IceWolf's Ramblings

How did Google Come to Rule The Toobz?

Alex — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:30:29 +0000

I have been wondering why my GFC (Google Friends Connect) widget has been showing up as a blank box on my blog and frankly I thought that it was some issue on my end that broke it. Turns out, and I am sure that I am probably the last person to hear this, that Google discontinued service for GFC if you don’t have a Blogger blog.

Ummm hello?!

Google, you have all my contact information. You probably have more information about me than any other online service and you couldn’t send out a little email that said that you were discontinuing the service? You sent me all sorts of information about shutting down Wave, but GFC, which I used all the time and lots of my friends used, nothing. Screw you Google, why did you leave me high and dry on this one, the useful service, and give me lots of info about the crappy service?

The real problem is that it was actually a great service that allowed those of use self-hosters to connect with the rest of the blogging community in a very simple and easy way. Google, you are good at making useful things. NOw they tell me to use Google+ and make a page and put a widget, so I did, but there is no way for me to get my list of followers back. Why should I use you? Well, I set it up just in case.

Then I searched the netz and found a new service, Linky Followers. This is a new follow service that is completely platform independent, so you can put it on your blogger blog, or wordpress.com, or wordpress.org, or basically any other blog/CMS out there. Of course it is pretty new and it seems to still be in Beta, but I think it has a lot of promise. Plus it is not affiliated with Google, or Facebook, or a Facebook App, or anything like that.

So, for now, I have included a couple different ways to follow me again, and I hope that some of you will take a moment to re-follow me if you are still interested. Pick the service of your choice, but give some serious consideration to using the Linky Followers as I have a feeling that it will have the most longevity of any of them.

Icewolf's Ramblings by Alexander Weisman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://icewolf08.com/contact-me/.

The Geocaching Adventure

Alex — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:07:07 +0000

You may have noticed today that I added a page to my blog called “Geocaching Profile” (under the about tab). You may be asking what this is. So I figured that I should tell you.

For those who have not heard of Geocaching, it is a global GPS “treasure hunt” where people hide caches around the world and post GPS coordinates online so that other people can find them. A “regular” cache usually is a watertight plastic container or a .30 or .50-cal ammo can. A cache always contains some kind of logbook and trade items. Most of the time trade items are simple things like lapel pins happy-meal type toys, and other small nick-nacks. Some people also hide larger and smaller caches from 5-gallon buckets to tiny “nano” caches that only contain a small log sheet.

The official Geocaching website is Geocaching.com, but there are a couple other sites that have popped up like Opencaching or even Munzee, which is an odd derivative that involves using your smartphone to scan QR-codes. Geocaching is by far the most widely used of the services. Cachers can visit the website and get information and coordinates for the caches they want to look for, and you can even load this information on to your GPS or smartphone so that you can take it with you and not have to print things out. The geocaching motto is “Get out and play!”

What does this have to do with me? Well, I was introduced to geocaching by my father back when I was in college. I did a little bit of caching with my friends while in school, and then it kind of fell by the wayside despite the fact that the old GPS unit that my dad had “loaned” me was riding around in the back of my car for years. Then, for my birthday this year my in-laws gave me a new GPS unit that makes caching really easy, and it re-sparked the flame to go out and do it. So, pretty much since my birthday this year I have been trying to get out every day and find at least one cache. As of this writing I have a string of 54 days with finds. I don’t know if I will ever be able to put together a streak of finds that is longer than the 2115 days of slump, but that isn’t really the point.

What is the point? Well, it really is just to get outside and have some fun, which I certainly have been doing. There are some challenges that cachers can complete. Some caches require you to solve puzzles or complete challenges in order to find and log the cache. Basically the game is based around goals that you set for yourself. There really aren’t any big prizes, no one can win the game. I suppose if you found all of the millions of caches around the world you could say you won, but there are new caches every day. For me it is just something fun to do.

“Socialpunk” a deeper look

Alex — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 19:54:35 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, I was asked to read and review Socialpunk, a new novel by Monica Leonelle. After reading the first 10 chapters in the preview, I anxiously waited to receive my copy of the full text. Thankfully it arrived in my inbox early enough last Thursday for me to load it on my Kindle before leaving for the airport to head to Boston. I just want to give fair warning that the following review may contain spoilers and plot points, so if you don’t like that kind of thing, be aware.

Had I not fallen asleep for the first hour or so of the flight, I probably would have finished the book on the plane. This is huge change of reading pace from Game of Thrones, which I have been making way through (I am in the middle of book five). I suppose my reading speed didn’t really change, so much as the length of Socialpunk is much shorter.

Socialpunk was a fun read, I didn’t want to put the book down while I was in the middle of it. I haven’t read any ”cyberpunk” style books before (that I can think of off the top of my head), but I did enjoy this one. It seems to me to be a fairly traditional, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi novel and love story. I can see a lot of parallels to other sci-fi stories spanning the years from Logan’s Run to The Matrix, including an almost verbatim reference to The Terminator movies. I have nothing against formulaic stories, I mean six out of seven Harry Potter books had exactly the same story with a slightly different cast and minor details, but I and most of the world still love them. Socialpunk follows the line of girl meets boy, boy takes here from the fake world to the real world where she breaks out her shell of a sheep to become the leader who will save her friends and the world.

Ima/Cinder is a great character, I enjoyed watching her story develop. I thought it was a little unfortunate that instead of really learning to change and growing out of her shell, she is “upgraded.” That area alone leaves so much room for character development, love story development and just more story. I realize the characters are supposed to be working under the time frame of something like a week, but still. She is a character who I found interesting to explore and who I cared about. I have definitely met characters in other books who I really could have cared less about, but Ima/Cinder was not one of those.

One of the other interesting references that I noticed that seemed out of place to me was one to Jane Austin’s Emma. All things considered, had I not just recently worked on the stage adaptation of the book, I probably would not have got the reference. I only question if the target audience of Socialpunk (and even the character who makes the reference) would really know Jane Austin. She wasn’t required reading when I was in school, is she now?

I also noticed a host of little technical issues with the book. To an avid reader you would probably look at them and go “huh?!” and then figure it out and move on. They really amount to a handful of typos, some pronoun and name inconsistencies and a few other small things. My hope is that I was just reading a preview copy that was going to get at least one more once over by the author or her editor before publishing. It didn’t detract from the story at all, but it is something you don’t expect to see in published books.

The last thing that really struck me was length of the book and the ending. Amazon says that the paperback edition is 400 pages. I read it on my Kindle, so pages are kind of meaningless. It took me less than a day to finish the whole book, and then it ended in a place where you might expect your favorite TV sitcom to end. I realize that this is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy, but given the length, I felt you could probably wrap all the books into one and still be happy. On the other hand, I guess maybe I am feeling this way because I was attached to the story and I want to find out what happens next. That is a great way to set up a cliffhanger, if your audience is wanting more!

Overall, I would recommend the book. If you like any of the genres or similar stories that I mentioned before, you will probably like Socialpunk. If you are looking for a fairly fast read (at least until the sequels are ready) then this is also a good book for you. The story has likeable characters with a plot line that is pretty easy to follow, and the story is fun.

Socialpunk is the first book in the Socalpunk Trilogy by Monica Leonelle. Monica Leonelle is a well-known digital media strategist and the author of three novels. She blogs at Prose on Fire (http://proseonfire.com) and shares her writing and social media knowledge with other bloggers and authors through her Free Writer Toolkit (http://proseonfire.com/free-writer-toolkit).

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If you are interested in reading Socialpunk, you can find it on Amazon.

And I thought no one noticed

Alex — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:40:58 +0000

So, it turns out that some people actually notice my blog that I have not been so faithful to this past year (along with some other things that I really should have been). I suppose that is neither here nor there though.

Anyway…. It turns out that last week I was contacted by a young author/blogger because her boyfriend has been by my blog to read about photography. Actually, I almost dismissed the email as SPAM because probably most of the email that I get in reference to my blog is SPAM. However, I took the time to actually look at this one ad reply to it.

The email was from Monica Leonelle from monicaleonelle.com and proseonfire.com, and it was asking if I would be interested in reading and reviewing her new book “Social Punk.” So, me being skeptical, wrote back a fairly skeptical response that was met with an almost immediate response. Made me feel better to know that there was a real person behind the emails.

So, I popped over to her blog, read some of the preview chapters and figured that it couldn’t hurt to sign up for the blog tour and write a real review. I am still waiting on the full copy of the book to read, but I am certainly looking forward to it. So, check back in the coming weeks for a real review of the book and possibly an interview with the author. In the mean time, you might enjoy the following snippet from the book:

After playing God for six years with the world he created, he couldn’t control any of his subjects, none at all. Over the years, he had watched them evolve and become the sum of their own choices rather than the sum of his; and for that, he regretted ever giving them life.

A small, blinking red light from just inside his eyelid reminded him of the news they sent him earlier that morning. The company had cancelled his funding and would shut down his project within three months. According to them, the project cost too much and took up too much space, and the inconclusive results couldn’t be published reputably, now or in the future.

Six years of his work, tens of thousands of lives at stake—and he could do nothing to save any of it. He bowed his head, letting his chin rest on the rim of his breakfast smoothie. The smoothie reeked of powder—crushed pills—but he supposed he had better get used to it. He wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of real food after they canned him.

He closed his eyes and called up the camera view of one of his favorites, number 3281. She fascinated him; he couldn’t deny it. When he had designed her, her pre-teen rebelliousness lit fire in her eyes. A survivor, he’d thought. He’d meant for her to have it all—to grow up, to get married to the love of her life, and to have a beautiful family of her own someday.

But he had only given her sadness so far. Instead of creating a strict father, he had given her an abusive one. Instead of creating a loving boyfriend, he had given her a friend who could never love her. And instead of creating a strong, proud mother, he had given her a meek one, who watched the whole thing unfold and did nothing about it.

He looked at his last and final creation sitting in the chair across from him—his own son, not awakened yet. The law forbade him to have any children of his own, so this boy would substitute.

But he had done the unthinkable with this creation—he had bestowed on it his own thoughts, emotions, and decision-making processes. He’d given the boy his own mind, his own physical characteristics, his own wants and desires.

He had never done so with any of the others because of the dangers of investing too heavily in any one of his subjects. But who could he kid? He had not stayed objective thus far, watching some of his subjects more closely than others, wishing for the happiness of some at the expense of others. He had become an abomination, a monster of his own doing, who had created subjects only to watch them suffer.

He couldn’t forgive himself; not now, not ever. His eyes lingered on the vial that sat next to his breakfast smoothie, that he’d stowed away for the day when they destroyed all his work, his entire world. He would save it, tuck it away for now, for as long as he could protect them. When things spun out of his control, he would drink it and end himself the way he had ended them.

In the ancient stories, gods frequently gave their sons as gifts. Now, he would give his son as a gift to her, number 3281. So she could be happy in her last months on earth, before they destroyed her with the rest of them.

Hasa Diga Eebowai

Alex — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:23:40 +0000

Well, I am not sure that this really is the right title for this post, but it is the title that came to mind. If you don’t know what it means, well, you should just brush up on your musical theatre.

I think the text in the image says all I need to say.

So, you may have seen this image floating around the tubes, especially on Facebook. I first saw it when it was shared by George Takei. I have also heard that there is a version where Jesus’ second line is “Did I fucking stutter” but that is really neither here nor there.

In any case, the image sparked quite a long comment thread on Facebook, and it really amazes me how defensive people get. I shouldn’t be so surprised I suppose, given where I live, but it annoys me to no end. The worst bit is that everyone gets totally defensive for their side and in the process misinterprets things that others have said.

I just want to know how long it is going to take this country to solve this latest bit of equality issues. We are a country founded on facing equality, from women’s rights to racism, now to sexual orientation. How many times to we have to re-invent the wheel on this one? We have proved that people are people and we have made it into law, why do we have to do it again.

I have said many times, at least in the USA we have freedom of religion, but we also have a separation of church and state. You are free to believe whatever you want in your home and in your place of worship, but out in the real world you have no right to impose your beliefes on me or anyone else. It also means that religious beliefs should not affect government policy. Therefore, since in this country marriage is goverend by the state, not by religion, there should be no question as to people who are not heterosexual being married.

That is all, putting my soapbox away for a bit.

Photo Gallery!

Alex — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:35:30 +0000

As we near opening for our next show at the theatre I usually find myself with more free time, though I think that this time around my time will be taken up by getting ready for my honeymoon. This mainly will involve cleaning the apartment and packing. I am really looking forward to this trip. It is the first real vacation that Ruth and I will be taking alone together. It Should be really fun and I am sure it will feel like it was too short.

We also basically just got back from our trip to Disneyland with Ruth’s family. That was a lot of fun, and it has been quite a while since I have been to Disney. Ruth and I flew out and met the family there to spend outs first day at Knott’s Berry Farm. Smaller than Disney with big rides, but also way bigger lines. We stood in some pretty long lines to ride the rides. We actually took to calculating how many people the rides could move in the amount of time we waited in line. We actually waited around 3 hours for one roller coaster that was about a 20-second ride.

After Knott’s, we headed to Co Co Ichibanya (aka Co Co’s), a curry house that is starting to make a US presence, coming from Japan. Co Co’s was the Jones’ favorite curry house in Okinawa, so they will go out of their way to go there when they can. I don’t have anything to compare to, but it is darn good food!

Then it was on to Disneyland where we had two days in the parks including staying till about 1:45AM on New Years. Disney is a lot of fun even when it is wall to wall people. It is the place where everyone has fun, and if you take a moment to plan your day, you don’t have to spend forever waiting in lines. We managed to break the Pinocchio ride, as soon as we got in the car, bells started ringing and lights started flashing and they had to evacuate the ride. Then the fog rolled in so thick you could barely see 100 feet in front of you. We couldn’t see the New Years fireworks, but we did managed to get stuck in the crowd. We got to fight against the press and then this great little old lady helped us jump the ropes when the cast members weren’t looking so we could get out of the crowd. Good times were had by all.

Sunset lights up Balanced Rock at Arches National Park

Of course the other big thing is my photo gallery opening that was last week. For the month of January I have a display of Utah Landscape photography up at the JCC here in Salt Lake. It was very exciting to lay out all the prints and see them big and up on the wall. I don’t have the space to really look at more than one at a time at home. The opening reception seemed to go very well, there was a good turn out and I have since received a few emails asking about the images. If you are in the SLC area you should stop by and see the prints, otherwise you can see the images on my website.

Where have I been?

Alex — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:39:27 +0000

Ok folks, it has been quite the long stint since I last posted here. Every blogger says it on a regular basis, but life has just been totally crazy. My last post was in May, before I went to camp, before I got married, and before the current season at the theatre. It was almost before the summer really started and now winter is starting. I have been kind of bad about lots of things in the digital world of communication though. I have been very slow at responding to emails, I have been behind on processing and sorting photos, and apparantly I am behind on getting videos together from the summer to go online. Then there are the actual things that I havent been doing, like going to the gym. Great.

So, will this just be a feeble attempt to try to get things moving on the blog again? I have no idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

So, if you got through that first paragraph and didn’t have a “wait, what?!” moment, you probably either already knew that I got married this summer, or you just missed that part. Yes, since August 25 I have been happily married to Ruth and life is pretty good. The wedding was beautiful, and everything seemd to go smoothly despite being out of the state at camp for the two months leading up to it. We held the ceremony and reception at the Alta Lodge and we were happy to celebrate with friends and family. Good times were definately had by all. The weather was beautiful, the montains were beautiful, and the over atmosphere was great. With a ceremony that we wrote ourselves, we were married by a mutual friend in one of the most beautiful places I can think of. Don’t believe me? Here, see for yourself:

Here we are standing under the canopy that was built by Ruth's father, with our friend Warren officiating our wedding.

Working backwards in time from the wedding, the summer at camp was not one of the best. Maybe that is why I refrained from writing during it. I don’t know that I will say too much, though there is plenty to say about it. The camps were under new ownership as of this past summer, and for some that transition was not so easy. Suffice it to say, I saw some good friends mistreated in a very public manner and it got dragged out for the better part of the summer. While I managed to spend the summer flying under the radar, there were grumblings about me as well. Camp can be strange like that, it is just unfortunate and really hard when friends get hurt.

So let’s not dwell on the ugly past. The theatre season is in full swing so life has been very busy. Getting Annie up and open was a killer, but now there is a little room to breathe. So in the mean time I have been prepping a bunch of my photos for my first ever gallery display! I will be showing photos at the JCC in SLC for the month of January. This is pretty darn exciting. I have the prints on order and should get them soon and I am really excited to see them. I am having all the prints done on metal with float mounts. The test prints I had made earlier look amazing, it is a really cool finished product. It would be hard to show what the prints look like in a photo, so any of you who find yourself in the Salt Lake area during January should stop by and see the gallery!

With that, I think that I need to stop staring at this computer screen. I have spent a lot of time in front of it in the past couple days. Besides being warm in bed sound much nicer!

Bloggerstock May 2011: Before there were blogs…

Alex — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:00:30 +0000

It is that wonderful time again when a small but fierce group of bloggers attempts to take over the blogsphere for a day with Bloggerstock! Well, I like to think so anyway. This moth happens to be the one-year anniversary of Bloggerstock, which is pretty exciting. This month I have the pleasure of hosting the founder of the Karaoke Blog Ring of Death, and the blogger behind Sara Swears A Lot. She is always entertaining and often her writing does the title of her blog justice.

I won’t dwell on the theme for this month, basically the idea was to dig through your old journals and pull out something fun and share it. I will let Sara share her take on the topic. So, without further ado, here is what you have been waiting for:

The theme for Bloggerstock this month was “before there were blogs” AKA in the old, dark age that sucked. I was lucky enough to find an old notebook from when I was in 4th grade. Most of it was boring as shit, because apparently I was the lamest 4th grader in the history of ever. But one entry made me realize that I’m the exact same girl today that I was ten years ago.

“My friend Josie and I got into this big argument and aren’t speaking. I’m mad at her. But then I thought two things. Who am I going to play with? WWJD? I talked to her today. We both said we were sorry at the bus stop. Besides, who’s pool would I use (J.J.) Just joking. I like her because she’s just fun to play with. She’s a very good friend.”

Riiiiiight, 4th grade Sara. That’s super believable. If that J.J. hadn’t been there, I might have thought you were being a selfish brat, but nevermind!

I also like how your first thought is that you’ll have no one to play with, and your second thought is pondering what Jesus would do in your situation? I’m not sure how often Jesus got in fights with friends who had pools in their backyard, but let’s be real for a second, 4th grade Sara. Everyone loves a pool. And I’m pretty sure Jesus would have done the same exact thing in your situation.

If you’d like to read what K. Syrah (www.shoesneverworn.com) has to say for Bloggerstock this month, check her out on my page! And a big thanks to Alex for putting so much work into this blog ring. I know it’s way more stressful than it looks!

With any luck, if you are looking for my post on this month’s topic, you can find it over on Bobby’s blog. If you enjoy bloggerstock and would like to learn more about it or get involved, you can just pop over to our site Bloggerstock.net. Any information you could want is there.

With that, happy blogging!

Mother’s Day

Alex — Sun, 08 May 2011 14:00:54 +0000

Happy mother’s day Mom!

I have to saw, I have an awesome mother. Sure, there have been and probably will continue to be times that we don’t see eye-to-eye, but never the less, I love my mother.

Of particular note, this year she qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon. Not only did she run the marathon, but she ran it is a great time. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t be there to stand out on Comm Ave near my grandparent’s house like we used to do on marathon day when we were kids.

My mother does lots of cool things. She has done some pretty cool trips in the past few years. She has ridden the Trans-Siberian Railroad, gone to somewhere in Africa (I forget which country), and most recently Patagonia. I hope that at some point I will be able to do things like that.

Of course really the important thing is that I have to thank my mother for the fact that I am ever here to write this. I do my best to make my mother proud every day. I know that there are things that I do a certain way because that is how I learned it from my mother. The biggest thing I think that I have not done that my mother wants me to do is get a haircut. I probably could use one, but not short like she think she wants. It’s my hair, I’ll wear it how I want.

So, with that, here is to my mother!

JustHost – if that’s all you need

Alex — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:04:39 +0000

About a year ago I started surfing the web looking for a web host to host my blog, my fiance’s blog, and eventually the Bloggerstock website. Spent some time on Google and I landed on JustHost.com. They gett pretty high ratings when you search for hosting reviews. Almost always in the top 10 if not in the top three. They offer a pretty darn good price for unlimited everything (which isn’t truly unlimited), and they make some pretty bold claims about their customer service right on their homepage. They even provide a “secret link” at the bottom of their page which if you click, will get you a discount on a few months of hosting (oops, it no secret anymore). In my humble opinion, all this comes with a giant BUT….

Over the past year I have not really had any cause for concern with my web hosting. Everything was working, the sites were up, and life was pretty good. The backend was a little tedious, but many hosting companies use the same c-panel software, so there was no reason to really care about that. Once I had the sites set up and working I rarely went into the back end other than to make backups.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I started getting emails from JustHost.com telling me that my account had been suspended and that I was violating there TOS. How? Well, apparently something in my account was using too much processor time. Somewhere in the TOS is a little line that tells you how LIMITED you actually are when you pay for UNLIMITED. Of course, instead of just putting a CPU limit on your account, they actually just suspend your account if you spike over 10% CPU usage. They don’t provide a means to monitor your CPU usage, nor do they give you any warning. It’s just BAM! “Sorry, we suspended your account.” Of course this means that you can’t even log in to make adjustments to try to correct the problem.

The first time this happened, I replied to the email and the tech asked for my IP address so that he could open up access for just me. Response time was fairly quick, within an hour or so. Fine. He also sent some suggestions, but nothing really useful. I followed all the suggestions he gave, and they re-opened my account. However, they forgot to reset their monitoring software so within two days I was locked out again for the same exact case.

This time, I called their 24/7 support phone number. Guess what, I got straight through to a real person! But, hold the phone, this person could not do anything but tell me that I should send an email to their support team! WHAT!? So, I tried their online chat support. Again, got right through to a support person but the answer I got was exactly the same, I had to email support. Can someone please explain to me what the point of having on call support people readily available if they can’t help? I would rather sit on the phone for an hour to talk to someone who can help then instantly talk to people who can’t.

So, I fire off more emails to support. It took an entire day this time to get a response. In fact it seems like it took a little threatening to leave their company. At this point they said that it had been a mistake, that they had not reset the monitoring software and that my account would be re-opened immediately. While this made me feel a little better, I was still very frustrated by their support system.

Which brings us to the end of last week and this weekend. Once again I get an email about server overload and my account being suspended. I am sorry, but while I would love to have tons of people visiting my sites, it just doesn’t happen. I haven’t changed the code here beyond updating to the latest version of WordPress, so I just don’t understand what changed. In any event, since friday, my account had been suspended and despite my multiple emails to JustHost.com support, I received to a single response until the wee hours of this morning. I talked to two online chat techs who both claimed to elevate my case to highest priority, but nothing came of that.

One tech actually told me that the only way you can ever talk to a high enough level support person is through email. I am sorry, that is just no kosher. If I can’t actually talk directly to someone who can help me then your support system is flawed. I don’t care if I have to wait, I would rather wait if it meant getting the service that I need.

So, with a few quick clicks I had a brand new hosting account with GoDaddy.com. With a little bit of fighting with JustHost.com I was able to get them to give me a download link for a site-wide backup of my account. The domains that I purchased through them are being transferred to GD, and my blog is up. My fiance’s blog is back up, and bloggerstock is coming back soon. My account with JustHost will be cloased, and in theory I should get some money back. I better get money back or I will make their lives miserable.

Moral of the story, don’t always believe internet rating sites, and don’t use JustHost.com unless all you need is hosting for a super simple website and you don’t want any kind of customer support. They are temptingly inexpensive, but not worth the frustration in my book.

While I don’t normally advertise on my blog, I kind of want to rub this in JustHost’s face. So, to show how happy I am with Godaddy.com: