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I am growing to love Quicksilver, which seems to be a religion among some Mac users. I've not yet reached disciple status, but I am finding it very handy. If I could make it search my mail, I would probably never open Spotlight.
That being said, I've only used it for a week or so, and while trying to figure out how exactly I could search through my mail, I accidentally used the "Open All Unread Mail" option. To say the least, hilarity ensued.
The following is an AIM conversation which took place about 10 minutes ago. Notice my friend Jeremy's perfectly inappropriate timing.
Jeremy
You there?
Me
Yeah
Jeremy
I heard what you were thinking just now.
Normally I'd have guessed "Buh"
But not today.
Me
And what was I thinking?
Jeremy
"I need a dog, or know someone who does."
Me
Are you kidding?
Jeremy
I am not.
My Dad is in Branson this weekend
and he found a puppy on the side of the road
Border Collie Mix, ten weeks old
BEAUTIFUL dog, great personality
Me
Jeremy, let me tell you a little story.
A good friend of mine recently moved back to England, and asked that I watch his dog before it went to live on a farm in the country.
So I have this BEAUTIFUL dog, great personality, etc.
The person on the farm never agreed to take said dog.
So we're trying to find a home for a dog at the moment.
About an hour and a half ago, this temporary dog BROKE MY BEDROOM WINDOW.
I just spent 20 minutes vacuuming glass out of my bed.
So I'm actually not looking for any dogs at the moment.
But your timing was hilariously perfect.
Pics of the broken window to come soon.
This was a brief message I sent to Threadless.com during their $10 sale, which ended yesterday:
Hey guys - your XXL link off the home page doesn't work and hasn't for some time. Where's the love for the husky guys?
Thanks,
Steven W. Merrill
Portly Fan
Threadless.com to me in reply:
Digg API Contest Finalist: A mobile interface for Digg in FlashLite 2.x. DiggMob displays the popular stories from a category, allows reading the teaser, and can direct the phone browser to the full article. Preferences are saved to the phone for easy entrance after the first run. By: Brian McMurray (bmcmurray)
Now that I'm in the Top 10 it's up to the users to vote for their favorites by digging the article until May 31!
I have just submitted my application for the Digg API Contest: diggMob
diggMob is a FlashLite 2.x program which allows those of us with capable cellphones to feed our Digg.com addictions. Now you can get the most popular articles from most of the main Digg categories while on the go.
http://www.brianmcmurray.com/diggmob/ - That's Brian McMurray's Flash Lite Digg application. Digg it, and help him win Fabulous Prizes?!
The last few weeks have been quite busy for me with wedding planning, work, and my final semester of school ramping up for the death star trench run of projects and finals. I did, however, find some time last week to create this new web app: an online RSVP system so that all of the guests we are inviting can quickly and easily tell us whether or not they'll be attending. Sure, I could have just sent self-addressed and stamped return envelopes with our invitations, but where's the fun in that?
I read dealnews.com, an excellent deal tracking site. Although their posts are normally rather dry - "this deal is $20 less than we've ever seen it," they slip in some hilarious bits from time to time, as in this posting today. (Emphasis mine.)
The Boston Globe reports that by the end of this year, all courses at MIT will be available online for free. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT OpenCourseWare program provides coursework for all 35 departments, including Architecture, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and more. Over 1,500 of the 1,800 total courses are available now. Upgrading to full tuition costs about $46,000 more.
I am a huge fan of content management systems, especially the Drupal system, and have used a number of other systems, including WordPress and phpWebsite. (I've commented on my thoughts on Drupal v. WordPress before.) Content managed solutions seem like the best website solutions hands-down. Designs can be dropped in and out relatively easily, data is held in a database for easy backup, and new features and plug-ins can be added or removed easily.
In the past, most of my development of CMS-powered sites has been for myself. Recently, though, I've been developing a number of sites for Joe Common; regular business people who don't know HTML, don't know the Web, and in some cases, hardly know how to use their computers. Obviously, the biggest power of the CMS is the ability to make it extremely user-friendly, with WYSIWYG editors, simple menus, training sessions, training manuals, category-driven content, and automating as much of the process as possible. And despite all this, things still get messed up. Sometimes the most bizarre of problems appear. It is amazing what can happen when non-technical people start tinkering with technical things.
This really hasn't become a big issue, but it seems like it could easily become a big problem. It seems to me that most businesses are moving toward these types of systems and putting non-technical employees in charge of these highly technical systems since companies decided that it is too expensive to pay a company to maintain a website or to have an internal web development team.
So where is the system really failing? Is it because CMS systems are still too complicated for users? Is it that the wrong people are being put in charge of caring for these systems? (It certainly isn't that these people aren't smart or aren't skilled; their expertise simply isn't in the Web. You wouldn't put your plumber in charge of maintaining your automobile, would you?) Or are businesses in general the problem because they have been convinced by the news media's coverage of the "Web 2.0 Revolution" that anyone and everyone is an expert when it comes to the Web and there's no value in paying someone trained in the Web to build and maintain a website?
Borrowing my title from a great song by Motion City Soundtrack, I thought I'd borrow my theme for this post from my friend Chad who has been doing a series on what he's looking forward to in 2007.
2007 is a huge year for me. I don't mean "burrito as big as your head" huge, but "milky way galaxy" huge. I don't have a particularly long list of things happening or that I'm looking forward to, but the events in my future are big...at least to me anyway. I imagine to most of you these won't seem so huge or impacting or really all that pertinent to you, but it's my blag so I'll write what I feel like. It reminds me of the horribly dumb, but at the same time philosophical ending to Men in Black II, when K opens the door and reveals everything we call existence and the universe to exist in the miniture to a much larger world just outside a door.
I'm looking forward to getting married this July to the most wonderful woman in the whole world. Abigail and I met on the first day of classes Freshman year at Bradley University and have been inseperable friends ever since. We've had our rough spots like any relationship, but we've persevered and worked through it together. The last three and a half years have been the best of my life, though I know the next however-many-until-I-die will be even better.
Speaking of the last three and a half years, I'm looking forward to graduating from the Multimedia Program at Bradley University in May. The Program has changed a ton in the last three years since my friend and mentor, Jim Ferolo, joined as the head of the program and turned it around for the better. In some regards I almost wish that I could start over again now, yet at the same time I absolutely cannot wait to be done with school.
Being done with school means that I can start up full-time with my job at The Iona Group, in Morton, Illinois. I've been interning at Iona since May 2006 and was offered a position as an Applications Systems Analyst in mid-December (two days after I proposed to Abigail, actually) for when I graduate. I really love working at Iona Group; the atmosphere there is awesome; I have some great friends there; and, I love what I get to do there.
On top of all of these big things, Abigail and I are also shopping for our first home. We want at least two bedrooms and renting a nice apartment in a neighborhood we like that's close to ammenities we've found to be pretty expensive. On top of that, I've discovered that Peoria has a down payment assistance program for first time home buyers, and Abigail and I should qualify for that. So we're looking for a house that will cost us the same or less than what renting was going to cost us anyway.
