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Alabama Tea Party

It looks like the upcoming tea party will be much larger and accommodating those bringing their families. Nice! So, who all is going?

Stock your iPhone with knowledge

Earlier this week, I ran across an interesting article by Sean Aune titled “40 Essential iPhone Applications For Web Designers.” It’s a very impressive list, but I didn’t realize until I started looking for the apps in iTunes that the majority of them were not free. Granted, I certainly don’t mind buying an app or two now and then, but I couldn’t very well justify buying 20 or 30 in one sitting. (plus I like keeping my screens few and meticulously organized!)

I may come back later and snag a database app or two, but I didn’t want to fill my iPhone with reference apps which looked to be not much more than common cheat sheets that you can find anywhere on the net. I discovered some handy references posted to MakeUseof’s website a while back and an idea struck me — it would be a lot easier (and cheaper) to use a file manager and simply store copies of these references, cheat sheets, and other essential files on my iPhone.

I mean, hey, wouldn’t it be cool to be sitting there working on one of my themes and look to my iPhone as a reference tool?

I had tried a couple of different file managers a few weeks ago, but never really found anything that I loved. Most apps that I’d looked into required signing up for an account on a website — and most of them were not free services. I needed something that didn’t require an internet connection for those times when I can’t get to a PC. I took a peek at Pandora Box yesterday and happily discovered that DigiDNA’s FileAid (normally $4.99 if memory serves me) was FREE due to a promotion!

As of this post, FileAid is still free, but who knows for how long?

Per DigiDNA’s website, “FileAid is a file manager and viewer for the iPhone and iPod Touch.” Basically, you can copy files over to your iPhone or iPod Touch wirelessly (by FTP) or via USB using DiskAid, which is their PC/MAC tool which can also copy files onto your device. Personally, I found that FileAid does exactly what I need, and can’t see myself using DiskAid. I love that I can use FileAid to connect to my iPhone via FTP and copy over my favorite tech references and cheat sheets, work-related documents, personal files, and other things that I would want to carry out with me without the need to use a 3rd party website. It’s now one of the most essential apps on my iPhone.

According to DigiDNA’s website, FileAid supports a pretty decent list of file types:

• Images (JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and others)
• PDF
• MS Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
• iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynotes, iWork 09 not yet supported)
• OpenDocument (OpenOffice) (Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation)
• Plain Text and RTF (Rich Text Format)
• Audio (MP3, VBR, AAC, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, CAF)
• Video (standard iPhone formats : H.264, MPEG-4)
• Web Archives
• HTML files
• ZIP Archives

So far I’ve loaded various images, PDFs, TXTs, HTML and DOC files onto mine. Had no problems with any of those and will try out more later this weekend.

FileAid FTW!

So if you’ve been thinking of downloading a few reference or cheat sheet apps, you may want to consider going a cheaper route using FileAid or another file manager of your choosing.

Turn your iPhone into your own personal library.

I like Safari, but …

For a while, I’ve been following the progress of Mozilla’s mobile browser project, codenamed Fennec. As the Mozilla team’s efforts push the project forward, I can’t help but hope that one day soon it will be available on the iPhone. Of course, this will mean that Apple will have to actually APPROVE the app for inclusion in the App Store.

As of this post, Apple has yet to approve any major 3rd party web browser application for the iPhone (meaning not based on Safari). That’s one of the few things where Helio had them beat. When the Opera “mini” browser was released, Helio embraced it. And how could they not? Let’s face it, the Helio native browser was sluggish and seriously lacking in many features where as Opera was sleek, fast, and surely had it beat. Heck, you could even manage your bookmarks online from the Opera website and easily synchronize with the browser on your device.

I would LOVE to see that kind of capability on my iPhone!

I had hoped that by now, Fennec would be far enough along that Helio users could use it. But since Jim and I have jumped aboard the Apple ship, my hopes are now that Fennec could one day soon be made available for iPhone users.

Please, Apple? Please???

Don’t get me wrong, I like Safari … but I’m a Mozilla fangirl through and through!

Businesses lending a hand to job hunters

I’m sure y’all don’t need me to tell you that finding a job is hard work. I know that I am extremely lucky to have found another job within a month of being laid off. Jim was laid off last week, so having me working again so soon was a real blessing. But I know plenty of other people who are still looking.

Looking and applying for a job is hard work, and I’m happy to see that some businesses are looking to lend a hand to those still trying to find work: in particular, Staples and Office Depot. I ran across a couple entries on Mommy’s Wish List that I thought some of y’all might find useful in your search (or you could relay to someone you know who’s searching):

• Office Depot is offering free printing and faxing services to customers until May 30th. (more details here)
• Staples is offering free and business cards to customers until June 13th. (more details here)

Hopefully that’s helpful to someone out there! Please feel free to share related hints or treats in the comment box below.

Hoppy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! I’ve two cute things to share today:

The cutest little rapper I’ve ever seen:

And by far one of the funniest Easter Eggs I’ve seen:

(H/T: For the Lose)

NeoVizion Silver Award

This arrived last night:

Thank you for submitting for the 2009 Gold Award. We enjoyed reviewing your website.

We are presenting you with the Silver Award. All we ask is if you decide to accept this award please link the award back so others like yourself can submit for the awards.

Your site is listed on our award page with a link.

Thank you from the NEOVIZION, Inc. review department.

Thank you!

My own blizzard

Boy, such a flurry of events have been whirling around me and my kin lately!

An American Visit

Friday I chaperoned Jessie’s class field trip to American Village in Montevallo. Even with the bad weather coming through (tornadoes and rain galore, yuck!), we still had a very good time. And I tell ya, I really wish I had visited American Village when I was Jessie’s age … I think I would have looked at history a whole LOT differently!

I’ve suggested to Jim that we head down there one weekend for one of their events or sometime in the summer when the weather is a little more accommodating!

Despite the bad weather and dampened spirits (my Lord, I’ve never seen so many pouty faces in one place! LOL!), I did manage to snap off a few shots:

The Home Front

We had our first interested party view the house last week. Friday night, to be exact. Our realtor called this weekend to let us know that they liked the layout and wanted to come back and see it again. So this weekend we busted some tail and cleaned and painted the entire bottom level. Jessie hasn’t packed a whole lot because she’s with her mother more these days, so we’ll get around to finishing her room last.

I’m trying not to get TOO excited, but I can’t help but want to get my hopes up!

We still haven’t gotten an answer yet on whether or not we got the loan on the new house. More paperwork was needed and faxed off last week. I’m hoping we hear something this week.

OMG … snow? In the South?!

Yes, it snowed here. We received between 3 and 4 inches here. Some parts of Birmingham received up to 7 inches!!!

Jessie was at her mother’s, so I’m sure she had a good ole time in it. I did manage to get a few shots of the pretty white stuff before the other neighborhood kids ran amok and transformed it all to dirty snowballs and lumpy stick-wielding snowmen. :lol:

Pass the Halls!

Either it’s the irritants in the cleaners, the paint fumes, or being out in the rain all day Friday (or a combination of all three), but I have been sick all weekend and feel generally like death warmed over today. I traipsed in to work to discover that my machine was hosed, so I couldn’t have done much of anything productive even if I wanted to.

Everyone kept telling me I should’ve stayed home because I sounded terrible — I think I’ll take their advice and stay in tomorrow. *ugh*

And last but not least …

One of my themes has recently been featured in a WordPress tutorial over on YouTube:

A big thanks to Kristie for letting me know about it, and to ktinboulder for selecting my theme!

Humpday Hilarities

I have several today, so let’s get started! This one is from one of my WOSIB sisters:

How to Deal with Party Crashers

It was at a party and the host was getting worried because there were too many people and not enough refreshments.

She was sure that not all of these people had been invited but didn’t know how to tell which ones were the crashers. Then her husband got an idea …

He turned to the crowd of guests and said “Will everyone from the bride’s side of the family stand up please?” About twenty people stood.

Then he asked “Will everyone from the groom’s side of the family stand up as well?” About twenty five people stood up.

Then he smiled and said, “Will everyone who stood please leave. This is a birthday party.”

This one is from my pal Cookie:

Understanding the Stimulus Bill

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, “I don’t understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?”

The professor replied, “I don’t have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I’ll be glad to explain it to you.” The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor’s house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, “First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can.” The student did as he was instructed.

The professor then continued, “Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it.” The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool.

The confused student asked, “Excuse me, but why are we doing this?”

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn’t think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough.

However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, “All we’re doing is wasting valuable time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you’ll really have accomplished is the destruction of what could have been truly productive action!”

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile,

“Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill.”

This one is from one of my coworkers:

The Coping Diet

This is a specially formulated diet designed to help women cope with the stress that builds during the day.

Breakfast
1 grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast
1 cup skim milk

Lunch
1 small portion, lean, steamed chicken
1 cup spinach
1 cup herbal tea
1 Hershey’s Kiss

Afternoon Snack
The rest of the Hershey’s Kisses in the bag
1 tub of Hagen-Daaz ice cream with chocolate chips

Dinner
4 glasses of wine (red or white)
2 loaves garlic bread
1 family size supreme pizza
3 Snickers bars

Late Night Snack
1 whole Sarah Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from the freezer)

Remember: ‘Stressed’ spelled backward is ‘desserts!’

And last but not least, another funny from one of my WOSIB sisters:

In addition to communicating with the local Air Traffic Control facility, all aircraft in the Persian Gulf AOR are required to give the Iranian Air Defense Radar (military) a ten minute ‘heads up’ if they will be transiting Iranian airspace. This is a common procedure for commercial aircraft and involves giving them your call sign, transponder code, type aircraft, and points of origin and destination.

I just flew with a guy who overheard this conversation on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai. It is too good not to pass along.

The conversation went like this:

Iranian Air Defense Radar: “Unknown aircraft, you are in Iranian Airspace. Identify yourself.”

Aircraft: “This is a United States Aircraft. I am in Iraqi Airspace.”

Iranian Air Defense Radar: “You are in Iranian Airspace. If you do not depart our airspace, we will launch Interceptor Aircraft!”

Aircraft: “This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 Fighter. Send ‘em up! I’ll wait!”

Iranian Air Defense Radar: (No Response — Total Silence)

WP Themes How to: Revolving Images in the Header

I was contacted a while back by Barbara Weibel, a very nice lady with a question about a WordPress theme modification. She wanted to know the best way to add a set of rotating images into the header — not like the rotating images php scripts that have been making the rounds for the last few years. She needed something dynamic, similar to the “cover flow” effect used by iTunes.

Boy, that one stumped me. I’m not a Flash or Ajax guru, and Jim was tied up in his own projects. I gave her what little helpful advice I had and hoped for the best.

Barbara emailed me again last week to let me know she had found a solution. She’s used my Translucent Dreams theme as a base for her blog’s design (which, by the way, is a VERY good read if you’re looking for new bloggers to add to your blogroll!) and has found that using the NextGEN Gallery in the header accomplished the effect she was wanting.

Take a look at her blog, Hole in the Donut, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Barbara was nice enough to allow me to publish her notes detailing the steps she took to implement this into her blog. I took the liberty of adding some screenshots from my own test blog to help make it easier to follow along.

Note: You may need to play with the settings once you have it set up to adjust to your liking …

First, I installed and activated the WordPress NextGEN Gallery plugin. This adds a settings panel to the Dashboard that is titled “Gallery”

Second, I installed and activated the NextGEN ImageFlow add-on for the NextGEN Gallery. This shows up as an added option at the bottom of the “Gallery” settings panel on the Dashboard.

**IMPORTANT:** Be sure to upload reflect2.php and reflect3.php to your Wordpress root folder!!

Next, I created and uploaded a gallery of the photos I wanted to show up in the header using the “Add Gallery/Images options in the NextGEN Gallery settings panel. I made sure they were all the same size (500 x 333) and although the documentation says you can use vertical format photos, I limited mine to horizontal, simply because I knew they would work better in the header.

Some changes were needed in the stylesheet in order to get the design to align correctly. Add this to the style.css file:

#gallery {
height:259px;
width:800px;
position:absolute;
top:-100px;
left:40px;
}

Then I modified the header.php to be:

<body>
<div id="wrap">
<div id="header">
<div id="gallery">
<?php
echo nggShowImageFlow(2);
?>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name');
?></a></h1>
<h4><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></h4>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sidemagic">


NOTE: The (2) in the above php echo code refers to the number of the gallery I created — your number may be different!

Then I went back to the style.css and made the h1 and h4 position absolute and tinkered with the height for the headline and sub-headline to get them to lay where I wanted them. It now looks like this:

#header {
margin:0 auto;
padding:0;
height:259px;
width:900px;
background-image:url(images/header.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:top center;
position:relative;
}

#header h1 {
font-family: Trebuchet MS, arial, sans-serif;
font-size:35px;
color:#ffffff;
line-height:normal;
position:absolute;
top:100px;
left:-30px;
}

#header h1 a, #header h1 a:hover, #header h1 a:link, #header h1 a:visited, #header h1 a:active {
color:#ffffff;
text-decoration:none;
}

#header h4 {
text-align: right;
line-height: 25px;
font-family: Trebuchet MS, arial, sans-serif;
width: 300px;
height: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
font-size: 16px;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: italic;
color: #5dc6cf;
position:absolute;
top:105px;
right:-30px;
}

Also, you’ll need to replace the header.jpg file in the images directory with this one.

You may need to tinker a bit to get everything in just the right place. The nice thing about the NextGEN Gallery plugin is that you can exclude photos with just a check mark, so I still have all 36 in the gallery and I can go back periodically and change which ones show up.

A note on gallery settings

These are suggested, but feel free to deviate to fit your theme:

Gallery, ImageFlow, General Settings:

For this one, set “Max. number of images” to zero: (Gallery, Options)

Barbara’s information

Barbara Ann Weibel, Writer/Photographer
Blog: http://holeinthedonut.com
Photo Library: http://easywebsite.net

In closing

A big thanks goes to Barbara for sharing this with me and allowing it to be posted here. Again, I hope this is helpful to some of y’all. Feel free to comment and ask questions via the comments form below!

Humpday Hilarities 2

I couldn’t resist posting this 2nd bit. This is from one of my WOSIB sisters:

Children’s Science Exam

Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.

Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.

Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes
A: Premature death.

Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen.)
A: The body is consisted into three parts – the brainium, the Borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.

Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.

Q: What does “varicose” mean?
A: Nearby.

Q: Give the meaning of the term “Caesarean Section”
A: The Caesarean Section is a district in Rome

Q: What does the word “benign” mean?’
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.

Ah, the mind of a child …

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