the village buzz

for those of you who keep up with blog engines, you probably know right away that this blog is based on b2evolution. this is a really great engine, and is in use everywhere. that is a good thing and a bad thing. the bad thing is that you really have to keep up with spammers, as they exploit this thing day in and day out. it is a major pain, and something you have to learn to live with.. that’s okay..

i started using my blog though, as a front end to my picture of the day list. this was all fine and dandy until i started email the html pages to my list. this caused some serious problems.

first, the list was being mailed a page that was chock full of ads and crap that i didn’t want to send to my list. it also had some forms and divs that did not translate well..

what i needed was a stripped down page.

here’s what i did:

checking around on the manual, i found that you can add skin=someSkinName to override the skin of the page. this works even if you have skin switching turned off.

i took the basic skin, and edited it to suit my needs (totally stripped down) and then, when it came time to mail to my list, i just tacked &skin=basic to the end of my url..

this is MUCH better than anything i have used yet.. we’ll see what happens..

for those of you out there who know about my upcoming motorbike ride to california, i have set it up so you can check out where i am and what i am doing via text messages from my phone..

i plan on updating every time i stop for gas, or any other reason..

that link is:

where’s sergio?

I met my old lover On the street last night She seemed so glad to see me I just smiled And we talked about some old times And we drank ourselves some beers Still crazy after all these years

P. Simon

This song came to mind when I saw u2 take the stage the other night. Not that the fellas from the band and I had ever had anything that resembled a love affair, but I did share secrets and endless nights with the music they made in the 80’s. We stayed up all night on Friday nights together while USA network pumped the Red Rocks concert into my living room. We camped out in front of Music Plus to get concert tickets together. U2 and I were tight back when I was flailing around, trying to find out which end was up. They hung out with me at 3am when my world was surely ending, and pumped away through my walkman. Their albums seemed to feel magical in my hands. Come to think of it, their music was sort of like a secret lover. The kind where there were no commitments, no drama, no hassles. Only my closest of friends knew about the whole thing, and they understood completely. It was the kind of secret that I hated to let out. Not that I wanted to horde some secret information, I just didn’t want to let anyone in who might not get it. It seemed that if more people got involved, it would just end up a big confused mess. Then, one afternoon, The Joshua Tree was released. We ditched school that day. We bought our copies at Salzer’s in Ventura. I still have mine. It’s on vinyl and the poster is still in good shape. I listened to it last night. I think it sounds better than it ever did. As soon as The Joshua Tree hit, U2 mania was unleashed. This was a great thing for the band, but for me, it was disheartening at best. Although it was great that we got to see the band on TV actually doing interviews, it got to be too much. It was like seeing your secret lover in bed with the football team. I soon lost interest. I moved on to different things and different places. U2 and I would run into each other every now and then. When we did, it was awkward. We were different people than we were when we met. Bono became the fly or whatever the hell he was. They were not only in bed with the football team, but the soccer and basketball teams, too. We had nothing in common anymore. We fell out of touch. I listened to their new records not out of curiosity, but out of hype. I didn’t recognize them anymore. The other night, it was different. It was like meeting that same friend again, 20 years later. We are a little older. A little grayer. A little wiser. Oddly enough, we are now the same people we were when we met. All the wild experimentation and confusion are gone. It was like old friends meeting again, and realizing that even after all the drama, we are who always were. No more, no less. I think this is the first time I have been that much aware of the fact that no matter what the years throw at us, we still are who we were. And that is not a horrible thing. Thanks, guys.

i have a new favorite toy..

this thing is the coolest..

what happens is, you send a message to your this little appliance, twttr, and it immediately posts it to the website. the idea on the site is to tell all your friends what you are doing, however mundane it may be.

this is all fun and good, but it ties in directly with another thing i have been trying to figure out..

in a week, i will be riding my motorbike from ohio to california.. this is a great way for my family to keep track of where i am. i plan on sending my location every time i stop for gas.. this way, everyone knows i am okay and upright..

good job, twttr folks!

since we here at red red design have gone APE over ruby on rails (and everyone is REALLY tired about hearing this brother testify… ) we of course are freako about 37 signals products.. i have been using backpack forever, and we also use basecamp for a neat site that we are working on in the next few weeks..

anyway.. this voicemail technology is something that we have been messing with alot lately.. i pretty much gave up on one of my projects, just because there was so much work involved in writing the thing in PHP.. since we made the switch to rails, this project is about to resurface “The Confessomatic” but until then.. i have some plans for 37 signals’ new offering..

good show, guys..

as if our brains aren’t broken enough every day, we have started playing mad chess at work. this is a SURE way to make sure your brain turns to mush by around noon, instead of five..

chess is alot like real life.. whenever you have two queens trading catty glances, there is gonna be a some hair pulled.. and like in real life.. someone is gonna lose alotta material..

in this game, it was me that lost all my goodies to a pushy queen..

k from mi writes..

my hubbies grandma jennings….. its actually his foster grandma but heck a grandma is a grandma…….well grandma jennings,her name is blanche, lived to be 105 or 106 i cant remember we sorta stopped counting after 102……at the family get togethers we would always ask her what was the best invention that she has seen…….she started listing things, airplanes, cars, electricity,telephones,computers, washing machines, bathrooms,-she had an outhouse- those things we take for granted everyday, ….she said probably the microwave oven was the best….and if you asked her what was her secret to long life she would just giggle her little giggle and say ‘the good lord’

i think i want to be able to see MY great great grandkids and tell them ” I remember when we were jaming to 8-track tapes and listening to LP’s” and trying to show them how to do the hustle or the macarena!

K

k from michigan has this to say about her road trip of the future…

when i was in 7th grade my best friend invited me along on a trip to idaho, parts of it were fun…..she was a brat…. i’d go back that way and see all the ‘worlds biggest……’ or worlds finest……’ and take pictures and get goofy like yer supposed to on vacations and then i’d head south to grand canyon…….always wanted to take the family out there….it’d be fun

K

this is awesome..

this dude gives you hints as to how to go about purchasing a haunted doll.

the point is to buy a doll off ebay that has a ghost or devil or some such fiddle faddle attached to it.. bringing it into your house is supposed to bring the haunting into your house..

excuse me, but this flies in the face of EVERY scary movie i have ever seen.

if it were me, i would just build my house on an indian buria site..

that is much more of a sure deal..

here’s another blackberry chess idea..

i like to play chess against the computer, but it takes so long to do it. it is a real commitment to play moves agains the computer, as you have to come back and forth to it every few minutes or so.. and make your move. if you set it up to do deep searching, it is even more iconvenient..

something that would be really cool would be to write an ap like ectool for blackberry..

then, run crafty or gnuchess on a remote machine that waits for requests via email..

the blackberry could then follow the game, allow you to submit a move, and send it in via email.. when the computer made its move, it would send it back to the the blackberry via email, and it would start all over again.

you can probably even send it a move like:

1. *

so you can play black..

let me think about this..