Author: Paul

Sharing the shiny bits of life since I can remember. I run http://greenergrassmedia.com/.
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WordPress doesn’t work perfectly

wp-upgrading4

I have always been frustrated that the “Upgrade Automatically” option doesn’t work as advertised. I have to muck around with a few files, go to my FTP client, etc. This is the second time I have upgraded, so it was much easier. (I was surprised I remembered what to do. The tutorial helped the first time – and I had it open for reference the second.)

Also – plugins – the automatic upgrade works for some and not others. (For example, I was surprised when WP’s own Stats plugin would not upgrade automatically.)

Now I can’t complain too loudly – WordPress is free software, and I like it oh so much more than blogger.

Funny enough, when I asked Matt Mullenweg (Mr. WordPress himself) at WordCamp Denver in February 2009 about this, he kind of looked at me like I was partly insane. Apparently I am the only person in the universe who has ever experienced these problems.

Neophyte note: If you let WordPress host your blog (like yourblog.wordpress.com), then WordPress automatically updates the software for you. My comments here only apply to self-hosted sites.

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Quad processor laptop

quad-processor-cSo, I was cruising the Sunday newspaper ads, as I enjoy doing. I stumbled upon the fact that Intel has a quad processor in the most expensive laptop Staples was advertising. I knew those were in desktop and all-in-one computers, but that was the first time I had seen one in a laptop.

I did a little digging and found out that it runs at 2.0 ghz. At this point, it would be impossible to compare the actual speed of this laptop with a Mac, for example, short of buying it and testing it yourself. Unfortunate, that.

If you are a Windows person and appreciate HP, it may be a good value. If you are a Mac person, you can get a 2.26 ghz Core 2 Duo 13″ for roughly the same money. If you are a regular reader here, you know which one I would recommend.

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No steps forward

yelo-pgs-logos-2

Remember the slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking”? That was for an ancient concept called the yellow pages.

As many have noted, phone books are redundant, if you have access to the internet. (Or in Nairobi, Kenya, they are just simply bad. About 90% of the time, the phone book didn’t have the number I was looking for.) So I am basically offended at the waste of trees and ink and delivery gasoline that it takes to bring me a new phone book about once a month or so.

Anyhow, this latest phone book came in a plastic bag that had these two logos on it (without my editorial comment in the middle!). The swoopy one is the newer one. They lost most of the connection with the original concept. Seen on its own, I’m not sure anyone could figure out what it means. (Two feathers floating down from space? A futuristic alien runner?)

They did not run it by enough people before they clicked “go”.

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What do you NOT need to say?

noneed2sayThis Frontier Airlines mini-billboard had no words. It didn’t need any. Larry the Lynx is familiar enough to frequent flyers that he speaks for himself. Without words, in this case.

What message is Frontier giving us? I dunno. Even though I rarely watch regular TV, I have seen their funny commercials with talking animals. They must be betting that Larry will give us enough subtle warm feelings that we’ll book our next flight with Frontier.

Takeaway: What do you NOT need to say in your next communication? Consider giving your customers, clients and friends more credit for what they probably already know.

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Planted

mystickerinbostonNo trip to an exotic location would be complete without leaving my mark. So I put my sticker on a subway map in one of the trains I journeyed in.

So far Chris, Arturo and Johanna (post coming) are the only friends who have taken me up my my request to do the same in your exciting part of the world (and take pix to prove it). Just leave me a comment and I’ll fire you a set of stickers. Thanks.

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Build it to last

no-longevitySo, I’m in this conference center. Well, at least the second floor was a conference center. Anyhow, one wall along the entrance consisted of several backlit photographs of famous site around the city of Boston.

Problem: all were faded. That tarnished my impression of an otherwise nice facility. Solution: simply painting the plexiglass panels a neutral color and putting small framed prints in the center of each panel would look much better at a fraction of the cost of getting new photographic panels.

The interior designer may not have known how quickly the panels would fade. Or the panels might have been there for ten years. In either case, putting them there without knowing the colors’ shelf life – or planning for their replacement – was a mistake.

Takeaway: How are you building that project to last? Or how are you planning for its replacement?

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New England converges with Old England

boston-convergesThere are many aspects of Boston that remind me a lot of England. The further west one travels in the USA, the more the old-world feel and heritage get lost. It was fun to see many similarities between the old part of Boston and London. Several pubs I saw the outside of could have been in nearly any town in England. The closest equivalent in Colorado is an Irish pub in Boulder that is not quite authentic.

Hackney Carriage? I remember seeing those in London when we lived in the south of England. I think that represents an obscure license for taxis. I would have thought that since carriages quietly slipped out of use maybe a hundred years ago, that title would have been left behind maybe 50 years ago?

No.

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Schraffts

schrafftsI lived in the suburbs of Boston during my junior and senior high school years. The Schrafft’s candy factory was – and still is – visible along one of the major traffic arteries.

I saw the factory last week. I was in Boston for a workshop. In my attempts to save my organization some money, I elected to stay in a suburban hotel rather than a pricey one downtown. I figured that since I had navigated Boston’s public transport system as a high schooler (and enjoyed doing so), I would have no problem getting from point A to point B.

Not true.

By the second and final day of the workshop, I figured it out. But the figuring out was painful. The first night I went from the airport to the hotel. I discovered that the bus route that Google Maps showed me (while in Denver) referred to a route that was only run during mid-days. The second night, I went on a long slow bus loop that was completely unnecessary.

Ah well, it was an adventure.

Anyhow, Schrafft’s no longer makes candy there. The building contains offices. Not-for-candy offices.

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