The Neurotic Fishbowl -->
 

Friday, May 2, 2008

Twitter

Yeah, perhaps it's obvious that I never blog on here anymore. My Vox blog only gets updated sporadically as well.

Just in case you are interested in what I'm up to, Twitter is the best way to follow me, though the last month my Twittering has dropped off some.

.: 53 words at 05:26 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (0) :.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Amazon Price Watch

If you're anything like me, you spend a large chunk of your money at Amazon. Most of the stuff that I buy online comes from here and it's not unusual for me to have several packages delivered from there within a week (I should really buck up and get Amazon Prime, but I hate to pay for shipping).

While some of you may know that Amazon does a pre-order price guarantee, did you know that they do a post-order price guarantee as well?

What this means is if price of an item you ordered in the last thirty days goes down, they'll refund you the difference. I've already made about $5.00 this week since Immortal Beloved and Sting's Songs from the Labyrinth both have dropped in price since I bought them about a week ago.

I've been meaning to see if there's a way to set up an RSS feed or something to track changes on individual items, but it keeps slipping my mind. However, I was thinking about this tonight, so I figured I ought to do a search first and see if anyone has something like this already made.

Sure enough, there's a site - Amazon Price Watch - that allows you to enter up to four items at a time in a form. Then, for the next two months you'll receive an e-mail notifying you of any changes to the item's price. That means that not only is this a great way to watch for any money due you on already purchased items, but it will alert you to any sale prices on items you want to buy. From now on, any items I purchase will be automatically added here so I can keep an eye on their prices.

I hope this helps others as much as I bet it's going to help me!

.: 309 words at 10:53 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Kymberlie's Collections

A few weeks ago I blogged that I was coveting Collectorz.com's special bundle which I went ahead and bought after thinking about it for a day or two.

Last week the scanner came in, so I after an initial problem with some movies not loading into the scanner properly, within a couple of hours I'd scanned about 320 movies (and manually entered about twenty movies that had the bar code covered by stickers) and created this site. Pretty slick, huh?

I've got about thirty or forty DVDs at Ben's house that I need to pick up and scan and I'm missing about another dozen movies or so (Arsenic and Old Lace, The Day After Tomorrow, Shrek, The Evil Dead 2, etc.) which is driving me nuts, but except for any new movies I purchase, you can see my full movie collection, here, which is currently 341 movies.

I needed some help to figure out how to edit their scripts so that my own Amazon Associates ID was used, but now when you click through to one of the detail pages (like this one), any thing purchased through there will generate me a referral fee. Feel free to make your Amazon purchases through there. ;-)

I also scanned one book shelf of my books and ended up with this collection of 144 books. It's mostly the ones that I've purchased over the last six months or so and still need to read, so this is far from complete. If I had to guess, I'd say that I probably have around 500 or 600 paperbacks.

I've also got the software for CDs, but I really wanted to get the movies and my recently purchased books scanned, so that's a project for another day. I've got this page - Kymberlie's Collections - set up as an index for these sites, so I'm sure once I start scanning CDs, they'll end up there as well.

So, I'd definitely have to say that the scanner and the software was well worth the $200 I spent. The only thing I would really like to see different is some better documentation for their templates since right now I'm having a hard time bending them to my will.

.: 373 words at 07:01 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (0) :.

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

Movable Type 3.2

Powered by Movable Type 3.2I'm proud and happy to announce that Movable Type 3.2 has been released today.

It's a free update for any licensed user of Movable Type 3.x. Personal users will also be happy to find that the Free edition now offers unlimited blogs. Best of all, personal users who want a multi-user license and access to our famed technical support (That includes me! I love working for Six Apart!) can now take advantage of a special $30 discount on Basic and Unlimited editions.

Here's a list of some of the new features:

  • Vastly improved installation and upgrade
  • Unlimited blogs for all
  • Special $30 discount for Personal Edition
  • All your blogs in one place
  • The best community management
  • Find what you need
  • Smart new styles
  • A new generation of plugins
  • The best support in the business (Again, this is me! woot!)
  • Professional backing

You can get more information on these features and more here.

I haven't upgraded yet, but it's in the works for either this weekend or early next week and I'm very excited about it.

If you're a Movable Type user who hasn't upgraded in a while, now's the time to do so. 3.2 is so awesome; it makes an already incredible product even better!

.: 206 words at 11:13 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

For All the Cool Geeks in the House

I love P22 Type Foundry. They have the coolest fonts in the world. I was even a member of their font club for two years until they changed the format.

Their latest addition is the Caslon font family and while it's definitely a great font, what really caught my attention is this CD.

Since the font is based on type designs by William Caslong, an eighteenth century type designer, they've taken music by The William Caslon Experience, a downtempo (my favorite music genre, btw) musical duo, and made a CD that contains a "remixed" version of the font that's only available on the CD.

You get the CD free if you buy the entire font family for $99.95 (and considering how many fonts it contains, it's really not a bad deal), but you can also purchase it seperately for only $15.95. I listened to some of the samples on the page and the group sounds good.

$15.95 for a downtempo CD and a remixed font? I'm getting my credit card out right now. What a great combination of cool (downtempo music) and geeky (a font).

.: 187 words at 02:03 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (0) :.

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Thursday, August 11, 2005

Konfabulous

After listening to Dwight talk about how much he loves Konfabulator (especially now it's free), I jumped on the geeky bandwagon and downloaded it.

However, there are almost 800 widgets available, so finding the ones you can't live without is a little daunting.

If you run Konfabulator, which widgets are the ones you have to have?

.: 60 words at 07:40 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (5) :.

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Thursday, July 14, 2005

Movable Type 3.2

The latest version of Movable Type, 3.2, is now avaible for public beta testing.

The new version is awesome, with lots of changes, and I'm not just saying that because I work for Six Apart. ;-)

If you're interested in checking it out, go join the beta. It should be lots of fun and very interesting!

.: 59 words at 01:52 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Geotagging on Flickr

I love Flickr big time. I spend quite a bit time there browsing through photos, adding favorites, uploading pictures to groups, and more. By far, though, the coolest thing I've found seen on the site is when people geotagged their photos.

Following these very simple instructions you can add geotags to your own images which then will plot your photos on a Google map, allowing you to see who's taken pictures at nearby locations, in essence, creating a virtual tour through these photos. This is especially cool in places like New York City and Las Vegas.

I've only tagged around forty of my own pictures right now, but you can see them here. So far I've got photos in Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York. I'd have some in New Jersey, but I can't find the damn address for the Secaucus train station.

Here I've been thinking it that it must be so hard to get your latitude and longitude onto a photo, but with these scripts, it literally only takes a minute.

If you geotag any of your photos, let me know! I'd love to check out your map.

.: 193 words at 07:48 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Sunday, June 12, 2005

SpamLookup for Movable Type

A few weeks ago I installed Brad Choate's SpamLookup plugin for Movable Type and I now get virtually no comment or TrackBack spam.

Considering I was getting dozens of them a day before, this is a huge improvement. If you're using Movable Type, I cannot recommened installing SpamLookup enough.

.: 50 words at 04:13 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (1) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

An Easy Way to Transfer Text America Photos to Flickr

A while back I lamented the fact that there was no easy way to move your photos from a Text America site to your Flickr account.

While looking through my Text America pictures, it occured to me that I could send my pictures to Flickr quite easily by using the "Send To Flickr" Bookmarklet from the Uploading Tools page.

The "Send To Flickr" Bookmarklet lets you click on any picture on a page and instantly add it to your photostream, so I added all the pictures from my Text America account and from Picture Fish that I wanted. Took no time at all and was easy to do.

It's probably something that a ton of people have thought of, but I hope it helps someone else out.

.: 128 words at 09:14 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Monday, April 18, 2005

Flickr Surprise

Thanks to a kind soul, I received a Flickr Pro account about a month ago.

Today, I received even more Flick goodness, which is perfect timing since I just uploaded almost two hundred pictures and finally broke down and bought a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 digital camera in red which should arrive tomorrow (Wheeeee!).

The surprise is that for all Pro users, Flick has doubled the upload amount to 2 GB, doubled how long your Pro status is good for, and given each person two free Pro accounts to give away.

How sweet is that? You can guarantee that Red and I will be taking full advantage of all that extra space.

Now, what to do with those gift accounts? Maybe I should give them away to anyone who completes all three offers for me.

.: 136 words at 10:30 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (3) :.

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Movable Type 3.16

Six Apart has just announced that the latest version of Movable Type, 3.16, is now available.

Significant improvements to application security and over one hundred other fixes have been made, so this is definitely an upgrade you should make, no matter what version you're running.

Movable Type rocks!

.: 49 words at 05:01 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Blingo - The New Way To Search

I stumbled across this new search engine, Blingo, which is powered by Google, and immediately started using it.

You may be wondering, if it's powered by Google, why not just use Google? Well, the reason would be because Blingo picks random times during the day to give out prizes like movie tickets, iPods, Amazon.com gift certificates, and more.

I was pretty skeptical of this until, after using it for about ten minutes, I won a free movie ticket. The other cool thing about winning is that the person who referred me gets the same prize that I won.

Do a lot of web searches? I know I do, so you might as well have a shot at a prize while doing it. Go sign up; it's quick, easy, and you can even add it to the integrated search engine box in Firefox.

Good luck!

.: 147 words at 11:32 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (7) :.

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Monday, April 4, 2005

Winamp M4P Input Plugin

Since iTunes started offering free songs every Tuesday, I've amassed quite a few tunes in my Purchased Music folder.

However, I really dislike using iTunes as my audio player and use Winamp instead. It's always bothered me, though, that I couldn't play my iTunes songs (saved as m4p files) on Winamp.

Inspiration struck yesterday and a quick search on the Winamp site turned up the M4P Input plugin. It takes only a few seconds to install and you can play all of your iTunes songs through Winamp.

I thought I'd share for anyone else who wants to get around listening to their iTunes songs in iTunes only.

.: 108 words at 11:38 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Saturday, March 26, 2005

A Wish: Import From TextAmerica to Flickr

You know what I would love? If someone wrote a program that would take all of your TextAmerica pictures and import them into Flickr.

Anyone with mad coding skillz want to take a stab at it?

.: 37 words at 12:43 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Sunday, February 20, 2005

Upgrading

Well, I am about to bite the bullet and upgrade this blog from Movable Type 2.62 (which was current probably like a year and a half ago) to 3.15.

I'm sick and tired of having to delete TrackBack spam by hand and look forward to doing it right from the MT interface itself.

So, if things are wonky around here, you'll know why. Cross your fingers for me. ;-)

Updated: All done! Now to see if anything is funky or doesn't work right. Please leave me a comment if you come across an error.

.: 94 words at 11:04 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Hacking Your iPod's "Do not disconnect" Icon

If you've got an iPod (I have two now that my photo iPod has arrived), you're no stranger to the blinking "Do not disconnect." icon. If you're tired of that plain, boring icon, it's apparently pretty easy change it for an icon of your own choice (I personally like the slashed out RIAA icon that they've used). If you want to change yours up, instructions are here.

(Link courtesy of KB.)

.: 73 words at 10:13 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (3) :.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

MT Pi

Six Apart has just released the newest upgrade to Movable Type, v.314. It addresses the issue of extreme server load under spam attack.

Sounds like it's a fairly simple patch with lots of benefits, so if you're a 3.x user, I'd suggest getting the update.

.: 47 words at 02:25 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (2) :.

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Tuesday, July 6, 2004

MT Blacklist

For some reason, I've always been under the assumption that your MT had to be a higher version that what I'm running (v. 2.62) to install MT-Blacklist . I finally went and took a look today only to find out that my version is compatible and I could have been running it since it came out! Needless to say, I installed it right away (took all of three minutes) and am now protected from MT spammers (I really hate those bastards. The trojan that I have on my machine right now is from accidetally clicking on one of their links. Fuckers.).

My black list is under The Fishkeeper sidebar if you want to add any of the people I've blocked. Here's hoping I get a lot less comment spam!

.: 129 words at 11:27 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (2) :.

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Saturday, July 3, 2004

Ratings, Ratings, and More Ratings

You may remember that a while back I added a Netflix page that displays the movies I currently have out, have recently returned, and what's remaining in my queue.

Using a suggestion that I made, Oscar had modified the code so that it now displays what I rated my returned movies.

You can download the updated Netflix Suite MT plug-in here.

.: 62 words at 08:07 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (0) :.

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Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Netflix Suite for MT

I finally caved in and joined Netflix (in case you've been living under a rock and don't know about them, they let you have up to three movies out at a time for $19.99 a month and you can rent as many as you want). I'm currently out of work, so I've already watched four movies since I joined last week.

Of course, since I'm also a geek, I had to install the Netflix Suite for MT which allows you to show what movies you currently have out, which ones you've seen, and which ones are in your queue. If you're interested, you can check out my Netflix viewing habits here.

Oscar, the creator of the Netflix Suite, is also going to be working on adding functionality to let you see what I rated a movie so you can see what I thought of it.

So, anyone have any movies - new or old - that are must sees that I need to add to my list?

.: 169 words at 06:01 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (7) :.

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Monday, April 12, 2004

WinNoise

Ever heard a song made entirely out of Windows .wav files? No? Then go here.

(Link courtesy of Melissa.)

.: 21 words at 02:06 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Friday, March 5, 2004

Phone Downloads

My mom pointed me in the direction of a great place to download ringtones, screensavers, games, and apps for your phone. It's called 3gupload.com and you can do unlimited downloads for as little as a $6.99 donation. Lots of cool stuff there.

.: 42 words at 05:54 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Virtual Tour

Christine was lucky enough to be chosen as a stop for the latest Virtual Book Tour. Lucky her! I would love to be a stop!

Basically, a virtual book tour is just like a real book tour, but instead of visiting different cities, the author visits a given number of websites in a given about of time, either to be interviewed, to take over the site for a day, to hang out with the site owner if they're in the same physical location, or whatever else that the site owner devises.

The book that's touring this week is Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment by Ethan Watters. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds really interesting. If you get a chance, go check out his Top 5 lists - very entertaining stuff.

You can read Christine's interview with the author here. Very cool indeed.

.: 150 words at 11:12 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (1) :: All the Voices Say... (0) :.

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Tuesday, November 4, 2003

Text Me, Baby

Depending on which skin you've selected, you may or may not see a sidebar box that says "Text Me." If you do, that little form with send an e-mail to my cell phone, so feel free to drop me a message any time you like. (I love get messages on my phone.)

I'm too tired to get it to work with every skin without screwing up the sidebar spacing. That'll be a chore for another day.

.: 76 words at 08:03 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Monday, October 13, 2003

All Consuming?

I was just curious how many people use All Consuming to track what they've read or are reading.

I know of about a dozen people (who I added to my friends list), but that's about all. Leave me a comment if you do so I can add you to my friends list and see what you're reading.

.: 57 words at 08:35 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (1) :: All the Voices Say... (7) :.

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Friday, October 10, 2003

No Mo' Moblogs?

I went to go look at my Neurotic Fishbowl Moblog only to get a page not found error. I went to Text America's main page to see if there was any information only to find the entire site gone.

Did something happen to them while I was sick? Did they go under? Man, if so, that sucks! I had some great little pictures on there I would have liked to have kept!

.: 72 words at 04:22 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (4) :.

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Sunday, August 31, 2003

Burning Resources

Okay, I've been meaning to post this for a while, so here's a run down of the programs that I use to rip, burn, and make CDs.

CDex: I use this program to rip my CDs (turn them into mp3 tracks). It's freeware, so that's always a plus. It's really easy to use and also accesses the CDDB (a database of thousands of CDs) which makes naming tracks really easy since it's done for you.

MP3 CD Converter: this is what I use to convert all my mp3 tracks back to .cda files (files that can be played in a regular CD player). I've been using this program for years and just love it. It's only $19.95 which is a hell of a deal.

MediaFace 4: this is what I use to create my snazzy cover and CD art. It's the only program that I've found that allows you to create a CD booklet. Since you can fold a booklet in half, you get a nice CD inside and outside cover using one piece of paper. This feature alone is why I went ahead and paid for the program. It's also only $19.95 and once you pay you have access to over 500 high resolution background that you can download. It's really easy to print both the CD covers and the labels for the CDs themselves.

So, if you held off from joining any of my CD exchanges before because you didn't know how to make a CD, now you have no excuse.

.: 256 words at 09:50 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (5) :.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2003

MTBlogTimes Problem

Ever since we moved servers last month, I haven't been able to get my MTBlogTimes plug-in to work right. My archives pages and the single BlogTimes graph down at the bottom of my index page don't shop up at all.

Anyone hosted at Blogomania figured out a way around this problem?

.: 51 words at 10:47 AM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (2) :.

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Thursday, June 5, 2003

Mo' Photos in the Moblog

I put all the pictures up from my phone (at least the ones I like) over at the Neurotic Fishbowl Moblog. Got a few of the storm rolling in today that I'm particularly fond of.

.: 36 words at 11:15 PM in Geeky Things :: Link :: Pings (0) :: All the Voices Say... (1) :.

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