Yay! Andy did a great job adding stats to the Dashboard! Here’s a screenshot.
This should make blogging at WordPress.com even more attractive as you know other people are going to know about what you’re blogging.
I’m still rather fond of reading the site through an RSS feed but that’s only managable now because there are so few blogs being updated.
When we’re bigger than Blogger.com that won’t be as easy!
Borders Chicago: Kirstie Alley
Way back in May Kirstie Alley appeared at Borders to sign her new book. Apparently the week before Sylvestor Stallone was in signing his book and the place was thick with people. Local media were there and Jacinta and I may have appeared on TV. Hey, I kept shooting with my 300mm zoom while the camera man had his camera trained on us so you never know!
You can’t go any further
Ubuntu: back on the scene
I installed Ubuntu ages ago but never got around to configuring it:
- Firefox didn’t like my .mozilla or .firefox directories. It complained that my default profile was already in use.
- Thunderbird didn’t work either but I can’t remember why. Could have been the same reason.
- Mplayer had to be installed from source. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of installing a compiler and associated development libraries.
This morning I rebooted my Debian desktop, only to discover that it wouldn’t boot again. It complained about needing an old version of modutils. Arrggghhh! Wasn’t this the perfect time to try Ubuntu again?
I rebooted, and managed to massage Firefox and Thunderbird enough that they worked.
Mplayer was still a problem but after looking around a bit here’s the easy way to install Mplayer:
Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse
Do an “apt-get update” and “apt-cache search mplayer” to find the right Mplayer for your CPU.
Make middle mouse button load URL in Firefox
Why can’t this be a default? Middle mouse clicking a url to open a url in the copy buffer is one of those “must-have” features of Mozilla that I always miss when I use IE. Why isn’t it turned on by default?
These instructions tell you how to enable it.
Set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to true in about:config.
The definitive collection of idea generation methods
The definitive collection of idea generation methods – I have no idea what to say about this 🙂
There’s a Hole in My Blog? – Holistic Blogging: Blog Tips
There’s a Hole in My Blog? – fill the hole in your blog and make it better!
Photography Links
- “This is not a normal assignment.”
- Pebbles From Paradise – lots of great stuff here.
- Beginner’s guide to composition
- Beauty Retouching
- Photoshop tutorials
- Start Your Own Photography Business from Home
- How I Recovered My Lost Digital Photos
- Macro photography with your digital camera – macro photography with a compact digital camera is so much easier than with a DSLR. You get fabulous depth of field and can generally focus closer. None of my lenses can focus closer than 11 inches. My FZ5 compact can focus at 1.9 inches!
TIME.com: The Day After Katrina Photo Essay
TIME.com: The Day After Katrina Photo Essay – 13 photos from Time.com. It continues in the Hurricane Crisis photo essay.
Edit in 2024: Obviously, the links above are long gone now. Here are the archive.org copies:
All About B&W
The New York Institute of Photography has great tips about B&W photography. It’s part 28 of the series and there’s plenty more!
2 Minute Photoshop Tricks
2 Minute Photoshop Tricks – nice idea! It’s an attractive format for presenting small tips. “2 minutes and I’ll know how to do this! Wow!”