Author: dave Page 4 of 75

“Was that two years ago or 20 years ago?”

That’s what my cousin asked me when I was raising an anecdote of some kind that had happened to “just a couple of years ago.”

When I thought about it, I realized that in fact, the event was a lot closer to 20 years ago than two.

I’m sure it’s a function of getting older. After all, the scope of our memories has grown a lot, and what used to take up a big chunk of our life (like a school year, for example) now passes by in the blink of an eye.

I’ve come to think of my brain as a vessel that can only hold so much memory. And my long-term memory is pushing my short-term memory right out. That’s a good an explanation as anything else I can come up with for why I can remember what happened to me during my trip to Europe in 1978, but I struggle to remember why I walked into the kitchen just now.

All of the above is a long-winded way to admit that while its been a long, long time since this blog was updated, I hadn’t actually noticed.

Today, I’m attending WordCamp Victoria 2012 and it’s been fun to listen to lots of people talk about why WordPress is important to them and along the way, there’s been a lot of talk about blogging.

Ironically, The Daily Upload is not a WordPress blog. It’s on Blogger, where I started it almost eight years ago.

But I’ve been doing a lot of work with WordPress over the last year or two and I like it a lot. In fact, I’ve got a new version of davetraynor.com in the works. And that’s a good thing, because I first built that site almost 12 years ago – and a lot of the copy there dates from then. Well overdue for an overhaul.

I started building websites years ago, long before we had content management systems like WordPress, or Drupal, or others. I learned HTML and I still build, maintain and work on old-fashioned “static” sites, like this one or this one. But now I’ve switched to WordPress builds, like this.

OK…I think I’ve purged enough for today. It feels good to put a post together, and now that I’ve told you about the new website that’s coming, it’s time to stop procrastinating and get it done.

Thanks for listening.

While doing some research for a new project I’m working on, I came across this infographic of how to make money on the internet.

Everybody wants to make money, right? So right off the bat, the author has come up with a clever way to draw eyeballs and potential customers to his content.

But the question, “How do I make money on the Internet?” is complex and can cover a lot of issues. I wouldn’t recommend trying most of the things mentioned in the Google page I’ve linked to. Trying to answer that question in a blog post, or sum it up in a podcast isn’t the easiest thing to do. The answers are also subjective and prone to error, since the reality is most of us aren’t making tons of money off the Internet. But we’ll probably be happy to give someone our opinions on how it could be done.

So, back to the infographic. (Here’s a good explanation of what it is.) It’s called The Ultimate Cash Flow Flowchart and I found it on the Fast Company website, where it was posted last year. I’ve also seen it recommended on a lot of different websites.

Take your time looking it over and following the flow. It starts off with a satirical tone, but it moves into a clever and accurate description of ways that people (and companies) are making money.

What about you? Do you have a favourite example of an effective infographic? Feel free to pass it along in the comments and give yourself a warm glow for helping with my research.

I’ve always liked panoramas when I’m making photographs. Thanks to apps like AutoStitch for my iPhone, it’s become pretty easy to shoot impressive panorama’s with a minimum of effort. Like the one below, which I shot on our holiday in Saskatchewan last month.

Of course, shooting with an iPhone is nowhere near the quality that I can get with my Nikon. And when you combine a digital SLR with a sturdy tripod, add in a bit of Photoshop processing and a really cool location, like Bagan, Burma, you’ll come up with an amazing panorama shot like the one that Ben Wilmore has done.

He stitched together 14 different images into an amazing single panorama, then turned the image into a movie and posted it to YouTube. The result is a very impressive panorama that seems to go on forever.

The race for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential nomination is heating up across the border. Like many of my friends, I’ve been amused (and amazed) at the kinds of things that become campaign fodder in that party. Tea party politics, gay rights, big government, big hair – Canadians like to mock the discussion.But it’s disconcerting to see how crazy, ugly and scary things are getting in the US. For example, consider an article in this month’s Rolling Stone, Michelle Bachmann’s Holy War. The congresswoman is running for president and you won’t believe the back story.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don’t laugh.It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children’s show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing “launch” instead of “lunch” inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.

The profile painted by writer Matt Taibbi is, to say the least, unflattering. But as he notes, don’t make the mistake of dismissing her because she’s so clearly deluded. Each time her opponents have done that, it’s only made her stronger.

In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you’ve always got a puncher’s chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she’s living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she’s built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.

This is the dark side of where our world is headed. No longer do political leaders need to be concerned with truth, or even reality. Get prepared for a Presidential campaign that is going to set new standards for what is considered fair game. And the crazier the better, it appears. Nothing is too outlandish. It’s going to be quite a show. Taibbi’s profile of Bachmann will be dismissed by her supporters, who will merely note how by attacking her, he’s only proving her point. And perhaps that’s the scariest part of this. We’ve arrived at the point where any serious debate about the truth is not possible. The polarization seems complete and there doesn’t appear to be any way to have a rational discussion – at least in public. But as the article concludes, those who call Bachmann nuts and want to laugh off her outrageous untruths and outright lies had better be careful.

It could happen. Michele Bachmann has found the flaw in the American Death Star. She is a television camera’s dream, a threat to do or say something insane at any time, the ultimate reality-show protagonist. She has brilliantly piloted a media system that is incapable of averting its eyes from a story, riding that attention to an easy conquest of an overeducated cultural elite from both parties that is far too full of itself to understand the price of its contemptuous laughter. All of those people out there aren’t voting for Michele Bachmann. They’re voting against us. And to them, it turns out, we suck enough to make anyone a contender.

– Link to the whole article here

I had heard about this. But I didn’t really see what the big deal was. And I sure never thought I’d get it. But it happened.I’ve got Bieber Fever.Today, on the flight to Toronto, (I’m on my way to the CPRS conference in Saint John) I watched Never Say Never, a documentary about this kid from Stratford and his incredible journey to playing a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York. It’s quite a story. I’d heard some of it of course. Anyone who spends any time in the social media world has heard of Justin Bieber. But I didn’t know his music or much of the story. It’s a great story. The documentary is well done, marching us through the short arc of his career – heck, he’s only 16 years old. But I loved the movie. I like old musicals and this is a take-off on that genre. We see the live shows, and meet all the backstage characters while we move towards the big night – the MSG gig. There are no surprises here. But the passion is real and we see a lot of talent at work.It’s interesting because we see plenty of footage from Justin’s early years thanks to YouTube clips. Most of his career has been captured on video and it’s fascinating to watch the evolution. He’s lived a lot of his life in front of a camera but unlike child actors, a lot of this stuff is raw and unscripted. You feel like you’re often seeing the real thing – not a performance. The truth is, I like the story, the music and the film. It’s a well done feel good story and that’s the way I feel.Enough already. I’ve got Bieber Fever. What more do I need to say? I think you’ll like this movie. I sure did.