A Random Pattern

I’ve been thinking about one of the fun little extras Steve Jobs showed off at WWDC not too long ago: The ability to replace backgrounds in iChat video chats. Here are some ideas that I’m sure someone will play around with as soon as Leopard is available:

• Wear a t-shirt that matches the background. Presto, there’s a hole in your stomach! (Don’t know if this will work, depends on how they implemented the algorithm.
• Take a screenshot with your head in the picture. Does your head now disappear?
• Create a fake background with yourself, then “walk in” on yourself while chatting with someone else.

Remember, folks, you heard it here first. Here’s the site that gave me the idea, with a rundown on Leopard:

… In addition, a sophisticated chroma key algorithm was added so that a user can do a snapshot of the background he is chatting in front of, and it will remove the background and key in a background image or video of the user’s choice. For corporate presentations, podcasts or just plain having fun, this is a great feature. …

Update:  Links to WWDC, the Leopard sneek peek iChat page, and a picture from Apple showing the new backdrop effect:

With the fixes I implemented last night, careful inspection later (read: today) reveal that I partially broke my page in IE. Yet another reason that you should be browsing the web in style. A fix is in progress, and I’ll document it here when I get it actually working.

I also verified that the sidebar on single pages goes right over the footer. I found one suggestion for fixing it, but that didn’t seem to work. Anyone have any ideas?

My fix for navigation links on single posts didn’t fix anything. So back to the drawing board for that too…

Update:  The breakage on IE was worse than I thought, so I’ve moved the subscription block back to the bottom right for now.  Hopefully the fix for that is easy.

What do you think? A new look for me?

Generate your own Web 2.0 label here, and join the clueless throng of internet devotees in celebrating and mocking something you don’t quite understand…

If you don’t get the joke, don’t worry. Most of the people who do get it don’t realize the joke they’re laughing at is on them. If that’s too meta for you, just skip this whole post. Or you can reference the word I made up and it’s definition:

dis-coordinated: unharmonious clumbsiness

Here are a few links on getting Ubuntu up and running with all the little goodies you might want:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-14062.html This is a forum where airtonix has a post (near the bottom) on getting WordPress up and running on Ubuntu. I’m still struggling with this, but realized I went about it the wrong way. There’s an option when you first install Ubuntu to install a “LAMP” stack. Choose this if you want to use your installation as a server for WP publishing, even privately.

http://torrez.us/myubuntu/ Someone writes on going “cold turkey” Ubuntu. Interesting, if a bit scary at first, with a ton of CLI (command line interface) stuff. My recommendations: 1. Don’t read this unless you’re a big geek. 2. Just install Ubuntu, and do things the nice easy graphical way. When you run into a problem, then worry about solving it. It’s much easier to take things one challenge at a time, and every issue you face is solvable one way or another.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186792 Similar to above, but a little more friendly. This is an Ubuntu “customization guide”, and the idea is to make sure you can use all the proprietary stuff that you also used on Windows or Mac, probably without realizing it. Stuff like Adobe reader, Flash, mp3s, all those are licensed and somebody has to pay for you to use a copy. Luckily there are easy ways to get this set up on Ubuntu. Again, my recommendations: Try easyUbuntu and automatix first.

List of what’s fixed, what needs to be fixed, and other changes to my blog:

Fixed:

• Sidebar now displays (mostly) as intended, with each section / widget displaying in it’s own floating white box.
• Sidebar shows up on single (post) pages.
• Unfortunately, I think that’s it. But I *felt* productive!

Need to be fixed or added (please add to this list in the comments!):

• Make sure Sidebar doesn’t extend past/over footer.
• Next / previous hyperlinks on individual pages too close to header title.
• Better integrated “pages” functionality (in header?).
• rotating header capability.
• more code cleanup, such as pulling out the sidenote javascript and extra images from the package.
• Figure out how/if to have a different Sidebar (shorter, simpler?) for single post pages.

Other changes:

• I created a cool widget, see it at the bottom of my sidebar. It has links to subscribe to my blog, and to explain what “subscribe to my blog” even means. It’s also got a way to get my new posts in your email, automagically! Yay for magic internet stuff!  (This was partially motivated by a reminder of a post from Robert Scoble, whose posts I keep running into lately.)
• In order to make the cool stuff above happen, I cleaned up my feeds and autodirecting for my feeds. If you subscribed to this blog before tonight – No Worries! It will automagically forward you to the feed I want you to use (grin) so I can count how many people are (not) reading my blog. This means you don’t have to do anything! But I’m still excited about it…

I think that’s it, at least that’s all I can remember.  If the blog doesn’t look or work much differently as far as you notice, that should mean I’m doing a good job.  And if something’s broken, please tell me.  I’ll fix it if I can.

Quick list:

-Fix sidebar to look like old sidebar, or like posts.  That is, white boxed instead of transparent.

-Get rotating header or Admin panel options to change header picture working.

That’s all I got.  Edits to come, I have no doubt. 

Could it be what I’ve been hoping and looking for? A collaborative whiteboard-type environment with IM, and it’s open-source to boot?! Of course, it looks like it has some, ahem, rough edges…

Performancing adds a MySpace Blog Editor – Who’da’thunk’it? On one hand, I’m thinking “yay Performancing“, great plugin, want to see them get more traction. On the other hand I’m seriously not too pleased with MySpace, and don’t want to see them get any bigger than they already are. On the third hand, this plugin may be one step needed to break the MySpace dominance…

Let me explain a little:

1. I didn’t understand MySpace at all, but I got a page anyways because two of my favorite bands were on there, Unsed and .heretoday.

2. I discovered there was no way to remove the ‘astrological sign’ junk on my main MySpace page. That’s just plain lousy and lame. On top of that, “TrueLuv” ads with scantily-clad women pulling at their skirts shows up every time I log in. You have no idea how much that ticks me off.
3. I discovered a few other people in my circle of friends, and since I had moved MySpace is the only way I would be able to keep in touch with them.

4. We had the neighbors over for dinner, and their son has a MySpace page. We discussed MySpace, because I still wasn’t getting why it was popular. Then it hit me as we talked – kids don’t care about any of the stuff I complain about. They just want to keep in touch with people, be cool, have friends.

The more I think about it, the more MySpace’s success makes sense. And it’s a little scary, because I don’t think the site is healthy – I think it’s a trap for our kids. Not that good can’t come of it, just that it facilitates evil far too easily.

But MySpace’s lead won’t be easily overcome. There’s no easy way to catch up with a friend network like that…

You may not notice too much of a change, but this is an brand-new theme. Vkaryl, a WP user and general web-expert-developer-type-person, kindly reworked the Rubric theme for me into a WP 2.04 friendly (and widget friendly) theme. I’m using it now, and am much happier.

There are still several areas I want tweaked, so I will be working on that over the next several weeks. It should be a good learning experience for me, and provide another useful theme for WP’ers out there.

On that note, look over to the right and you will see a “Pages” section. If you are family or a friend, there’s a page for you. It’s not too useful now, but give me a week or two and that will probably be your preferred landing page, as it will have a lot less “geekese”.

If anyone wants improvements to the theme, has comments or feedback, or is having difficulty with the them, just let me know in the comments.

Ubuntu-related posts will resume tomorrow.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more about this on the internet – maybe I missed it. Anyways, this is funny and disturbing at the same time. Have Samuel Jackson call someone you know. Enjoy. And don’t worry, you get to preview before you send it.