The new facebook comments should be up and running on this site. Oddly though - I had to tack on "www." at the beginning of the domain or there was an error message. Why? I have no idea.

Expect me to post several comments on here in a few moments. Just to give it a whirl

I like to play a little game. I call it...

Count Down to Green

Here's what you do.

• As your driving up to a red light, start counting down from 5 ( you can make it 6 or 7 if you like ). 
• Make sure to count calmly, so that it's a real second, not a pretend second.
• By the time you hit 0 the light will turn green. 

Will it? Really?

Maybe. It works all the time for me. And every time it reminds me that I'm still at the steering wheel of my own life.

I've never been one for sitting down and making a list of things I want to accomplish. Reason being - 3 days in, the list has already changed. 

Originally my resolute friends said my lists were too generic like: "more exercise, eat healthier food, blog more"

These were not concrete enough.

The next year my list was "Go for 20 minute walks every lunch hour; have carrots for dinner on thursdays; blog Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays". I heard a resolving "yes" from my friends. 

But then... I got bored. 

I like to call myself an ebb-and-flow-kinda-guy. Routine and I don't really get along. So, you could imagine that these regiments didn't make it past the first week. 

So now - I come up with a theme.  Think of it like a musical score - and every scene I'm in, you can hear a Baritone Saxophone melody.

Here's some examples

• I've had "Fire" to put some urgency in my life
• I've done the "Snake" to help me shed some things ( snake skin, get it? )
• I've used "Earth" to find solid ground.

Think you've got it?

So what am I going to do this year? 

I'm thinking either a "Stereo Speaker" or a "Care Bear".

Can you figure out why?

On The Bus.

Between Wiretap and Six Pixels I eavesdrop on two effeminate boys talking brawl in the "old days."

"We are the only generation where kids after us are tamer," the one with the heavier lisp crosses his legs tightly.

The emo pierced boy agrees and flails his hands in theatrical-like motion "Oh no!. You're going to tweet this!" He mocks his imaginary aggressor with high pitched squeals.

The continue to lament the feud of Sooke & Langford as if they were from the House of Capulet

I was listening to Six Pixels of Separation #221, and then read Mitch's 7 Things That Blogging Does - and then something connected with me. Something I realized that slips through the cracks every so often.

Blogging = Exhaust Valve. A great Blog is great because the Blogger actually cares and loves to create content. If it's forced, if it's your "job," then the passion rarely comes through. The biggest lesson I have learned in my seven years of Blogging is that this Blog is my exhaust valve. After working a full day with clients and their many challenges, this Blog is my playground. It's the place where I can let off some textual steam. Make your Blog your exhaust valve. Caution: be careful that you're not Blogging simply to blow off angry steam. The steam and exhaust I am talking about is the pent up energy of passion that I have from doing what I love to do.

When life's little pressures build up I shut down. What I should be doing is the exact opposite. I should write more. I should be free writing and puking up all that crap in the exhaust system, and putting it down on paper ( digital or other wise ).

But why don't I?

Maybe it's something about conservation of words. This idea that a word not seen by the outside world is a wasted jewel. But then again, am I really that arrogant and cocky?... don't answer.

Not a resolution

I have said many times in the past that I vow to change. But this isn't a resolution or promise to myself. It's more an interesting observation.

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Thanks to @SeanToohey & @gawker for adding to my library of meditation tracks. I wonder if @somafm could add it to their Drone Zone channel?

Here's something to consider about Facebook fan pages. According to The Montreal Gazette, Canada has only 334 fans. But in taking a look at Government fan pages for Canada, which one do you follow?

• The one from the article (334)?
• This one (2780)?
• Maybe this one suites your fancy (210)?
• Probably not this one (16)

While all of them say they are "government" which one is really the government? There is no ownership info; no info what-so-ever.

I'm reminded a little of Seth Godin's Tribes, before you start raging ahead of the pack to lead, do a quick search to make sure someone else hasn't already started.  And, if they have, just click "like"

I've been playing with XML & XSLT on and off for 6 years. I've toyed with parser scripts. I think, at some point, I even wasted a few days making an ant compiler to generate a static site for a client of mine... but that's as far as it went.

Recently, I decided to play again and set up an experimental playground over at ethernick.com. What's fun about it ( "there's no place like 127.0.0.1" kinda fun ), is that it's all XML. Right now, there isn't a single html page. I've parsed out RSS & RDF, plus i've even applied XSLT to a quasi-HTML index page. But don't let the letters fool you, it's not HTML.

What caught my eye, was that although the very first page is ".xml" and it uses XML doctypes and XSLT calls, Google decided to index it as if it where HTML. So I added a fake

What I ended up thinking is - if Google sees something else, is this a potential hole for scamming? Here's the story I play out in my mind:

Say I work for a seedy business. And at that business my job is to lure unsuspecting people to see my site. These unsuspecting people may be even be fooled to click on a link or two. And while people are clicking away to unauthorized sites and scammy links, Google doesn't see any of it. They are unsuspecting, because to them, it's a little page with a couple of paragraphs.

Now...I admit this isn't fully thought out. I admit that there are holes. I'm wondering, in real world practicality, why would someone make a page for real-estate, and then show them porn. It's more of a surprise factor than anything. So, is it really a problem after all?

I don't know. But I guess that's why it's an experiment. I guess the discussion is open.

I've been on a bit of an upgrade kick recently. Part of it is my small fascination with Empire Avenue, and part of it has been the new found time since completing school. I'm sure there is also a part that what is "just because". All-in-all, here's what I've done

RSS Tweaking

The first big change I did was changing up my RSS. Since I'm using my RSS on @EmpireAvenue I noticed the duplication of twitter feeds. And since most of my social networks include a twitter import, I figured, why repeat? So I am filtering our all my tweets from the RSS. And for those that are using RSS to follow me, sorry, but you're just going to have to watch my on @ethernick

Eavify

A great little jquery plugin from Olivier which converts ( e )OL into (e)OL.

Formspring.me

I've been wondering about the uses of formspring.me. I've got an account, but don't promote or use it much. And since Facebook Questions is taking forever, I figured why not put a little weight behind it. And while I'm at it, make a Storytlr plugin for it! So It did.

Github

And since I was promoting my plugin to Github, it occurred to me that I need to add that feed to my site as well. So ,thanks to John's diligent Stortlr plugin wrangling, I found one already made.

With Twitter making the big change to dump basic authentication, it looks like if you pass a username and password through curl, then you'll be getting a 401.

So What do you do?

Well, I changed 2 things to ensure I fall inline with the api:

1. Change the fetch domain in TwitterModel.php (Line:96)
   was:

   $url  = "http://twitter.com/status...

   
   change to:

   $url  = "http://api.twitter.com/1/status...

2. Comment out the curl username and password (Line:92)

I've just added @Anywhere to this site.  It's was relatively easy. Here's what I did.

1. Signed up

First things first, you need to goto @Anywhere and sign up. Add your application name and webiste details. It's pretty straight forward. From there they give you a code to copy and paste

2. Updated default.phtml

I opened protected/application/public/views/layouts/default.phtml and pasted the code I got into the <head>

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/anywhere.js?
id=<YOUR ID GOES HERE>&amp;v=1">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
   twttr.anywhere(function(twitter) {
            twitter.hovercards();
   });
</script>

3. Updated Timeline/view.phtml

As an added bonus, I figured that if I were to get a comment on a tweet through my site, then it should go through twitter. Makes sense, yes? So I added this little snippet into protected/application/public/views/scripts/timeline/view.phtml.

if ($this->item->getType()=="status") : ?>
 <div id="tbox"></div> 
 <script type="text/javascript">
 twttr.anywhere(function (T) {

 T("#tbox").tweetBox({
   label: "Your thoughts?",
   height: 100,
   width: 400,
   defaultContent: "@ethernick "
 });
});
 </script>

I inserted it just below

echo "<div class='date' id='".date("YMj", $timestamp)."'>$date
</div>";

echo $this->partial('timeline/item.phtml', array('item' => $item, 
   'admin' => $this->admin, 'model' => $this->model, 
   'disqus' => $this->disqus, 'googlefc' => 
   $this->googlefc));

And Blam-o!

Roll over these to see the hovercards: @ethernick @breakingthedial

Or if you want, checkout one of my tweets to see the tweetbox in action

I was given the task of making a manifeto for class.  There was one that fell under the guidlines, and one that didn't.  One that I wanted, and one that I didn't.  This is the one that I didn't hand in, but the one I'll use, just for me. 

1. The Same Rules Apply. New Technology isn't a mystery, just a new medium. The same rules for interacting with people in the 19th century still apply. 
2. Dig for the root. Don't take anything at face value. Always ask "why" or "where it came from". If you can't ask any further, then ask someone else.
3. Nothing is new. Recognize that. Respect that.
4. When you understand, you can overlook the details. Having a foundational understanding of why something is, will help you figure out the details later.
5. Details are what set you apart. Everyone can have the same message, but what makes you stand out, are how you say it & more importantly why you say it.
6. The most important words, are in the spaces. Between every word, your true nature slips out.
7. Be a Tumbleweed. Learn to roll with things and look forward. Let the wind cary you, and don't say no to the experience. 
8. Improv Rules. In the world of improvisation, the fastest way to kill a scene is to say "no".
9. When a baby falls down, it doesn't get embarrassed. And neither should you. Mistakes are a fact of life, and when it happens, move on.
10. If you show your skeletons, no one else can. Don't be afraid of the past, show it with pride. Even more, show that you've learned from it. 
11. Sometimes the only one who knows there was a mistake is you. There are countless Jazz albums where a musician makes a mistake. To the average listener, they don't hear it.  To the trained listener, it adds wonder and flavor.
12. Sharing is caring. Keep sharing with people. Wether it's one person or a thousand people. Wether they share alike, wether they recognize you or not, they will always remember where they got something from. So will you.
13. If you wouldn't say it in a crowd, don't say it. Online or over the airwaves, if your instinct is to whisper, or look over your shoulder, you are not the one who should be talking about it.
14. Someone else can always say it better. Look for them. Give them the recognition they deserve.
15. Shake hands and kiss babies. In everything you do, if you take the extra time to recognize someone, that charity will always come back. Do it wether you are on the clock or not.
16. You have two ears and one mouth. Always listen twice as much as you talk.
17. If you have nothing important to say, don't say anything. If you can't contribute to the conversation simply share the conversation. See Sharing is caring.
18. Land it. Everything needs to have a point. Everything needs to have a solid ending.  And if you get lost...babies fall down.
19. When all else fails go back to the basics. It's good to try new things, but when they don't pan out, keep it simple.
20. Less is more.

You may have noticed the zootool, dailybooth and vi.sualize.us plugins on my site.

With the help of SimplePie, I made them myself. 

Thanks to the request of John, I've put them up on github for all to use and download.  I'm no code monster, but I can hack away.

Feel free to use and improve them.

When I looked at Storytlr, the key was that I could make my own plugins. Which, I've done with my vi.sualize.us and dailybooth add on's (I'll share them later). But, I had to make some changes.

First, storytlr uses the zend framework, something that's still a little foreign to me. So I needed to add a library that I could work with.

Enter SimplePie

It's relatively easy to impliment. But there were a couple hiccups along the way.

1. Download SimplePie 1.1.3
   note: don't install 1.2 because for some reason, it will end up repeating the same posts over and over and over.
2. Rename simplepie.inc to SimplePie.php
   note: some servers are case sensitive so make sure of naming
3. Drop SimplePie.php into ./protected/library
4. Edit ./protected/application/Bootstrap.php
   

   113:	error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_STRICT);
   

   
   note: if you don't then your log file will be bombarded with php strict errors that are just clutter
5. Edit ./protected/config/config.ini
   

   31:	debug = 0
   

   
   note: your could keep debug on (debug = 1) but then others will see all the little errors on your site when something goes wrong.

Now SimplePie is a free for all to use

	private function loadFeed($url) {
		$feed = new SimplePie();
		$feed->set_feed_url($url);
		$feed->enable_cache(false);
		$feed->init();
		$feed->handle_content_type();
		
		return $feed;
	}