Category: Geek Love

There is a new gadget out on the market that is basically a Radio Tivo. But as I mentioned at Melissa’s site, Mike has something that is even better in my opinion. Not quite as amazingly perfect as my TiVo, but pretty damn close, he got an Avertv Studio Card for his computer for about $80. With it, he can record both TV programs and radio. (Well, when it wants to behave.) Then he used VCDEasy to burn the video that he recorded on the computer on to a CD – not a DVD, a regular ol’ CD – and it plays in my CD/DVD player. Mine reads Video CDs, as do many other DVD players in the U.S., so it is quite an uber cool solution. (More info on Video CD can be found at Doom9.) Or if you prefer you could just watch it on your computer monitor.

So if you have TiVo Envy but don’t want to buy one, it’s a solution worth looking in to!

As some of you may have already seen, changes are under way over at ScriptyGoddess. I think I scared Jennifer with my threat of a hostile takeover of the site, so she isn’t taking down the site as she originally considered. But, in order to keep the site alive and going, we need YOU. Yes, that would be you. Right there, in that chair. YOU.

Where do you come in? Have you figured out a way to do something with your site that you didn’t think could be done? Have you written a cool snippet of PHP, ASP, Javascript or whatever that you are willing to share? Come up with a cool way to do something in pMachine or B2? Whatever the case may be, we’re open to hearing about it. You submit it, we review it, we’ll post it on the site with a by-line crediting you. Also, if I spot something on a site that I think is neat-o keen, I just might e-mail you and ask you if you’re willing to share how you did it or if I can share your post on the site (giving you credit, of course).

Perfect example of why we’re doing this – I spotted a cool grid of thumbnails on a site, and I commented to Ste that I sure wish I knew how to do it. He pointed out to me that there was a MT Plugin that would make it happen for me. Wow! I had no idea! Here I thought it was some code-fu magic. So once I test it out, set it up, get it working, I’ll write up how I did it and share it on ScriptyGoddess. YOU have the power to do this too. If you’ve ever felt like ScriptyGoddess has given back to you, now it is your turn to give back to ScriptyGoddess. Please bring us your offerings…

Please Note: ScriptyGoddess is NOT just for MT users. We are 10,000% open to tips on using any other blog software out there. Your tip for how to do something in pMachine just might inspire someone else to do something in another blog software, and the knowledge will spread and we will all grow.

In the end, it’s all about sharing the love, isn’t it? So help save ScriptyGoddess! Keep it alive! Share the love!

I ping weblogs.com, and from what I’ve discovered tonight, my ping is wide open to the world to use for whatever they want. Curious about other ways your pings are used? Here is the perfect example. The World as a Blog – “Real time & updating display of weblog postings, around the world. How? Weblogs.com + geocoding + RSS”

Yes, your pings to weblogs.com plus your geocoding powers the site. You didn’t ask to be listed, but you pinged a feed that is scraped and parsed. [via Geekgrrl]

Personally, I don’t care. But Mike wrote a lot of good reasons why you might. Just more to think about tonight. Meanwhile, that site is freakin’ cool!

Jennifer asked asked last week about how people feel about the sidebar of her blog. I wonder the same thing, but I don’t have the script in place to let you answer the questions interactively, so you have to leave comments. Please write out complete answers, and don’t forget to show your work…

:: Do you ever look at my sidebar at all?
:: What sections in my sidebar do you use?
:: Do you care at all about the media sections? Small Screen / Big Screen / Books / Music?
:: If my blogroll disappeared, or moved to a different page, would you notice? Would you care?

In order to speed things up around here even more, I’m considering making a skin that has just posts, and everything else is on a portal-type page. I’ll still keep the media blog going, so all of the movies & books can be posted there. I can leave the sidebars on some skins, but make even “lighter” skins without them if there is interest.

So, are you interested? What do you think about the sidebars? What do you use?

Just the other day I said that I wished Philip Greenspun had a weblog. Now he does! I feel like my wish came true! (Where’s the RSS feed though? Found: here.)