GetSheila

Technology Is A Bully But I Spit In His Dr. Pepper So Now We're Even

Okay. So maybe technology is not out to kill me after all. It is still a big ole bully.

I finally figured out how to create video clips and post them to YouTube. My method is not glamorous. Neither is it easy. Most especially, it is not fun. But it works.

Behold my first attempt on Medium Dreams. It is Patricia Arquette's interview on The Ellen Degeneres Show's Halloween episode. She is dressed as a He/She. It is most disturbing.

Edit: Argh! I just discovered the sound starts to get out-of-whack towards the end. Big mean ole bully!

 

Tags: creating video clips, youtube

I Am So Sick Of Learning New Things

Alternate Title: The Whiney Baby Post, Part Deux

For crying out loud, when will it end?

First there was the mp3 vs iPod research (I opted for mp3.)

Then I had to learn how to use it.

Then I had to figure out how to properly set up my new GetSheila domain name.

Then I had to decide on a software for editing my mp3 audio recordings, followed by the agonizing process of learning how to use the software (Audacity) yet never getting to the part where I actually edit any of my recordings.

Then I discovered I cannot edit my Tivo video recordings due to licensing issues so my plan to create video clips of Patricia Arquette's talk show appearances for Medium Dreams is shot all to hell. (So all of that research and troubleshooting time is down the toilet.)

And now, although it is a good thing because it may result in my getting my hands on perfectly legal Medium video clips at some future point, I have to learn another new software (Azureus) for managing Bittorrent (a file sharing protocol.)

It involves "leeching" and "snatching" and "seeding" and frankly the whole thing makes me nauseous so I think I will put it off until this weekend. Because we all know I have no life so I will have two full days to devote to finding out if I am a "leech" and whether or not that is desirable.

And then I am not learning anything new for at least a week.

Dammit.

Technorati Tags: bitching, learning new things, technology

Big Gator Watcheth

Okay, I have unbunched my panties. Over the weekend, I spent many an hour trying to update my blogroll so it would 1) display in categories, and 2) update automatically from my NewsGator feed reader. I failed miserably and, as we all know, misery loves company so I shared my experiences with you, gentle Internet.

Too exhausted and frustrated to put in a ticket with tech support, I created a work-around that did the job and that was that.

Well lo and behold, NewsGator is On. The. Job. Jack Brewster from Tech Support commented on both of my bitch-filled posts and was quite helpful. (I know! A helpful tech support person! What are the odds?) Here is the skinny:

Skinny #1: I am stupid. No, no, no - Jack didn't say that. I am saying that. Not stupid, exactly, more along the lines of tired and frustrated and only know html by the seat of my pants and virtually nothing about CSS and scripts so did not realize I could simply change the NewsGator template to show site links in the blogroll rather than the feed links. Jack admits "the documentation on the blogroll configuration page isn't clear enough" and promises to add an article in the Knowledge Base today. So far, nothing, but the day is young. I have made the necessary changes and my blogroll now flows from NewsGator. BEHOLD the new and improved masterpiece...that looks just like the old one but is way, WAY better. Bask in the beauty that is my new blogroll. P.S. If you run into glitches, it is at the target site's end, not on my end or with NewsGator. I'm just sayin'.

Skinny #2: I am not stupid when it comes to the folder issue. They really are worthless for anything other than organizing your feeds for viewing within NewsGator. Jack has added a feature request in response to my suggestion. I am boat rocker, hear me roar.

Skinny #3: I have another feature request I will email to tech support but thought I would include it here since we are on the subject of improving NewsGator. TAGGING, PEOPLE. While folders are lovely, they are not for everyone and are limited by nature: you can only put a link in one folder at a time. If one were able to give each link a tag, like the tagging feature in Technorati, Flikr, and virtually everywhere else in the blogosphere, NewsGator would be a much more powerful tool. Example: My blogroll is organized by Subject. Let's say I want to indicate which ones are written by my fellow b5media bloggers but leave the links in their respective Subject folders. If I had a tag for that, I could include the tag next to each b5er's blog. I could also create a whole separate blogroll just for b5media personal blogs, etc. I can currently do this in NewsGator using "locations," as I have done to create my categorized blogroll (one location for each Subject), but it is a manual workaround that shouldn't be necessary.

Now, if only I could get a helpful response from Windows Live Spaces tech support so I might one day be able to actually leave a comment on Maryamie, Maryam Scoble's blog. I have been emailing back and forth with Microsoft's tech support since August 7th. As much as I love reading Maryam and would love to comment over there, I am running out of patience with Microsoft. Hey Maryam! Time to take Robert up on his suggestion to move to Wordpress, perhaps? :-)

Tags: blogroll, newsgator, reader, rss, windows live spaces problem, tech support

NewsGator and TypePad Suck In So Many Ways

The Blogroll links are fixed. Hooray! Check 'em out in the left sidebar.

Yesterday's debacle was not a complete waste of time. I was able to put all the feed links I had created up on GetSheila, then copy them over to Frontpage and manipulate them. As in, go to each one and take of the part of the link pointing to the feed page. Some feeds are directed through Feedburner, so I had a few extra steps to get back to the main blog page, but all in all it only took an hour or two. Okay, three. Alright FOUR, but I did some chores and had my tea and breakfast during that time too.

I know, "Waa, waa, life is so hard. What a sucky baby." I am perfectly okay with that. Why? Because I learned a few things, and learning is always good:

NewsGator is a great feed reader but it also sucks in many ways: NewsGator stores an HTML link to the main site (in addition to the feed for the site) but does not allow you to create a blogroll from it. Why? NewsGator's Knowledge Base has zero entries for "blogroll" so it appears no one is using this feature (perhaps because it sucks!) The folders you can set up to organize your feeds are worthless for anything else. Example: I created a location (i.e. category) for "taxes" so I could create a blogroll for tax blogs. But could I simply check a box to pull in all feeds in my "taxes" folder? No. It lists every single feed you have in alphabetical order and you have to hunt through and manually check each feed's box to add it to the location. Giving the user the option to view feeds alphabetically or by folder would make this job much, much easier. TypePad is a great blogging tool but also sucks in many ways: TypePad does not have the capability to create a feed for comments in addition to the feed for posts, like most other blog tools do (Wordpress, for example). To edit an existing post, you must navigate over the the site admin area. Wordpress has an easier way: once you have logged into the site admin area, you can go to the main site and edit posts directly from there because, now that you are logged in, each post has a "edit" button only you can see. TypePad does not have many "widgets" (plugin programs you can add to your site, like the poll I added to GetSheila yesterday) and many it does have are, frankly, kind of boring. You are only allowed one NewsGator blogroll widget at a time. So, if I create a separate blogroll for each category (taxes, personal blogs, health, etc.), I can only show one of them. If I want to show all of my blogroll links, I cannot categorize them. SUCKS! If I didn't know HTML, I would be totally screwed using TypePad.

It sounds like I am leaning toward switching to Wordpress, doesn't it? I am waaaaaay too tired to think about that just yet, but...maybe.

Tags: rss, blogroll

WTF? For The Love of God!

Today was blog clean-up day for me. I cleaned out and organized my three email account inboxes. I tweaked some things over at Medium Dreams. But the majority of my day was spent here at GetSheila. Lookie over in the right sidebar. A poll! Aren't you lucky? No, the right sidebar. That's it. Down...down...a little further. There you go! Don't forget to vote. This one is about Halloween. I will try to put a new poll up every week or so. The excitement is almost painful, isn't it?

The real beauty is over in the left sidebar. What? You say it doesn't look much different? Well, a lot YOU know. It is vastly different. It just looks the same. Here, let me walk you through it:

1. The first new thing you see is "From Medium Dreams." This handy widget shows you the five most recent posts I have made over on Medium Dreams, where I blog about the TV show Medium. It is my attempt to gently entice you to click over there.
2. Below that is the new and improved but not yet ready for prime time blogroll. (The "not yet ready" part will soon become clear.)
3. The last thing you see in the left sidebar is a widget that shows the most recent eight sites that link to GetSheila. Woo-hoo! People actually link to me sometimes!

One of the reasons I chose NewsGator as my feed reader was because it said, "Automatically show the blogs & news feeds you read, on your blog." Kewl! I don't have to manually enter links to the blogs I read anymore. Since I subscribe to all of them in NewsGator, I can pull them into my blog from there. And...AND...my blog will automatically update when I add or delete a feed. Eureka!

Do you see the flaw in my thinking? If so, you catch on way faster than I do.

I spent hours today setting up different categories (health, personal blogs, etc.) in NewsGator and mapping the feeds to the appropriate category. At the end of the day I had a beautiful, categorized blogroll showing all the blogs. The best part was that I would never have to mess with the blogroll again because it would all flow automatically from NewsGator. Just look at it over there in the left sidebar. Isn't it pretty? I know it is just text, but it is organized and current text. I would urge you to admire the beauty, but it jacked up my site so I had to take it down. Effin' NewsGator! Please read the rest of this post as if the links were really there, m'kay?

Just don't click on any of the links.

Oh, you did? Um, sorry. Yeah, I would be annoyed too if I clicked on a link that looks like it will take me to a web page only to find myself on that crap XML page that needs a feed reader to decode. WTF?

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. These are the XML feeds not links to the actual sites!

NewsGator is a feed reader. It should have occurred to me sooner that I was dealing with feeds and not links. But they even call it a "blogroll" which is always a list of link to other blogs, not to their feeds! BASTARDS!

I am disgusted. I am tired. I may switch to Bloglines just to show them, stupid NewsGator. And this isn't my only disappointment with them. They also advertise "Smart Feeds" (plural) with the free version of their product but you only get one. If you want more than one, you have to upgrade to the version that costs actual money. (A smart feed uses keywords to search for feeds, e.g. I could set up a smart feed for "Sheila Livingston" to see who is talking about me on the web. No one, BTW, in case you were wondering.)

So if you click on a link and get a garbage page, it must be Sunday and I haven't got round to fixing it yet. Or maybe not. I haven't decided what I am going to do yet. Take them down and manually set up links again? Leave the pretty links up and run the risk of alienating all of you nice people when the link doesn't take you where you expect it to? Or do I just take them all down and say, TO HELL WITH IT. I DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' LINKS!

I just don't know. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: blogroll, rss

b5media Gets $2 Million in VC Funding

Do you know b5media? It is one of the largest blog networks in the world and I am proud to blog for them at Medium Dreams.

b5media announced today that it raised $2 million in equity financing through Brightspark Ventures and J. L. Albright Venture Partners. Both VC's are based in Canada. Click on over for the official press-release-speak. (yawn)

I don't really know what this means for my little blog about the TV show Medium. I suspect not much, except perhaps a bit of spiffing up on the technical end and one can always use a little pick-me-up. It is very exciting for the guys at b5, though.

CONGRATULATIONS TO Jeremy, Duncan, Aaron, Christina, Darren AND Shai!

Technorati Tags: b5media, vc funding

Best Buy - Land of the Devil

Sorry I missed all y'all yesterday. I stopped at Best Buy after work for a surge protector and came out with three surge protectors, a television, a Tivo box, and this teeny tiny little wireless optical mouse for my laptop:

 

Is that the cutest damn mouse you've ever seen or what? The one on the right is the optical mouse I use with my PC, which now looks bloated and hopelessly wired in comparison.

I have a love/hate relationship with that mouse. The hate part comes into play when I have to clean the gunk build-up from metal slider feet every other day and remove stay cat hairs from the optical lens opening. To get around that, I use the cardboard back of a pad of paper as a mouse pad. A mouse pad I am not supposed to need with an optical mouse. *grump*

So far, my only complaint about my new Kensington PocketMouse Optical Wireless Mini (why do I suddenly feel like an infomercial?) is the on/off button on the mouse. There is a similar on/off button on the USB antennae that plugs into the laptop that is easily pressed. The one on the bottom of the mouse, however, requires teeny tiny Thumbelina fingers to reach far enough into the recessed area to depress the button.

In true MacGyver fashion, I improvised. Behold the entire kit, complete with high-tech button-pushing implement:

 

Tags: best buy, the evils of shopping, wireless mouse

Where's My Laptop, Dammit!

I ordered a Dell laptop a week ago. (I know, I know! But I'm counting on them having worked that whole battery-exploding problem out by now.)

Anyway, I didn't expect it until tomorrow - then found out it would arrive day before yesterday - got a notice they tried to deliver it during the only one hour period no one was home - stayed home all day yesterday to be sure I wouldn't miss the second delivery attempt - found out UPS only does first-attempts on Saturday - so now have to wait until Tuesday because no one will be home to sign for it on Monday.

Bastards!

I look forward to blogging from my bed surrounded by cats as I watch my favorite shows on my new DVR which will also be installed on Tuesday.

I love the whole ugly American spending my disgusting capitalist wealth on filthy luxuries when I should be feeding the poor blasphemous life that I lead. It makes me feel all girly and princess-like.

Tags: computer, laptop, UPS

RSS Feeds - An Update

Remember this post, where I told you about RSS feeds and most of you went, "Huh?" Well, I have moved on from my browser-based feed reader. I now use Newsgator's web-based feed reader. Why? Because "web-based" means I can access it from any computer with an Internet connection.

Although I know most of you are still going, "Huh?", I am writing about RSS feeds again for two reasons:

1. I am curious to know how you (Yes YOU, sitting there reading my blog and going all, "I don't need no stinkin' feed reader!") currently get your daily blog info, and
2. To clear up something JennBo and I were both confused about that I have finally figured out.

ITEM 1: How do you get you blog info? Do you:

1. Go to the blog site and read it there,
2. Use a feed reader of some kind (Newsgator, Bloglines, Rojo, MyYahoo, MyAOL, etc.), or
3. Use some other method. (If so, please tell me what you use because for the life of me I cannot think of one single "other" way to read blogs.)

Please leave your answer in the comments. If you are feeling lazy, feel free to just type in the corresponding number as your answer.

ITEM 2: I finally figured out the purpose of that crazy page you often get when you click on an RSS or XML button!

JennBo's comment on the post I linked to above included:

"Several of the "subscribe to rss" links on other blogs are an index.rdf file. What the hell is an *.rdf file? All I get is an option to download an unreadable file. Or, sometimes the *.rdf opens in my browser and it is basically a messed up html document."

That's the file the feed reader "reads" but here's the good part: many feed readers give you the option to put a button on your browser's toolbar to "Subscribe in Newsgator" (or whatever feed reader you use). Once you click over to that messy page of XML code, click on your browser button and the feed will be added to your feed reader. SO much easier than being on the site's main page and clicking the browser button to add the feed and waiting, waiting, waiting for it to be found.

If you don't have the handy button on your browser, the crazy XML page is still valuable. Your feed reader should allow you to add a feed manually by typing/pasting in the URL. The XML page's URL is the one to use, rather than the site's main URL. (Like above, your feed reader will probably still find the feed eventually if you input the main page instead, but this way is faster.)

Okay I'm shutting up now. No more talk about RSS feeds. Ever. Scout's honor. (Does it still count if I was only a girl scout for about a year and didn't earn any but the most basic of badges? Oh wait, I just remembered...I don't need no stinkin' badges!)

Tags: blog, reader, rss

What is an RSS feed and why should you care?

I discovered RSS feeds a few weeks ago and I just can't get enough of them, so naturally I must share.

See Six Apart's About Feeds page for the low down on just exactly what a feed is, what tools you need to read one, and how to subscribe to one. I chose to link to Six Apart's page on this subject because 1) they make TypePad, the tool that powers my blog and with which I am quite happy, and 2) they provide all the basic information in an manner that is easy to follow and not too long. They do, of course, shamelessly plug their blogging tools in the "Publishing a Feed" section, but it is short and you can skip it now that you have been warned.

If you read more than one blog or news source, using a feed reader (aka news aggregator) is the way to go. A feed reader brings the information to you, rather than you having to go out and get it. I use Mozilla's Firefox Browser, which supports an integrated RSS reader, as described in my All Hail Tabbed Browsing post.

In Firefox, I simply click on the reader's refresh button to pull in any new postings since my last refresh. Post titles list in a small window on the left, while full posts show in the browser window on the right.

My pet peeve is when only an excerpt of the post shows in the browser and I have to click through to the blog site to read the full post. This defeats the whole purpose of having a feed reader. Bring the content to me and lay it at my feet, don't make me go get it! But since the feed owner makes that decision, whether to send full posts or merely excerpts, I just pull up my big girl panties and move on.

So tell me, how do you get your news and keep up with your favorite blogs?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Reader, RSS