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Published On: Aug 13, 2005 10:03 PM
Published On: Aug 13, 2005 10:03 PM
My Links
Thu - July 28, 2005
Been awhile
I haven't been blogging for awhile
Between work and family I've squeezed yet another
thing into my life which has squeezed out blogging for a while. I've started to
learn Java. I'm using the book Java How to Program, Fourth Edition by Deitel
and Deitel. So far it's an excellent book. I'm up to chapter 6 which is
teaching about methods. I'm considering writing a blog on my experiences.
What do you think? Would it be worth chronicling?
What do you think? Would it be worth chronicling?
Posted at 08:13 PM Read More
Thu - March 18, 2004
Auto Updating dotmac
Steps for auto publishing of your iBlog to
DotMac.Info and Weblogs.com
Here are the steps for setting iBlog to
automatically update dotmac.info.
1) Select the blog that to have automatically send the updates from
2) Click on the edit button
3) Click the Yes radio button and save
And there you have it. When you publish your blog it will show up (it may take 5-10 minutes) on the DotMac.info 's Active web log list! As you can see if you should check Ping Weblogs.com you will send it to Weblogs.com.
This is certainly a cool feature of iBlog 1.3.5!
1) Select the blog that to have automatically send the updates from
2) Click on the edit button
3) Click the Yes radio button and save
And there you have it. When you publish your blog it will show up (it may take 5-10 minutes) on the DotMac.info 's Active web log list! As you can see if you should check Ping Weblogs.com you will send it to Weblogs.com.
This is certainly a cool feature of iBlog 1.3.5!
Posted at 10:23 PM Read More
I Upgraded to iBlog 1.3.5
I'm a little nervous about using this version
because version 1.3.1 was fairly stable and I was getting to know it some what.
I'm nervous enough that I copied my Site folder from my iDisk to my Hard Drive
just so that if something went wrong I can put it back the way it
was.
...There is a check box that can toggle the auto abstract on or off, "Enable Auto Abstract" by clicking the check box.... If it's not you can type in your Abstract like in the previous version.
The first time I tried using it on this entry iBlog crashed and I lost the entry.... It only crashed after I had tried changing the parameters several times and clicking the "Refresh Abstract" button.
...There is a check box that can toggle the auto abstract on or off, "Enable Auto Abstract" by clicking the check box.... If it's not you can type in your Abstract like in the previous version.
The first time I tried using it on this entry iBlog crashed and I lost the entry.... It only crashed after I had tried changing the parameters several times and clicking the "Refresh Abstract" button.
Ok so I downloaded iBlog 1.3.5 and I'm trying it out
now. I'm a little nervous about using this version because version 1.3.1 was
fairly stable and I was getting to know it some what. I'm nervous enough that I
copied my Site folder from my iDisk to my Hard Drive just so that if something
went wrong I can put it back the way it
was.
First thing I notice is that there is an ability to auto generate a Abstract of the body. That might be useful or you might want to put your own abstract there. There is a check box that can toggle the auto abstract on or off, "Enable Auto Abstract" by clicking the check box. If it's checked then several radio buttons are visable, a scale, and a button, "Refresh Abstract". When it's checked it will generate the Abstract for you. If it's not you can type in your Abstract like in the previous version.
The first time I tried using it on this entry iBlog crashed and I lost the entry. My fault as I hadn't saved the entry. It only crashed after I had tried changing the parameters several times and clicking the "Refresh Abstract" button.
There is also a "Customize" button that allows you to change the Menu on Edit Entry screen.
There is also buttons for including music, photos, movies, and attachments to the entry. These work with Apple's new iLife 4.0 series of apps.
(imported music from iTunes)
(imported picture from iphoto - mission San
Jose)
I'm very interested in trying the new Layouts. I haven't really explored that enough to be able to claim I can control it. It requires more knowledge of html than I can remember off the top of my head.
First thing I notice is that there is an ability to auto generate a Abstract of the body. That might be useful or you might want to put your own abstract there. There is a check box that can toggle the auto abstract on or off, "Enable Auto Abstract" by clicking the check box. If it's checked then several radio buttons are visable, a scale, and a button, "Refresh Abstract". When it's checked it will generate the Abstract for you. If it's not you can type in your Abstract like in the previous version.
The first time I tried using it on this entry iBlog crashed and I lost the entry. My fault as I hadn't saved the entry. It only crashed after I had tried changing the parameters several times and clicking the "Refresh Abstract" button.
There is also a "Customize" button that allows you to change the Menu on Edit Entry screen.
There is also buttons for including music, photos, movies, and attachments to the entry. These work with Apple's new iLife 4.0 series of apps.
(imported music from iTunes)
(imported picture from iphoto - mission San
Jose)I'm very interested in trying the new Layouts. I haven't really explored that enough to be able to claim I can control it. It requires more knowledge of html than I can remember off the top of my head.
Posted at 12:21 AM Read More
Thu - March 4, 2004
iBlog 1.3.5
There's a new version of iBlog
Version 1.3.5 of iBlog is out. I should download
it. Here is what is new:
- Integrates with iLife '04 by allowing bloggers to seamlessly import photos and music from iPhoto 4 and iTunes 4.
- Adds support for a custom category image size and an embedded Safari WebKit in Reader mode
- Bug fixes and other performance enhancements.
I'm ashamed of saying it but I'm afraid of losing what I have or screwing up what I currently have working. I'm even afraid that if I download it that my license will expire. Heck it's only $20 so I shouldn't even care. I spend that much on iTunes some nights.
Ok. Ok. I'll download it tomorrow night and take the chance. You talked me into it. I'll let you know what I think. The tighter integration with iLife '04 should be worth $20 if I have to pay for it.
- Integrates with iLife '04 by allowing bloggers to seamlessly import photos and music from iPhoto 4 and iTunes 4.
- Adds support for a custom category image size and an embedded Safari WebKit in Reader mode
- Bug fixes and other performance enhancements.
I'm ashamed of saying it but I'm afraid of losing what I have or screwing up what I currently have working. I'm even afraid that if I download it that my license will expire. Heck it's only $20 so I shouldn't even care. I spend that much on iTunes some nights.
Ok. Ok. I'll download it tomorrow night and take the chance. You talked me into it. I'll let you know what I think. The tighter integration with iLife '04 should be worth $20 if I have to pay for it.
Posted at 11:47 PM Read More
Polywogg
Experimenting with Polywogg
I downloaded Polywogg and setup my free account (yet
another benefit of .mac. It's currently in beta mode (version 0.8f). It's real
easy to get started. For basic journals it's really very straight forward. I'm
not sure about other things though. You can see what it looks like here. If you want
to add a link you have to edit HTML. It imbeds it for you and it's not that
difficult. You don't have access to the html of your site. It looks like you
can only use it on their site. Not that that is bad. I haven't really figured
out how to publish my iBlog to other sites yet either (it would help if I had a
manual). I also can't see how you might change the layout. Looking at other
Polywogg blogs there must be a way. I just haven't found it yet.
Posted at 11:33 PM Read More
Fri - November 14, 2003
How do you show only abstracts on the front page.
My attempts to learn about showing abstracts on the
front page and details below.
First thing I'm going to try is publishing all my
blogs to see if their abstract show up on main page. That didn't work at all.
I did find that if I had a blog that had 3 or more categories in it and I did a
preview it created a index page to each of the categories. This was stored on
the local disk and would have to be manually copied to the idisk to publish it.
Not very elegant. There must be a better way.
Posted at 09:29 PM Read More
Sat - November 8, 2003
Home page
I created a home page to link my Blogs
to
Well I created a home page using iMac to link to my
Blogs. This turned out to be fairly easy but it the page layouts were fairly
limited. You can go to http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/Menu1.html
to see it. I linked to each of the blogs sperately so people could see what I
have been working on. I did have one problem that I haven't solved yet. I
wanted to use the iBlog icon
but i couldn't copy it up to my iDisk. I'll try and figure that out later.
I was also trying to figure out why "Richard's Rants" blog was better formated than "Learning to Blog". "Richard's Rants" has a shorter line length before it wraps around and is easier to read. The only difference I saw between the two blogs was in the color of the header. I'm not sure why this would have any affect but I am change "Learning to Blog" to match "Richard's Rants".
but i couldn't copy it up to my iDisk. I'll try and figure that out later.
I was also trying to figure out why "Richard's Rants" blog was better formated than "Learning to Blog". "Richard's Rants" has a shorter line length before it wraps around and is easier to read. The only difference I saw between the two blogs was in the color of the header. I'm not sure why this would have any affect but I am change "Learning to Blog" to match "Richard's Rants".
Posted at 02:37 PM Read More
Thu - November 6, 2003
Results of Publish test
Further results on Publishing tests
One thing I noticed when republishing was that
publishing with Reset Publish State And Publish takes longer. I believe this is
because it is forcing everything to be republished not just what
changed.
When it finished publishing it brought up two browser pages. One for Richard's Rants and one for Learning to Blog.
Learning to Blog's URL was still http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/index.html
Richard's Rants' URL was http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B250045583/index.html. This blog had the different ordering of the Calendar and Categories and the change in color of the banner (it looks black to me).
Most interestingly is that the default URL for iBlog http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html hasn't changed since Oct 19th when I foolishly tried to delete a blog. I was kinda hoping to see a page that pointed to both of the blogs there but I guess that was to much to hope for.
When it finished publishing it brought up two browser pages. One for Richard's Rants and one for Learning to Blog.
Learning to Blog's URL was still http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/index.html
Richard's Rants' URL was http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B250045583/index.html. This blog had the different ordering of the Calendar and Categories and the change in color of the banner (it looks black to me).
Most interestingly is that the default URL for iBlog http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html hasn't changed since Oct 19th when I foolishly tried to delete a blog. I was kinda hoping to see a page that pointed to both of the blogs there but I guess that was to much to hope for.
Posted at 04:59 AM Read More
Publishing
More on my experiments
When I republished this time I used the Blogs menu
(instead of the button on the bottom) and selected Reset Publish State And
Publish. Before I did that I went into the Preference and under general changed
the Choose a template set from RightNavigation to LeftNavigation for this
blog.
The results were:
The calendar ended up on the left side.
All of the links to pictures were reset.
URL was set to http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/C1259970634/index.html
Well the changes to the preference changed to layout. This is something I very interested in looking more into. It wasn't the primary thing I was looking to do with this experiment but it was a good side show. I will continue to try different settings there.
The Reset Publish State And Publish seems to have rebuilt all of the folders with the assets needed to publish all of my links and pictures properly. It also fixed the navigation which wasn't working quite right as well. It did not cause the url to be reset to the default.
BTW - My iBlog Help has gone away since I upgrade to OS 10.3 (which I love so far) so I am having to guess at what to try.
Here are the changes that I am going to make and we will see what differences are created when I republish.
In the Preferences Menu item I selected Publish and double clicked on the Default .Mac Location and clicked on the Assign Blog and Copy Blog Folder for both Richard's Rants and Learning to Blog.
Under Preview I changed Choose a stylesheet to blackberry.css and LeftNavigation for Richard's Rants.
Under the Blogs menu item I selected Show Navigation Editor and changed the order of Calendar and and Categories (I made Categories first Calendar second).
I am going to Reset Publish State And Publish and tell it to publish both blogs.
The results were:
The calendar ended up on the left side.
All of the links to pictures were reset.
URL was set to http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/C1259970634/index.html
Well the changes to the preference changed to layout. This is something I very interested in looking more into. It wasn't the primary thing I was looking to do with this experiment but it was a good side show. I will continue to try different settings there.
The Reset Publish State And Publish seems to have rebuilt all of the folders with the assets needed to publish all of my links and pictures properly. It also fixed the navigation which wasn't working quite right as well. It did not cause the url to be reset to the default.
BTW - My iBlog Help has gone away since I upgrade to OS 10.3 (which I love so far) so I am having to guess at what to try.
Here are the changes that I am going to make and we will see what differences are created when I republish.
In the Preferences Menu item I selected Publish and double clicked on the Default .Mac Location and clicked on the Assign Blog and Copy Blog Folder for both Richard's Rants and Learning to Blog.
Under Preview I changed Choose a stylesheet to blackberry.css and LeftNavigation for Richard's Rants.
Under the Blogs menu item I selected Show Navigation Editor and changed the order of Calendar and and Categories (I made Categories first Calendar second).
I am going to Reset Publish State And Publish and tell it to publish both blogs.
Posted at 04:04 AM Read More
Publishing
Issues with Publishing
My default url to publish to is supposed to be
http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html
I'm currently publishing to this sub folder http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/index.html
This has been this way since I tried to rename one of my Blogs. I am going to try different ways of republishing to see if I can get it going back to the default url.
I'm currently publishing to this sub folder http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/B1183948439/index.html
This has been this way since I tried to rename one of my Blogs. I am going to try different ways of republishing to see if I can get it going back to the default url.
Posted at 03:04 AM Read More
Mon - October 20, 2003
Publishing issue
Support came through
Since I renamed the blogs I have only been able to
use the Learning to Blog web log. I tried everything except the "Rebuild
Application Data" to no avail. So I broke down and sent an e-mail to Lifli
Support (Lifli is the company that Apple got the software from). I had seen
comments in a couple of discussion groups about Lifli Support and they had all
been positive. My personal experience with most Software support orgs hasn't
been all that great. Especially for software that sells for under $20! I got
mine free because of my .mac
account.
Any way, on thursday evening, I sent an e-mail to "support@lifli.com" explaining my problem. Well Guess what? When I got home Monday evening I had an answer! I received the following e-mail:
Hi Richard,
To publish a blog you have to create a publish location and assign the
blog to it.
Try this.
1. Go to iBlog application preferences.
2. Click the publish toolbar icon.
3. Choose ".Mac" in the Popup button and click the "New Location" button.
4. Enter a unique location name, dot mac username and password.
5. Set the "Copy To Folder" value to "Sites/iblog/"
6. Check the "Assign Blog" and "Copy Blog Folder" options.
7. Save the publish location settings and close the preferences window.
8. Click the publish button.
NOTE: For now, always mount the iDisk in the Finder before clicking the
publish button.
Regards
Sarat Kongara
I tried it an "Voila!" I was back in business.
Any way, on thursday evening, I sent an e-mail to "support@lifli.com" explaining my problem. Well Guess what? When I got home Monday evening I had an answer! I received the following e-mail:
Hi Richard,
To publish a blog you have to create a publish location and assign the
blog to it.
Try this.
1. Go to iBlog application preferences.
2. Click the publish toolbar icon.
3. Choose ".Mac" in the Popup button and click the "New Location" button.
4. Enter a unique location name, dot mac username and password.
5. Set the "Copy To Folder" value to "Sites/iblog/"
6. Check the "Assign Blog" and "Copy Blog Folder" options.
7. Save the publish location settings and close the preferences window.
8. Click the publish button.
NOTE: For now, always mount the iDisk in the Finder before clicking the
publish button.
Regards
Sarat Kongara
I tried it an "Voila!" I was back in business.
Posted at 08:14 PM Read More
Sun - October 19, 2003
Linking to Other's assets
Issues with linking to others assets
When I republished tonight I realized that some of
the pictures that I put in to some earlier entries were coming up as question
marks. I'm pretty sure that it is because I was pointing to the picture on
someone else's site instead of coping a picture down onto my site. I guess it's
not wise to count on anything permanent from the web unless you have arranged
it!
Posted at 11:09 PM Read More
Organization and Recovery
How to organize a blog and what I am doing to
correct the error I have
I'm still learning what works best in organizing my
web log. It's just now starting to come together for me. I now have three
categories blogging, Herndon's Hide-a-way, and Space.
Blogging is what I am learning about blogging and the iBlog software.
Herndon's Hide-a-way are thoughts and stories about me and my personal experience (although the whole web log thing feels pretty personal to me).
Space contains my thoughts about space. Which is a subject that I care very much about.
I'm thinking that I will continue to separate my blog by subjects and see how that works when published.
Speaking of being published I still don't know that anyone has actually visited my site and I still have the problem of not being able to publish any blog besides this one. I sent an e-mail in the the company that makes iBlog asking for assistance but I haven't received any response yet. Apple doesn't have a forum for iBlog yet on .mac even though they are giving the software to .mac users. Under the Resources menu there is a menu item called Rebuild Application Data. But it comes up with this message.
I haven't found any documentation about exactly what it does yet so I have been reluctant to actually try it for fear that I will lose everything that I have done.
Blogging is what I am learning about blogging and the iBlog software.
Herndon's Hide-a-way are thoughts and stories about me and my personal experience (although the whole web log thing feels pretty personal to me).
Space contains my thoughts about space. Which is a subject that I care very much about.
I'm thinking that I will continue to separate my blog by subjects and see how that works when published.
Speaking of being published I still don't know that anyone has actually visited my site and I still have the problem of not being able to publish any blog besides this one. I sent an e-mail in the the company that makes iBlog asking for assistance but I haven't received any response yet. Apple doesn't have a forum for iBlog yet on .mac even though they are giving the software to .mac users. Under the Resources menu there is a menu item called Rebuild Application Data. But it comes up with this message.
I haven't found any documentation about exactly what it does yet so I have been reluctant to actually try it for fear that I will lose everything that I have done.
Posted at 10:58 PM Read More
A Unexpected Side affect of blogging.
Letter to editor is published in
newspaper
After I wrote the entry about the Chinese going into
space I decided to e-mail that entry to the Orlando newspaper and tomorrow they
are publishing it. I haven't sent many letters to the editor in the past even
if there was a subject that I cared about. I normally wouldn't have spent the
time putting my thoughts down in writing. Since I am keeping up this web log I
now have a forum to capture my ideas and thoughts. Once captured I can reuse
them.
Well here's an unexpected side affect of blogging.
Well here's an unexpected side affect of blogging.
Posted at 10:40 PM Read More
Mon - October 13, 2003
iBlog Categories vs Blogs
I experiment with Categories vs Blogs
It's been a few days since I last worked on my web
log. Tonight I created another blog with Apple's iBlog software. This was my
first attempt to share my thoughts on current events. This is one of the things
that I have found that I like on other people's web logs. Like everything else
with iBlog creating it was simple. I created links and copied pics from the web
as easy as you would expect. I then published to my .mac account. What I found
was that this blog (Learning to Blog) was published to the Internet but my new
one was not.
I then went and looked at my idisk to see if the new blog was actually on the idisk. It was. It was in the Sites folder in the iblog directory. I found that what was published on .mac was the index.html which pointed to the first blog under Blogs & Categories. You would then access it on the Internet with this url http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html
Within the iblog directory there a bunch of folders that had names that started with a letter followed by 10 numbers. I found that what was published on .mac was the index.html which pointed to the first blog under Blogs & Categories.
My new blog "Richard Herndon's Weblog" was found within the directory ifile:///Volumes/richardherndon/Sites/iblog/C814694846/index.html
So if I wanted someone to actually see it I would have send them this url http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/C814694846/index.html. I found this by opening files with Safari until I found the file that contained the page that I wanted. This is ok but since I still haven't figured out how to get my site published on a weblog publishing site I knew know one would ever see it.
I then drug the Herndon's Hide-a-way category up under the "Learning to Blog" blog and republished. What came out here was that both Categories were visible from the same url.
http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html. For the time being this seems to be preferable for me. I think I will use Blogs to publish to different sites (when I learn to publish to different sites).
I then went and looked at my idisk to see if the new blog was actually on the idisk. It was. It was in the Sites folder in the iblog directory. I found that what was published on .mac was the index.html which pointed to the first blog under Blogs & Categories. You would then access it on the Internet with this url http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html
Within the iblog directory there a bunch of folders that had names that started with a letter followed by 10 numbers. I found that what was published on .mac was the index.html which pointed to the first blog under Blogs & Categories.
My new blog "Richard Herndon's Weblog" was found within the directory ifile:///Volumes/richardherndon/Sites/iblog/C814694846/index.html
So if I wanted someone to actually see it I would have send them this url http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/C814694846/index.html. I found this by opening files with Safari until I found the file that contained the page that I wanted. This is ok but since I still haven't figured out how to get my site published on a weblog publishing site I knew know one would ever see it.
I then drug the Herndon's Hide-a-way category up under the "Learning to Blog" blog and republished. What came out here was that both Categories were visible from the same url.
http://homepage.mac.com/richardherndon/iblog/index.html. For the time being this seems to be preferable for me. I think I will use Blogs to publish to different sites (when I learn to publish to different sites).
Posted at 10:49 PM Read More
Pictures and Music
Pictures
xml feed
Cool
Reader mode
Publishing
iBlog