Technobabbles

Orchestra, Tech, & Audition Opportunities Seized

dgw 2010-02-20 - 16:19 2010-02-20music, theater, w00t 2

As mentioned in , my involvement in the pit orchestra at Temple of Aaron led to an offer from the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company. Well, last Sunday I attended my first GSVLOC orchestra rehearsal; there’s another tomorrow. It followed a week of back-and-forth emails with my contact (from Arizona, where I went to celebrate my grandmother’s 86th birthday). I also worked out dates for another potential gig in technical theatre at the Minneapolis JCC for their Jewish Humor Festival—about which I just happened to receive an email the day after the offer from GSVLOC. After Sunday’s GSVLOC…

“Guys and Dolls” Retrospective

dgw 2010-02-14 - 19:45 2015-10-31music, opinion, theater 0

This was meant to be published last Wednesday, but WordPress missed the scheduled post. I’m looking into how to solve that problem in the future. I told myself I’d blog about anything significant before I started it. That didn’t happen, so I’m doing my normal post-project wrap-up. Combining the first time I’ve ever assistant-directed a show with the first time I’ve ever played in a pit orchestra (despite plenty of “regular” orchestra experience) was a job. Here are the highlights—or at least the important bits—and my usual summary of tech week. Becoming Involved I got involved in my two different…

reMAP: IMAP reConceptualized

dgw 2010-02-07 - 20:37 2010-11-27Blogger, email, Gmail, internet, opinion, technology 0

Gabor Cselle, the founder of reMail, recently posted an idea for replacing the IMAP email protocol with something with which working would be easier. The proposed name? reMAP, short for reimagined Mail Access Protocol. He calls for a RESTful design that among other things would globalize message identifiers (rather than changing them the instant a message is moved to a new folder), replace folders with labels (a la Gmail), require the server to handle email search indexes, and make conversations the basic unit of email (instead of individual messages). reMAP would also make handling MIME messages unnecessary; the client could…

A Thought About Efficient IT Administration

dgw 2010-02-02 - 16:15 2010-02-02musings, opinion, technology, Vista, Windows, XP 2

I’m kind of calling out St. Kate’s Enterprise Computing Services department in a way, because I want to know why they would schedule a restart-required software deployment an hour before the computer lab is to close. Can anyone with experience in Information Technology and management of company/school computer networks tell me why the times chosen to deploy new software are chosen? My experience last night of a new software deploy completely disrupting my very limited time on the computer happened at Saint Catherine University, which has a generally great library (unlike Concordia University in Saint Paul, though Concordia used to…

“Houdini” plugin for WordPress is no magician

dgw 2010-01-30 - 10:00 2015-10-31internet, JavaScript, opinion, PHP, technology, WordPress, WTF 0

I’ve seen some pretty absurd WordPress plugins show up in the Plugins dashboard widget on this site, but the recently-released “Houdini” takes the cake so far. It claims to prevent spammers from copying the contents of any post or page upon which the [houdini] shortcode is placed. The fact is the internet is open can lead to theft especially to content stealing and plagiarism. Until now, there was very little to discourage and deter this serious crime. Yes content theft and plagarism is a crime in some jurisdictions. You cannot rely on others or the authorities to continue to police…

iPad? Of course I want one, but…

dgw 2010-01-28 - 10:15 2010-01-28Apple, opinion, technology 0

Image by toykyo via Flickr Technological progress can suck sometimes. I have wanted an iPod Touch for about a year and a half, to have the ability to play music and games while on the go as well as gain access to email, tasks, calendar, contacts, etc. while away from a computer (but near an open Wi-Fi network). I almost bought one last year, then I got wind of the upcoming third-generation models: more storage, etc. etc. So I waited. Then the Apple Tablet rumors really started in force, and I really don’t have that much spare change anyway, so…

Why I’m Always Promoting Dropbox

dgw 2010-01-27 - 15:30 2011-11-22Android, Dropbox, freeware, internet, opinion, tools 2

Image via CrunchBase If you’ve had much interaction with me regarding computers, no matter what the medium—Twitter, Facebook, email, dinner conversation, small talk during a gathering—I’ve probably mentioned a service called Dropbox. A few of you have already succumbed to my uncharacteristic marketing tone and signed up, but I thought I’d blog about it and perhaps get more people on board. I’ll start with the reasons I like the service, and then explain why, exactly, I’m doing this a little later. The site bills itself as an online synchronization and backup solution. I use it mostly for the backup, but…

My First WordPress Plugin Patch: Wibiya Toolbar

dgw 2010-01-22 - 19:46 2010-01-22Blogger, ideas, My Code, PHP, WordPress 4

The beauty of using WordPress instead of Blogger is, in a nutshell, the freedom that comes with using an open system instead of a closed one. Under Blogger, I had very little freedom to extend the platform. Everything I could do had to be added by someone from Google, with the exception of a few JavaScript- and Flash-based sidebar widgets. Under WordPress, I have access to literally thousands of open-source plugins to modify, extend, and replace the functionality of the site. The beauty of using this open system is that if something doesn’t work the way I want it to,…

Bringing Back Skribit

dgw 2010-01-22 - 17:55 2010-01-22internet, My Websites, tools, WordPress 0

A while back, I tried out a service called Skribit on my Blogger site. Skribit’s purpose is to help bloggers overcome writer’s block. It places a suggestion form on the site where visitors can leave ideas for the blogger to use when he or she is out of his or her own ideas. It never got much use by readers of the old site, so I initially didn’t bother transferring it here; but now that Skribit has launched and (I see) done a lot of work on the experience users leaving suggestions have, I figured I might as well install…

How I Beat Blogger and Redirected to WordPress

dgw 2010-01-17 - 14:30 2010-02-14Blogger, hacks, My Websites, opinion, WordPress 3

Yes, I really and truly have from Blogger. I know there are a lot of guides out there, but I think the method I used was different enough to warrant a new post. (I won’t duplicate the steps of setting up the new WordPress site and importing the content from Blogger; that’s pretty obvious, and it’s well covered elsewhere. Redirecting is the art form that’s been changing every few months.) Obligatory Rant Getting away from Blogger is really much harder than it should be. There should be a process to verify with Google that one is not a spammer trying…