After spending several weeks posting status updates to the site that include my mood, I decided that I needed to begin using a broader vocabulary to describe my emotional state. Aside from producing a boringly repetative pattern, I simply felt that my range of emotion encompassed more than I was taking the time to specify.

How best to make this process easier to facilitate?

LiveJournal has a rather large array of emotions to choose from when posting content. The list is large enough that I felt it worth replicating, for convenience. After all, the end goal is to cross-post blog entries to my various profiles, including LiveJournal, so it only makes sense to use data that it is already trained to expect.

Keep reading to find out how I ended up implementing the feature...

After an intensely frustrating day of just trying to accomplish simple errands, foiled repeatedly by everything from citywide bicycle marathons to sunday hours to citywide bicycle marathons to sunday drivers to, oh, did I mention citywide bicycle marathons?

I crashed midday to escape the insanity and was awaken by my roommate wanting to know if it was a good time to go buy the new Conan MMO. I should have stayed in bed, because the correct answer was: NO, it is NOT a good time to go buy it.

Disregarding my own personal dilemma at having either waited too long of the game vendor somehow not thinking that digital distribution at launch was a good idea. I mean, seriously, WTF? No digital distribution in the season's premier game?

And so, since my roommate was able to acquire the last available copy of the game in South Austin, it will be another day that I am able to saunter forth as a Stygian Demonologist on a quest to establish my own city...

It is difficult to consider with a straight face, but, on consideration, the possibility that Atlantis was a spaceship has a degree of merit. Having never encountered the concept previously in literature, I was even more circumspect about it. The argument that I was presented with included conjecture that the different evolutions of mankind were each originated as genetic experiments in adaptation for a non-indigenous people. The basis of the argument was that there is no satisfactory explanation for the genetic leaps of each phase in evolution that include an increased number of chromosomes; each additional chromosome representing a further attempt to integrate with the native environment.

Of course, if you are considering the existence of Atlantis at all, you shouldn't have significant qualms about the possibility that Atlantis was a spaceship.

Now, allowing that our ancestors were aliens is one thing, but imagining Atlantis itself as an actual spaceship is another stretch of the imagination altogether.

I'm not saying I agree with it; I'm just telling you what I've heard...

After my earlier success with getting Xaraya to talk to the Twitter API, I set my sights on completing a matching component for Facebook.

I knew from the start that the code I would need would be simple. Typically, a developer will spend a few hours just to crank out several lines of code, and this was no exception, perfectly in keeping with my expectations.

Publishing to Facebook is a tricky endeavor, but it is now an accomplished feat that you can read about on my Facebook profile even though I never publish to it directly or even visit it myself.

What does it mean to get "Slashdotted"?

If you have been online for a decent amount of time, you probably know about the news site for geeks called Slashdot.

From this, you may surmise that getting "Slashdotted" involves getting your site linked to in an article on Slashdot, resulting in a significant increase in your site traffic.

You would be correct. Very correct.

You may also surmise that this increase in traffic results in a corresponding increase in sales/leads/etc.

My name is St.Ego, and I am a religion of one.

This is my religion.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My faith does not rely on the dogma of others.

My perception is my reality.

I must master it as I must master my life.

I am my own god.

The religions of the past all tell a facet of the same tale, of which I myself am a facet.

Mine is the Tao of change, of ascencion.

I stand at the gateway and guard the crossing of travelers who walk the path.

Bhodhisattva of self-realization am I, of realizing the self, of willing the self into reality.

Manifest yourself.

Some of you may remember back when shows like Battlestar Galactica were still available on iTunes, before it distribution was cut off mid-season during a bout between NBC and iTunes. At the time, in answer to demands from the studios for variable pricing (ie: charging more), Apple simply pulled all NBC properties (including the Sci-Fi channel) from iTunes. Don't like the way the game gets played? Take your toys and get the fuck out...

Except BSG is back on iTunes again now, after quite a lengthy hiatus.

Steve Jobs must have really impressed studio execs with all his talk about the iTunes/iPod ecosystem, because it was announced that the hiatus was over at the Apple "Let's Rock" event, earlier this week in San Fransisco.

I recently started using Twitter, by proxy through Ivory Tower using an Articles publication type. But I only send Twitter the status update, whereas on Ivory Tower I publish my status as well as my mood and what I am listening to (both optional).

So I got the crazy idea to scrape the Ivory Tower status updates for an archive of what I was listening to. This would, essentially, be my playlist...

I thought that I would be able to complete the task in about 10 minutes by making a new base module template and calling the Articles API in it for a list of  the entries that I wanted, then loop through them and output in the middle.

Another reason that I was doing this is because it seemed so stupidly simple that there was no reason that it should not exist on the site, so I set out to try and find one.

I failed. It really was stupidly simple, taking one new template file with four lines of uncomplicated template tags. I spent more time adding design than getting the data on the page. And it really did only take about 10 minutes to figure out and implement.

RTFA to see the template. Click here to see the Playlist!

During a lenghty career periodically marked by exposure to those desktop systems which are plagued by antivirus software, I have realized the periodic (tho infrequent) benefit of keeping some type of antivirus software running. I more often realize the added inherent sluggishness that antivirus can give a system. Each time there is a desktop computer I have to work on that is running slower than snails balls, it seems that either Norton or (less frequently) McAfee, the two premier antivirus suites available. Neither offers anything for free.

For several years now, I have been making use of Grisoft's AVG antivirus package. It represents the "good enough" pricepoint of being free. Free as in beer, not free as in speech. It isn't open source and it isn't licensed under the GPL, but it isn't trialware either. The software is mature and only leaves a footprint on your CPU when it does it's (periodic daily) systems check.

All it took was one good week of acute paranoia over finding a keylogger on my unprotected system several years ago, and I've made sure to run AVG ever since. Now, instead of worrying, I spend my time trying to figure out the best time to schedule system checks. Wouldn't be a problem if I slept normal hours and/or kept normal-length days. The secret to the 36-hour-day is inconsistency, I'm afraid.

After listening to some of the other podcasts that are out there, I decided that the time has come for me to give it a try.

I recently downloaded Audacity, which offers voice-activated recording features and accepts the line-in that is currently carrying the mic from an old over-the-ear gaming headset I had sitting around. I have to increase the Gain quite a bit to hear myself after recording through such a low-end mic, but it gets the job done.

In order to run a podcast, however, you need more than just a few mp3's.

In about two hours, I worked out a way to run podcasts from Xaraya using only Xarpages, a new articles pubtype and a couple of templates. Continue reading to see the actual templates and get started setting up your own podcast using Xaraya!