Tag Archives: Technology

RSS Readers and a rainbow

Technology

I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned he looked at our blog and a few others from time to time but always forgot to check back or didn’t know when an update was posted.  He didn’t know about the magic of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.  Basically, most blogs and some websites have special programming that enables them to publish the fact that changes to the site have been made.  RSS readers can use that information to consolidate the updates into a single simple reader.  To know that a site publishes an RSS feed, look for this button somewhere on the site or on the menu bar of your browser (it will be smaller of course):

Rss Logo

Any site that displays that logo publishes a feed.  So, now you need to find a reader to consolidate your feeds.  I use http://www.bloglines.com/login to read my feeds but Yahoo!, Google and many other places have readers as well.  Once you create an account, find your blogs that you want to read and click on the orange RSS logo.  You’ll be taken to a new page.  Copy the URL (web address) that you are taken to and enter it where your reader asks for new feeds to monitor.  In bloglines, I click the “feeds” tab, then I click “add”.  I simply enter the web addresses I want to watch and save.  The reader will periodically monitor your subscribed site for changes and alert you to those changes when you log in.

Now, since you have endured my technology post, I will leave you with a picture of a pretty rainbow…

Awesome rainbow

This picture was actually taken a few years ago but Abigail spotted another beautiful rainbow this morning.  I didn’t have my camera but it was awesome to see.  Isaac wanted to hop a jet to get to the end and pick up his pot of gold.  Unfortunately for him, he had to go to school.

Stellarium

Nature, Technology,

Stellarium

Did you see the full moon a few nights back?  I really enjoy the simple things I guess, but the sky was clear and it was full and bright.  I took my telescope outside and focused it on the moon for a quick gaze.  Through a telescope, the full moon is almost blinding.  Well, maybe not that bright but it’s bright.  Stare at it for awhile and then look away into darkness and you’ll see spots.  Anyhow, if you have some sort of magnifying device, the full moon is well worth the look.  It is especially good if you have a tripod or some sort of stand, but even binoculars are cool.  It’s amazing to see the crators and meteor strikes that still look fresh.  Along the edges of the moon are incredibly detailed mountain ranges and all shades of gray.  Besides just looking at the moon, there are lots of other awesome things that can be found in the night sky, if you know where to look.  You can memorize star charts (which isn’t a bad idea, but…) or you can find a program to illustrate the night sky.  I like Starry Night which came free with my telescope.  There is an alternative that requires no purchase and is pretty great.  Stellarium is both popular and powerful.  Besides that, Stellarium is free and easy to use.  It’s also easy to use.  Did I mention, it’s free too?  In a nutshell, it shows the objects in the sky for your location and will plot future locations as well.  You can choose to see illustrations of the consellations or the orbits of the planets, nearby nebulae, etc.  It’s incredible and should make finding objects in the sky much easier.  That was always a huge frustration for me when I started star gazing…where to look.  The other thing is that I never felt like I had enough “fire power” when I pointed a scope at the sky.  I was surely wrong.  On a whim a few years ago, I pointed my spotting scope at the sky…you know, the kind you take to the shooting range or when you go groundhog hunting.  I was able to see the rings of Saturn.  Mind you, Saturn was tiny, but I could clearly see the rings.  It’s also very easy to find and quite amazing to see.  A triod is required but if you have any sort of scope, download Stallarium and find Saturn.  I think you’ll be hooked!

Down she goes!

Technology

The blog was down starting yesterday afternoon sometime until now (if you didn’t notice, never mind…all is well). I host the blog on a machine in my office and someone here at the shop changed a router or something and kicked me offline. I have sufficiently beat them and all is well again. Sorry for the screw up!

Woot!

Free Programs, Technology,

Woot-offThis is sort of silly but there are a few websites I check every day…even on weekends.  One of the first is www.woot.com.  They typically sell one item per day.  If/when they sell out of the item, the site is locked until the next day.  Now, that may seem pretty dull but the deals are typically pretty great.  They also have hilarious product descriptions, a funny podcast and goofy comments on the blog.  But the really exciting part is when they have a woot-off (usually once a month…you’ll see the sirens and the yellow progress bar during a woot-off).  During a woot-off, which can last 1or more days, they sell one item until it is gone, and then they move on to another item.  I suppose it is a purging of the items left in the warehouse that either didn’t sell during normal woots or were purchased in smaller quantity.  Anyhow, it is a ton of fun for me to watch the progression of items for sale during a woot-off.  The problem is, many items sell out in a matter of minutes.  I can’t sit at work all day refreshing a webpage waiting for the next item.  Of course, I can’t sit all day at work during a woot-off and miss any items either.  Faced with a problem, I thought, “hey, I am a computer programmer…I own this!”  From that, “woot watcher!” was born.  I wrote a little application to check the site every 30 seconds and look for changes.  When it finds a change, it pops up a message with the item title and cost.  I can choose to ignore it or view the item.  Now, there are others who have written similar applications, but I like having control over how my version works. 

You can download my program here.  When you click the link, it will prompt you to run or save.  Just save it to your desktop (or wherever you want) and have it ready for the next woot-off!  Please drop me a comment if you download.  I am just curious if anyone else likes woot or “woot watcher!”.  Of course, you download this at your own risk.  I make no warranty for the program or your system.  Please feel free to virus scan it.  It works well for me but I can’t be responsible if it sends your Windows 95 machine over the edge!

WordPress 2.6 upgrade…oops!

Technology

I take it back! I take it all back! Abort your 2.6 upgrade. I write software for a living…I know what happens when stuff is first released! What was I thinking?!?!

Ok, get my point? It wasn’t all pretty afterall. Lots of good stuff but some stuff just doesn’t work as well as it should. e.g. image uploads were a mess for me…I think I will wait for v 2.6.1 or something. I was fortunate enough to have saved everything to roll back…and that was easy and went smoothly. Sorry for the false alarm!

WordPress 2.6 Upgrade!

Technology

I just upgraded wordpress, the software I use to build this site. Version 2.6 was released in the last few days and adds a number of pretty nice features. I won’t go through them here but check out this video https://videopress.com/v/mARhRBcT/fmt_dvd
for info on what has changed. All in all, the upgrade was extremely easy. I just made a backup of the database and my wp-content area. I stopped all wamp services just in case. My instructions didn’t explicitly say to stop them but from experience with Windows services, I figured it couldn’t hurt. The download for the new source was small and speedy. I unzipped and copied everything (except the wp-content dir) into the wordpress root and then carefully copied the new stuff from the downloaded wp-content over the appropriate items in my wp_content (I didn’t want to hammer my mods, themes, etc). I restarted all wamp services and logged in to the site. On initial login, I got a message that I needed to upgrade my database…and there was a nice button to push to take care of it. I pushed the button and 5 seconds later I was in. That’s it. I was so surprised at how easy it was. I haven’t figured out how useful some of the changes will be yet though I especially like captions for pictures and the supposed easier editing in the wysiwyg post/page creator. We’ll see how that part works out. Anyhow, congratulations wordpress for an awesome update!

Domain name chaos

Technology

As you may have experienced, my initial domain name, buzz-honey.com has been up and down and generally all screwed up.  I registered the domain with yahoo in 2005 and had been chugging along with them just paying $8.95 per year to keep the site/name active.  This year, I noticed that they planned to raise the rate to $34.95 per year.  I decided to transfer my registration to another service which is supposed to be an easy process.  I signed up with namecheap.com to transfer my domain and crossed my fingers.  I had to get the transfer password from yahoo so I called them and asked what to do.  They said I needed to cancel my service with yahoo in order for the transfer to take place.  I argued with the technician thinking that it can’t be a good thing to cancel with them.  He assured me that it was the only way to make the transfer happen and that my site would continue to exist as-is until the transfer.  Foolishly, I cancelled my yahoo account and within 2 hours, buzz-honey was down.  Only slightly irritated, I called yahoo back and asked them what happened.  The next technician said that cancelling the yahoo account made them drop the domain and move it to melbourne-it, the company in Australia that they use to register domains.  I gave this technician the name of the first technician and asked him to inform/reprimand him.  Anyhow, I then began the chore of contacting melbourne-it.  Not wanting to make an international phone call, I foolishly decided to send them an email…and then another…and then another.  I got no response until 3 days later.  Even then, the response was a canned blurb.  I was pretty irritated by this point so I purchased the new domain name for this blog from namecheap.com hoping to get something back up and running.  Nameheap did a great job, was quick to respond, had online chat support, etc.  I definitely recommend them.  Anyhow, 6 days passed between domain transfer initiation to  completetion.  Apparently that is not too bad as I have read stories of transfers taking much longer.  Still, it is unacceptable for a domain name transfer to be this much of a problem.  Take heed!