“LightSaver” – Nerdy, Parody, Pop Culture, Funny T-shirt by Matthijs Smit.

Technorati Tags: internet

have it your way, jerk

Technorati Tags: funny, internet, passive aggresive

I’m trying it out for a while, I don’t get so many comments on the site so I figured if I try to make it easier for people then more may come.

Have you integrated JS-Kit on your site? Let me know your experience with it in the comments.

Integrating Comments into Blogger and WordPress @ JS-Kit Blog.

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet, review

Safari 4

Apple have made a public beta of the latest version of their Safari web browser available for download. It is a pretty thing indeed. There are a number of bells and whistles that we have seen before (it looks and feels a lot like Chrome). There are a number of new features like the ability to save a web page as an application a la Google Gears or Fluid (edit: although I have yet to find this function). There is also a start page not unlike Chrome or Opera that takes your history and shows you which sites you are going to the most. Pretty useful, not especially innovative but it it executed really well. I’m going to keep working with it for a while where I can. Note that I say where I can.

Sadly I have discovered a couple of problems already that have hindered my experience. First, Safari 4 does not play nice with GrowlMail. If you have that plugin installed then Safari will cause Mail mail to repeatedly crash when it checks for new mail. This is very frustrating, especially as you need to open mail to disable GrowlMail properly. In order to trash GrowlMail I had to remove the following from my Library.

/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.bundle
/Library/Receipts/GrowlMail.pkg
/Library/Receipts/growlmailPreflight.pkg

…and then disable GrowlMail in the Growl Prefs pane. It works now I have both S4 and Mail open at the same time. It looked for a while like that was never going to happen again. There is a discussion about this on the Apple Support site.

A more pressing problem and one that I can upon as I was about to write a glowing review was that it appears impossible to use the WYSIWYG interface of WordPress when adding a new post. I was writing this post and attempted to insert a link and the screen went dark as if some javascript was running and then nothing. The box that I wanted was behind a wall of grey and I couldn’t click the grey away. It was most frustrating. See screenshot below.

So I know that it is a preview release and there are bound to be bugs but this means that I can’t use the browser for blogging which really sucks. I hope it gets fixed soon. I’m still playing with it and if I find anything else I will post it up here.

Apple – Safari – Download Safari – Download the world’s fastest and most innovative browser for Mac and PC.

Technorati Tags: apple, internet, safari, tools

Technorati no more like me

So I probably did a silly thing. Well in fact I think that the problem was that I did nothing for too long. I used to have this blog registered with Technorati in order to increase visbility. That was years ago. It didn’t seem to do much but that was more to do with the infrequency of my blogging I suspect. As I have got older I have become more lazy in this respect.

Anyway, it seems that Technorati have removed my blog. The URL has apparently been flagged in their systems. Why does this happen? A quick search on their site will tell you:

Q: Getting the “This URL has been flagged by our systems” message immediately?

1. A: If the system will not allow the blog claim to go further than the first step, then your blog has been flagged for review.

   In this case, please submit a support ticket from our Support Contact Form with Support Type “Claiming” and Concerning “I cannot claim my blog, it gives me an error message immediately” so that we may be able to review your blog.

2. A: Check that you are attempting to claim a blog.

   Technorati does not support claiming a feed Please claim the URL of the blog the feed is associated to.

   Technorati does not support claiming a static webpage. Example: If you are attempting to claim a front page that contains a collection of blog, you will need to claim each blog individually.

   Note that a blog is indicated by:

   • Posts listed in historical chronological order
   • Permalinks for each post
   • Original Content
   • Posts structured with date, title, body, and footer that includes author and usually comments

Thanks for the helpful description of a blog BTW, that will help me in the future.

I have been updating the site albeit in a lazy fashion via the superb Twitter Tools plug in from Alex King. I post to Twitter and then once a week Twitter Tools bundles them all up into one weekly post of stuff that I have been doing that week. It’s mostly gibberish but it is (mostly) original gibberish. However, I suspect that it may be this that is causing the problem. I have written to Technorati to ask them why my blog is under review. My other site http//:thecontrast.net is listed even though it is not technically a blog (I’ll probably get that one withdrawn too now). Strange, days, indeed.

The good thing about it is that it has prompted me to write a 500 word blog post about the happening. I’m sure if only more things happened to me then I would write more. I’ll keep you updated on the progress. I’m interested to see how it turns out.

Follow me on Twitter, they don’t mind my nonsense.

Edit: A few hours later and Technorati support get back to me (via this post would you believe – see below). The problem is now fixed and I know that at least one real person has read my blog today.
Technorati Profile

Technorati Tags: blogging, internet

Image "borrowed" from Tweetcrunch

I’ve been away a while gazing at my navel and wondering “what the hell?”, “why the hell?” and “who gives a fuck?” I came to no conclusions. I have been in the wilderness hunting for my own particular kind of agave that will bring me to my senses. Something did happen that pulled me up by my bootstraps, slapped me and apparently forced me to write exclusively in clichés. And it is very cool. More of that later.

I was also bitten by the Twitter bug. I signed up to this phenomenon months ago, used it twice and then forgot all about it. Somehow I came across it again, I think as a result of my recent iPhone acquisition (very happy about that too). Anyway, the little bird pecked at me until I could stand it no longer. I have been cyberstalking (at least that is how it feels) a bunch of individuals in various states of celebrity. I receive regular updates from TV stars, journalists, and a few folk I’ve never heard of. What’s it all about? Why am I bothering? Not sure, that is something for my analyst to answer. Whenever I get one that is.

I find the whole thing faintly voyeuristic. In a good way, if that it possible. It is “reality” Internet. It’s like watching Celebrity Big Brother in text form. Stephen Fry tells me of his little trip to the shops to get a transformer, Greg Grunberg posts photos from the set of “Heroes”, and Warren Ellis is charmingly belligerent. I’m sure it will lose its sheen after a while but for now I’m tweeting like mad with all my new buddies. OK so only Stephen Fry has actually bothered to add me as a friend so far, but it is early days yet. I’m still finding my way around. I still can’t settle on which application to use. More of that next time.

Follow me @marcaprice

Technorati Tags: internet, Twitter

Today is also exciting because the new iPhone should be announced today. With any luck this new 3G appliance will be available in the Netherlands.

Technorati Tags: ecto, internet, tools

So far so good, it seems to play a lot nicer than the old plugin. Formatting the page is made so much easier. Particularly if, like me, you use a CMS like Drupal that can sometimes be a little painful to use. I rejoice at having smart tags and the ability to add images and Technocrati tags and Del.Icio.us bookmarks and trackbacks and so on. That said I haven’t tried to add images just yet. As I am such a fickle beast I may change my mind rapidly.

Today, as yesterday, I have been off work with a shitty horrible cold. It seems to be clearing up now but the extra time at home has given me the opportunity to play with this thing a while.

What other developments? Well, I have been populating my usually barren site with news from around the Internet by turning feeds from other sites into posts on mine. Cheating! No! The idea is to have content on my site that I want to read as well as my stupid and sometimes inane ramblings. The idea was to get me inspired to write something again after quite a long gap. Anyway, I use the Leech module for Drupal. This is how I can get such luminaries as Neil Gaiman to write for Bigger on the Inside. It is indeed comforting to know that wonderful writers such as Mr G also write ludicrously short blog posts.

So now I have no excuse to have good content on my site…right?

Related Links
ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging » Getting Started
ScribeFire plugin for Firefox
http://www.neilgaiman.com/