Blogging Archives - Chris Ullrich dot net
Browsing Category

Blogging

A New Update

So, I won’t be completely abandoning this blog after all. In truth, I kinda miss writing here. Over at Medium (which I like) I do feel the pressure to write things that are more “commercial” so I can get the tiny amount of money my articles generate from readership.

I’m not complaining, mind you, It’s nice to get any money for this shit. Still, complete freedom is nothing to scoff at. This blog is never going away (unless I stop paying for the server it’s hosted on or I die or whatever), so that’s pretty cool.

And nobody can tell me what to say or post on here. That’s pretty cool too. Although, you know what Lord Acton said about absolute power . . .?

Anyway, I’ll see you soon. Oh, and if you’re missing me, you can still find me at Medium, at Instagram and my new home at Mastodon. You should really give Mastodon a try, it’s pretty nice. Very few dickheads. I’d call that a positive.

Be kind to each other. Cheers.

Going Medium to Get Large

Hello friends. It’s that time. I’ve finally made a decision.

I’m going to be shifting my writing focus over to Medium for the time being. What does that mean? I won’t be writing anything new here. Instead, I’ll be ranting, raving and otherwise smacking the keys over at Medium.

Why, you may wonder? It’s a long story but let’s just say I’m trying to simplify my life, write more and potentially expand my audience. I think Medium has the best chance of helping me do those things.

So, if you enjoy my musings, please go to my Medium site and continue to enjoy. And tell a friend.

Thanks for a great time. I really appreciate you hangin with me all these years. I’ll see you on the other side.

Until then, try to be kind to each other.

Still More Useful and Interesting Things

poster-app-ios

As life returns to normal (or at least my version of it) I realize it’s been several days since I last put some useful and interesting things up here.

So, with that in mind, here’s some more for you:

• Have trouble getting people to do what you want? Maybe this technique can help.

• For the screenwriting nerds out there, John August and his team have come up with a new version of the venerable Courier font, called Courier Prime, to use when writing your scripts. I’ve switched to it and it’s quite nice.

• If you have a girlfriend who would love this as a gift, marry her. If you already did, kudos to you and it makes a nice Valentine’s Day gift too.

• Here’s a complete collection of Mac OS X install disks. I think I still have all of mine too. Yep, Mac nerd right here.

• Have and iPad? Want to use said iPad in the kitchen or other place where it might get wet? You want one of these.

• I like talented people doing cool things, so I like this. Granted, I know Brian so I may be a bit biased. But still, it’s pretty cool. BTW, you should also read his book. It’s very funny.

• Last, but not least, Tom Witkin’s Poster app for iOS is for posting to a WordPress site and is very awesome. It’s become my new favorite and I now use it pretty much every day. Check it out.

A New iPad Writing Update

ipad-writing-2

As previously mentioned, I’ve been trying to write with the iPad as much as possible instead of using the MacBook Air or any other OS X-powered Mac. After a couple weeks of doing this, I’ve got some thoughts to share.

First, and this should not come as a surprise, I love almost everything about the iPad as a device. It’s extremely portable and has amazing battery life, even when used for several hours of work and pretty much continuous syncing of Dropbox via Verizon’s 4G LTE. I can only imagine the portability and battery life are going to get better and better as we see newer versions of the iPad.

As a device used for content consumption, the iPad also excels. If you want to watch a movie or TV program via Netflix or iTunes, the iPad is your best choice. The screen is excellent and the afformetioned battery life can get you though several programs during a long plane ride to Hawaii, or wherever you’re going. It also features an impressive collection of apps devoted to bringing you content.

On that note, the iPad is excellent for reading books via the Kindle or iBooks app or comics using an app like Comixology. I also enjoy checking out news, Twitter, Facebook and my Instagram feed using an app like Flipboard. These kinds of content consumption, and the quality experience they provide, are all pretty much a given.

Continue Reading

Blogging from the iPad (Again)

This post will test my ability to post something from the iPad using Google Chrome. So far, so good. I can open a draft in Chrome and the UI looks pretty much as it does on my Mac. Let’s see if I can include a picture. (Sound of gears grinding).

Well, posting from within Chrome, and including a picture, is a bit of a pain. Would it be so hard to have a way to insert pictures from the photo library on the iPad? And no, there’s no way to cut and paste, at least not that I’ve found. Not into a Chrome window at least.

I guess Apple doesn’t like that idea. They probably don’t want a “full” file system in iOS. That’s what Mac OS X and Macs are for.

Anyway, on to other methods like Blogsy. I’ve tried this tool before with some success. I haven’t tried the latest version yet, so here goes.

After getting all my info set up in Blogsy I was able to get a picture from the photo library on the iPad uploaded to this site and inserted into this post. It’s the dragon pic above. Scary, right?

So far, it looks like Blogsy is the winner. The UI is a bit confusing and has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to use. Not as easy as using Chrome on Mac OS X, but it may just be good enough for my purposes.

That is, unless I’m in a hurry to post something. Then, we may have a problem as thre steps are a bit time consuming. This is especially so if you’re looking for an image online to use in a post. You need to find it, save it to the photo library and if editing or resizing is necessary, use yet another iOS app to do the resize and crop, then bring it back into Blogsy to upload to your site for the post.

The resize/crop app I’m using at the moment is iResize, which seems to do the job pretty well. I guess you could always resize an image once you get it uploaded to your site but that’s not really the best way to go about it. Plus, cropping is out of the question if you do that. So, an additional resize/crop app seems like a must.

So, for the moment, it looks like Blogsy is the winner. I’m going to look into some other apps and workflows to see if I can improve my time to post and ease of use. Still, for normal blogging this setup works pretty well.

 

Site Stuff, Photo Sharing and More

Looking at the archives list on the right of this page reminds me I’ve had this particular blog incarnation since mid 2004. That’s a good amount of time (almost 8 years) and I’m proud of myself for sticking with something that long.

I have actually been putting stuff online since before 2004 but alas, those articles and content have pretty much been lost after moves into and out of various blogging platforms over the years. I’m pretty sure I could probably locate them if I really tried and perhaps I will someday. But for the moment, I’m content to have this blog’s starting date be in June of 2004.

In the interest of fun, though, let’s step into the Wayback Machine and see what I was thinking on that first fateful Summer day in June of 2004. From that first post it seems like I was talking about a mix of tech and politics and also managed to throw in a quote from Chris Rock too. Not a bad bunch of content at all.

Although, I’m not sure why I felt the need to say “later” at the end of the post. It’s almost as if I didn’t know what I was doing then. So weird.

Anyway, now that I’ve evolved into the highly skilled professional that I am (hey, if you get or got paid to do it, you’re a pro) I can safely omit any of that kind of stuff and just talk directly to the audience. You know, you and you out there reading this.

Yes, there’s probably only two of you but that’s okay, we know something that others don’t know, right? We’re the cool kids now. Suck on that nerds. . .

But, I digress.

Nostalgia and self-affirmation is great but it doesn’t help me figure out if I should keep my Flickr Pro account or not. See that there, that’s what they call a transition. Although, it wasn’t a great one. No, not at all.

My Flickr Pro account expires later this month and my dilemma is that I haven’t been uploading photos to it at all. In fact, I haven’t used it for many months. Granted, it’s only about 25 bucks a year but if I don’t use it at all, why bother? Plus, maybe there’s something better out there with more features, more interaction and the like?

I’m also considering that I have pretty much unlimited bandwidth, space and server power with the Media Temple servers we use for The Flickcast and other sites (including this here blog) that I could just host my photos myself and skip the third party stuff. That’s why you now see a “Photos” tab up there at the top of the screen.

I’m trying out various photo gallery plugins for WordPress to see which one looks the best. Right now, it’s one called NextGen Gallery and I kinda think it’s the best of the bunch. We also use it at The Flickcast so I’ve got some experience with it. I think I will leave it in place for now and see how it goes. I will add more photos I’ve already taken and perhaps some new ones soon too.

I also know that I’ve invested a lot of time and effort over the years to upload stuff to Flickr and it has a lot of photos of mine. It would be a lot of work to start completely over somewhere else. In fact, I’m not sure exactly how I would bulk download all the photos at Flickr and upload them somewhere else. I would need to look into that more.

Given the potential pain in the ass and time involved, I would instead probably want to have Flickr serve as an archive for my old photos and would start anywhere new, like SmugMug, from this point on. However, because of the large number of photos I have (too many for the free Flickr account) I would end up having to keep paying for the Pro version just to maintain the archive.

So I guess that pretty much answers my question, doesn’t it? Yahoo will be getting 25 bucks from me this month. They can probably use it.

Thanks for playing along. Always fun to see the decision making process at work, right?

The truth is no service, free or paid, is going to motivate me go out and take pictures. That motivation has to come from within.

Now where did I put my camera?

Ups and Downs

Well, so much for the great “let’s post my Instagram photos to my blog automagically” experiment. If you’ve been following this site the last couple days, you know it went horribly wrong and resulted in lots of the same thing being posted over and over again.

Not good. Made even more not good by the fact that this site is setup to automatically update my Twitter with new posts and that’s set to automatically post to my Facebook. Not good times a hundred thousand.

So, that meant a lot of extraneous posts and a whole slew of bullshit I needed to deal with today in addition to the ever increasing pile I already have allotted to me. But I’m not unhappy.

However, to read this site or my Twitter or Facebook you might get the impression I’m disgruntled, angry or otherwise unhappy. Not at all.

In fact, I’m not disgruntled, rarely angry and thousands of miles away from unhappy. Just ask anyone who knows me well and they’ll tell you. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Welcome back. I tend to go the opposite direction of angry and in most cases, I just keep on being happy. I’m not saying I never feel down or sad, I do. Everyone does. Well, most everyone anyway. Probably not sociopaths. But they’re just weird.

Anyway, the truth is for a vast majority of the time I feel happy and I think life is pretty good. It has some ups and downs, sure, but to me that’s what makes it interesting.

Of course, I say this as an educated, white male living well above the poverty line in a city with great weather, great people and with a lot of opportunities for work, fun and to live life to the fullest. Yes, luck may be a factor too.

However, even with a lot of luck you still need to do something with the opportunities presented to you. You can’t just sit back and expect the world to come to you. It doesn’t work that way and at some point, if you’re still waiting, eventually you’re going to be disappointed.

The trick is to get out there and do something before that happens. That’s why I make sure I’m as busy as possible doing a variety of things that a love. I don’t want to look back later at my life and be an old man filled with regret (apologies to Christopher Nolan for cribbing that line).

That’s what helps me stay happy. It might not work for you but hell, it’s worth a try, right?

Let me know how it goes.

Hanging At the Grove

The Grove in Los Angeles is one of those great, outdoor shopping areas that attracts all manner of people. It’s situated next to the famous Farmer’s Market, which has been a fun hangout for hipsters, and non-hipsters alike, for many years.

I was at the Grove tonight to see a screening of director Steven Soderberg’s latest movie Haywire. It’s an action extravaganza starring MMA sensation Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas.

I will be doing a full review later this week for The Flickcast. For now, just enjoy the above picture I took at the Grove this evening.

Yes, it’s actually even nicer than it looks in the picture.

On a related note, we’ve made the decision over at The Flickcast to make the site dark in protest of SOPA and PIPA. We firmly believe in stopping piracy but we don’t want to give up liberty to do it.

For more on how you can get involved, go HERE.

Because of my personal disgust with SOPA and PIPA, i won’t be posting here at all tomorrow either. Be back Thursday.

Have a great day off from me.

By Way of An Apology: Some Notes About This Site

Happy second day of 2012. No, I don’t know how long people are allowed to say “Happy New Year” or what I just said. I’m just going with it, okay?

That kind of statement brings me, in a not so direct way, to this website, blog or whatever you want to call it. I will call it a blog or, more precisely, “The Personal Blog of Chris Ullrich.” See, it even says that up there at the top.

In other words, this is my blog and these are my thoughts, such as they are. They are not to be confused with anyone else’s or with those of anyone or anyplace I have worked, am working now, or will work in the future. These concepts are not that hard to understand so I will rely on you, good readers, to figure these things out. I feel confident you can.

Now that the disclaimer part is over, let’s talk about some other facts. I started this blog in 2004 (here’s a link to the first post ever) and it has been continuously published since that time. It used to have a decent amount of daily readers, but for various reasons, that readership has dwindled.

This is probably mostly due to the neglect it has suffered at my hands. That’s changed and this blog will now be updated regularly again.

Another reason readership has dwindled is due to this blog being moved around and hosted at various places using various hosting software. That is also done. This blog, along with the rest of my sites (including The Flickcast) is now housed permanently on it’s very own virtual server provided by the folks at Media Temple.

This blog is also now permanently run on WordPress. It had previously been on other platforms, including TypePad, but now it’s WordPress all the way.

It’s also been tough to find this blogs RSS feed because I’ve tried several ways to help that out too, including FeedBurner. Now that it is permanently on WordPress, being served off of my own server and is not going to be moved ever again (if I can help it) the RSS feed is not going to change again either.

In case you’re wondering, the RSS feed for this blog is right up there in the top right corner. It’s also right here. Click on either link to subscribe and I will love you forever.

Why am I taking valuable time out of your day to tell you all of this? The answer is simple: I owe you an apology.

I owe you this apology because if you’re reading this blog, and have read this far, I should not have taken you for granted. I say that because people who regularly read a blog are often frustrated when it isn’t there when they go to find it. They are also often frustrated when they go to read a blog and find it hasn’t been updated in a long time.

I’m guilty on both counts, but I can change. In fact, I already have.

If you take a closer look you’ll see I’ve updated this blog more times in the last month than over the last several months. I realize that’s not a foolproof way to tell I’ve changed, but I just wanted you to notice.

I intend to keep writing here. Even though some have pointed out blogging is dying, I actually feel it has helped me immensely. I also feel there’s still an audience for quality (or in my case at least prolific) blogging.

So, I’ll keep doing it and doing it here (as well as various other places like The Flickcast) and if I’m lucky, people will start coming back to this blog and enjoying it. I think it’s possible.

Thanks for reading and feel free to check back here often. I’ll be around.