The screenshot you see here is a family portrait of sorts; my parents, each on their own Macs, and me on mine while my wife looks over my shoulder. What makes this a bit odd is that we are all in the same room.
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Archive for June, 2008
The Family that Chats Together…
27
Jun
Plugins as Handmade Gifts
17
Jun
We have certain rights as consumers and, by and large, we exercise those rights. If I buy something I have certain expectations of my purchase. First and foremost, I expect it to work as advertised. If it’s a toaster, I expect it to make toast. If I bought a 4 slice toaster, I expect that it will toast four pieces of bread at the same time and that all the bread will be evenly toasted. Anything that is counter to my expectations will lead to disappointment, frustration, etc. I will pack the toaster back in its box, grab the receipt, and take it back to the store from whence it came.
Gifts, especially handmade ones, fall under a different set of behavioral expectations. If my Aunt Tilly brings me a jar of homemade jam that tastes like a combination of laundry detergent and burnt rubber, I will smile politely, thank her profusely, and jettison the jam soon after she has departed. I will not complain to Aunt Tilly, nor will I return the offending jam and ask her for a replacement jar. She gave me a gift, I didn’t like it, end of story.
Which brings me to plugins. The open source aspect of WordPress has inspired a whole group of creative and dedicated programmers to develop software solutions that improve the functionality of the WordPress blogging platform. Because of their plugins, my WordPress blog has all of the features that I want it to have.
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Change of Address
13
Jun
My son, Peter, has a summer job and is living away from home. The other day he asked me to mail him something. He tells me the address is 514 5th and Main St. “That doesn’t sound right “, I tell him. He insists that the apartment is on the corner of 5th and Main and “why wouldn’t that be the address?”
I understand his logic. He has much more experience with web addresses than he does with U.S. Postal protocol. If Pete’s address was a url it might be something like http://pete.city.us/5th/main/514 All the elements appear in a logical sequence. Postal addresses don’t follow the same logic.
Those of us with years of snail mail experience will understand that the ’514′ in the street number indicates that his apartment is in the 500 block of Main St. It is unnecessary, and potentially confusing to postal employees, to include both streets in the address. A trip to the post office confirmed this. The postmaster asserted that the proper address was 514 Main St. and proceeded to cross out the extra street reference.
“Why is this interesting?”, you might ask. It is another indication of the influence the Internet is having on the most basic aspects of everyday life. We use less and less snail mail and input more and more web addresses. The logic of web addresses begins to influence how people (particularly younger people) conceive addresses. How else does it influence how we perceive locations in space?
More WordPress Plugins
06
Jun
My June 1 post on WordPress plugins contains Lester Chan’s own plugin (WP-PluginUsed This makes my post dynamic since WP-PluginUsed will constantly update my own plugins list. Therefore, every time I add, delete, activate, or deactivate a plugin, this will be reflected in the June 1 post.
When I first wrote that post I had 22 total plugins; 14 active and 8 inactive. I spent some time last night with the plugin directory and I now have a total of 24 plugins; of which 16 are active and 8 inactive. One of the new plugins is called Organize Series . I’ll test out its practicality and functionality on this series of posts on plugins.
Nature’s Way
02
Jun
I love this age of hot and cold running information! Random songs used to wander around in my head for days. What was that song? Who sang it? Now, with minimal effort, and a few well chosen inquiries, it takes very little time for a song to move from inside my head to inside my iTunes library.
“It’s nature’s way of telling you something’s wro-ong”; my head sang to me. I was sitting on the patio having dinner with Linda. I sang her the snippet. “Who sang that?”, she asked. “I think it was Free“, said I. “They also did “Alright Now”, Linda offered. “Then it wasn’t “Free”, said I.
A quick trip to iTunes on the kitchen computer identified “Spirit” as the group that sang Nature’s Way in the early 70′s. 
It also provided a plethora of subsequent covers. Then to top it all off, a short search of youtube uncovered this video:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTK2LHZKPQ]
I know I’m not the only one to believe that this is amazing. Why isn’t everyone amazed? How old do you have to be for it to be amazing? Will those who aren’t amazed finally be impressed when they can hum the song and a Google-created audio-algorithm can identify it? Is it possible that, in this time and place, an attitude of “anything is possible” has supplanted “wonder”.