Archive for December 2001

Working in a software development shop, I can relate to Jeff’s version of the 12 Days of Christmas!

Want to get married? Bid on your bride.

The year is coming to a close, so it’s time for those "End of the Year" best of, worst of, and
remember type lists. Year-End Google Zeitgeist provides a glimpse at what captivated the world over the past 12 months, based on the most popular search terms on the world’s most popular search engine. 2001 media follies is a review of press obsessions and omissions. Time’s Best and Worst of 2001. BusinessWeek. MovieCritic.

Nicholas, the author of the anti-thesaurus updated his article to include my frustrations with getting a lot of Googlers looking for the above title. I’m not changing my name. Meryl youknowwho changed her name — she was not born as a Meryl. So there. Enough scroogin’, it’s holiday time! Back to the "Let Us Blog" song.

Thanks, Jeff for spreading the Phoon word.

Was inspired by Little Blogger Boy, so I mangled “Let it Snow” since we don’t get snow in Texas at Christmas time. It comes at weird times like March. Apologies to Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, the composers of the original.

Let Us Blog

Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the monitor is so delightful
And since we’ve no place to jog
Let us blog! Let us blog! Let us blog!

Net doesn’t show signs of stopping
And I’ve gone to Amazon for shopping
We pray that the Net doesn’t clog
Let us blog! Let us blog! Let us blog!

We finally sign out for the night
How I hate going away from the keyboard!
But if you’ll email me lots tonight
Then in the morning I won’t be bored!

The fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, we’re still IM’ing
But as long as you have some grog
Let us blog! Let us blog! Let us blog!

I’ve been conducting in lab experiments with CityDesk and RadioLand. It’s amazing how Content Management Systems and Weblog systems greatly differ from one another. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s all about what *you* need.

It was bound to happen… a blog paraody of a Christmas song. Little Blogger Boy from The Mighty Geek. Thanks to Christine and aka cooties for bringing it to our attention.

Kottke shared a fun link during the rough month of September and it provided a much needed smile. Since then, I have been searching for an opportunity to Phoon. Got one last month when I went to the conference in Nawlins, unfortunately it turned out blurry. It’ll be better next time. The person who took the picture was someone I met face to face for the first time. We know each other through DigitalEveDallas and didn’t even know one another was going to the conference. Anyway, we decided to meet in the French Quarter on the last morning of the conference and walk around. When we got to Jackson Square, I knew I had to capture it on film. She said she’d take the picture, so I ran up there and did my best phoon pose feeling quite stupid because I just met her and here I am in this silly position!

Though it’s two days away on December 22 (when most people are playing not surfing), I want to wish a Happy 1st Birthday to Sooz radio.

Parlez vous français? Thanks to Zeldman.

Affleck (no, not Ben) has an easy to read and implement article on Weblog Accessibility. Need to bookmark this one for when I redesign (how many times have I mentioned this?) this place. Thanks to Cam.

On December 5, I noted the anti-thesaurus and Dori linked it. Now, she reports a follow up and I’m linking it. Dontcha love the ‘net? Where else can you help each other get updates?

Gosh, meeting a lot of great people this week. Had the opportunity to meet one of the great minds behind DFWblogs and he just happens to work in the same company I do! (Well, OK, kinda sorta… before the company split in two, but he works right next to the building where I worked for three years before moving to the new building last month). Matt has been trying to help me learn and implement XML/XSLT, but it turns out that Verio (my host) has nothing with XML listed on its tech support pages. Well, it better get its act together because XML and Web Services are the wave. If you have XML and certain modules available, Matt has a great Blogchecker utility that you can implement.

Shame on me for not sharing this little secret with you much earlier. It’s the only newsletter I receive at work since it’s related to the job. StickyMinds from STQE Publications is a resource for everything related to building better software (hey, Joel, do you hear this?). Here are tidbits from the latest issue:

Reflections on "A Fable" is a follow up to last year’s "A Fable." Parents will understand the similarities between getting a kid to clean up her room and getting developers to test their code.

The other item I enjoy in every issue is Robert Coutre’s "Our Take." It’s a lighthearted editorial and either I learn something new or I nod my head in agreement thinking, "Yes, I’ve been there." Coutre writes, "The Holiday Season is upon us. As quality professionals, one important gift we might give ourselves is "quality of life." And few things in life provide a feeling of quality more than personal or professional accomplishment. So here are my top-ten suggestions for improving quality of life. (Perhaps a “New Year’s Resolution” in the making?)"

1. Write a proposal to your management to give yourself a raise, citing all you have contributed and the talents you bring to the company. (Whether you actually send it to your manager or not, it is a great reaffirmation to yourself to compile your productivity, achievements, etc.)
2. If you have experienced a particularly good conference or training session, read a good book or article, or something else–then write a note of appreciation to the person responsible for the experience (the instructor, the author, etc.).
3. Study your company’s competitors’ Web sites: Look at their offerings, product information, and any other useful information. (This is good simply to be informed, but it also may generate some good ideas of your own.)
4. Play a game of chess (on a real board with someone, as opposed to a computer game).
5. Read a good software-testing-industry book (Meryl says: I reviewed one of their excellent books on Web Testing Handbook. Yikes! The review is offline! I’ll fix later.)
6. Become (more) involved in a special interest group or online exchange with other software quality professionals.
7. Formulate the procedures for the Glass Bead Game (esoteric reference from the novel “Magister Ludi”).
8. Write an article and submit it to a magazine (or a publishing Web site).
9. Start your own personal journal for possible process improvements, product ideas, ideas for future articles, etc. Whenever possible, find ways to implement or turn
   these into proposals.
10. If you manage to do even a few of the activities above, you should reward yourself. So here’s #1 on the list: Create a classic chocolate sundae with vanilla ice cream, Hershey’s syrup, nuts, and a cherry.

Amen!

Shirley and Dave got unlucky to have their emails become a spammer’s return address. Like them, I don’t want to hide my email. I tried leaving off the mailto, then someone wrote to me asking why I didn’t use it. Then, I just told myself to forget it and use it because of the various articles I’ve published list my email address with the mailto. <sigh> Fortune writes about "Finding the Perfect Spam Catcher." Also, SendMail has an interview with Tim Pozar of Brightmail discussing spam.

I made a new friend through Dave and he provided some more spam goodies (wow, spam and goodies in the same sentence!). Rick writes:

"If you get mail from a *NIX server of any kind, or from any server that can run procmail (an *excellent* mail filtering tool!), there is a great tool/script/procmail recipe out there, called Splonk. It’s got a perl script that it uses to make editing your .procmailrc easy, just a matter of answering a few questions. I have my own procmail recipe going, so I just cannibalized his recipe a bit for some excellent ideas."

Jeremy Allaire shares his thoughts on "What’s Next?" Ah-ha! Clarification on the difference between Flash and Shockwave.

It’s holiday time and just like my mailbox fills with mail order catalogs, my emailbox does the same. I was afraid to opt out of some of the spam because it just tells them they have a live emailbox and to attack again. Dave links to a thoroughly written article on spam over a CamWorld. The thing is… I don’t want to manage multiple mailboxes. For example, the article mentions using a mailbox for only eBay auctions. I don’t have time to regularly check a second mailbox if I’m involved in an auction. I do have multiple email addresses, but I don’t check the others very often.

Derek has some great advice as I begin the journey of putting together the letters into words… words into sentences… sentences into paragraphs… paragraphs into chapters… chapters into book. Offline, he tells me to "Unplug!" That’s going to be the true test in this journey.