tfl: The Flatiron Life

Ray-Ray asks in comments,

Do you guys know why there’s two versions for Google — iGoogle and Google Reader? I have both going, which adds to the disorganization that I need to sort out…

The reason is because Google is trying to reach people who use homepages (iGoogle) and people who don’t (gReader). My question is why do you use a homepage? (Not is a critical OMG kind of way, but what advantages do you see to it kind of way.)

A lot of people use homepages to gather all their information together. On iGoogle you can see my Gmail, gReader, other feeds, weather, and other misc items. I definitely see the value in it and would recommend it as a second choice or an away from home choice. However, to me it is a bit cluttered and small for everyday use

This is my setup at home and work.

My browser of choice is Firefox. It began because it was perceived to be safer and faster than IE. I no longer know if that is true. I continue to use Firefox because of the add-ons. For instance, I have an add on called Forcastfox installed that added the weather and forecast to the status bar.

Firefox allows you to have multiple pages as you homepage. These pages will open in different tabs. My homepages are Gmail and gReader.

With gReader I have a pretty standard setup. I read mostly in the All Items view sorted by ‘auto’. I star things I want to blog about or need further update. I share things I find interesting and share with comments things I do not think are full blog post worthy.

If you want to improve your gReader abilities, I suggest hitting ‘?’ and learning a couple keyboard shortcuts.

Gmail is more customized. I have two add-ons installed: Better Gmail 2 and RTM for Gmail.

Better Gmail 2 allows me to make sure Gmail is always uses a secure connection;this mean you melding kids cannot read my email as easily. I am also able to add keyboard shortcuts, hide some stuff, and show the inbox count in the tab. All of this really increases my productivity in email.

RTM for Gmail adds Remember the Milk as a side bar to Gmail. I can manage all of my tasks from the same window as email. I can also create tasks from emails for future follow-up.

That is my setup. What do you all do that makes you more productive at the computer?

I just noticed that the trends page of Google Reader tells you how obscure the feeds you are reading are. This is your feeds ordered by how few people subscribe to them in Reader. It is possible that these feeds are wildly successful, just not with people who have the good sense to use one of the most popular and best feed readers. Possible, but I think unlikely.

I have a lot of feeds where I am the only person who subscribes to them. Most of them I understand somewhat.

I am am the only person who is looking for comment made on my pictures in flickr. As I think you have to be logged in to flickr as me to have access to a private url to get that one, I am glad I am the only subscriber.

I would like to see more people subscribing to Rachel’s, Rob’s, Dana and Kris’, and Zach’s photos. However it does not seem unreasonable that I am the only one or two who is.

There are some blogs that I think should find a wider audience and I am want to call them out.

One of them is the blog for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. (Yes, that is the same Pulitzer family as the Pulitzer Prize.) The Pulitzer is a great little museum in St. Louis and the employer of my cousin-in-law Rachel. It is an interesting daily dose of what it is like behind the scenes at an Art Museam. The posts are not long nor dense and the authors are very responsive to questions.

Make me not the only subscriber! Check out the blog and if you find yourself in STL go to the museum.

More obscurity to come…

I recently joined Facebook. I had resisted for a long time because I am so repulsed by the overgrown Geocities site that is MySpace. I was pleasently suprised that instead of being another disconnected home of content, I could add my flickr feed and the feed to this blog to the feed in Facebook.

It is great that more people are reading Jos and I, but I have found a downside. When someone comments on the post in Facebook it is not a comment here and vice versa. Facebook supposedly offers this great API for applications. This might allow me to write something to sync the comments. Does anyone know if a solution to this already exists?

In the mean time, I would prefer for comments to be made on the blog, but I am not going to be fascist about it.

When the time comes, this is how I want to go out.

I think Americans would be more open to multi-culturalism if it meant more awesome funeral processions and pyres.

That is the low estimate of how many crimes there are spelled out in the US Code according to a report from the Heritage Foundation.

I don’t want to debate about what should and should not be illegal or if it should be a federal or state issue. (Well you know I do, just not here.) What I find interesting is we often hear that ignorance is no defense for breaking the law. However the number of things that are illegal is larger than the number of things an one person can hold in their head. It seem like the only way you could be sure to not be an accidental criminal is to assume everything you do is illegal until the government tells you it is not.

Does that sound just? I am curious of your opinions on if that seems fair that there should or should not be more crimes than thinks you can think of in a week and why?

I think we can consider Jonah a crawler. Maybe. What he’s doing looks a little Lieutenant Dan, letting his legs go limp and pulling his body with his arms. I’m not sure I would consider it crawling if he weren’t so darn efficient with it. I couldn’t do it, but Jonah moves like lightning in this manner. I can only imagine how fast he’ll be once he figures out how to push with his legs and pull with his arms at the same time.

Wait, wait, wait just one minute. Our governor can just add whatever he likes into a bill he is signing? Who are the jag-dorks that thought this was a good idea.

Why do we even have a legislature in Illinois, then?

It was just July 4th a couple weeks ago, right?

I wonder if a white, upper-middle-class family of 3 moving out of uptown made it more or less diverse.

DePaul recently found that Uptown is the most diverse neighborhood in the city, both economically and racially. When you walk around Uptown, that is clear. What is also clear when you walk around is how you are not sure you are safe walking around. Everyone, all races, income groups, and ages, is on edge.

That being said, if you would like to make an offer on a lovely 1BR in the Margate Park sub-neighborhood, email me. Maybe not a nice place to raise a family yet, but the retailers faces just light up with the see a non-crazy person not on the public dole come in the door and buy something.