Desultory Thoughts

As I read blogs I get to see the good and bad of design. I’ve modified my design from a template provided by Blogger and I think it looks fine. One thing that I like on many blogs is a mini-calendar that serves as navigation tool. WordPress 2.0 [wordpress.org] has a nice calendar plugin which is something Blogger.com is definatley missing. If I hadn’t signed up with Blogger quite some time ago, I might actually consider switching to WordPress based on many available plugins.

I’m really good at procrastinating. I should be finishing up a video project that has an upcoming deadline, but instead I’m confessing that I wasted a couple of hours today trying to add a calendar feature [ecmanaut.blogspot.com] by Johan Sundstrom to my blog. I implemented it and then decided it’s not exactly what I had in mind. I didn’t back up my html (even though I was warned to do so) so I had to manually take out all the modifications and get things back to the way I had them. What a pain!

Besides finishing a video project, I should have been preparing for the lesson I have to teach in Elder’s Quorum tomorrow. The lesson is on forgiveness, a subject that I particulary need help with. There are people in my life that I should forgive, but I’ve been hanging on to it instead of letting Christ take my burden. Usually preparation for a lesson helps me grow in the area that I’m teaching about so that I’m less of a hypocrite when I teach. I’ve been fighting that on this one, just as I have for years now. For all of you readers that are religious, pray for me. I want to forgive.

  

Yesterday I posted comments on the huge amount of snow we received. I think weather is pretty interesting; the forces of nature are awesome!You can watch the forces of nature at work by checking out this real time weather camera [home.comcast.net/~wilkerson.george/wxpage/] that looks out over the Salt Lake Valley. One of my favorite features on the page is the “Last Hour” and “Last Day” links that show time-lapse video. It’s very cool. I have it imbedded in my Personalized Google Home Page. If you’d like to put it in your Google Home Page, here’s how:

As described on the Google Webcam Module page, once you’ve signed into your Google Home Page, click “Add Content” at the top left. Click “Create a Section” then copy and paste the following line into the text box:

http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=11766777274779470112

Now click “Go”. You may be warned that this is not an official Google plug-in. I’ve been using it for several weeks without a problem. The module will appear on your page with a default webcam.

Personalize it by clicking “edit” and changing the values. I named mine “My Office Window” since that’s about the only view I have out of the basement where I work.

If you want to view the webcam discussed above, copy and paste the following link in the “Url of your webcam” text box:

http://ocwx.com/now.jpg?ds=5

For a nice proportional fit inside the module use “215″ for the height and “287″ for the width.

  

In the last seven months I haven’t seen too much by the way of nasty storms, although there have been some stronger winds than I’m used to. Last night what I’ve been waiting for finally came.

We got clobbered with more than a foot of snow! I nearly didn’t make it out of our neighborhood. The further north I drove, the better it got. When I got to Salt Lake where I work, there was nothing. The difference, as described in a Tooele Transcript Bulletin article, was not lake effect. The storm that rolled through just decided to linger over our fine city of Tooele. We’re supposed to be getting some more snow tomorrow night and into Saturday. How exciting!

The kids had fun in the snow today. They made snow angels, waded through the deep stuff and slid down the driveway on sleds. It’s the most snow Griffin or Sami have ever played in. They had fun playing with their friend, Logan. They also “helped” shovel the driveway, but the true heroes of shoveling were the Barths (our fine neighbors to the west of us) with their monster snow blower! They saved us all a lot of work.

I should note, however, that when the snowplows came by, they covered the sidewalk and the driveway again, and Heather (my awesome wife) did second clean-up.  And if you’ve ever shoveled the snowplow crud, you know it’s extra heavy.  So good job, Heather!

  

A very funny article [slashdot.org] (non-intentional) was posted by CmdrTaco on Slashdot today. CmdrTaco is an editor and, according to the article, the owner of Slashdot. Slashdot.org, for the uninformed is “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.” It has turned into a place for geeks to “discuss” articles that are submitted by the readers of Slashdot. It’s a community blog!The funny part about this post entitled “On the Subject of Slashdot Article Formatting” is that he addressed spelling and grammar and noted that they weren’t very important or that they were “secondary” issues. He proved it by misspelling several words including ‘to’ when he meant ‘too’. He even sited that as a direct example as one of the mistakes he doesn’t care about when he said, “Of course some users like to email me to tell me how much Slashdot sucks, how fat and lazy I am, and how the most terrible thing in the history of Slashdot is the fact that the 4th story down contains the word ‘to’ when it ought to contain the word ‘too’. That missing ‘o’ is the greatest travesty on-line today! It’s hard to take that seriously.” However, the Slashdot community disagrees, for the most part.

I’m using this article as an example of how important spelling and grammar are to the reader. When you misspell words, especially obvious ones like ‘to’ when you really mean ‘too’ and ‘there’ instead of ‘their’, it tells the reader that “you’re not as smart as you think I am”.

I hope that all the computer kids out there recognize that “See you later” is not really spelled “CUL8ER” and I wonder how much more of a problem this will be in the future, especially when the “editors” of a major blog don’t really care either. I know I’ll be certain that my children learn these essential basics.

  

I watched this the first time on Nike [nike.com] a while ago and I was amazed! I was reminded recently when I saw it again on Google Video [video.google.com] and I thought I’d put it here for your viewing enjoyment.

You can read more [wikipedia.org] about this talented soccer player. I know my nephew Christopher who plays soccer probably knows who this guy is. If you’re on a high speed connection you might also be interested in some more soccer videos [soccerfanatics.net] feauturing the great Ronaldinho!