I watched a panel today at SxSW and the moderator, Lynne Johnson, asked a great question of the panel. She asked each of them to explain where the name of their weblog came from. Hearing their answers was great and I think everyone should explain where the name of their weblog comes from.
So, I encourage you to explain the origins on your own weblog and use the tag ‘blognameorigin’ to help people find our post.
For those new to posting tags, basically a tag is a kind of flag to search engine on how they can sort your post. If you put this code in your post, it should work.
<a href=”https://technorati.com/tag/blognameorigin” rel=”tag”>blognameorigin</a>
And then you should see a link like this appear: blognameorigin on your post. If you click on that link, you should see the posts of all others that used that tag.
With that said, back to the main idea…
The Story of cruftbox.com
Back in 1997 I registered the domain name pusateri.org as a personal site for photos and stories. It served me well and in early 2000 I started using pusateri.org/cruft for my nascent weblog. The word cruft was a word I liked since I had first heard it in college.
To me the word represented exactly what my site was, random bits of unimportant crap.
In late 2001, I decided I wanted a site for the weblog alone, to keep the family stuff a little separate from my ranting weblog. I wanted cruft.com as my domain name, but alas, it was taken.
John Walker, founder of Autodesk, had already registered cruft.com, .net, and .org. I emailed him and asked about his plans. He said he wasn’t doing anything with them, but that he was saving them for something ‘good’. I apparently didn’t count as ‘good’ and he didn’t want to give me any of the domain names. (It’s four years later, and e still hasn’t done anything with those domain names…)
Back to the drawing board I went, trying to figure out what to do. After a bit, I came up with the idea that the site was realy a container for my cruft and not so much cruft itself. At that point, I started playing around with names like cruftcan, cruftstuff, and boxocruft. I finally settled on cruftbox, mainly because it was a easy to pronounce word and it ended with a X, the mark of all things high tech.
And so, cruftbox.com was born.
What’s your story?
Neat use of Flickr Notes to tell a story
My friend Beth has used Flickr’s notes feature to tell a story. Go check it out. Beth is wicked smart…
I need to do this myself.
Giveaway
SxSW ]I[
I’m sitting in my hotel room in Austin sipping on a cup of coffee.
This is my 3rd SxSW conference. It’s starting to feel quite familiar.
Last night at Break Bread with Brad I talked with many people, drank beers, and even got into a discussion about metadata, nomenclature, taxonomy, and archival of assets with people that actually knew what I was talking about.
The conference shifts into high gear today with the Keynote kickoff.
If you’re at SxSw, say hello!
Ego Boost II
Yet another event is causing my already huge ego to swell to exceedingly large proportions.
I’ve been interviewed for an InformationWeek article on How five executives got blog religion. With a picture and everything. My mom will be proud…
I don’t think they quite get my point about lunch.
My point about seperating work from my blogging was this: If there is an issue at work that I couldn’t speak of openly at lunch with my staff like personal performance, my frustrations, future plans, it should not be on my personal blog.
Why? Because when I say something in a public realm, whether at work or on my blog, it affects my work relationships and the environment my staff have to operate in daily.
I cannot make my staff or co-workers uncomfortable or upset, just because I have the need to vent in my off-hours. There’s plenty of other stuff to write about and I have plenty of buddies to vent to over the phone when the need arises.
Other than that, an interesting bit on the various ways weblogs are finding roles inside the business world.
Why you should carry a handkerchief
One memory of my childhood that will stick with me always is the sound of my father blowing his nose. He always does it the same way with his handkerchief. Blow, rub nose, put the handkerchief away.
When I was a young man, I thought a handkerchief was for old people, like dentures, Ben-gay, and scotch. I mean really, a handkerchief was kind of a nasty idea and I didn’t have to blow my nose much anyways.
Over time, I came change my view. Like many young men, as I got older, I began to see the wisdom of my father, grandfather, and other men of older generations. By your late 20s, you begin to realize how foolish some of your ideas of your early 20s were about what you would and wouldn’t do in life.
So, for probably the last 10 years, I’ve carried a handkerchief in my back pocket. And you should too.
Before you dismiss the idea, give me a chance to discuss it a bit.
For those that don’t know, a handkerchief is usually a white cotton piece of cloth that is roughly a foot square. There are a few different kinds, like the handkerchief designed to stick out of a suit pocket, but the kind I’m talking about is the simplest kind.
The white cotton is soft and tightly woven to give it some strength. So people like them ironed, but I prefer the soft fold instead.
The main use is for blowing and wiping your nose. This may seem unhygienic, but actually it’s not. When you get out your handkerchief, you will see that it naturally unfolds and you don’t use the outside. You use the inside.
After a day’s use, it goes into the hamper with other clothes to be washed. I have dozens, they are cheap.
Now you young men, especially of the dating age, listen up. The handkerchief is key tool for impressing women. Yes, they will dig it the most. Not only will you appear to be older and wise to the world, you will be prepared for the ultimate smooth move.
It’s not untrue or demeaning to say that women cry, they are more in touch with their emotions than men. A young man will undoubtedly encounter a young women breaking into tears at some point. To score huge numbers of points, have that hanky ready. Offering it to her shows her that you are helpful, prepared, and the other Boy Scout laws. In other words, you are showing yourself to be a gentleman. Women love this kind of thing. Trust me on this.
There a ton of other things you can use a handkerchief for:
1) Blow/wipe nose
2) Dry a women’s tears
3) Cough into to avoid spraying others
4) Bind a wound
5) Cover your mouth from dust
6) Wipe up a mess (very useful as a father of toddlers)
7) Use in a magic trick
8) Tie the corners to make it into a small bag
9) Clean your pocketknife or other tool
10) Wave to get someone’s attention
11) Clean dirt off your hands
12) Wipe lipstick off your face
13) Clean your glasses
14) Use to avoid leaving fingerprints
15) Convince a man to kill his wife
And finally: Wipe sweat from your hard-working brow
Griffin Radioshark
My Griffin Radioshark arrived on Friday and I quickly hooked it up to our Media Server in the front room.
The Radioshark is a FM/AM radio that plugs in via USB to a computer, Mac or PC. I love listening to the radio on the computer and this device is supposed to give me the ability to record shows automatically.
The quality of the unit seems high with a good feel to it. The software came up quickly and in a couple minutes the radio was playing through the speakers nicely.
The software is, well, eh, not my cup of tea. If I’m using a PC give me the standard PC look and if I’m using the Mac give me the standard Mac look. This look leaves me flat.
The app covers the basics of tuning and setting up a recording. There are a few issues like not being able to enter a duration for the recording and having to choose one of the predetermined one. When I record something I like to record a little extra at the beginning and end. With a locked 60 minute record, you can’t do this.
You can easily schedule a recording based on time and station. The Windows version only record in wma (Windows Media) and wav files. Not the end of the world, but I would have paid $5 more to record directly in MP3, saving the hassle of conversion.
The radio reception itself was good but not great. I really want to record Indie 103.1, a Los Angeles station with a weak signal at my house. My car can pick it up, but the Radioshark couldn’t.
There is an input for an external antenna so I decided to give that a try. I took a standard FM dipole antenna and soldered it into a 1/8th inch audio connector.
For those that don’t know, a FM dipole antenna is specifically made to pick up radio signals and not much else. It’s what we electrical engineers call a tuned quarter-wave antenna.
BTW, I highly recommend those new-fangled butane soldering irons. They are perfect for these quick little jobs around the house.
The antenna worked but I had to get it up pretty high to pick up the signal. After standing in the room holding the Radioshark and the antenna in endless positions, I found that placing it above the curtain rod was optimal and was least offensive to Michele’s sense of how it should look.
The Radioshark was wedged up there and seemed a bit precarious. I couldn’t have it fall down on the girls as they walked by.
I removed the metal based, drilled a hole in it, and was able to attach it to the ceiling, securing it against a tumble.
Summary
Overall, the device works as advertised and most people aren’t going to be listening to weak stations. If you like radio, then the Radioshark is for you. It works, it looks good, and it’s reasonably priced.
2 days and 2 months
Friday I started having problems with my computer and it’s taken two days to straighten it out. No huge loss, but in the file corruption trouble I had, chkdsk saw fit to delete my Outlook pst file.
That means to fix the problem, it deleted my email. The last back-up pst file I had is two months old. Two months of email disappeared in the whir of a hard drive.
I need to start using IMAP.
We had a good weekend and did a few things around the house. Zoe made a bluebird bird house and a bird feeder in class and we hung them today.
I’m proud of my little carpenter!
Make Magazine
I keep hearing about Make Magazine over and over. I get emails about it, see posts about it. There are even pictures of it.
Well, I subscribed to it and they charged my debit card, months ago.
Where the hell is the damn magazine? If they want us geeks to like it, they better send it the hell out. I’m about ready to remove myself from the whole hoopla if it doesn’t materialize soon.
The magazine looks great, but if your readers don’t have it, you will fail.
Ego Boost
A couple weeks ago I was interviewed for a podcast show called G’day World. The show is run by Mick ‘Splatt’ Stanic and Cameron Reilly, to Australian blokes who love podcasting. I meet Mick last year at ETech.
They posted my interview. If you want to hear me blather on for 45 minutes, here’s your chance.
I’m not sure why they wanted to interview me, but I agreed because my ego is growing to an abnormally large size.