shellen dot com: September 2004 | Sincerely, Jason Shellen

Gnomedex 2004 : Be there!

I'll be among some of the finest geeks in the land starting tonight in South Lake Tahoe at Gnomedex 2004. I'll be the one giving out Blogger stickers and speaking on the 'Maximizing Blogging Strategies' panel. See ya there.

America 24/7 and custom covers

Perhaps you have seen the book, America 24/7. The book is full of great 'images from One American Week' as shot by different photographers. It's a great book and they have a feature on the book site that let's you order your own custom cover based on a photo you upload.

That's a rendered copy of the cover I ordered for my Dad not long ago on the left. Here is the original photo. My Dad loved the cover but I just recently saw it in person and it's a great high quality continuous tone print. I highly recommend making your own. If you already own the book, you can just order the cover. Personal publishing - I love it in any form.

LazyLife: A free idea for Make-lovers

I really like the idea behind Make Magazine. It sounds like a Ready Made (which is also great) for the geek set. That's nice and all but some of us geeks are busy geeks. While I might have the time and energy to link to a $14 Steadycam or a homemade bottle cap tripod I don't have the time required to make one.

However, I'll bet one of you out there does have the time. How about opening up a little interweb store to sell the things you make from Make? I see a $14 Steadycam in my future, only it will cost $28 plus shipping and handling and it will still be less than an actual SteadyCam. Bring it on.

It's a good thing I don't have a bedtime

...otherwise I would be up way past it. I hear 2AM is the new midnight anyway. This is going to make that 9AM call in Mountain View fun.

The definition of a thinly veiled threat

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States"

Cheney Warns Against Vote for Kerry | AP

Thanks for playing boys and thanks for the past four years of fear, war, and trampling on the Constitution. I won't miss you one bit.

I'll be voting for justice, human rights and action. Don't forget to register to vote if you haven't already.

Out Firefoxed

Oh dot Nine-Three - you silly (former) bird. You had me at dot Six! Dot Nine One was almost there. What have you done with 0.93 however? Every install Mac and Windows alike has been a horrible frozen step backwards. I think I can blame my Windows XP Firefox install on a bad plug-in choice or two (I'm looking in your direction MozBlog , c'mon we need a Firefox version).

Because I'm going to blow away this installation and start over, I'm linking some of the plug-ins I've installed so I can reinstall them with care. For those who venture out looking for extensions beyone my list, there appear to be three authority sites on Firefox extensions, 1, 2, and 3. Someone should make an introduction or two, because it's confusing. Here we go with my list of Firetweaks:

Firefox Toolbar: Blogger Edition - Not developed by Google but still an interesting start
Bookmark Synchronizer - Total must have item for Firefox if you use multiple machines. Uses FTP - hot.
Web Developer Extension - A must have for webmonkeys.
Sage : Atom and RSS feed reader - I keep forgetting it's right there in the margin.
GoogleBar - Again, not from Google but pretty darn good. I think they fixed the bug where the default results assumed you were searching Google Columbia. I think.
Firesomething - I may not reinstall this one because it's actually a joke. Because Firefox has had a few naming issues in the past this plug-in randomizes the name shown at start-up. It says I'm using Mozilla Powertiger right now.
Auto-hide - If you want to run your browser in a kiosk mode this is the deal to use.
Gmail Notifier - Simple and elegant way to tell if you have new mail as well as one button access to your inbox.
BugMeNot - For those times when I'm not username: rebeccas_pocket pass: pocket
Bloglines Notifier - Just installed but it looks great so far.
Flat Bookmark Editing - Adds some flexibility in bookmark editing.

PS: On a day when Moscovians are dying, the US is bracing for a potentially deadly hurricane, and Chechens and Russians are locked in a horrible stalemate over the lives of young children I feel like an ass for posting about my free web browser issues and preferences. Feh.