blog one another

Stolen Laptop: Prevention and recovery

Photo by Arenamontanus (license)

This is Part 3 of a series on my stolen laptop.

As I look back on the theft of my laptop from my car, I realize there are things I could have been done to prevent the laptop from being stolen. I also learned that there are steps you can take in advance to attempt to recover your laptop after it has been stolen.

This begins the "practical" part of this series, and I hope you will find it helpful. But I am also writing for myself, so that I can think it through and learn from my mistakes, and from your recommendations.

Hey subscribers!

If you subscribe to blog one another, thank you! I'll get back to you in a second; hang on.

If you don't know what it means to "subscribe to a blog," here's a quick explanation: Perhaps you read this blog by clicking on a link you've saved somewhere, say as a bookmark in your browser. You click, and take a look to see if anything new has been posted. Save yourself the trouble! By subscribing, you make computers do the work for you, and a program will tell you when there's something new. This can even be done by email, so when I write something new, you'll see it in your inbox!

Back to the subscribers: I have a request for you RSS subscribers. (Email subscribers, I have a request for you at the end.) The mighty Google tells me that some of you are using old addresses for the RSS feed.

A good chunk of you use:

http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/atom.xml

A group of you use:

http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/index.rdf

A handful of you use:

http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/rss.xml

Would you take a minute and do me a quick favor? Please check your news reader (whether that is Google Feedfetcher, Bloglines, or whatever) and make sure that you are using the following address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlogOneAnother

That would help me have a clearer picture of how many of you there are. FeedBurner also helps with some traffic analysis. (Don't worry, I don't see any personal information: see my privacy policy if you have any concerns.) Thanks for updating your new readers with that address.

Finally, whether you subscribe by RSS, subscribe by email, or come here manually, I have a final request: Would you pass this blog on to a couple of people who you think might appreciate it? TIA, thanks in advance.

Blog design changes

Thank you for reading blog one another. I hope the renewed energy I am putting into writing is proving helpful. Well at least, I'm having fun! Today I want to point out some design changes I have made to this blog:

I changed the overall theme to make it easier to read the home page or any pages containing multiple postings: The text is tighter so you don't have to scroll as much, and the titles "pop" so you scan them more easily.

Did you notice the new navigation bar along the top? It explicitly lists pages that were previously kind of hard to find:

Home

is an easy way to get back to the home page.

About

takes you to my revamped "About" page. Check it out even if you know me well.

Archives

is any easy way to see two lists of all my posts, one by date and one by category.

Subscribe

takes you to a brand-new page describing two ways you can subscribe to blog one another. Not one, but two! Some of you may even want both.

Erin sez

"What's a pager?"

New genres of Songsmith art

On the heels of my previous Songsmith post:

The creators of Songsmith could not have imagined the novel ways their program might be applied to create new forms of art! Doing a search on YouTube reveals a growing number of entertaining music videos. But here's a new twist: What happens if you generate notes from stock charts?

Fun with Songsmith

Found on Slashdot: Microsoft has come out with a new music program called Songsmith. All you do is set the tempo, and sing, and it comes up with a chord progression in the accompaniment style of your choice!

After watching the engaging infomercial, I had to download it and give it a try. The results are curious, but it really does try to match your pitch, whatever it is. And so I give you my new composition, Feel the Beat! (Apologies to Strongbad.)

Songsmith is being relentlessly mocked, but I have to admit, it's kind of fun. The demo lasts only six hours, though -- an awfully short time-bomb. I wonder how much it costs? No, no, I'm not going there.

And thanks to Internet culture, a new category of music is born. Check out this new version of Tom Sawyer by Rush. Oh, oh, and White Wedding by Billy Idol!

Calibrating your battery (and your spirit)

The battery on my MacBook Pro is probably getting a bit old. The main problem is that the "time remaining" estimate was way off. Following Apple's description of how to calibrate the battery, I let it drain until it was practically empty (1 minute left), then shut down my computer and left it alone for five hours.

Sure, I could have left it overnight. But I did it during the day as an experiment, a kind of fast. I have to say, it's not as uncomfortable as a food fast, but the benefits are still noticeable. It comes right when I am making a conscious effort to remain calm about not hearing back from Google. I meditated on Psalm 27. I worked out. I took a nap. I picked up my kids from their schools (the ones that aren't sick, anyway).

So I see the benefits of fasting from technology. But technology may not be the thing you lean on for comfort. As followers of Christ (and as faith communities), we can probably stand to increase our "fasting vocabulary."

I think I have achieved zen detachment from the need to get this job.
God, that means I'm ready for you to give me this job already!

Update: Maybe the battery is hosed. It didn't quite get to fully charged, then the magsafe connector started flashing back and forth between green (charged) and amber (charging). Running on a supposedly nearly full battery, it says I have one hour of battery time. Well, maybe that means the estimate is more accurate.

Facebook status feed

Would you like to share your Facebook status updates outside of Facebook?

By accessing your Facebook status as an RSS feed, you can put add it as a little box on your blog. Your status then acts like a micro-blog, providing miniature snapshots of your activities or state of mind.

And (if your mother isn't on Facebook) you can even set up the feed in Mom's web browser so she can keep up …without having to be overwhelmed by the rest of Facebook!

Facebook status for 1 month

One of the things I enjoy about Facebook is the status updates. Twitter started it, I suppose, but you can think of it as micro-blogging: one-line updates about your activities or mood. So for you non-Facebook people, here's a snapshot of my past month. Well, more like a sequence of snapshots. Like a flip-book.

Gas prices are changing our lifestyle

The kids are back in school, and that means Kay is back in driving mode. As I learned from first-hand experience, she does a lot more driving than I.

So as much as she loves her Odyssey and I my Prius, we have swapped cars in order to save money. Yes, the rising cost of gas is leading to lifestyle changes.

I still have trouble parking the minivan in the garage at work. But Kay seems to have adjusted quite easily, mocking the large trucks and SUVs in the pick-up lines at each school with the gusto of a seasoned Pious driver!