Archives: July 2005, March 2006

Find music, videos, and ebooks Monday, March 20, 2006

Using Google's API, I am creating a website that will allow users to plug in a keyword, such as an author's name, a song title, or book title; and recieve results from Google's search engine with music, video, and ebook files that can be downloaded.

Yes this could be used for illegal purposes, but that is up for your own actions to decide.

Please check it out and test it. Thank you.

Free. Cash Money Sunday, March 19, 2006

First off, there is no such thing as free. At some point someone has to work to earn the money. The cool thing is that you can get really close to free money. Only problem is that you open yourself up to scams, spam, and identity theft.

However, as a soon-to-be college student, I have been wandering the net aimlessly looking for that one service that will give me some money for free* without the hassles. The best option so far has been recieving emails for a few cents.

InboxDollars gives you a five dollar sign up bonus plus an email (or a few) a day that generate a couple cents each. They also give you the option of signing up for other services and making more free* money.

This is a shameless plug.

Blogger Categories Revisited Sunday, March 12, 2006

November was a busy time for the post "Blogger Categories Revamped". Sadly, I have been absent from this blog for a long time and never came across these comments until today. Anyways, here are some frontpage links that any other interested parties can take a look at.

• Commentary from Sam.
• Two very nice category implementations (one | two) by John and Greg.
• The whole shebang! from John at Freshblog

Drop your comments and links.

UMPCmods Sunday, March 12, 2006

With Cebit '06 on going in Germany; the little devices known as Ultra Mobile PC's are coming out into the open. And as with all technology they need modifing. So I grabbed two domains in hopes of either developing them, or selling them: umpcmods.com and umpcmods.net (dot net has a ring to it).

They are parked and listed on Sedo, but I set the asking price high because I am still not sure what to do as of right now.

Online Writing Saturday, March 11, 2006

This thing called blogging is an amazing feat for us people. It has taken us from "Idiot Nation" (Greenday, American Idiot) to a level playing feild where broadcasters like CBS have to drop to their knees and beg for us to watch their newcasters screw facts around (Dan Rather, 09.08.04).

Of course many bloggers are biased. Its hard not to be unless you are talking about dirt. Then again some may not think it's "just dirt". It might be a vessel for some earth god waiting to take back the world from us, the people, who have chopped down thousands of trees, killed billions and billions of animals, and then ate the poor animals.

So, blogging = power to the people.

Peace, love, and small Governments,
Billy (coming back)

The Harry hoax Saturday, July 16, 2005

Within the past few hours I must have pissed many Harry Potter fans off with my recent post entitled "Finished Harry Potter". But before anyone wrings my neck, I would like to point out the solid evidence that blogging effectively requires a few details:

1. Knowledge of the next big thing (such as Harry Potter).
2. A very well documented post that leads into discussions and more posts, offering your readers a reason to come back.
3. Reaching out through instant blog directories (technorati).
4. A well formatted blog and writing style (a prime example of the wrong way can be seen by looking more closely at my blog).

I myself am no example, however, I am working on it, and just by looking at the following three days will show you that with the right wording on the right subject will generate some nice traffic:



And so, before fall settles in, and my time is sucked into the blackhole we call school, I would actually like to have some type of content available within this blog. Although this may be an impossible task, the first step I am taking is by establishing series that will begin one by one and hopefully build into a smorgus borg of series. So to start the trek, I introduce to you the series- Blogspot Browsing.

Blogspot Browsing is a series in which I will quite literally stumble across blogs hosted on Blogspot. Upon stumbling across the most interesting blogs I will do a short write up of some form, whether it be a personal experience relieved, or a relationship between the blog and current events.

Stay tuned for tomorrows (or within the week) premier of Blogspot Browsing.

Google is no Mapquest Saturday, July 16, 2005

I have never used Google Maps before, but today while I was getting directions to a college in Vermont, I decided to try Google:


Being the map expert I am, I realized that there is a very large detour within Google's map. So I hopped on Mapquest, and was greeted with a two hour difference in driving time:


Conclusion. Although being a Google freak is a good thing, there are times when you need to tone it down a bit. And having to sit in a car for an additional two hours is one of those times.

Finished Harry Potter Saturday, July 16, 2005

Well, last night I was up until four thirty in the morning with most of the world in a wild rage of exuberance, adrenaline, and anger. You see, I'm approaching my senior year of high school, and as the "webmaster" of my school's website, I need to leave it in the most "outstanding" condition. So, instead of reading the new Harry Potter book, my school's website had my attention.

But I wonder if I'm the only one not obsessing over Harry Potter. Heck, even the Pope is involved, although in a peeved manner.

What is up with blogging Thursday, July 14, 2005

This whole realm of blogging that I have been apart of, on and off for a few years, has confused the daylights out of me since day one. I mean, come on, how on earth do people like Jason Kottke come up with the material to write on, day after day. Not to mention he has time to wander the net, soaking up the most interesting links the WWW has to offer.

Mean while, I'm sitting here on Blogger, complaining about my insignificant ability to perform the magic feats of Kottke. Heck, maybe Mr. Oxton felt the same way.

Ah well, live, learn, and die.

Archives: June 2005

A Greasy Day Saturday, June 25, 2005

Today's forecast includes 90 degree temperatures with high humidities. Along with some greasy tidbits for Bloggers and Greasemonkey fans.

In my previous post I gave a shout out to the Greasemonkey script that works with Blogger, del.icio.us, and Technorati to give us Bloggers the ability to categorize our posts. Anyways, I redid the script a bit to work like my Link Field implantation, except now you will insert your tags through the new input field displayed below your post textbox.

Note that the only difference between FreshBlog's implantation and mine, is that mine uses the Link Field (Settings->Formatting) in Blogger to stow the tag list. Instead of adding the tags to your post body in the textarea.

Greasemonkey file: http://saturn.walagata.com/w/pacetua/bloggertags.user.js

Now only if I knew enough javascript to modify the Link Field itself.

Geasing Blogger Saturday, June 25, 2005

I was informed of another type of tagging method for Blogger by John (FreshBlog) that uses the Firefox plugin, Greasemonkey. May be an interesting subject to look into.

Blogger Addition: Image Upload Friday, June 24, 2005

Blogger has just released an addition to their blogging tools- an image uploader. Read more here.

Blogger Categories Revamped Thursday, June 23, 2005

I really hate... er... dislike the fact that Blogger does not support categories. So with the passion to improve, I have ran around the net looking at how others have accomplished this.

The most distinguished method I have found went beyond categories by implementing the tag theory with the help of del.icio.us. Looking at BlogFresh's implementation, I began to wonder if there is a more automatic sequence. And yes, I believe their is one.

BlogFresh uses a tagging script that generates an HTML string that you manually insert into your page. Well, I'm lazy. So I allowed for the Link dialog to be displayed (Settings->Formatting on Blogger) and rewrote the technorati delicious tagging script to automatically insert the HTML string into the Link input. Where upon, in your template you place the following code within your tags:


<$BlogItemUrl$>

This will out put something of this nature:

Cuban, Cigars, Liberal

But of course the links will be to your del.icio.us tag.

Directions:

1. Get a del.icio.us account.
2. Allow the "Link Field" to show (Settings->Formatting) in Blogger.
3. Edit your template by pasting <$BlogItemUrl$> somewhere between your tags.
4. (with Firefox) Right click on your Bookmark toolbar, select "New Bookmark", use whatever name you want, and paste the following into the "Location" section: javascript:(function(){var a='';var t=prompt('Enter Tags:','');var tr=t.split(' ');for(var i=0;i 0){a+=', ';}a+=''+tr[i]+'';}document.stuffform.url.value=a;})()

Okay, we are all set up.

Let's say you're going to post something. This post of yours is about life, liberty, and happiness. So click on that Bookmark you created on your Bookmark toolbar and you should be prompted for some tags. Write out your tags (tags cannot contain spaces because they are separated by spaces and del.icio.us uses only one word tags). By clicking Okay, you should see your Link input light up with text.

Now post you wonderful post.

However, we are not done yet. You now have to go to your post page and have del.icio.us tag it with your tags.

Enjoy.

I did not write the Javascript, only modified it. Thanks goes to Ted Ernst.