Category: Life hacks

new techie goals

I’m working on a new Intranet site for work today. Last week I was working on new WordPress themes for a possible encounter website redesign (you may have seen them on my Flickr stream).
While working on the Intranet site I’m using CasadeBlundell.com for “filler text” and it got me thinking about redesigning that site as well. It’s gotten a little stagnant.
All of this led me to think about a few goals/challenges I’d like to figure out/complete before to long (some of them are personal, others are work related).

  • Finish a redesign of the encounter website
  • Redesign CasadeBlundell.com
  • Redesign our departmental Intranet site
  • Find out how to combine multiple RSS feeds into one – hopefully without using third party software. I’d love to be able to let people subscribe to one RSS feed and get the latest from my twitter feed, Flickr feed and of course my SSL feed. I’d eventually love to have an option to combine all my RSS feeds with Laurie’s RSS feeds as well so people can truly stay up to date with what’s going on.
  • Get a better grasp/understanding of CSS – this is coming slowly as I build these other sites
  • Learn PHP language – coming along even slower

I think those are the main ones for now – but who knows I may think of several more on the way home – you can check my Twitter feed for updates on the way home 😉

Save gas – don’t make left hand turns

Shipping giant UPS made a realization – they could save fuel and costs by reducing the number of left hand turns on their routes.
According to the NY Times, the international shipper is saving roughly three million gallons of gas a year by reducing those turns.

Think about the time and fuel used at each left hand turn. Left-hand turns are far more costly because of the waiting time involved. There’s rarely a “left on red” rule and thus drivers have to idle, wait for the lights to change and burn up gas. Depending on the cross street, that can take up considerable time and fuel.

Thinking about my new job, and duties at encounter and other places, it’s always exciting when someone comes in with a fresh set of eyes on things. You may never know how you’ve accepted doing something a certain way – only to find out there could be a much easier, simpler and cheaper way to do it.

What could you change in your ministry or church or organization to speed things up and cut costs?

Foods for your mood

Men’s Health lists six snacks to munch on that can give you a chemical attitude adjustment.
They cover anxiety, stress, restlessness, depression, insecurity and being flummoxed (i had to look that one up).

Here’s on tip for ya…

Your Mood: Restless
You need some serious shut-eye before the big day.
Your Meal: Nonfat popcorn half an hour before you go to bed
Here’s Why: The carbs will induce your body to create serotonin, a neurochemical that makes you feel relaxed. “Make sure it’s fat-free, because fat will slow the process of boosting serotonin levels,” says Somer.

Thanks to Lifehacker for the tip.

Tracking Santa then and now

From the Google blog:
It was more than half a century ago, on Christmas Eve in 1955, that a Sears Roebuck & Co. store in Colorado Springs advertised a special hotline number for kids to call Santa. What the company didn’t know at the time was that they had inadvertently misprinted the telephone number. Instead of Santa’s workshop, the phone number put kids through to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace defense of the U. S. and Canada. Worse, it wasn’t just any number at NORAD: it was the commander-in-chief’s operations hotline. In the spirit of the season, Colonel Harry Shoup, the director of operations at the time, had his staff check radar data for any indication of a sleigh making its way south from the North Pole. They found that indeed there were signs of Santa, and merrily gave the children who called an update on his location. Thus, a tradition was born, and NORAD has continued to help children track Santa on Christmas Eve ever since.

Google is joining the effort. This holiday season, NORAD has partnered with Google to use technology including Google Maps, Google Earth, iGoogle and YouTube to track Santa. I can remember tracking Santa with my grandfather as a child, and I’m so proud to see my company carry on his vision of doing something this special for kids around the world.

The countdown begins December 1st on NORAD’s website, where families can find a new kid-friendly game or activity every day until December 24th. And starting at 1:00 am PST on December 24th, you’ll be able to track Santa’s trip in real time. You can download Google Earth and add the NORAD Tracks Santa iGoogle gadget to your iGoogle page anytime, but make sure to come back to noradsanta.org on December 24th to download the special Santa Tracking file for an enhanced 3D Santa-tracking experience.

More changes to SSL

Got around to setting up accounts with del.icio.us and twitter over the last few days. So far I’m liking them both. Don’t know why I’ve been putting it off. They may mean I’ll cut down on some of my usual blog posting, but I don’t know.

You would think that I would have jumped on these bandwagons a long time ago, but I put them off until seeing them really utilized by folks like Thomas and others. Even various organizations and companies are getting on the bandwagon to easily share links within their organizations or to clients.

For example The Sunlight Foundation sent me to their del.icio.us page a week or two ago to show me all the articles and information I might ever want on their new Google Earth layer. Rather than e-mailing me a list of a few articles, I was sent a link and it had loads and loads of links and information.

Also several presidential campaigns are running del.icio.us pages and twitter pages as folks follow the candidates around.

If you’re not familiar with the two services, del.icio.us allows folks to save bookmarks for websites, videos and misc. that are of interest and that they want to share with others. As you’ve probably noticed a lot of my posts are simply links to other sites and articles I want to share with others. Now with del.icio.us that’s done in one easy to follow place. I’m working on trying to set it up so it will automatically post one blog entry with all the links for the day – but I’m still working out the kinks on that one. Until then, you can visit http://del.icio.us/jdblundell to see the various links.

As for twitter, the service allows users to keep others posted throughout the day & night about their going ons. It’s like a simplified report or re-cap of the day – 24/7. Don’t know how often I’ll be using it or updating it. We’ll see. It can be updated form the website, my cellphone or IM and it also updates my Facebook status too. My twitter status will update on the right hand side of SSL, right under the calendar or on my twitter page.

Crazy stuff going on around here – who knows where it will all lead.

UPDATE: With the pending shutdown of Delicious sometime back I jumped ship and moved to Pinboard.in which has far more features and benefits than Delicious ever did. I highly recommend it. You can see my links there at: http://pinboard.in/u:jdblundell.