A funny scene from one of my all-time favorite movies — Amadeus.
Despite all the turmoil and angst, Salieri describes his respect for Mozart’s gift.
November, 2009
30
Nov 09
so i was thinking…
…while listening to jazz at HR57 this past Friday that my musical tastes are pretty varied. It’s been nice talking to friends (Jeniene and Kimberly come to mind.) over the last couple of months and discovering they, too, are all over the musical spectrum.
For no appearent reason, this song that was buzzing in my head this morning.
30
Nov 09
i'm waving
Ok, really I’m talking about Google Wave.
Google Wave is a new communications collaboration tool introduced earlier this year.
For the record: Yes, I’m a Google Fan Boy, and must try anything new offered by the company. I have already converted my email to run through Google Apps. If you call me, it’s directed to one of my many phones (office, mobile, home, Blackberry) through Google Voice. I’m contemplating upgrading my mobile with an Android OS device. Call me an early adopter. It’s easy to be an earlier adopter when most of Google’s services are free. I do pay extra, though, for the Google Apps Premium edition for my photography site and email.
The promise of what Google Wave can do is pretty exciting.
What is a wave?
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
I think Google Wave will be a very useful communications tool–if adopted–whether used locally at a distance.
For business, it has project collaboration written all over it. I’m trying to examine Wave to see if it would be a cost-effective alternative to 37Signals‘ products for my wife’s small business. Given that she often has staff in different locations, a real-time communications and file sharing tool could be useful.
I also think Google Wave could be a good communications tool for friends or family. I’m contemplating putting a family intranet site up on my domain, but have started to wonder if Google Wave might be an alternative or, at least, a good complement.
Unfortunately, the primary hindrance at this point with scoping out the full functionality of Google Wave is that there are not yet a lot of people I know with access . The service is in a pre-Beta testing stage, and is available only by invite. Nevertheless, as more and more invites go out, and invitations are shared by users (yes I have a few), I expect then I can really test the usefulness of Google Wave.
If have about 80 minutes, and want to really get your Google nerd on, check out this video that explains Google Wave.
If you’re already on Google Wave, please add me to your contact list. My wave address is mdlindc@googlewave.com.
29
Nov 09
dare to compare?
Something that has befuddled me for years, but I seldom talk about, is how comparisons of celebrities and athletes are made. Now, we all do–make comparisons; but I’m specifically talking about how commentators, journalists, and people in everyday conversations are locked into only comparing someone of a particular race with someone of the same race.
I don’t watch basketball that much anymore, but it just amazes me that so many white players in the NBA are compared to “Piston Pete” Maravich. I mean…really? Can that many white players have the same style as Maravich? I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s almost a struggle to find white players to compare to these days. If anyone has seen Jason Williams play basketball, I think Magic Johnson or even Jason Kidd, not Bob Cousy or Jerry West. Similarly, if there is a player who is Jewish, why compare him only to Dolph Schayes? That’s just dumb.
Music is another area where people seemed locked into making comparisons of artists based on race. If Diana Krall vocal style is reminiscent of Ethel Ennis, why not just say that instead saying she’s the modern Rose Clooney? I’m sure many of you can rattle off other singers she sounds like, but personally I think Diana Krall sounds like–Diana Krall. Surely, if I put some thought into it, I could come up with some fabled jazz singers to compare her to. I can’t tell you this, what they look like would not be a factor. Will the next black male country music star automatically be compared to Charlie Pride?
I think you get where I’m going.
Don’t get me wrong. If the comparison fits, no problem. If my photography evokes thoughts of Gordon Parks. Sweet. that’s quite a compliment. However, if I’m taking black and white images of landscapes, it would seem Ansel Adams would be more appropriate. (Granted, I’m taking quite a leap to even suggest my work is anywhere near that of Adams.)
In the end, I just wish people would break out of these narrow boxes when reaching for a comparison. That is, to the extent comparisons are even necessary.
28
Nov 09
tiny victories
And I mean little With many of these sites, you upload an image or draw your own favicon. The image is pretty small, so crude drawings really don’t matter. I’d stick with letters or symbols if you’re going to draw.
I’m talking about a favicon, which is the tiny icon that appears in address bar of your brow ser and tabs (if you’re using a browser with tabs). Normally with blogs on Blogspot, you see a little,
You will notice in the address bar for this blog, there should be a small M (for Matthew, of course). I said “should be” because I noticed the favicon comes-and-goes on the Firefox browser.
Though the favicon is not really a big deal (no pun intended), I think it’s a nice little way to individualize and brand your blog or website.
It took a few trial and error attempts to figure it out on my sites and WordPress-powered blog. Even though I know how to add the favicon, it took a few attempts to make it work on Blogspot.
I figured that I would share with you the steps I followed to save you the headache — for the most part. If you’re interested in adding a favicon to your blog, here is the steps you should follow.
1) Create Your Own Favicon
When creating your own unique favicon file, remember that it is a very small icon file. My recommendation is to keep it simple. Many logos get lost when you shrink them down. It’s worth noting that the favicon will have ‘.ico’ extension. (I’ll explain why this important in the next step.) If you have editing software, reduce your desired image to 16×16 pixels. Huh? What? Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense, or seems like a hassle. You can use one of the following online services to create your favicon for free.
2) Upload Your Favicon File
Now that you have created your favicon, you will need to upload it to a web location. As I alluded to earlier, the favicon file is a small image file with ‘.ico’ extension. The issue with this extension is that it cannot be uploaded to many photo sharing sites such as Photobucket, Picasa or Flickr.I did some checking, and the image hosting site PicPanda accepts .ico extensions. Once you’ve uploaded your favicon, it’s important to copy the link to that image. I typically keep the image open in a separate tab, because I often have to cut-and-paste other text before getting to the link.
3) Add the Favicon to Your Blog
Once you’ve uploaded the favicon to a domain or image host, you will need to configure your blog to display it. To do this, you will need to go into your Blogger profile. Go to layout
Click ‘Edit HTML’
Before doing anything else, it’s a good idea to download your full template before making any changes to the code.
You will now be looking at the HTML code for your blog. Though it may feel like looking into the Matrix, locating the proper place to add code to show your favicon is not too difficult. What you’ll need to do is first locate the proper place to insert new code — just after the blog’s title tag. To do this, search for the following,
="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once you have searched and located this bit of code, put your cursor at the end of that line and press enter. On the next line, insert the following line of code. (Note: you can’t copy the code from this page because the words are actually an image file. The short answer to “Why?” is because I can’t post live HTML code within my posts.)
Make sure you replace the words your favicon url with the the address of your favicon file. Be sure to keep the single quote hash on both sides of the link.
Save the template. That's it! and check your blog. Your favicon should now be visible. I hope this was helpful.