I mentioned the other day in my post about moving to Feedly, that I was unable to share to Facebook via the Feedly desktop app.
Later, I resolved to figure out the problem and fix it. Without going into all the nerdy details, it turns out there was a conflict with one of my Chrome extensions. Specifically DoNotTrackMe.
Once I disabled that extension, I was able to share to Facebook via Feedly.
Hopefully this will save others who run into this issue a little time.
I see that right on the heels of killing my beloved Google Reader, Google has launched Keep, a note taking service.
So I gave it a try. Here’s my considered analysis, in the form of my one and only Google Keep note.
It’s no secret that almost all of my web content consumption is done via Google Reader. Which, of course, means that like most TV shows I watch, it was doomed.
I have been dreading, expecting and/or denying the reality of this event for a while. So when I read the official word, I was more resigned than sad. Google Reader is awesome and, to be frank, Google sort of owes it to us to keep it operational even if it isn’t making money. But even in the unlikely event Google capitulates to the hue and cry of the masses, if it’s not going to actively develop the app, it’s better to pull the band-aid off quickly.
I looked at the various alternatives, and have decided that Feedly is clearly the best bet. In fact, in some ways it may actually be better. Feedly is catering to the displaced Google Reader masses and promises a seamless transition when Google shuts off our beloved service. The interface is more feature rich. Sharing is easier (even if sharing to Facebook doesn’t work for me). I am warming to the Magazine layout (particularly for news-related media), though Titles will remain my preferred view.
With just a little work, Feedly can be almost perfect. Here’s what needs to be tweaked immediately.
First, make my Facebook connection work. Currently, my Facebook sidebar feed is in forever load mode.
More importantly, the Facebook sharing button at the bottom of each post doesn’t work. I click on it and nothing happens. Ever. Twitter and the other sharing buttons work fine. This must not be a widespread issue, as I only see a couple of posts about it.
I miss the Readable add-in for Google Reader, which pulls full feeds from a lot of sites, but Feedly’s Preview feature is growing on me. It’s more or less the same thing – just in a pop-up.
I wish they would tweak the menu in four minor but important ways.
1. Increase the contrast and/or text size in the side menu. It is really hard to read. Much harder in the app than in the screen capture below.
2. Auto-sort the categories with unread items to the top.
3. Let me sort feeds within categories alphabetically, or at least manually by dragging them around.
4. Make Titles (Feedly’s list view) a default view option.
It may sound like I’m complaining here, but that’s not the case. I really dig Feedly. It’s about to replace Google Reader as my must used and important app. I just want to see it evolve into the perfect app it can be.
We just got back from a fun week on the farm over Spring Break 2013. Here are a few of the highlights.
Thanks to Greg, Yvette, Evie, Aidan, Arnie, Christina, Remy, Sierra, Emerson, Kelly & Hayden for sharing some fun times with us.
Somehow I missed this record when it came out, but my goodness do I love this song. The Duke and the King – Shaky.
“Shaky makes me all so shaky mama
C’mon wake me up
We go dancing however you wanna
‘Cause we were just babies
The Jackson 5 grew up so fast
C’mon baby, just come and shake that country a**”
This song will be heard often at Rancho DeNada this week.
I came across a discussion on Facebook a few months ago about Savage Breed, a book published in 1959, allegedly by a man from Chesterfield County, SC, my hometown county. I’d never heard of it, but some of the comments intrigued me.
There were hints of censorship.
When I moved to Cheraw all the kids were talking about this book….could not be sold in Cheraw…could not be in the library…..there was talk back then that it was actually written by a woman.
And scandal.
At the time (60’s) I recognized all the characters. It was really the talk of the county!
And more scandal.
I remember being told the young man’s father tried to buy up as many copies as he could, out of embarrassment over the book’s content.
I wondered if there was any truth to the stories that this book referenced places and maybe even people from home. So being the computer savvy cat that I am, I set up a few eBay, web and Amazon scripts and waited. It took almost a year, but I got a hit. Someone had a used copy for sale via Amazon.
So I bought it. For $20.
Published by Newsstand Library Books in December 1959. By William K. Douglas. 126 pages. Originally 35 cents. No “about the author” paragraph. It’s pretty clear from the “other books” pages at the back that Newsstand Library Books featured a lot of soft-core pulp and not much high-brow literature.
Nevertheless, I was happy to receive my copy of the much-discussed book. Here’s the first sentence:
“Luke Saxon turned off the Bloomfield Bypass, and got on Highway number 9. He was going to Camel, 13 miles away, to pick up Dot Silvens.” Hmm. There’s no Bloomfield back home, but there’s a Bennettsville. At first I thought maybe Camel was a thinly disguised pseudonym for Cheraw, but that turned out not to be the case. More on this below.
It takes less than 10 pages to get racy. By page 20, it’s crude and exploitative. By 2013 standards. Beyond that by 1959 standards.
First stop, “Lory’s Drive-In.” Never heard of it or anything similar to it. Same with “the Hightower,” described as the local beer joint.
In chapter 2 there’s a mention of Winthrop, “the state college for girls.” I just think of it as one of the many schools to beat Wake Forest in basketball, since Ron Wellman’s ego assassinated the program. There’s also a mention, in Chapter 2, of going to a Rock Hudson movie in…wait for it…Cheraw. That is, however, the one and only mention of Cheraw.
Mostly, it’s just one scene after another in which some brothers and their friends do horrible things to weakly portrayed women. A literary masterpiece, it is not. “When you had enough beer, you didn’t need a woman. They could go to hell, and be damned.”
In sum, two brothers and their friends do horrible things. One brother is a completely horrible person. The other brother is only around 90% horrible. 90% marries a girl, who has been abused for years by her pharmacist father. 100% impregnates her, while 90% is at work. An abused farm hand kills 100%. The abusive father marries the brothers’ young cousin. At the end, there is some small nod towards resolution, as the remaining family gathers for a completely dysfunctional Christmas meal. It’s bad, shallow writing, designed mainly to get from one soft-core scene to the next.
The more interesting question is whether any part of this was based on actual events or people from my hometown. I’d have to say unlikely, as the events are really just your run of the mill horrible acts by your run of the mill horrible people. Cheraw was mentioned exactly once, and none of the action takes place there. One existing road (Highway 9) was mentioned. Other than that, I saw nothing that sounded familiar.
I will say this, however. To the extent any of these events or people really occurred or existed, there is no doubt that this book would have been extremely scandalous when written. I also think the author would have been sued, or killed.
Bottom line? It’s poorly written, trashy pulp, likely authored by someone in or near Chesterfield County, SC. If any of the events in the book are factually accurate, it would be surprising and likely unprovable.
My name is Kent Newsome. I love Wake Forest University. And I support this video.
I am re-watching the entire original Dark Shadows series as treadmill fare. I’ve watched it twice before, once as a kid when it was on the air and once when it was on the Sci-Fi Channel back in the nineties. It’s good stuff.
I have been struck this time by the complete lack in the series of any cultural references from the era. It was mostly set in the late 60s to early 7os. Other than an occasional reference to seeing an (unnamed) movie, there are virtually no references to music, film or television. In fact, I can only recall seeing a television in one scene. A woman’s boarding house room as she was terrorized by John Yaeger.
As a result, I’ve watched closely for any intentional or unintentional cultural references. I noticed a cardboard animal in David Collins’ room that said “Chicken Little was Right.” A google search didn’t turn up anything interesting. There are some interesting posters in David Collins’s room, but until today there was never a close enough shot to see what they were.
But today.
There was a scene where I could read this poster. It says Aug 29 – Sept 3. I gave google a shot, and much to my surprise and delight it turns out TO BE A CREAM POSTER!!!
Specifically, a Fillmore poster for Cream’s Aug. 29-Sept. 3, 1967 shows with the Electric Flag and the Gary Burton Quartet.
How awesome is that?
A close look shows that they removed the references to the bands and the Fillmore, but it is clearly the same poster.
Update:
There’s another Cream poster in David’s room too.
This one from Cream’s Aug. 22-27, 1967 shows with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the South Side Sound System.
Yes, I am paraphrasing Zoe Muth.
I’m a big believer in the cloud. I also know a lot of folks- I’m talking way more than half the people I know- who dabble in the cloud, but don’t trust it fully. If someone access your vacation photos, so what. But if someone accesses your financial records, personal information, etc., that is a much bigger problem.
I tell people all the time that it’s OK. Your information is safe, encrypted. Hashed, salted and secure.
But stuff like this doesn’t help. Let me be clear. If this is what cloud computing looks like, no one is going to trust important data to the cloud.
Evernote says in a blog post:
The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords
Headlines like this reinforce the phobias that lots of people already have about seeding the cloud with stuff that matters. Hell, it makes me think twice (or thrice) about all the data I have in the cloud. If Evernote can be breached. If Dropbox is even partially vulnerable. Then the whole cloud business, at least as it exists today, if flawed and probably dead. Free space for photos and other non-sensitive stuff. Sure, thanks. But becoming a paying customer and going all in? Nah, not so much.
I don’t know the answer. Maybe there isn’t one. But I know this. If I am getting nervous about the cloud, so are 95% or so of the rest of the potential customer demographic.
Probably 75% of the music I listen to was recorded over 20 years ago. As a result, one of the issues I face is artist fatigue. One example- I used to love Creedence Clearwater Revival, but their catalog is relatively small and I am sick and tired of most of their songs.
But not all of them. There are some that still rock. Like this.
Newsome.Org 