avablog

Finally, a reason to not delete my Yahoo! ID.  Pipes. For people who browse, this is huge.  FYI:  That’s you.

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We’re in the market for a new database at work, so we’ve had vendors coming in to give three-day demos of their software. I won’t name any names, but the first group was really top notch. All of the presenters really knew their stuff, and they were polished and professional, but not aloof. Their product […]

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A maven is someone who is experienced or knowledgeable.  Given the title of this post, I suppose it goes without saying that the contents of this flickr set exhibit the telltale signs of a Photoshop maven at work.  Some quick background…

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This upgrade to the latest version of WordPress was the easiest yet. It’s especially nice to be able to do the update remotely using FTP and have it all work so smoothly. I only use a couple plugins, and as far as I know, they’re all working OK. And I love the fact that this […]

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There’s a big MacWorld conference this week. As always, rumors abound. I’m tempted to sit this one out, but I’m sure I’ll end up taking a peek at live coverage sometime during the day. The keynote is on the same day we’re having an inspector come and look at the house in preparation for negotiating a sale with our neighbor. It’s going to be a big week. By Wednesday we’ll likely know if we’re staying here for a while or moving in the spring.

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In case any of you were getting sick of all the cute shots of Ava: Shot courtesy Apple’s Photo Booth software.

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You might notice some changes over in the menu on the right. Aside from some shuffling around, I changed the search function a bit to use a Google custom search, which is part of Google Co-op. The custom search is cool because it lets me build a custom search database that contains only the sites […]

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We’re no YouTube or MySpace, that’s for sure. As long as someone keeps ending up at my site when searching for “hair technical,” I don’t care if that’s the only hit I ever get.

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I went and signed up for a beta test of the new online word processing application from Google.  I haven’t played with it yet, but it looks great.  I’m eager to try creating a document and sending the text to this blog, which is one of the cool features you get with an online word […]

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And it goes like this: Everyone I know signs up for a Gmail account. That’s it. The end. Web-based, so you can get to it anywhere. Plenty of storage, so you never have to worry about whether some IT heavy is going to show up and tell you to empty your inbox. The way in […]

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I’m going to try something new with the comments on this blog, and it may not last. Up until today, I’ve allowed comments only from logged in users, which has kept my daily spam average pegged right at 0. It’s nice. My Webalizer logs tell me that there are a lot of people reading this […]

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In deference to my in-laws, most of whom have a fairly low tolerance for technology (with one notable exception), I don’t make too many computer-related posts on this blog. But Apple did something today that stands to change the way people buy and use personal computers, and that’s big news. Starting today, you can officially […]

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We had a nice weekend in IL. The two basketball games we watched weren’t very good, and George Mason’s improbable bid for a national title has ended. Too bad. So sad. I’ve got new pictures up in the gallery, which, as it happens, has been updated to version 2.1. I’m not sure I love the […]

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How’s that for technicalese?! Standing on the shoulders of giants, I got the FAlbum plugin working under WordPress. What’s it do? Well, see that instance of “flickr” over there in the menu on the right? Click it. It’ll take you to a page hosted at this site that is populated with images from my flickr […]

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I heard from one of this blog’s silent readers last night that I’m too light on Ava content and too heavy on irrelevant, uninteresting content.  Other than Leah’s constant harping about tech-related posts, I think it’s the first feedback I’ve had on the site’s content.  I sure do appreciate it! In response, I guess I’d […]

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For the last couple days I’ve been messing around with coComment, which is a neat service that lets you track all your comments at various blogs. I don’t make a ton of comments in any particular place, and I don’t visit all my favorite blogs every day, so having a place like coComment is a […]

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I just installed the latest update to WordPress and thought I’d take a minute to document the process I use for anyone who’s in the same boat as I am (and also to have these notes saved somewhere when I invariably forget what I did). The official upgrade instructions are here. The important bits are: […]

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I was browsing my Webalizer logs this morning like I do every day and was surprised to see that my mention of Steve Carrell’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was a pretty hot search topic. So this post doesn’t come across as too blatant a hit-whoring tactic, I will say that I’m consistently amazed […]

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I admit it: I’m a Webalizer junkie. One of the most interesting things about putting all of this information out on my site has been watching how people from all over the world interact with it. Even more than the number of page hits or KB transferred, I’m always curious to see which search terms […]

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The Webcam software I use lets me archive my captured images as a .mov time-lapse movie. Which is pretty cool. I hadn’t taken advantage of the feature…before today. Now, when you click on the nichecam link over there on the right, that page has a link to the movie footage from the previous day. WARNING: […]

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