Conehead Bailey

Originally uploaded by mykoleary.

This is our “intelligent” blue heeler puppy minutes after we finally got a hole punched in the plastic animal cracker container he managed to secure to his head while scavenging. We got a hole popped in with a knife to give him enough room to breath while we gradually cut out the whole bottom of the container to the collar with metal shears. Once we got all of the thin plastic cut away, we were able to sneak the shears underneath the container’s collar and cut it in one motion. Tense night for us…

I put a few new plugins in the site:

1) Evoca Browser Mic - this is added in my sidebar and lets you leave me a voice comment that goes to my Evoca account.

2) Targana Del.icio.us mp3 player - Let’s mp3s that are uploaded get saved and clipped to Del.icio.us and lets you play them right in the browser. You’ll see this when I start posting audio clips.

3) Digital Fingerprint - let’s you add a fingerprint to your posts so you can scour the web for stolen content much more easily. You better not see this one at all!

4) Did you pass math - Adds a very simple math problem to the comment form to hurt spambots even more. If you’re numerically illiterate and want to comment, send me an email.

Have a good weekend!

So it turns out I can;t just do a one click upgrade on Dreamhost since I didn’t install from there. It won’t be hard to self upgrade, but it’ll take longer than I have this weekend. And, I’m not as far off the latest version as I thought.

I will be looking to install some new plugins though. If any of them stick I’ll let you know which ones were enabled.

I’m going to attempt to upgrade my Wordpress installation. All should go totally smooth, but just in case it doesn’t, here is your warning.

Don’t worry, I remembered to backup my wordpress folder and the database of posts…

I grabbed a bottle of “Peach Oo-La-Long” tea by Honest Tea from Specialty’s the other day. Besides being some darn good tea, they also have some great inspirational quotes on the inside of each label.

This is the one from my latest bottle which I whole heartedly agree with:

“Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there” –Josh Billings

I need to call these out a little bit better in the UI of my site, but until I get the chance, let me link to specific projects that have been getting attention lately - since I know a few blogs just linked here and I got asked what the projects were…

Twitterlicious.com - A mashup of Twitter, Del.icio.us, and Ma.gnolia.com that allows you to browse Twitter on a mobile device, and clip tweets to your bookmark service so that you can view embedded URLS at your leisure on a screen that supports the size.

BookmarkCleaner.com - A site that allows you many ways to clean out your bookmark service’s stored bookmarks. It works with Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia.com as of now.  You can search for bookmarks with particular tags, for URLS that no longer exist, and for suspected phishing and malware sites using the Google Safe Browsing API.

I’ll post later with more information, my other projects, and blogs for each project (although maybe I should just bring them all into this one…?)

IMG_2924.JPG

Originally uploaded by lizney78.

Here I am leading a session for about 25 Mashup Camp attendees on mobile UI and applications. We talked about the challenges facing the space, several best practices, what UI platforms are best, and several other topics. Take a look at the session notes on the Mashup Camp 4 wiki if you want to know more (There’s even a link to a recording there if you want to feel like you were really there.)

http://wiki.mashupcamp.com/index.php/MobileUIApps

I fixed the problem with del.icio.us not auto posting my links here. Sorry it took so long. It ended up being a problem with Dreamhost’s custom compilation of PHP. All is well now after adding a small snippet of code to a Wordpress file.

Bailey Photoset

Originally uploaded by mykoleary.

This is a shot of Bailey, our new blue heeler puppy sitting outside on his first night at our house yesterday evening. He’s still a bit sleepy, but getting more and more rambunctious. He is very willing to let the girls doll over him, and is actually getting along right fine with the cats.

He’ll be very loyal and protective once he gets a bit older; a great quality that makes me feel better when the girls all go out for walks in the neighborhood.

So I work a block or two from the latest water main break in Seattle.  It was a pretty bad break of a 24″ main.  So bad it created a huge sinkhole that enveloped two cars and shut a drawbridge for the better part of two days.

Here’s a picture that came out in the Seattle Times of the workers making sure the latest fix of reinforcing the girders with cement to ensure the bridge won’t collapse to reopen it to traffic.

Notice that one of these guys is actually working.  It’s almost like a where’s Waldo picture…