Blogging about online communities, videogames and technology from the heart of Toronto, Canada.
I’m new to the Scott Pilgrim universe. I started following the series a few weeks ago when I read through volumes 1-4, all in one sitting. (Yeah, I’m like that.)
Having caught up on Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe two days ago, it made sense to pick up Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour last night.
Here are my thoughts. (Spoilers ahead, of course.)
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I absolutely love the animation in this video. (I’m also a U2 fan, which helps significantly.)
That said, Irish animator David O’Reilly has just been added to my Awesome list.
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I received an invite to Digg v4 (aka Digg Alpha) last night:
You’ve been invited to participate in the new Digg alpha! Some of your friends on Digg are already using it. Check out what they are digging and submitting, and how they can help personalize your Digg experience.
Finally got around to checking it out this morning.
Here are my initial thoughts:
In a way, it feels like Digg is getting back to basics with v4. Seeing it for the first time sparked the same “hey, this is neat” reaction that hit me back in 2006 when I first joined the site.
Verdict: I like it. I tend to use Twitter and Google Buzz for sharing news updates from my RSS feeds. Now I’ll switch that around and start with Digg before pushing out to other services. On a business level, it’ll be interesting to see how these changes affect Digg as a company.
You can check out CNET’s more thorough review right here. (Disclaimer: I love CNET to death. Buzz Out Loud is the best podcast ever. That is all.)
In other news: You may have noticed a bunch of doodles filling up my blog background and header. I got bored of staring at dull grey and blue, so I decided to inject some life into the site with my sketchbook-related nonsense. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but hey, this is a personal blog, so meh!
View Comments | Posted in Neat Stuff, Social Media
The web truly is the new Library of Alexandria. But it won’t face the same fate as that ancient world wonder of academia. It can’t.
Decentralized, the web — as a whole — is the property of no one individual, organization, country or empire. The information found on the web is held in an intangible format and controlled by a countless number of parties, scattered in data centers around the globe, tucked away on personal hard drives and isolated within servers in government and corporate facilities.
On a slight tangent of a related note, I’ll leave you with this.
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If you’re anything like me, you’ll often have great ideas when you’re nowhere near a computer: in the shower, out for a walk, laying in bed, etc.
These moments can really suck, because no matter how hard you try, you’ll likely forget whatever great idea you had.
The solution? Start recording your ideas as they happen, and stop forgetting them!
The practice of collecting thoughts as they occur is a fundamental part of Getting Things Done (David Allen, 2002), a system I was introduced to back in September. The primary purpose of the GTD® system is to increase productivity and reduce stress, but a huge side benefit is simply having a common area to dump all your ideas into.
A post on DailyBlogTips (How Do Your Come Up, Store and Organize Ideas for Blog Posts?) also has some good feedback in the comments from folks who have their own methods of keeping track of ideas as they occur, be it through emails, drafted posts or good ole fashioned pen & paper.
It’s all common sense, but one of the biggest problems is finding the tool that fits your personal requirements.
I use Google Tasks for all of my side projects and day-to-day task management. If you have yet to find a system that works, give this a try.
Why do I use Google Tasks? Multiple lists, calendar integration and mobile support are the primary reasons.
No matter where I am, I can whip out my phone and quickly type in a reminder. The newly-created “task” will automatically sync with Gmail, any due dates will appear on Google Calendar and everything will be reflected on iGoogle.
And since I use 5 different devices (my office workstation, my home PC, my laptop, my netbook and my iPhone), this centralized system is a huge help.
If you’re in a similar situation, this could be an ideal solution for you.
Here’s a quick introduction to Google Tasks, directly from the folks at GOOG:
View Comments | Posted in Google, Neat Stuff
For the sake of saving some extra cash, I’m contemplating a change in my current services setup with Cogeco.
The Quebec-based telecom recently completed an overhaul of their site (thank god), but despite the overall improvement to navigation and usability, I can’t help but question the choice of imagery for the header of the site.
Seriously, guys – this image is more frightening than it is endearing:
…I’m scared.
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Summer is wrapping up and we’re heading back into another academic year. High School students and Elementary School students have already returned to classes this week (for the most part, anyway), and the Post-Secondary students are about to make the most of these last few days of vacation. As a recent college graduate, I feel that it is my duty to throw some handy advice to my former comrades. Hopefully it’ll be of some use.
There are tons of alternatives to Facebook for managing group projects, but I found this to be the best method in my 2nd year of college. The advantages were fairly obvious.
By using Facebook, members never had to be nudged about checking in or responding to group discussions. It was just a natural part of being on the site and communicating.
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opensourceCMS.com was created to give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best free and open source software systems in the world. Each system listed here provides for a user demo so you can make an informed decision regarding which system best suits your needs without having to go through the tedious process of installing multiple systems only to find they don’t do what you require.
I’ve been using opensourceCMS for years. It’s done a wonderful job of expanding my knowledge of what content management systems are out there. One of my favourite recent finds is LightNEasy, a barebones flatfile CMS built on PHP. I plan on putting together a few projects with it this weekend – we’ll see how it goes!
Technorati Tags: cms, open source, flatfile, php
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Interested in creating your very first site from scratch? You’re not alone! There are an endless number of lengthy+detailed resources available on the web, but I’m not about to list them all. I thought I’d do something a bit more useful by writing a brief blog post – an introduction to web development, of sorts.
(By the way: the following process sums up how I started to learn HTML and CSS, so I know it works!)
*ahem*
Clarifying the questions that may be raised by this post…
Thoughts? Opinions? (Did I miss something obvious?) Leave a comment and let me know!
View Comments | Posted in Neat Stuff, Technology