Evening Reading: 4/19/12

Here’s today’s evening reading. The most interesting things I read today, a cool picture and the overheard quote of the day.

Age, the Vampire Slayer: R.I.P. Jonathan Frid, Dark Shadows’ Barnabas Collins (I loved that show)

But I already have 20 photo apps I never use: Mattebox Might Be The Best iPhone Camera App Around [Review]

Please don’t suck: Google Drive Interface Leaked in Employee Presentation

Ya think?: Unlike iCloud, Google’s Rumored Cloud Storage Could Be a Privacy Nightmare

I would’ve named my son Levon, but for that horrible Elton John song: Levon Helm, Drummer And Singer In The Band, Dies (I did name my next to last dog Virgil Caine)

Bonus Levon, from my pal Dan: Levon Is Across the Great Divide

OQOTD: “Don’t worry though, hologram Dick Clark should be good to go this December.”

Enjoy!

Giving the WordPress iPad App Another Spin

As I noted earlier, the increasing frequency of Parallels/Windows crashes and the utter lack of any decent Mac blogging apps have led me back to the native WordPress blog editor. With a few good plugins, I think the web-based desktop editor may work.

That leaves mobile. Historically, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the mobile WordPress app. But like the web-based editor, it has been steadily improving.

The lack of plugins, especially Post Snippets, is a drag. Adding links has gotten easier, but it’s never going to be really easy on a tablet.

Images are still hard.

I like the preview feature, particularly since you never know what a mobile blog post is going to look like.

All in all, it’s good enough. And that’s good enough for me.

Post Snippets: A Mandatory WordPress Plugin

Now that I have been once again foiled in my attempts to find a decent Mac blogging app, I am, once again, considering using the native WordPress front-end. It’s still not great, but it seems to be improving at a steady pace.

Today, I came across a fantastic plug-in that may be the thing that makes the WordPress front-end good enough. Post Snippits. A plugin that will save you a ton of time and effort.

One of the things I do to make my blogging more efficient is create snippets of text or code that I use over and over.

For example, I like to have a snippet that lets me add a YouTube video by simply filling in the video’s ID number. Create a snippet via Post Snippets’ settings, click on the Post Snippets icon in the post editor…

snipicon-300x133

and the following beautifully simple and easy box appears.

Add the video ID, click Insert and…

insert-300x114

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBuJB218UvU

I also created a snippet that lets me create an Amazon Affiliates link to a recommended record.

Wrinkle Neck Mules – Apprentice to Ghosts is available via immediate download at Amazon. Buy this great record now.

With a little effort, you can automate a lot of stuff this way. It actually works better than the similar feature in Live Writer.

And that is a promising development.

Stupidly Cool at 2500 fps

Actually, this is just cool.

That’s all.

MacJournal as a Blogging App: So Much Potential, So Much Frustration

macj I continue to keep Parallels and a Windows 7 installation on my iMac, solely so I can use Live Writer. Lately, however, I’ve experienced a lot of unexpected Windows restarts and other (Windows-related) crashes. This adversely affects my joy and greatly increases my interest in finding a decent Mac blogging app, so I can uninstall Parallels and rid myself of the last remnant of Windows.

So I was immediately interested when I came across MacJournal today.

It’s not specifically a blogging app, but it has blogging features that are noted in the write-up and in the user manual. It is clearly a powerful app, that does a lot of things very well. It has good ratings, and seems to be beloved by many as a journaling tool. But as a blogging app, it has issues. Some of them are serious.

Need an example? How about the fact that this is the fourth time I’ve written this blog post- the first three tries via MacJournal were lost to a spinning beach ball of lockups. This one is being written in good ol’ Live Writer. I wish I was raving about the many good features MacJournal has to offer. Instead, I am ranting about the lost potential. And the fact that I can’t yet rid my iMac of Windows.

Let’s take a look at the very good and the very bad.

The good:

1. It is designed to interface well with a self-hosted WordPress installation. Setting up the blog connection is as easy as adding the URL, name and password for your blog.

2. It’s easy to add links, though the app needs to paste any URLs on the clipboard into the URL box. A small thing, yes, but a real time saver.

3. It is generally easy to add and manipulate photos and videos. There needs to be an easy way to resize a photo to a specific width, etc.

4. Categories and tags are supported.

5. I think it would be easy to create time saving templates. When it comes to adding content and media, the app is very powerful.

Adding photos is as easy as a drag and drop, or you can browse through the included media browser to find media on your Mac.

Adding YouTube videos is even easier. Paste the iframe code into your post, and MacJournal does the rest. This is very handy.

You can also record audio and video entries right from the app.

You can quickly import audio and video files from your Mac.

The bad:

notresp

This happens a lot. It’s a deal stopper for me. The problems seem to arise mostly when I try to publish a media-rich blog post. Problems also arise when I try to open an existing unpublished entry to edit it.

Forever loading. Loading. Forever.

I was never able to successfully publish a media rich blog post via MacJournal. My initial test post, containing just a photo and a YouTube video published quickly and easily, and looked great. I could even edit it and republish it. After that, when I tried to do a full post, with a photo, a YouTube video, several links and a short voice recording, nothing. Just this.

nopublish

There are some quirks in the editing window (the cursor jumps to the top when you try to resize an image below the fold; I don’t see an easy way to make links open in a new tab or window, etc.), but those are minor annoyances that don’t outweigh the app’s obvious potential. That is, if you could actually post to your blog.

Granted, I am focusing on one aspect of what is, essentially, a journaling app. But that is the one feature I want, and the only reason I would pay $30 (wow) for the app.

The local journaling features may work fine, but as a blogging app, MacJournal is frustrating, to say the least, and possibly broken (if these issues I am experiencing are widespread; I hope they are not). The lockups and inability to open an existing entry are huge problems. The worst part is that MacJournal clearly has a ton of potential. But for now its greatest potential is to frustrate those looking for a native Mac app to replace Live Writer.

Hopefully someone will create a decent Mac blogging app at some point. I need to get Windows off of my iMac. Soon.

2012 Houston Kids Triathlon

Delaney and Luke competed in the inaugural Houston Kids Triathlon at the University of Houston last weekend. It was the largest kids triathlon in Houston history.

Delaney finished second, adding another medal and trophy to her immense hardware collection.

dgn

Luke finished 13th, in only his second triathlon.

len

It’s really cool watching a thousand kids swimming, biking and running early in the morning. Big fun.

GoodSongs: Anne McCue

Anne McCue rocks out a great Neil Young cover.

Yep.

More.

GoodSongs: New Wrinkle Neck Mules

Anyone who reads this blog or knows me in the semi-real world knows that I frickin’ love The Wrinkle Neck Mules.

Somehow, though, I managed to totally miss their new record, Apprentice to Ghosts, released back in February. Fortunately, the excellent music blog Twangville alerted me to this ear-pleasing development.

Sadly, I don’t see the record on Spotify. It’s available via Amazon, via Google Play or via iTunes. Look for a review shortly.

Must See Video: The Visual Style of The Wire

Everyone knows The Wire is the best show in the history of television. It’s so good, I wish I could erase my memories of it so I could have the pleasure of watching it again for the first time. Since I can’t do that, unexpected pleasures like this video essay on the visual style of the show are a real treat.

omar

Here’s Erlend Lavik, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media studies at Norway’s University of Bergen, discussing some of the techniques used in framing and filming our favorite show.

And for those stubborn few who deny themselves the pleasure of the best show ever, the montage that ended Season 2.

Awesome.

(via A.V. Club)

Happy Easter, Aliens and a Punkin in the Pulpit

The single best thing about the internets is the way it lets creative people show their work to just about anyone, anywhere, any time. I love the clever remixes and mash-ups that come across my computer screen on a daily basis.

Have you ever wondered what if Alien was an Easter movie? Me neither, but happily someone did.