Blob
>the personal blog of david n wallace
[aka Dave the Lifekludger]

June 28, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , — dnw @ 2:23 am

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June 21, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-21

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June 14, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-14

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , — dnw @ 2:23 am

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-14

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , — dnw @ 2:23 am

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June 7, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-07

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June 3, 2009

Munging Evernote as a blog publishing engine

Filed under: Blogging, Evernote, Thoughts — Tags: , , , — dnw @ 11:40 pm
evernote and wordpress

evernote and wordpress

I’ve been, and always am, looking for ways to streamline the process of getting the things I see online or come across on my computer out into the Intertubes - usually through one of my blogs. You know, reduce the amount of steps involved between getting something from my head as idea to a digital object.
 
The problem is there’s a myriad of things I might want to capture as a blog post, from a myriad of sources and a further myriad of apps.
 
This is where Evernote excels, at capturing ‘bits’ on the fly from anywhere on your computer.
 
What I really wanted was something that worked like Evernote but could publish to a blog. I even put that very thought out across Twitter, not really thinking about what I was saying.
 
  
Of course, I couldn’t just leave it alone there for some Evernote fairy to come along and create what I wanted, and I got thinking about a way to munge a solution.
 
The answer came to me in the middle of the following night and was actually simpler than I thought as I’d alread had the majority of the puzzle solved in the process I’ve been using to get my thoughts about things I discover out onto my Lifekludger blog.
 
The process on Lifekludger is I collect things I see in a delicious account. I save the url to delicious and add as much complete thoughts about what I’m saving as posible in the notes field of delicious. I even try include urls to images and other links I’d want to use in my final blog post. I then make sure it’s tagged with a unique tag I use that flags it as a future blogpost. Then I’m done and move along to whatever I was doing.
Meanwhile, I have on my blog a plugin call wp-o-matic [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-o-matic/].
 
This is a plugin that takes any rss feed and turns each item into an individual blog post. Now, delicious is clever and can spit out a rss feed of just about anything - including a particular tag. So I setup wp-o-matic to grab the rss feed of the  special tag in my delicious account and it automagically creates plog posts in the backend of my blog. I set it so the posts are drafts, then go into my blog backend when I have time and clean up the drafts, format a little, and then publish. Sometimes if there’s a few drafts, I’ll schedule them to release in some time in the future.

So, back to Evernote. You can possibly see where this is leading. The thought I had that night was “oh, I wonder if the publicly publishable part of evernote has rss on it? If so why not feed the rss of that into wp-o-matic“.
 
Fortunately, the ppl at Evernote did build in the ability to get a rss feed from any notebook you publicly publish. So, I had my rss feed. 
 
I setup a few captures in Evernote and used a unique tag to mark future items I wanted to become blog posts, setup a search on the tag and set them up as a public notebook.
 
 
Then I got the rss feed from the published notebook and plugged it into wp-o-matic on myblog.
 
And, it didn’t work.
 
I went away and slept on it again, perplexed, as there was no valid reason for it not working. Then I got the idea to toss the public Evernote generated rss feed into feedburner to clean it up, then plug the feedburner feed into wp-o-matic. And voila! Next I looked there they were, 3 Draft posts of the individualy clipped terms in my blog back end from my Evernote notebook.
 
So now I have the ability to quickly capture anything I want in Evernote and publish it out to my blog. A little like an offline tumblr. 
 
For more blog editor type function, some things could be better, like link embedding. And images don’t always go through as intended, especially if there’s multiples - I’ll likely keep using Jing for that when there’s more than a simple one image clip. That way I also know the image gets saved on my server.
 
I’m still to try it out in angst, but the process is sorted.
 
Originally I wrote this in Evernote. Capturing screenshots into Evernote and dropping them into this note along with dropping in links too. However apart from the images issue, there was a bigger problem - only a portion of the note written in Evernote was imported by wp-o-matic to my blog post. It was cut at about 400 words. Where that issue stems from I’m not sure at the time of writing. It could be the rss feed, some limit of evernote or some limit in wp-o-matic. I’ll need to test that out more. [Later: I just discovered the problem is Evernote not putting out a complete rss feed]
 
Anyway, to me the limitations don’t negate the usefulness of this method of using Evernote as a desktop quick blogging tool and I look forward to using my maze of small pieces, loosely joined I now call my new blogging flow tool.
 
Dave

May 31, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-31

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , — dnw @ 2:23 am
  • head in too many places #
  • on hold to centrelink. on skype-out, call recorder running. #
  • @fang Just skipped vista here on mac/bootcamp and went to win7 in reply to fang #
  • Just realised, my ideal quick flow/blogging solution would most likely currently be solved if Evernote had a “Blog This” button :) #evernote #
  • @kerryank you’re hurting my brain. in reply to kerryank #
  • A caveat to previous #evernote tweet - it should do more than attempt to load an ext blogging app, like #netnewswire does :/ #
  • Reading minutes #
  • @kerryank and said strangers should be given 4 glasses of red wine for having to listen :) in reply to kerryank #
  • checking out a thing called #SortSite … mmm no Mac version - http://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/ #
  • @kerryank oo…then we’d all be tequilaised! in reply to kerryank #
  • @monnie I keep one of those foldup ones stashed in me bag with me wallet. in reply to monnie #
  • oh poo, 6 pages with accessibility problems o my blog … must fix. #
  • SEO-”Title tag is longer than 66 characters. Google search results display the first 66 characters of the title, cropping to complete words” #
  • @Kodo on what mac? mines an older mini. in reply to Kodo #
  • OO…my ext drive died. #
  • Time to get a big nas I reckon. recommendations? #
  • @mickyj I’ve heard ReadyNAS is good. You sell em I guess? :) in reply to mickyj #
  • @mickyj something that’ll do 2 x 1gb mirrored with hot swap. in reply to mickyj #
  • resizing bootcamp partition using CampTune after win7 took more room than expected - so far so good. #
  • bugger, just found a typo in my cv #
  • @kerryank oooo…now that’s a cheeky idea! in reply to kerryank #
  • love the way mac integrates pdf everywhere #
  • heading out into the big bad world of dark. laters. #
  • loading ipod for commute this arvo. god I wish #twit would id their shows so they appear together. loading 2schooners, mbw, some #ntc09 etc #
  • back from beyond #
  • Anyone know which wiki software (self-hosted) has the best back end editing - preferably wysiwyg? #
  • <filter time=0:30:00>-#newinventors</filter> #
  • aghh…filter fail. going twitter-dark #
  • perplexed that #evernote doesn’t seem to sync saved searches between computer instances #
  • @fang will get onto lessig audio… in reply to fang #
  • bed. #
  • @fang This is what you want http://lessig.blip.tv/rss/mp3 in reply to fang #
  • heading out into the big world of dark. later #
  • Updated blog post: virtual co-presence - http://is.gd/JVJ2 #
  • Lifekludger New post: Buttonless remote control - move it http://cli.gs/Jbn9EU #

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May 29, 2009

virtual co-presence

Filed under: Presence, Second Life, Thoughts — Tags: , , , , — dnw @ 11:01 am
Update: Some sentences rearranged to better express what I wanted to convey. Bold added. 

albert&dave_sfnc-frame.jpg 

 
Last year a blog post by Mark Pesce titled “Those Wacky Kids” contained this paragraph:
 
Mizuko Ito, a Japanese researcher, studied teenagers in Japan a few years ago, and found that these kids – from the moment they wake up in the morning, until they drop off to sleep at night – are enaged in a continuous and mostly trival conversation with, on average, five other friends. They might be in the flat next door, or on the other side of Tokyo. Proximity doesn’t matter. What does matter is the constant connection. Ito named this phenomenon “co-presence”. It seemed a bit too science-fiction wacky-technophile Japanese, at the time.
 
I just rediscovered this in some little used backwater of my online tools after saving it there ages ago.
 
The bold highlighted part is the bit that struck me, not simply because it’s obviously what’s going on with social networks and why things like Twitter are so popular - I’ve always seen Twitter as a ‘presence‘ app, but primarily because it’s what I’ve craved and been for years living out to varying degrees in various places online.
 
It’s also what I see and experience as going on big time in Second Life. With a twist. There, the physical, geographic proximity of the residents [users of SL] in terms of where they live  certainly doesn’t matter (aside from the obvious problems differing timezones bring). And certainly, the relationships bought about by connection is the thing that keeps them returning.
 
However when in SL the issue of proximity does matter in terms of virtual geography. The “co-presence” spoken of is felt and made stronger by being in the same close virtual proximity with others in-world.
 
It’s why gatherings for dance partys with music live streamed in by DJ’s thrive, companies hold meetings, educators take classes, live music events where artists play in some remote physical location with their music streamed straight into the virtual gathering are extremely popular, it’s why people build homes and have friends around, and why they go exploring together, and develop close personal relationships, and why people gather in groups around in-world, often simplistic, puzzle style games that they share in the same virtual proximity with others - where the being with others is part of the enjoyment of the game - in my opinion, often moreso than the game itself.
 
Yes, in the physical world, proximity may be becoming less important for connection to others.
 
In the virtual word, proximity is everything and co-presence is made almost palpable.
 
Dave

May 24, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-24

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , — dnw @ 2:23 am

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May 23, 2009

My chicken’s on the internet - poem

Filed under: Everday — Tags: , , , — dnw @ 12:05 pm

My boy was around, showed my this kids poetry site. One of the poems was the following. Hope you like it as much as I did.

Here’s him reading it [audio]

My Chicken’s On the Internet

My chicken's on the Internet.
She surfs the web all day.
I've tried to stop her browsing
but, so far, there's just no way.

She jumps up on the mouse
and then she flaps around like mad
to click on every hyperlink
and every pop-up ad.

She plays all sorts of chicken games.
She messages her folks.
She watches chicken videos
and forwards chicken jokes.

She writes a blog for chickens
and she uploads chicken pics.
She visits chicken chat rooms
where she clucks about her chicks.

I wouldn't mind so much
except my keyboard's now a wreck.
She hasn't learned to type yet;
she can only hunt and peck.

–Kenn Nesbitt

Copyright © 2009 Kenn Nesbitt
All Rights Reserved

See http://poetry4kids.com/
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