Sun - October 2, 2005

New blog www.jimphelps.info

Hi All,

I am deprecating this blog and moving to WordPress on my own domain. Follow me on over to http://www.jimphelps.info for my personal blog. My work blog is at http://arch.doit.wisc.edu/jim/

Posted at 09:25 AM     Read More ;

Fri - May 20, 2005

del.icio.us

I hope all of you have discovered del.icio.us . It is a great "social bookmark manager". I just had an interesting thing happen with del.icio.us. I was adding some urls (on faceted navigation) when I thought I should add a tag to those entries. I went to my del.icio.us bookmarks to edit them then saw some bookmarks I had thrown into del.icio.us during the Internet2 Member Meeting. I had completely forgotten about these bookmarks. I wonder how many bookmarks are lost inside of my bookmark menu that I just don't remember adding.

It is good to have a second brain sometimes.

Posted at 09:23 PM     Read More ;

Fri - May 13, 2005

Haven't blogged here for quite a while

I've been busy with my work blog, setting a blog for my boss and demonstrating the integration work that I did for my work blog. That has kept me very busy. I was also traveling to Arlington VA for the Spring Member meeting of Internet2.

Posted at 09:24 PM     Read More ;

Tue - April 5, 2005

My work blog - tagging and folksonomy

I haven't been posting here much. Most of my time has been spent on writing code for my work blog I.T. Architect in Academia. I run that blog on WordPress and I must say that I am very impressed with the WordPress engine. There a lots of plugins and templates and activity around the code.

Posted at 04:34 PM     Read More ;

First bike commute today

Today was the first day that I commuted by bike this season. I missed a lot of last season since we had a puppy who needed to be fed at lunch time. It was great to be back in the saddle again. I hope to ride through Thanksgiving this year. Some people ride year around here even on the -24 (yes minus 24) degree days.

Posted at 04:30 PM     Read More ;

Tue - March 29, 2005

Fish and Greens

I have been having cravings for fish and greens all of a sudden. I have made two different meals around this theme in the past week. See below for more...

Posted at 08:42 PM     Read More ;

It almost feels like Spring

We have had several of days of nice "almost" Spring weather - highs in the upper 60s and nearly 70 yesterday. There is still a lot snow on the ground and the air doesn't smell like damp earth yet but you can feel it coming. Yesterday, I opened all of the windows and let the house air out. It is amazing how wonderful it feels when you realize it is time to run around and open all the windows.

We planted some blueberry bushes next to the house on Sunday. Gardening again! What a nice feeling. This is our year for big gardening / landscape jobs. Seems like we are on an every-other-year cycle. House Remodel - Big Yard Renovations - House Remodel - Big Yard Renovations. This year we will redo our driveway and sidewalks. We will also redo our back patio by the house. The driveway is asphalt and it has reached the "time to go" point. The sidewalk from the drive to house is in terrible shape. Our back patio has sunken next to the house so it funnels all of the rain water up to the foundation (no. bad. wrong.).

On the fun side, I hope to put in some flag stone paths and a flag stone patio out under one of our big trees. Maybe I'll talk Ena into letting me put in a pond too!

Also, there is more fencing to be done and planting and weeding.

I'm just happy that I get to work in the yard again. Spring! Aaaahhhhhhh.....

Posted at 08:31 PM     Read More ;

Sun - March 27, 2005

Setting up a work blog

I've been spending a fair amount of time recently setting up a new blog for my work writings. You can see it here: I.T. Architect in Academia. Though soon I will probably move it up one level in the directory to http://arch.doit.wisc.edu/jim/

Posted at 09:34 AM     Read More ;

Tue - March 15, 2005

Radio Paradise - great web radio site

There is a espresso shop near my work which I frequent - Muddy Waters. Great coffee, free wireless. They are always playing a cool music mix. Finally, I asked what they were listening too. The told me it was "Radio Paradise, a stream from the web".

Posted at 09:57 AM     Read More ;

Wed - March 2, 2005

Two new fun sites for y'all

OK Folks. Shine up your funny bone. Here are a couple of "dark humor" sites that I found pretty entertaining.

First up - The Evil Bastard's Rationalization Guide .
"Evil people are the most oppressed minority in the country these days.  Government officials who would never dream of using racial or religious epithets in their speeches have no qualms about calling for the incarceration or execution of every Evil person they see."

Second up - Motivational Posters Based on Comic Book Characters .
The artist made these in response to the announcement that Marvel Comics is now making motivational posters .

Posted at 07:28 PM     Read More ;

Thu - February 10, 2005

John Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

A friend went to see John Perkins last night at the Memorial Union. Sounds like it was a very interesting talk. Mr. Perkins has the insider's view of the real way that our country has dominated third (and second) world countries - through crushing economic debt. We loan money to these governments which then funnel the funds straight through to big corporations like Halliburton et al. If the leaders won't play, then they tend to die or be overthrown. Rather an intense and disturbing look at our leadership.

Mr. Perkins now uses his money to fund Dream Change a non-profit that is out to "create a more compassionate and just world".

Click on read more if you want to download the Democracy Now interview.

Posted at 10:09 PM     Read More ;

Three More Movies in the Thought Provoking file

Here are a few more on-line movies that are thought provoking.

The first one is EPIC 2014 This has been around for a while but seems to be rising again on the "meme" cycle (more about that later). The premise - it is 2014 and the New York Times has gone offline... It is a look at what the future of "news and media" might become based on the current trends (more on that also later).

The second one is an ACLU movie - Pizza Privacy. It is a look at what the future might become as our privacy disappears.

The final movie is a slide show from Iraq set to music by the BYU Choir. Great pictures and very poignant. (click on read more to see the lyrics to the song). What I find amazing is that the right sees this as "an anthem to rally around". Us lefties see it as a beautiful and moving statement as to why we shouldn't take war lightly. The right seems to think that disapproving of the war in Iraq and of wishing our troops weren't in harms way is somehow betraying the men and women of the armed forces. sigh.... didn't mean to start a rant this late in the evening. Anyway. Watch the photo show. It really is quite wonderful and moving.

Posted at 09:46 PM     Read More ;

Sun - February 6, 2005

Check out the time on these clocks.

These on-line clocks are very cool. These are animation based so give them a minute to load. I would post a screen shot but it would ruin the fun for y'all. The clocks are by Yugo Nakamura who does some pretty cool web animation stuff.

Posted at 09:07 AM     Read More ;

Thu - February 3, 2005

Sprint and the LG PM-325

A while back I wrote that I want a new cell phone with bluetooth . Sprint has launched the LG PM-325 (Engadget Story about the LG PM-325). This is a slider style phone with bluetooth, a camera, nice bright color screen and lots of goodies. But (isn't there always a but in these stories), BUT - Sprint put half-assed bluetooth on the phone.

Posted at 09:00 PM     Read More ;

Mon - January 31, 2005

I'm trying Sideblog for Books and Music

I got tired of trying to maintain the "What I'm Reading" list on the side of my blog (and the "What I'm Listening To" list come to think of it). Both are way out of date. I saw "Sideblog" over on samblog @ Very Simple by Sam Dow. Sam uses it for quick posts when she doesn't want to fire up iBlog to make a post.

Posted at 07:18 PM     Read More ;