Well as everyone has noticed, I took a little break from blogging here over the Christmas/New Years holiday period. Part of it was traveling to see family and part of it was just taking a nice break to work on offline projects. (Along with starting my new (well old) hobby.
You see, here at Supergeekblog I stay pretty focused on tech stuff. Be that gadgets, tech news, scifi, etc. Well I also have what I consider an “old school” geek blog that is rather niche. Modeltrainrookie.com is another blog I run - and over the break I was working on that hobby. (Model trains.) It is a hobby I was really into as a kid with my Dad. Well around 12-13 years ago water got into my parents basement and we had to tear the whole thing down… and it just never got reset up. Well for Christmas my Dad gave me all of the old train stuff. (We had quite a lot!) Now that I have my own house, made for quite the fun project over the holiday.
Feel free to head on over to that site and check out my progress there. I am attempting to document my progress on that blog. So far it is a blast and I am managing to keep up with the pictures and posts.
Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (1)
Computer Networking Products Overview is a guest post from Eric at CXtec.Intro:There are enormous amounts of computer and networking products available to consumers. Determining what items are best suited to meet your needs can be a time consuming task. Unless you are directly involved with work in the networking field, I think it is reasonable to assume that you don’t read up on all of the latest network technology products that have come out.
Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (1)
Ok Jackson over at LifeHacker did a post on this, and it is just too good to pass up. I know many (and I mean many) of us get request all of the time. We pop over to google, do a search, and send back the first 2-3 links that look like they will do the trick.Let Me Google That For You allows the user to see the search term you used, an animation showing how to hit “search on google,” with the funny quip “was that so hard”, and finally ending with the google results.
Posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 in SGB Tech - Comments: (3)
The number of plugins I use for this site has grown quite a bit. If you have your own blog, take a look at the below list of plugins. Perhaps you will find one useful. I have the name of the plugin linked to where you can find it, along with a brief description and explanation of why I use it.
Posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (0)
Ok, just about everyone is aware of the Trek movie coming out in 6 months. Some Trekkies are pretty leery of the “reboot.” I for one look forward to the new take on the original crew just to hear more stories about that crew. (Kirk and the gang are still my favorites.)Here are a few links for you to get caught up on:Official Trek Movie WebsiteApple Trek Trailersio9 has an awesome breakdown of the new trailer (2).
Posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 in Social Media - Comments: (0)
I have yet to create a custom background for my Twitter page. However being on my second week of really diving into Twitter, I have noticed other bloggers and big time Twitter folks take the time to customize their background.There seems to be a basic convention to it, and I have to admit it makes it look more professional/more information/and generally more appealing.
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Posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 in SGB Reviews - Comments: (0)
Over at ProBlogger, they have a well written article discussing 16 different applications that bloggers should use. Some I have used, some I have not, and some I prefer and alternative. I wouldn’t say this needs to be limited to bloggers, but anyone who likes to customize their web experience.The first one on the list being Firefox - I couldn’t agree more.
Posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 in SGB Software - Comments: (0)
I normally don’t plug (pun intended) too many Wordpress plugins, but this is the second one I have discovered this week that I installed right away. This stats plugin impressed me with it’s layout immediately after installing. It is called CyStats.It integrates right into the WP-Admin section and starts recording data right away. As a stats junky (my day job is reporting/business advisor/analyist/report development) I really like having this information at my fingertips.
Posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 in Uncategorized - Comments: (0)
For fellow bloggers out there, I found a pretty nifty plugin/app. It allows you to moderate your comments right from your desktop. (Instead of either logging in manually or waiting for the queue email.)Depending on the volume of comments, may or may not be worth the time. However it certainly is worth taking a look at to see if it would be useful for you.
Posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 in SGB Tech - Comments: (0)
Well, I have installed and started customizing a new theme here at SuperGeekBlog.The idea is to finally make the jump (like I did on OlorinPC.com) to a theme that supported widgets. Not totally sure about it yet, as the dividers are doing some funky stuff… but I might be able to find the code that is doing that and tweaking it a bit.
Posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 in Websites - Comments: (2)
Another WP Plugin, looks to be pretty nifty. I am actually installing it here at SGB and going to give it a spin. It is a plugin that does a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly brief summary of posts done on a WP site.Best Posts Summary is a WordPress plugin that automatically generates a summary post of your best posts over a specified period of time based on the most popular posts in terms of number of comments or number of visits.
If you enjoy the content on this site, please make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.
For fellow bloggers out there, I found a pretty nifty plugin/app. It allows you to moderate your comments right from your desktop. (Instead of either logging in manually or waiting for the queue email.)
Depending on the volume of comments, may or may not be worth the time. However it certainly is worth taking a look at to see if it would be useful for you.
One of the questions I get from time to time goes a bit like this: “Jake, where do you find this stuff?” That typically is a reference to a blog I linked to, news article, etc.
The short answer is - I read. A lot. I use Google Reader to subscribe to many different blogs/websites/newspapers/etc. Last count I have 109 subscriptions. So the follow up question to that would be - “Dude, how can you read that many sites in a day? Don’t you have to work sometimes?” Well of course I actually have to work. If I didn’t get my work done, I wouldn’t have a job, and if I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t have money to pay for the internet to read stuff. Many of the sites aren’t quite that frequent in their updates… though I would say an average daily level for me is hovering around 250 items per day.
There are a few useful techniques that I use to get through higher volumes (some Mondays it gets more towards 500 unread) posts. The main one I use is (again with reader) sharing and starring items. I scroll through and note the ones that sound interesting, mark them, and review them later when I have the time.
I also know there are some sources (like a couple of the newspapers) that flood me with items that I quickly scroll past. So 10,437 items sounds like a lot, and it is, however the time spent on the bulk of those really isn’t. That shared number really just says that there are (using an average) a little over 20 posts a day that make me pause. That being said, I think anyone who really makes use of RSS feeds and reader can attest… some days you get buried and it takes a bit to catch back up.
So that is how it works. Other side of the coin is making posts myself. I am doing a similar process on that end. (Batch processing.) I write up 2-3 posts at a time and set the date/time I want them to show up on the web.
Overnight, Microsoft issued a rare out-of-cycle patch for Windows systems that should be installed immediately. The vulnerability affects all versions of Windows and could have an impact similar to the 2003 Blaster Worm attack. If you’re not set to auto-update, be sure to go out and grab the update.
Now like the author of that post, my machines are set to auto-update in the early morning. However, I like to run update manually sometimes just to make sure. Not every one does though, so if you have a less-geeky friend or family member - remind them to update! I know it never works, but it is worth a try. (First thing I do when sitting at a persons computer to work on it is start running windows and virus scan updates.)
For those geeks out there using Wordpress for their websites - get this plugin. It Automatically upgrades your wordpress to the latest code version.
The only kink I have run into with it is it has a habit of not reactivating your plugins, but really that only takes an extra second. I just finished upgrading the codebase of 5 different sites with it in about 10 minutes. That is about a tenth of the time it used to take me manually uploading the new WP files. I used to wait or delay upgrading site code till I was sure the kinks were worked out, till I got hit with a script attack that poisened every single one of my php files. After that I tried to be a little more proactive on keeping my site code up to date, but it was still a pain. This way, it was so quick and simple, even if there is a bugfix release tomorrow, I will be able to be right on top of it.
Saw this one over at CrunchGear - it sounds neat. Yet I wonder what the net return will be on this. Are fuel costs factored in to ship trash there once the immediate local garbage dump is exhausted? Judging by the scale implied, the plant isn’t going to move from dump to dump, so in the long run trash will have to go there. While the number of trash we produce will easily fuel this concept - can we get it their cheap enough to make it a more viable solution?
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