Tag Archives: myspace

Still trying to work out the kinks

I don’t think MySpace likes posts with images in them. For instance, my rainy days post didn’t make it over. The MySpace crossposting plugin gives the option to post a generic message to tell people to click and read my blog here, or posts the text of the blog over to MySpace. I prefer the posting of the full text option — I used to force people to come over here from LiveJournal and that never happened. I modified my copy of the plugin to post a link to each post so those who would want to come here could. Apparently it didn’t like some of my formatting…no fun. Further testing is required.

The ultimate success: Now crossposting at MySpace

Thanks to the hard work of Roderick Russell and others in the WordPress community, I’m now able to somewhat reliably crosspost this blog to MySpace, in addition to the crossposting that happens to Facebook, LiveJournal, and Xanga now. I know I have some friends that really dig MySpace, and I’m sure they’ll be glad to know that they cannot escape my reach there now either. :)

Yay, new stuff!

With any luck, I will able to crosspost to my MySpace account now. This is one I’ve wanted to get going for a while. (Edit: Negative. Foiled again. I hope that MySpace joining OpenSocial will help to make interoperability with other sites possible. Again, this is one of the many reasons why it’s hard to take MySpace seriously as a legitimate social networking platform…)

Observations & Anecdotes

Well, I just woke up from a right-after-work nap that ended up extending until about 10:15 — I may be pulling the late shift yet again. ;) Today turned out not to be that bad of a day, persistent intestinal/stomach bug and all. It was nice out and stuff got done, with one glaring exception…

  • The first song shuffled up on the iPod in 2007 was Backwards by Apartment 26, but strangely, it decided not to play. Most appropriately, the next track was “So May It Secretly Begin” by Pat Metheny Group from their Still Life (Talking) album, and that played successfully. At six minutes, it covers my walk down Calhoun pretty well. That, and it’s a great track, only outshined by the next song from the album, “Last Train Home.”
  • The first thing I hear walking into the office: The School of Education reconnection was delayed. That turned out to be mighty unpleasant for folks who were packed and ready to roll. Looks like we techs will be assaulting that project in February now. Don’t get me wrong though — there was still PLENTY to do today in other areas, though, hence why there was only one from-work blog post today.
  • I hadn’t seen Windows Vista for a while until I got back to work today, where I run it. Guess the launch pageantry is really going to ramp up in the next week or so as CES looms. I dunno, I’m still a bit sour on Vista. For what it’s worth, there’s a new set of Realtek drivers out that work with my motherboard — perhaps it’s time to try again? Why do I torture myself so? Who knows.
  • Another work anecdote: I heard today someone was having problems every time they “pulled up an internet” — haha. I was waiting for a lecture on clogged tubes.
  • Alison and I have a similar problem — every time I want to tell my parents something exciting, I have to remember to tell them before I write about it on The Blog as they are frequent readers of this very site. Otherwise, I go to tell them this and they’re like “Yeah, we read it already on your blog”, and the “Wow!” factor is demolished. If there was ever an argument for leaving stuff out of one’s blog, though, I think Alison has it — it really can be quite the buzzkill in a conversation when someone already knows quite a bit about you from the Internet(s). Shouldn’t we be leaving something to the imagination?
  • I wish phpBB 3 would come out already so I could get the forums going…yes, that’s what I’m waiting on. I just don’t want to put so much in the way of blood, sweat, and tears into phpBB 2 when by the time that’s finished, version 3 would have a stable release candidate out (this is my luck coming into play). Though, then again, the predecessor to this site known as The Realm ran on phpBB 1.4.4 for many months after version 2 was released…but I love phpBB 3 and I must have it for my production sites. So there. Haha.
  • MySpace expanded to 300 photos per user today. Great. Two-hundred eighty four more ways for one to embarrass themselves on the Internet.
  • Either William Clay Ford told Matt Millen that the Lions are his ship to turn around, or he’s holding his fingers over his ears with his eyes closed making random, unintelligible sounds at a high volume while intermittently interjecting with “Nanny nanny boo boo, I can’t hear you!” I’m not even a Lions fan and I am absolutely befuddled he’s coming back.

Welp, that’s today in a nutshell. Catch you all sometime tomorrow — hopefully not at 4:30am. :)

I should try this

CNN:

Walls of an auditorium were covered with thousands of sheets of paper — printouts from MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and other online sites that were filled with back-stabbing gossip, unflattering images, and details about partying and dating exploits.

Each posting was easily accessed online, no password needed. But seeing them on paper — and in some cases, being asked to read them aloud — grabbed the attention of members of the North American Federation of Temple Youth, who gathered earlier this year at a camp outside New York City. That each of the pages mentioned their organization in some way only made it that much more embarrassing.

You know, I bet if I printed out a bunch of CofC MySpace and Facebook pages and stapled them to the bulletin boards around campus, there would be a lot of unhappy campers around here…

Insomnia, For The Loss!

Random insomnia-borne observations:

  • A couple days after realigning the room, I’m really a big fan. Why didn’t I do it this way the first time?
  • I tried to watch Abrams & Bettes on The Weather Channel last night. Couldn’t do it. I like both their personalities, but I can’t watch the show. Something about it seems really forced, like they’re trying to crowbar a newscast into a lineup full of…newscasts. So, they make it extra newscasty, which, in my mind, just doesn’t seem to work. Watching A&B made me long for the days of the early-to-mid ’90s again.
  • I remember the last time a pitcher went to an NL West team for over $100 million. What are the odds of Barry Zito turning out like Kevin Brown in San Francisco? Zito’s magic avoidance of injury thus far in his career has been impressive, but any guy with a hook like he has is asking for arm problems down the road. The Giants paid a lot of money and once again took this offseason to ridiculously new heights, as if that was even possible. A pitcher the likes of Johan Santana should easily command $20-$25 million a year now on the free agent market. Look for small market teams to be much more guarded with their farm systems as the years roll on.
  • Nothing says Christmas like marshmallow-stuffed snowmen. Nothing.
  • Vacations that take a lot of work and are over-planned totally defeat the purpose, IMO. I’ve been talking to a friend for a few days who has been absolutely exhausted from her vacation in Florida, which was planned out point by point. What’s the point of a vacation where one MUST be up at 9:30 every morning? That’s low value. This friend is now taking a vacation from vacations.
  • Brian Goode’s calling it: Rain on New Year’s Eve. It’s looking pretty solid for that, too. The more I think about it, the more likely I am to stay in at this point, though wandering to a random bar to be selected is not totally out of the question (unless someone wishes to kindly save me from this kind of low value fate).
  • I signed into Classmates for the first time in about a year and a half this weekend, and was reminded why I stayed away in the first place: Errors, ads, and then not being able to do anything without paying a fee…in other words, it’s totally incompatible with Web 2.0. Facebook and MySpace effectively render sites like Classmates pretty much obsolete thanks to their unbridled FREE accessibility and more expressive profile options.
  • I’m looking forward to the new semester, real bad. I’m in several media courses and am really looking forward to getting into the meat of the major.
  • If you have LiveJournal, I’ve got The Blog crossposting to mine now. Add me to your friends list if you like. :)
  • Finally…I have a lot of work to do in Flight Simulator 2004. I’ve been struggling badly with my landings…

It’s bedtime for real now, before the sun comes up. :) Later folks.

MySpace Jobs

LOL. So I was looking around MySpace in an epic homework evasion maneuver and noticed a new “Jobs” link on the homepage. You basically can search for jobs on MySpace now via SimplyHired.

Am I the only person who finds this idea incredibly hilarious? MySpace profiles are used by employers in their weeding-out process. Haha.

Back to work with me…and then a rundown of the Panthers & the Chargers (HEARTBREAKER!) later on.

From out in left field…figuratively and literally.

Today CofC IT had a professional development retreat (read: we went to the park and played wiffleball for two hours).

Two observations:

  1. I am quite out of shape, as I’m pretty sore and beat right now, and
  2. Pitching a wiffleball is an exercise in futility — I gave up a ton of hits, about six runs, especially on two big bombs that resulted from me hanging an underhand knuckleball right over the plate. (Yes, the underhand knuckleball can work.)

It was a good time, though, despite my astronomical wiffleball ERA and resulting pain and fatigue. It’s something we must do more often.

In other news, searching for the name “Kyrie” on MySpace yields about 864 results, mostly females who are aged 18-22, which can only mean one thing (and I feel for these ladies, I really do): Their parents named them after a Mr. Mister single.

Can’t think of any other randomness at the moment. I’m getting a tad nervous about classes starting back up next week. Something about inserting myself back into mainstream college society after a year break, feeling like an old fogey.

Enter DOPA: Expansion of the nanny state

CNET is reporting on the passage in the House of DOPA, the Deleting Online Predators Act, which aims to impose a federal mandate for libraries and schools to restrict access to MySpace and other sites that offer chat room or social functionality — in other words, most of the Internet — to minors. The legislation appears to be very broad, as it targets any site that permits the creation of a “public profile.” So, in other words, this includes most blogs (including this very site), message boards, chat rooms, Facebook, MySpace…you name it.

Here’s my take: It’s poor legislation that I think attacks the wrong problem the wrong way. There are perfectly legitimate academic uses for some discussion sites and blogs, I think. Yes, Internet predators are a real problem, and we have to deal with them, but let’s not ignore the possibility of predators at playgrounds and other public places. They’re still out there as well. What do we do? Ban the usage of playgrounds by minors? Restrict minors to a federally-mandated curfew? What kind of parent lets their kid onto the Internet without supervision anyway? I don’t know too many parents who let their young children out on a playground, or any public place, without some kind of supervision. The playground isn’t responsible for watching the children, the parents are. Why does the Internet have to be any different? Our government clearly knows next to nothing about how the Internet works (see Ted Stevens’ rant about “internet tubes” for a prime example) but wants to legislate the living hell out of it because it’s still relatively new and must be a breeding ground for lawlessness and anarchy. That, and it represents the circumvention of traditional media controls for the free exchange of ideas, and that seems to threaten a lot of people.

Sitting here listening to Trammell Starks in the office…

…what a few days it’s been. The impending full moon seemed to bring out all the IT-related problems today. LOL. C’est la vie. I made it though.

I’m getting a little leery of MySpace these days. Seems like I get at least one or two friend requests a day from pornographers who have rigged their spaces to be one giant porn link, or wanting me to go to a dotless URL, or some other scheme that would undoubtedly bring out security problems in IE if I tried to use it. (Nothing like an IP address written entirely in HEX.) Seems like pornographers aren’t the only ones hitting MySpace; in a rather unsurprising turn of events, adware is making its way through MySpace via friend request now. I’m not at all surprised by this; with the amount of people who have enough sense to cram enough things on their space so it scrolls horizontally on my 1680×1050 widescreen, it was only a matter of time before adware peddlers targeted the site.

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