Recently in Blog Category

There are some moments in my life where I knew something has changed permanently.

Last night I got an email about a young woman who died tragically. When you read something like that it either far away or far too close. In this case it was in the middle. I didn't really know Julie in real life, but I read her blog. She was a friend of a friend. Hearing of her death, clicking on her rss feed and clicking the link to her last post was a moment I won't soon forget. Her blogspot "Location" left as it always was ... "amidst the water & the trees, minnesota". My heart goes out to those who lost a dear one.

Part three of my tribute to Lore and his seven basic blog posts.

CIMG5826, originally uploaded by timbu.

We recently had some ducks overnight with us. They were hatched at Matthew's school and will be released later this summer. It's was so cute watching these three ducks follow the children around the yard. I was relieved that we got them back without any unfortunate mishap!

Part two of my tribute to Lore and his seven basic blog posts.

I just paid too much money for a few sheets of paper with a cheap soft cover. You should buy one too so you can be cool like other bloggers.

Bloggers are known for their ability to find a product and flog it like there is no tomorrow all while avoiding the uncomfortable truth that they are being paid on each and every sale and the item in question was given to them for free. It's the classic Judas kiss, where you trade your ethics for a bag of gadgets you don't need. It's all a part of their desire to be "citizen journalists" only instead of the traditional demarcation between news and commercial speech bloggers blend them seamlessly so you have no idea which is which any more.

Lore Sjöberg opined today that there are really only seven basic blog posts. It's sad and mostly true.

I think I'll try and write an example of each of these and see where it leads.

I don't get much time lately to play with web toys, but I've been really intrigued by the possibilities offered by the new CSS grid frameworks. I think it's a bit too soon to call these CSS files frameworks, but they offer some great possibilities.

I took apart a MovableType template and have applied on at my test blog. Check out the coolness that happens when you go to that page and click control, then use your scroll wheel. I didn't make the whole template set yet -- I haven't had much spare time lately.

Grid templates:

• Typogridphy -- I like this one since it does a really nice job of both the grid and typography.
• Blueprint -- Pretty good documentation.
• Yui Grids -- Really easy to use with some super cool automation.
• Blueprint Generator -- fill in a form and the custom CSS gets emitted. Awesome if you know what you want.

I ran into a weird citation of my blog on an academic paper. Implicit Structure and Dynamics of Blogspace written by Eytan Adar.

Yet-Another-Google-Api was announced. This one is an ajax api for language detection and translation.

This looks like a pretty neat idea. Not only can I create a comic strip sans talent, I can share it, let people comment, let them edit it - this seems like fun to me. This seems like a lot more fun than "super-poking" someone or sending them a virtual banana for a real dollar.

I finally got around to switching my timbu.org email to be managed by google apps. It’s a much nicer interface than the cPanel front end I use now. Having google manage my email server doesn’t really give me anything new, rather it means that I stop worrying about the size of email on my web server - which has been a problem in the past. At the moment, they don’t really advertise themselves like an ISP, but you could easily cobble together something exactly like a hosting account by putting all their services together.

I still love my ISP and wouldn’t be willing to switch … yet.