promoters of new media.

And that's really all any of the old boys like the RIAA, MPAA, broadcasters etc are good for -- gatekeeping/promoting.

Re: Meme: What’s Your Web 2.0?

engtech — Tue, 01 May 2007 04:24:30 -0000

I wish more people used Fanpop. It's a very solid site.

Re: Where are the cliffs of insanity?

engtech — Wed, 02 May 2007 16:27:14 -0000

I love XKCD so much. I should support them by buying some t-shirts.

I think the Facebook mountains are too small though.

Re: Digg: Social Media Consumer Revolt

engtech — Wed, 02 May 2007 19:25:20 -0000

Armchair activism at it's best. Copy and paste a 32-digit key all over the internet versus preventing something like the DMCA from becoming law.

All of us tech types are guilty of this.

Re: MySpace, YourSpace and Politics 2.0

engtech — Fri, 04 May 2007 05:50:39 -0000

I saw this story the other day and found it so interesting. One nice thing about being a Canadian is to be able to objectively look at the issue without getting caught up in my actual feelings towards Barack Obama (or I should say, one nice thing about being a Canadian who lives under a rock when it comes to politics).

Clearly it sounds like his campaign people are weasels, and trying to smear him by claiming he was exploiting. Some of the naysayers have a good point that he was doing it all on a volunteer basis and volunteers should be paid.

What struck me about the resolution was Andrew got to take is 160,000 MySpace friends to a new name while the Obama campaign gets the now-friendless name.

I understand why they wanted the specific name, it's what they had been (idiotically) using as their official MySpace page. But I'm pretty sure they wanted the user accounts as well and I find it so hard to believe they didn't try to negotiate with him more over the $39,000.

Of course, it was all further muddied by the fact that the people Andrew was negotiating with were most like the people whose jobs he had been doing for free for two years.

Re: Studios sing chorus of “Blame Canada”

engtech — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:34:26 -0000

Such idiots.

If they had a clue they would hire teenagers to make crappy camcorder copies of movies to distribute over the internet. Crappy cam copies are so inferior to DVD/HD-TV rips that it gives the consumer an incentive to buy the higher quality product.

If you target the inferior pirated product, then you remove the competition to DVD/HD-TV rips. So when Joe Shmoe goes to pirate a movie he doesn't have to sift through tons of crap cam copies to find a good release.

Killing Napster got rid of all the inferior MP3 rips out there and pushed people to BitTorrent and piracy groups that pride themselves on releasing "as good as CD" quality rips. Now they're doing the same thing with movies when instead they should be flooding the pirate channels with bad rips and mislabeled downloads.

Re: Buckshot, EP. 2: Social Networking sites

engtech — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:47:37 -0000

Last.fm is such a great service. I really hate that I can't listen to it at work (bandwidth), otherwise I'd be using it all the time.

Some guy came up with a player for mobile phones, but unfortunately I live in the crappy world of $0.05/kb data rates.

Re: Covering Pasadena from 9,000 miles away

engtech — Fri, 11 May 2007 19:20:36 -0000

and that explains everything that is wrong with press releases.

Re: Comic Notes: Hot Mexican Love Comics 2006

engtech — Sat, 12 May 2007 22:45:17 -0000

Heh. I thought this was going to be all about Love and the Rockets when I saw your tweet.

Re: Bruce Willis hangs out in chat rooms?

engtech — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:10:31 -0000

Even better than Kevin Smith's blog is his Evening with Kevin Smith DVD series.

Re: Analog Productivity Experiments: Fighting Blog Fatigue

engtech — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:52:14 -0000

The biggest problem with blogging is that it never ends. There is always the blog to feed, always new posts to write, etc etc.

When I bailed out of the Tech News game and decided to focus on original content -- that was a huge relief from time pressures.

But then I wanted to hit a posting schedule of 5 posts during the week and my linkblog post on saturdays. Still too much work, I don't get time to write every night and sometimes something will take more than a day to write.

So now I'm aiming for 2-3 original content posts a week, and the linkblog on the weekend. Should be maintainable.

Re: Community is the hard part

engtech — Wed, 16 May 2007 04:29:34 -0000

I'm excited about avanoo.com

I got in the beta today, and I like what they're doing over there. Something different than other social sites.

Re: Content Conversion to WordPress

engtech — Sun, 20 May 2007 18:17:20 -0000

My first post was on setting up categories in Blogger.

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/04/11/how-i-s...

:)

Re: Content Conversion to WordPress

engtech — Sun, 20 May 2007 18:18:18 -0000

Followed by:

http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/04/17/switchi...

Re: Helprin on copyright is copywrong

engtech — Mon, 21 May 2007 05:06:30 -0000

A Winter's Tale is still at around #23,000 on amazon.com even though it came out in 1983. It's biggest threat to relevancy is it's age and competition against itself with easy availability at libraries and second hand sales. I got my copy for free through bookcrossing.com, and I didn't care for it.

The problem most authors face (Stephen King aside) is staying in the public eye and keeping your works from getting passed aside by the throngs of newer books; the hype machine doesn't focus on older books.

If only there was some way to easily draw attention to yourself and your previous works...

Re: Universities Need To Develop Entrepreneurs

engtech — Mon, 21 May 2007 22:00:40 -0000

I did co-op in Ottawa and I think part of the problem is that there isn't an abundance of jobs where being plugged in would matter.

I feel that there's always this stagnancy that prevents trying out technologies that aren't at least 5-10 years mature.

Re: BusinessWeek: The Poverty Business

engtech — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:03:04 -0000

Person B gets a worse credit rating because they're living beyond their means. Person A is living within or close to their means.

A gets a much better rating because A is so much less risky to lend to. The extra interest B pays (in theory -- in reality they're being gouged) is to make up from the money lost from the other people B who default on their loans.

Insurance is the same way, if you're high risk you pay more for insurance than if you're low risk.

I completely agree that there are inequalities, but I don't think lending money is ever a charitable action... it's a business that you do in order to make interest on the money being lent.

Re: BusinessWeek: The Poverty Business

engtech — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:18:09 -0000

It's the same thing with how banks move out of poor neighbourhoods and those Money Market type places move in.

Money is never ethical.

Not letting people who are in debt get into more debt is a great idea, but you know there'd be people arguing about how the man is keeping them down from expensing their college education on credit cards or something.

Re: Book Notes: The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner

engtech — Wed, 23 May 2007 04:44:59 -0000

Stick with the old sci-fi. Another really good one is The Mote In God's Eye.

Re: TechCrunch Pricks The Wrong Bubble

engtech — Wed, 23 May 2007 06:10:40 -0000

very, very good point.

It's funny how people pay for the location / weather and then spend all the time working at start-ups.

At least in Silicon Valley North we have an excuse. We only have two months of good weather each year :)

Re: Top 10 Reasons to Join a Startup

engtech — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:49:11 -0000

Ten Reasons Not to join a Startup
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/10/04/top-ten...

:)

Re: Book Notes: The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner

engtech — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:06:15 -0000

Yeah, Titan and Wizard are ok but weird. I really recommend anything Varley did after that though. Especially Blue Steel. Read that one three times.

I love that I can reserve books online using my local library system and then use http://libraryelf.com to get email/rss updates of it.

Re: DVD Player Craps Out, Grey’s Anatomy, Taking Action

engtech — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:32:05 -0000

I hope you didn't get a DVD/TV combo. Those combos are HORRIBLE.

The player will always crap out before the TV, and because they use the same power switch it means you might not be able to turn on the TV (although, for $25 a local electrician can usually rewire it).

Re: Link Sharing: 5/24/07

engtech — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:29:58 -0000

Hiya,

the linko del muy blogo has a double http:// which is bringing it to http.com

cheers

Re: Startups Can Be Very Stressful, But…

engtech — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:11:47 -0000

Complete agreement that culture starts on day 1.

Which is something workers should always remind themselves... if the culture is already bad, when why would it ever improve?

I sometimes feel like I'm the only one complaining about issues and deficiencies I see... maybe a sign of a bad fit?

Re: Movie Notes: My Ten Favorite Star Wars Moments

engtech — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:17:35 -0000

Check out this list:

http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/0...

I like that they do a top 10 movies and top 10 from the comics.

Re: Scraping Starts from the Very First Post

engtech — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:11:46 -0000

I think you're misinterpreting your data source. The wordpress.com feed stats always follow the ebb and flow of your posting frequency.

I have a popular wordpress.com blog, and my feed readers are split between the wordpress.com feed (http://engtech.wordpress.com/feed or http://internetducttape.com/feed) and the FeedBurner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/engtech). Wordpress.com doesn't let me redirect to my feedburner feed.

About 624 of my readers are in FeedBurner, there's another 400-700 who grab the feed directly.

Here are screenshots of my stats from wordpress.com and from FeedBurner. As you can see, there are serious discrepancies. I trust the FeedBurner stats much more.

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/engtech...
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/engtech...
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/engtech...

To make it worse, the wordpress.com stats seem to be pretty dumb in that they count feed reader hits even if it's just someone clicking on your link from another feed. Not an issue for this experiment, but something to note.

Bottom line: no conclusions can be drawn from using wordpress.com feed stats. Set up a blog somewhere that let's you use FeedBurner stats and you'll have a *much* better data sample.

Interesting idea, but the data you're basing it off of is so questionable to start with.

Re: Roll Your Own LOL, Not Just For Cats Anymore

engtech — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:17:11 -0000

You forgot lolgoths

http://raincoaster.com/tag/lolgoth/

Re: Link Sharing: 6/20/07

engtech — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:21:46 -0000

I use del.icio.us, and I have a program I wrote that does a weekly post of them all.

I will be releasing to the public at some point.

Re: I Don’t Like The Idea Of Fake Comments

engtech — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:29:09 -0000

It depends on the nature of the blog. I have a friend who routinely posts about really outrageous stuff, then he create a fake comments that calls him out on his outrageousness in the original post... to which he replies in greater depth to the ideas he didn't want to fully flesh out in the original piece.

It works really well on keeping a post concise and interesting, while still addressing the additional points that you want to cover.

On Beats Entropy (4 authors) we also played with the idea of the four of us pre-commenting on our posts before they are published so that more ideas are covered before it goes live. It might have worked, but we never ended up doing it because we're too lazy.

Re: Flash Project: Fanpop Widget

engtech — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:35:03 -0000

You should give the Sandbox css design competition a lookie.

http://internetducttape.com/2007/06/20/win-cash...

Sandbox may become the default theme for Wordpress, so it can make for some really good exposure.

Re: Desktop Tower Defense: Addicting Time-Wasting Procrastination Aid

engtech — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:33:06 -0000

I block off both entrances and herd them to a corner where I concentrate firepower... upgrading is SO important, as is putting slows in early... I put a slow down every 4-5 when I'm building a path

the center is reserved for a building anti-air

Re: Movie Notes: Ratatouille

engtech — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 05:03:27 -0000

Just got back from seeing it. Much agreement that this was way better than Cars, although I think I prefer the subject matter of Incredibles.

My only fault with it is in seeing the late show so I couldn't go out to eat some fine cuisine afterwards.

I really like how they tied the plot together.

Re: The Art Of The Pitch: Ron Popeil And Steve Jobs

engtech — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:32:08 -0000

If it wasn't for my hawking of my flavour injector, I don't think my girlfriend would be dating me.

Re: Is Fake Steve Jobs Dave Winer?

engtech — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:20:48 -0000

Can't be. FSJ is writing on a blogging platform he didn't create himself.

Re: My Blogging Reality Check

engtech — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:19:08 -0000

I yam what I yam.

uhg guhh gug.

Re: This Just In: We’re just not that funny

engtech — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:38:00 -0000

http://nobodycomeshere.com/ is a blog :)

Re: Second Webomatica Contest: Bad / Good Movies

engtech — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:43:51 -0000

So bad it's bad: Envy

So bad it's good: Tombs of the Blind Dead, 1971.

Watch the Spanish version with subtitiles though, the american version is re-edited into a different plot and not as good.

Re: Promised Land

engtech — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:52:53 -0000

I'm really looking forward to digging through your designs and learning from them. Particularly the stuff about Template: Sandbox, etc.

I'm especially excited about learning about grids.