Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Quick Update

Published
by
C.G.
on September 24, 2006
in Site
. 0 Comments

I’m in the process of changing hosts.  Sorry, DreamHost… you seem to be going through too much for me to use you.

But the change will not be immediate.  I want to organize my other sites at the same time and get them all on one registrar.  Then I want to look for a new host.  It will take some time to do that and once I find one that seems to have a decent reputation and has no problems, I’ll begin migrating all my blogs over starting with my development blog where I test out my code.

In the meantime, I changed the theme yet again to test out a few things.  Sorry for all the change-up but its what I feel I need to do to get this blog done right.

Bloglines De-Clutter

Published
by
C.G.
on September 23, 2006
in Computers, Hacks and Life
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So the informational de-clutter continues.  This morning, I ravaged my RSS feed aggregator, Bloglines.  Although I do like running local applications for certain things (more functionality that what JScript can provide), web based apps like Bloglines (and Gmail and others) make it easy to have all your information in one easily accessible place.  I’ve been using Bloglines for a few months now and like it very much.  Even when I do settle on an OS, I’ll probably still use it as my RSS reader.

Bloglines makes it easy to add feeds to your list and over those few months, I’ve added over 150 feeds to my list.  They are organized by category type like news, C.G Feeds (my own or friends), Gossip, Technology, etc.  in my attempt to reduce the clutter, I deleted about 15 feeds I almost never read.  I’m going to continue to reduce the amount of feeds I watch over the next few days but I also want to organize them better.  But Bloglines only allows for category folders - not sub folders - so I am finding it hard to further tweak my feeds.

In the technology folder, for example, I could create a sub folder for software development for the HTML, CSS, AJAX, and web design blogs I read.  It could also have a gadgets folder for the many sites I read about the latest and greatest.  Still, there could be more folders for site that cover Web 2.0.  The subdivision could go on and on.  And while I don’t want to get too granular, I can’t have 50 feeds in technology and not have them narrowed down by title alone.

Nevertheless, I’m still trying my best to show less information at any given time.  I’ve changed my viewing options to only show the feeds that have updates.  So I don’t have to worry about the alphabetical organization for all the feeds - just the ones with new articles.  I’ve also turned off the option that shows updated articles as new for all but a few sites who’s news can change frequently enough to change the fact basis of the posts.

I’ve got a lot of work to do, however, and want to get my reading down to 75 feeds or less.  I also want to remove those feeds that don’t have real value (like my calendar and to-do feeds) and those feeds that have massive updates; I can’t follow Digg or AskMetaFilter because they get populated too quickly.

Anyway, thats where I stand.  I’m going to take a break from the informational work and focus on the physical work around the house and maybe go out later to break up the day.

De-Clutter Project Update:

Published
by
C.G.
on September 22, 2006
in Hacks, Life and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Well, I’ve started the de-clutter throwing out phase. Today, I marked more for tossing and tonight, before I go out, I’m setting it aside where I keep the trash. I’ll wait for my wife to review what I plan to throw out just in case she wants to keep something. But because I am waiting for her review, I’ve moved on to the paper and informational clutter.

The paper stuff is easy. I just set it aside (and have been doing so for a few weeks) and shred the junk mail with my personal information on it (don’t want to give it to an ID thief). Bills are shredded too - those that are paid and those that weren’t got paid. Not every piece of paper is shredded, though. I’ll finish that over the weekend or sometime next week. The bag of shredded paper is sitting just outside my doorstep and will be tossed tonight when I head out to meet my wife for dinner before she hits the theater. Now the harder task for me to tackle is the non-tangible information.
I’ve started going through my del.icio.us tags and reviewing each article associated with them. I’m removing duplicate tags and creating new ones to better define what the link is about. When I first signed up for del.icio.us, I wanted to be sure I stuck to just a few tags (in an attempt to keep it simple) but that proved to be too restrictive and in this case, I am going to let loose and use tags very freely. But I will redefine some of the tags.

For example, I’ve got tags for Shareware, Freeware, Software, Utilities, Downloads, Tools, Admin, etc…. the list goes on. But to me, Utilities and Tools are the same thing - I don’t know why I named a few of them tools but I did. And all the software whether it be Freeware or Shareware… are all downloads; its a useless category for me. So I’ve come up with a tree like structure for my del.icio.us links and am slowly migrating towards that concept. I wish that del.icio.us would allow for nested tags to help keep things organized.

Anyway, I’m done taking a break to do more stuff. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Cool New Taxi

Published
by
C.G.
on September 21, 2006
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

As one who lives and works in New York City, I can attest to how important taxicabs are sometimes. And in New York, all cabs are clearly identified by their color and in most cases shape; traditionally, they were always Ford Crown Victorias. Lately, they have been introducing other models like hybrid powered SUVs and minivans. But none of these models do any one thing exceptionally well.

Sure, the Crown Vics do the job but they only hold four people (tops) and not comfortably. The minivans hold another person (I think) and the hybrids have the same capacity. Trunk space is great for the average traveler but there isn’t any access for wheelchair bound people. If you are mobily challenged you have to call ahead for special transportation and its often expensive and unreliable.

Well, according to Autoblog, a company called Standard Taxi is building a better taxi and is hopeful that the livery industry places orders for their well designed automobile. According to both Autoblog and Standard’s websites, the prototype will seat 5 or 4 with someone who is wheelchair bound and has an enormous amount of cargo space (some in the trunk and other room in the seating areas). They claim the car is fuel efficient with a V6 installed instead of an 8 cylinder. And should be able to handle commercial wear and tear (something you know will happen in NYC.

Its not a pretty car but I kinda like that. It reminds me of the Checker cabs and if Standard Taxi takes off, will let everyone know that that car is a taxicab and not something else - like a cop, elderly driver, or someone who isn’t cool.

Why am I writing about this? I don’t know… I just think its cool.

Here’s a pic:

Standard Taxi

Things Are Better

Published
by
C.G.
on September 20, 2006
in Life and Site
. 0 Comments

Well, it seems like DreamHost did fix most of their problems and the speed in which my sites are loading are more in line with what I want them to be.  I still think there is room for improvement but I’m not convinced its a hosting issue.  Rather, I think, it’s a MySQL or PHP configuration problem and the DB queries aren’t running as fast as they should be.  If anyone knows how to tweak a MySQL/PHP/WordPress server system (and can speak in a way that novices like me can understand), I would appreciate the help.

The new theme is really growing on me.  The theme I choose, blog.txt by Scott Allan Wallick at plaintxt.org, is perfect for my new found sense of minimalism.  I ran into some trouble with the theme and widgets and Scott was very helpful and solved my problem within minutes of me showing him what was going wrong.  I really can’t thank him enough - for creating the theme in the first place and helping me work through that problem; I’ll be sure to make a donation as soon as I get a new job (I promise).  I haven’t added any widgets yet but I will - soon - when I figure out what minimal amount of information I want displayed on the sidebar.

Tomorrow is the first big cleaning day for the junk that I marked for the trash.  Some of that stuff is already in piles on the floor waiting for Oscar the Grouch to take it away.  And since I’ll have time (and more space) tomorrow, I’ll find even more to toss.  I’m going to be good about the clothes, though, and donate what I don’t want to a local charity.

Once I free myself of all the physical clutter, I promise to get to that informational mess that is my hard drive.  I’ll delete those files and I’m sure to free up gigabytes worth of space.  Its not that I need the space, I just can’t find anything in the endless ‘To-Sort’ directories I’ve created from files that littered my ‘Desktop’ and ‘My Documents’ folders.

And once that’s all done, I’m going to retool the blog a bit.  I want to clean up the categories and create a tree structure to better organize the posts.  And then, I hope to be more prepared to write the way I want to.

If anyone has tips on how to de-clutter and transition into a mess-free life, please, let me know.