The blogging class that wasn't

Today would have been the meeting date for the blogging class I was going to teach. Only one person signed up, so the class was canceled, but we have another one scheduled in a couple of months. I will get started preparing for that class soon. There are already some people signed up for that one, so chances are better that it will be held. The one scheduled for today was supposed to meet at a satellite campus which may have had something to do with the low enrollment. The next one is at the main campus and is scheduled for the evening during the week.

new Mac models

It has been some time since Apple updated their computer line. With so much focus on the iPod and iPhone, it's easy to forget that Apple, Inc. is still primarily a computer company. I'm waiting on an update to the Mac Mini. Adding a Core 2 Duo would be enough for me to buy one and hook it up to my tv. I might need to get the Wireless N router also to go with it. says there may be a black iMac. That might be nice http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifalthough I am content with white. If it's like the Macbook and you have to pay more for black, I'll pass on that. Nice marketing gimmick, however. When something only comes in white and then you offer black and charge a little more for it, I think you've pulled a fast one on people.

New Blogger bug remains

There is a bug in the new version of Blogger that is still there, a couple of months after I first saw it and reported it. I run into it every day at least once, but there is no pattern to it. I select some text and go to create a link using the link button. Instead of a link, I get a reference to the gif file which makes up the link icon and the link code isn't inserted. Plus, it erases part of the text that was selected, so I can't undo it. Normally when I re-do it, everything is fine.

iPhone ads during Oscars

I don't care for awards shows, particularly the speeches, so I don't watch them. The Oscars may not be as bad as some of them, but since I rarely get to watch a current movie in a theater, I'm usually not familiar with the movies and actors who are up for the awards. This year might be different though since Apple is going to advertise the iPhone during the Oscars. I'm not going to buy an iPhone and I could probably wait and watch the iPhone commercial on Apple's website, but it might be fun to see it this weekend.

Chinese Acrobats

We have a busy weekend ahead. Usually we sit at home and play Runescape all day, but this weekend we'll be going to two shows at the Pechanga Casino. Tonight is the Incredible Shanghai Acrobats and then Sunday is David Copperfield. It should be fun, although no photos are allowed in the auditorium.

another sick day

I am not sure if I've ever taken a sick day before yesterday. Although I've been working for a long time, prior to October, I only had a job which provided sick leave for 3 and a half years. Most of the time I either worked as a contractor or in academic jobs which didn't offer sick pay. Now I've taken two sick days in a row. Not that I'm getting used to it, but I may need one more before I get back to work. I feel good enough to do my work but not good enough to drive there and sit around all day in the same room.

Lakers trade

I don't think the Lakers are going to get Jason Kidd. I bet he doesn't get traded at all. The Nets want too much from the Lakers and Kidd has a huge contract. I don't see the Lakers giving up Andrew Bynum for a guy who may have 3 or 4 more good years left, if that. Bynum is too young to trade away. If they can get Kidd for other players, it would be a great deal, but that doesn't seem likely. Unless the Nets want to cut their payroll and start over with Richard Jefferson and let Jason Kidd and Vince Carter go, I'm not sure why they would make the deal.

posterino 1.0

I have been using the 1.0 version of Posterino to create a poster from the many photos I took about ten days ago at Astrocamp. It certainly has improved since 0.8 and there are no huge bugs, but there do seem to still be a few quirks I haven't figured out. Adding text seems to be incomplete as I can't add a background with it. When I leave a section of the poster blank to add the text in Photoshop, I end up with images in that area anyway. All in all, it does save a huge amount of time, but I've got to re-do mine because the output is too dark and I think that means I'll need to start over.

Home sick

I don't think I've missed a day of work because of illness in 10 years. That's probably because until this year I didn't have a job that had any sick days available. Yesterday there were two guys who work in the same office as me who were out for the week with some kind of throat related illness. They worked in the office over the weekend. Sure enough, I started feeling something funny in my throat last night and it was worse this morning, so I stayed home and used my sick leave. I hope it doesn't get worse because even though I've got the sick days available, I don't like missing work.

Nothing

operator error

Outlet shopping

Most of the time when you go to one of these shopping outlets, you don't get much of a deal. They produce lower cost stuff for their "outlet" stores, so you may pay less but you don't get the same stuff they sell in the regular stores. That's not always the case, but it seems that the real bargains are hard to find. Over the weekend I bought a reasonably nice pair of pants at the Haggar outlet for $12. That's a good deal, to me anyway. We'll see how these pants hold up, but they look pretty good. In fact, I'm wearing them today.

Hacked

Someone hacked one of my sites. They changed the homepage and that seems to be it, but it was liked that for 3 days before I noticed. I have been hacked once before. That one was a case of someone creating a folder and leaving links to some spam site in Russia. I didn't notice that for months. This one worries me more because I'm not sure how the person gained access. The previous time was due to a problem with the ftp settings that my provider had set up. This one might be a stolen password or maybe not.

Norv Turner coaching the Chargers

Getting rid of Marty Schottenheimer is looking more and more like a bad idea. The Chargers waited so long to do it that there were not too many experienced coaches left. So they hired Norv Turner, who does not have a good track record as a head coach, with an overall losing record. How is he going to do a better job? I don't see that happening. The guy who should have left was AJ Smith, the GM. At least there would have been some continuity with the coaching. I don't see the Chargers improving next year.

More Astrocamp photos

When it comes to school events, I figure that even though I might not rate a photo too highly, it still might be interesting to someone who knows the people in the picture. So I'm less choosy about uploading photos to albums which will be viewed by parents and friends and others. I use that approach with my school and sports photos. As long as it doesn't make someone look bad and it isn't flawed photographically, I'll upload it. I've just added Saturday photos from last weekend's Astrocamp outing. The good thing is that I have 200+ GB of space available thanks to DreamHost.

College student living in his truck

There was a period of about 2 months years ago when I had no place to live except the back of my old station wagon. I kept most of my stuff in two storage units, which I visited almost every day. I kept a small amount of things in my car and used the gym for showers in the morning. Eventually I found a place to live and ended my days of living in the car. The LA Times has a story in today's edition about a guy who has been living in his truck for more than a year. Andy Bussel has been doing it for 19 months. He's a full time student with a job at the local Apple store. To me, it would have gotten old and limited your options a little too much after that long. I guess the money savings part of it is nice, but the hassle of having to move around and knowing where the police won't bother you every night is too much work. I never had a problem myself other than being told by the police I couldn't park in certain places a couple of times.

All Star Game not in HD?

Maybe I've got the wrong channel on, but in my house, the NBA All Star game is showing in standard definition. It looks terrible. How can it not be in HD? I know they show some games, even on TNT, in HD. This looks bad and I have no idea why it's not in HD, and now that I have an HDTV, I'm a real HD snob when it comes to sports.

NBA All Star game entertainment

They really do it in style in Las Vegas. The pre-game entertainment was interesting while the halftime show was very good. I guess I thought Wayne Newton was a little older than he is (64). He can still put on a show, although he looks a little too good for a guy that old. The wonders of modern medicine, I guess. The Danny Ganz national anthem was pretty well done -- he's a good singer -- but it looked like they just picked 4 other guys out of the crowd who were wearing black to back him up. The outfits didn't match and one guy wasn't wearing black pants.

At halftime, everybody seemed good to me, but seeing Christina Aguilera's performance made me think of the contrast between what she's doing this week and what her contemporary, Britney Spears, is doing. Maybe she could give Britney some career advice.

Not really blogging

SFGate says that SF mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary is in hot water for his blogging. You'd think a newspaper which actually has bloggers would understand what one is. Peter Ragone left comments about news stories about the mayor on blogs using other people's names. I don't think that makes him a blogger. Maybe a blog reader, maybe an anonymous commenter, but not a blogger. He'd need a blog to be a blogger. Maybe they just don't have the language to describe what he did:

Although the timing worked momentarily for Ragone, the incident left him with a mark on his record that no press secretary would want: For whatever reason, when first questioned by reporters about his blogging, he was less than truthful.

He was dishonest, but he wasn't blogging.

Green Options is online

I don't know whether Al Gore and his movie deserve credit or if it's just a mass movement at this point, but there does seem to be a much greater recognition recently of the importance of the impact people have on the earth. Certainly this is very true in the United States, where people consume more of everything than in other parts of the world, although I believe China has just passed the US in oil consumption. Green Options is a website that has come along at the right time.Green Options: Greening the Good Life is a kind of portal for everything green -- news and stories about energy use, hybrid and electric cars, the high tech industry, wind power, the environment and more. There are a number of contributors to the site, so it's very up to date in terms of content.

As far as the organization of the site goes, it's not overly complex. There is a blog, discussion forums, the Green Life Guide, the Green Report and the Home page. Each section has a clean design and is reasonably easy to use and nicely illustrated with images and graphics. to The blog is collaborative, with short, readable summaries of longer pieces which are posted 3 - 7 times per day so far (6-10 posts per day is the goal, but 3-7 seems more in line with what's actually happening). The full article is available through the headline link, and has comments by readers visible. This article about the Chicago Auto Show is a good example of what you can find on the blog.

The site's discussion forums have a wide range of topics like solar energy, home and garden, and recycling. Some appear to be pretty new with very little activity while others have a little more activity. I'm sure as the site gains in popularity, this area will pick up and become more widely used.

The Green Life Guide is designed to help you apply some of the ideas on the site to lessen your impact on the environment. Each section is set up as a wiki, so it can be edited. The solar panel section has lots of information, although I'm not sure I could use it to put solar panels on my home.

The Green Report is a news headline page, with items that should be relevant to the purpose of the site. This may be done through an RSS feed or other automated system, which might explain why there's an article about the Duke men's basketball team ending their five game losing streak. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with green issues, but maybe one of the staff members is a Duke fan.

Overall, I think the Green Options site is nicely designed and has a good balance of content. I will definitely bookmark the site and revisit it weekly. I'll also add the blog to my RSS reader, but where's the subscribe button? That should be prominently displayed near the top of that screen and it's nowhere to be found. There is an RSS feed for the site, but it's not easy to find.

One other nice feature of the site is that it uses a Creative Commons license for the content, so you can share and remix the materials with attribution. That's a great thing for bloggers who might want to link to or excerpt from the site.

Astrocamp photos online

I finally got some of the AstroCamp photos online. I've divided them up by days for now - Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Since most of the photos are from the group of students I was with, they may not appeal to everyone. I did try to get pictures of everyone, so there are still quite a few from other groups. They can be found here and I will be adding more today.