October 2003 Archives

One of the major reasons why I'm abandoning Radio is what just happened for the Nth number of times:
before I'm done writing my post,  the window closes and refreshes, killing my post.  I was writing to say I have posted in my Movable Type blog at Movable Theoblogical,  and will rarely post here anymore,  except for a few reminders of those who still subscribe here to change their RSS listing for me over to my MT feed.

I am still looking for a weblog app I can install on my server, adn possibly use as a way to host multiple weblogs and deploy weblog app servers to other clients who wish to host weblogs.

I have been struggling with the mailing list for DotText , which thusfar is the only dotNet based weblog app that is available (that I have seen). I can not even get DotText going, and the writer of it will not, for some reason, host weblog conversations on the fixes and problems, but insists on using a mailing list. This , for me, is WAY too slow , since any replies I get are also , thus far, not the right solution.

I saw a piece on 60-minutes earlier tonight about companies using carefully, strategically placed "agents" to prominently postion a product , under the guise of public-but-private use, to "lure" people into catching an eyeful (the first example was a video game that utilized a sensor-glove-joystick to navigate and operate key operations in some environment). The question posed was whether this was "deception" or "manipulative". (see the write-up on cbs.com)

It occurred to me that this is marketing that uses a form of "CLuetrainish" philosophy: that people prefer getting their info and endorsements virally; IOW, to get the scoop about things from the views and experiences of acquaintances. (Another segment showed marketing of a movie whose name escapes me at the moment but it included the word Cowboy and it was animated--- but this marketing company was asked if there was something unethical about using a 13-year old as an agent, whom they paid in "Movie Merchandise" because the boy absolutely loved the movie; so, to him, it was justifiable reward. The marketer replied, "How is it wrong, if the person is passionate about it, loves talking about it, and is absolutely convincing because he is a fan himself?)". Again, very "Cluetrainish", and a very good point.

For the third straight year! Horrors! The Yankees DON'T win it all. (If you know me, you know I'm being sarcastic.....I LOVE seeing the fat-cats LOSE. I've actually disliked the Yankees mostly because I tend to bail from any semblance of pulling for a team once they threaten to become or renew anything that can be construed as a dynasty (except when it's my team, of course, like the Reds in the 70's. It was really gratifying in 1990 when the Reds, years removed from their former dynasty-threatening status, ended the A's run of dominance (and the A's haven't won a post season series since).
Anyway, way to go Marlins!

I saw via my News Aggregator that Smart Mobs linked to a 90-minute talk given at Stanford by Howard Rheingold, so I fired it up, moved it over so Howard was talking on the left part of my screen while I continued checking the News, Technorati, etc. (BTW, I've been using Bloglines almost exclusively now, as my "Radio" days become less and less.

In fact, the latest link to me found by Technorati was from The xagronaut Chronicle, noticing that I was having fits with more than one feature/bug of Radio.

I just completed a short project for an ISP/Web development firm setting up a Web forum/discussion board for church organization's website. I used ASP, and added an approval feature before Posts actaully go up on the board.

It was a good project to do along with my OSG work, since we'll be implementing one of these as well, so the work I did can be "plugged in". There is a good possiblity of getting to do another of these, and perhaps a blog setup as well. That got me lokking again at dotText (a dotNet weblog) that I have setup, had working, and then it broke again, and I've never been able to get it working again. I posted my questions to the dotText mailing list. I 'll include it below (in the extended entry):

A fairly substantial and important rant ,  if I can say so myself.  I did it over on my MT blog ,  entitled Cluetrain and Theoblogical

I have often written individual rants inspired by concepts gleaned (or ones that "jump out at me") from The Cluetrain Manifesto. They are very Theoblogical, or theological rants become blogs, but nevertheless go to the core of my theology; specifically a theology of cyberspace for the Church. That is, that conversations are holy. In them we discover the treasures waiting for us in one another, a nd the power of what happens when our callings come together to make something great happen.

Great piece in WIRED by Lessig on blogs and poliics

A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built.

The article's message is that Open Source is what works.  It seems the Church can learn here from the power of the movement in the software world. 

...you will absolutely suffocate anything that you're trying to do on the Internet by trying to command and control it...

Part of how the Church, mostly in it's traditonal and established , denominational forms,  does "command and control" is in systematically ignoring the open source nature of community.  They have Web sites and web developers,  but the conversations are lacking becuase they want to control them.  The publishers avoid allowing the customers to "talk" about their products because they're afraid someone will trash them.  Well, if the shoe fits.......On the otherhand,  if the product is worthwhile,  wouldn't we WANT to know how people are using it? Wouldn't this be the BEST endorsement,  replacing the theological/marketing hype of resources with the stories of how these are actually being used successfully?  There has yet to emerge an expectation among the resource producers that this content can become immersed in community,  and even,  as a result,  partly if not largely produced by that community.  But this would challenge,  seemingly,  the leadership.

community can't be broadcast. It gets built not from slick commercials squeezed onto a Web page, but from tools that enable, and thus inspire, hundreds of thousands of people to something that American politics has not seen in many years: hundreds of thousands of people actually doing something.

This again says something to the Church and her institutions.   People actually DOING SOMETHING.  Linking to efforts being created to address the common causes --- the "breadth" of which was not previously known until previously geographically and socially dispersed "pockets" of individuals discover each other's activities and conversations via Google and such,  and then end up working together FTF. 

Weblogsky points to:

The Internet: Reflections on Our Present Discontents

In NetFuture, Stephen L. Talbott explores the impact of our thinking about the Internet, or perhaps our lack of the kind of thinking that puts it into the right perspective relative to our communal, social context. He argues that the supposed efficiency of the Internet should not be seen as a goal in itself, apart from our values, concluding that the Internet can be the expression of a healthy society – or society can become an unhealthy expression of the Internet. [Link] Discuss

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less --- General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

This is one of the quotes from a Tom Peters book shown in an ad I saw in WIRED yesterday. I thought it hit dead on the Church's technology problem. Resistance to change causes an extreme gap in the ability to communicate. (Like in Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here, is a failure to communicate"). When we are not present in an obviously very significant shift in culture and "ways of doing things", then irrelevance spreads like wildfire. When we are simply not there, and we fail to take advantage of the "ways of keeping in touch" and "ways of expressing our deepest passions", then other "outlets" are found to "host" the conversations. When our passions and concerns are not heard, then we simply move on to somewhere where people listen.

In an earlier post, I was commenting on the signs that said "destiny", a nd said, "Yeah right, how many times have they made it , 30, 35?" 39! Here, the word means "It's the destiny of most fans to have to endure , over and over, the same tedius, over-dramatic hype about a team with the baseball's highest payroll, who bought their pitching staff" (all except for Pettite).

Just saw Bobby Valentine say (see it on the ESPN Motion on the espn home page) , when asked if they left Pedro in too long, that "The Red Sox had a great season and Whatever Grady Little did was the right thing to do"......WHAT? OK, let's all be nice. Bull. It reminds me of the scene in Bull Durham where Crash (Kevin Costner) is telling the rookie pitcher all the "lines" and "cliches" that ballplayers and managers use....Pedro should NEVER have faced Matsui. Not with the Series on the line. No way. Then Little leaves him in to face Posada. Gimme a break.

Cubs and Red Sox; don't bother wasting energy on 'em. I did. What a total bummer. I don't mind the Marlins so much as the freakin' Yankees. The Red Sox manager blew it as badly as Baker did for the Cubs. Stayed WAY too long with Martinez; Baker did it twice, with Pryor and Wood.

I can't say I'll be re-arranging anything, or going pout of my way to get in front of a TV for any of the Series.

The topper for all this is Aaron Boone winning it for the Yankees, one of the "firesale" players jettisoned by the Reds back in late July. When I saw that Boone had hit all those long loud fouls off of Wakefield when he beat the Yanks in game 1, the thought occurred to me just before he launched it. The fans holding signs that say "Destiny" are confused. The Yankees have been there how many times now? 30? 35? Yeah, there's drama. Right. It's like a bad movie.

When the Cubs suffered that horrifying 8th inning and loss last night, in the manner they did, my thoughts went back to the wild game 6 of the '75 series, and how I felt as a Reds fan as Carlton Fisk completed a comeback that began in the 8th inning as well, whern Bernie Carbo erased a 3-run deficit with a 2 out 3-run homer. I felt like Sparky Anderson did that night. Sleepless, worrying about "destiny" defeating the Reds, who had won 108 games that year. The dramatics from Carbo and Fisk made it seem that this could be the time for the Sox. The Reds won game 7 and finally had their World Championship.

I do not recall ever having been nervous about a game for a team other than my team, until this one. I'll probably watch the West Wing as a distraction. Go Cubs! The entire baseball world outside of Florida is for the Cubs (at least it seems so). It's not looking good at ll for the Red Sox now, heading to Yankee stadium needing to take 2 to meet the winner of the Cubs-Marlins.

I had understood that Movable Type was to release a Pro version this past summer. Is this still in the works and just late, or has this plan been scrappped? I have seen basically nothing on it since the initial announcements that were made. I will check again on Google, but I have yet to find any updates on this.

Update: after a quick Google search, still nothing I see since Feb 13 of this year when they officially mentioned the upcoming Pro release for "this summer" , which came and went. I am surprised as heck that more MT users aren't asking this question aloud, or did I miss something?

I'm up in the OSG East tower again the first half of this week during the day, trying to set up for some collaborative work with Larry on some of the Web structure we want to set up. Yesterday, we looked for long misplaced folders on the network that contain the assets (pictures and text and ppt files and ai files to convert to Web-friendly information.

Cub PinchHitters were 3 for 3 with 2 triples and a homer, a slugging percentage of 3.333. Simon's homer, and triples by Goodwin and Glanville got the job done, I would say. (You know, Simon was --technically --- not a pinch hitter, since he was previously inserted in a double switch, but good job anyway)----if you count double-switch atbats, then the totals are 3 for 5 with a 2.000 slugging percentage. A double switch is, basically, a setup for pinch hitting for the pitcher that is being replaced during the double switch, without having to remove the new pitcher until the new batting slot comes up.

Boy, did the Cubs ever win a wild one last night (I suppose it returned the favor to the Marlins for game 1). I woke up my wife with a "Oh No!" when Ramirez let the ball get behind him on that last play. Seems to me Castilla was not thinking too well on that one. If the ball was bounced so easily directly to the third baseman, how in the world would he expect to make it? Just stick close and let the batter reach base and continue on with the meeting and give Cabrerra a shot (who was 2-4 and hitting .429 for the series). Then again, I wasn't on base. Go Cubbies! (I'm pullin' for the "Dream Series": Redsox-Cubs)

The sub-title of this site is a quote from Al Sharpton (who is unaffiliated with this site, but they liked what he said), which is this:

"It's time for the Chritian Right to meet the right Christians."

I like it as well. I found The Right Christians via Mike James' Tread Lightly on the Things of Earth blog, which I have added to my RSS feed and Blogroll.

The Flash books I mention below are 7, as follows:

2 O'Reilly books: Actionscript for Flash MX Second edition, and ActionsScript Cookbook.
Peachpit Press: Macromedia Flash MX Advanced
Flash MX Savvy (Sybex)
Flash MX Actionscript Bible (Wiley)
MaranGraphics/Hungry Minds "Visual" series: Flash Actionscript (just noticed it uses Flash 5 Actionscripting)

I just picked up a whole slew of Flash books, specifically on Actioncript. In taking an online Lynda.com course on Flash MX 2004, I learned much, not the least of which was how powerful Actionscripting is. The new 2004 interface promises to be a good way to learn a bunch of Actionscript, with its "Forms Based" Flash app editor, and the components panel.

Something else I'm looking for: I want to create some of those "faded" backgrounds from images to use as backgrounds. Old Saint George is a beautiful place, and we have lots of good photos already scanned, and so we plan to use quite a bit of these for backgrounds, buttons, and lots of other enhancing graphics from these images. First up, though, is the "opacity fade" effect I 'm looking for. I've used Fireworks for basically every graphic effect I'v ever done, so if there any Fioreworks graphics people out there reading this, point me in the right direction.

Flash and LoadMovie or gotoAndStop: I am trying to find out how to load a Movie into an empty clip I have already set up (and working....I can load separate swf files that represent the 7 main navigation buttons, but I want to be able to "reload" or "redisplay" the default content in that Movie Clip container when I have either rolled off the buttons that display that content when I have rolled over them, so that the animation does not play each time it "reloads". I guess what I'm after is what I think is a way to gotoAndStop on the final frame of the defaultContent movie, so that when I roll off of any of the rollover buttons (the rollover shows the main page for each of the 7 navigation buttons), the default content that shows when the Home Page first loads does not "RE-Load" and redo all the 1 second movement that happens when it first plays, but simply displays the final frame (40) of that clip (defaulHome.swf). I want to make the rest of the page (all of the area arond the buttons and the content area--- IOW, the banner at the top, and the area below the buttons , a rollover to re-display that final frame, so that the default content doesn't keep "re-animating".

The OSG Board meeting got moved back on the calendar a couple of weeks, so I feel a bit of breathing room on the tight development schedule, especially since I have been working through some Flash-learning exercises over on Lynda.com. I don't plan on "sitting back" with this extra room, though, but to be thankful for the opportunity to look diligently for the solutions I seek.

I'll take the opportunity to get my arms around some specific techniques that I'm after by exploring some further "how-tos" on Lynda.com online training, and perhaps do a quick Bookstore run later today or tomorrow to find something on Actionscripting (that might lead me to the code I need to achieve the gotoAndStop effect I mention in my next post)

I learned yesterday that our non-profit "Volume license" for Studio MX 2004 is in, and so I 'll be able to update my Trial to full versions when I get up there this weekend/next week. Flash is an incredibly versatile set of tools. I'm just beginning to see the power of Actionscripting. In combination with Dreamweaver and Fireworks, this trio (I"ve been using FW and DW for about2 and a hlf years now, and learned ASP via the Dreamweaver interface) is a heavyweight in Web development. As MX incorporated the .Net features/support , this also gave me a nudge in the direction of learning what's up in the DotNet world. And, as I wrote about not too long ago, ColdFusion was introduced to me as a powerful Web app platform in my Contract job that I had for a little while.

I have a few questions I'm gonna explore about Flash tohelp me with where I am developing right now.

As I began to say before I was so rudely interrupted (see previous post), I have been doing hardly any mention or reflection on any Sports lately , having been busy trying to do "Work related" stuff (like trying to find a source of income to supplement what OSG has been scraping together for me as I work on our Web makeover and Flash/Weblog/Forum development).

But, I have to mention how pleased I am that once again, the Braves are out of the postseason, and the Cubs are making a run at getting back to the Series, and that it might (hopefully) even be the Redsox as their opponent. That would be amazingly touching for me if that were to happen. It would be a big boost for baseball. All the baseball hopes and dreams of all those fans who seem to be fated to be the "patient and devoted" fans.

Last night I went out with the car to see what the deal was with my ABS Light on my car coming on (it comes on only after I've driven the car a bit , stop and turn off the engine, then re-start after only a few minutes (eg. making a quick stop at a store or something). It does NOT come on if the car has been turned off for more than , say 10 minutes or so. Anyway, I left my glasses on top of the car when I got out the owner's manual from the passenger side door, and took my glasses off as I looked at it (my "bifocal needs" problem). Then I drove away again, forgetting about the glasses. I looked all over last night (but it was getting dark, and so I couldn't see well enough --- no glasses to help with that). It was also raining.

This morning, around 7:30 I went out and walked the route around the block. About half way down a quarter mile stretch in our subdivision, there they were, all neatly folded up about a foot from the curb (they were on the passenger side on the roof, so they fell to the curb side of the road rather than the middle of the road). What a relief. Now I go to see what the deal is with the ABS light , and possibly/probably need a new set of brakes anyway (it's about time from previous estimates of break pad wear). We'll see.

I discovered a comment Mean Dean (of Heal Your Church Website) left last week (on my 9/14 post titled Churches Must Engage, that I somehow missed, with my New Aggregator's comment list, as well as referring links, I missed it both ways.

Anyway, I posted a comment under the post where he links to my article about the Brochureware approaches so many Churches take.

(And, oh yeah, I also added http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com/index.rdf to my RSS Subscription List, which I don't know how I managed to NOT do up until this time) Now it's there if my uploads and Radio are working like I think they are, or should, or MIGHT.....I never know lately)

Toshiba seems like a good test case for "Cluetrain" scrutiny; a lesson on "what NOT to do".

It is obvious to anybody who can use "Google" to look up PDA topics and "Toshiba e740" that Toshiba blew it on this one. I have one, and have been having fun with it, but I see frustration ahead in the continuing insensitivity Toshiba exhibits toward this issue of Windows Mobile 2003 upgrades.

I had a comment posted under my previous post (on my Radio version) that qualifies as SPAM Comment.

The post below is to say , "Sorry I haven't been around here much",  but also to say that as soon as things begin going up,  one of the first features to be integrated into the framework is Weblogs. 

I've been blogging very little lately,  mostly due to the fact that I've been spending all of my time at the desk on Website features and "Flash feature" reviews.  I've been gathering an arsenal of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 features via a brand new addition to the online training collection at lynda.com Flash is SO right for OSG,  and the kind of "feel" that we want to "make present" on our site. 

After my post of dismay about Fox Sports NOT having the Cubs game on Saturday,  I did see that they did a lot of switching over to the Astros and the Cubs games.  I just wonder,  still,  why wasn't the Cubs game the POINT game?  What OTHER story was there on Saturday?  I could see a coverage of the Astros as primary in Astors territory,  with lots of switching to the Cubs game.  The Braves-Phillies was worth absolutely zero.