The Junk Drawer

So I’m in the middle of trying to do another post full of pictures … and our transition to the new version has left me a little irritated.

The old Word Press was not all that intuitive, but I found a way to not use thumbnails and also eradicate the annoying hyperlink borders by taking off half the coding.

So now I’m a little stumped at the way yet another photo uploading system works. I’ve uploaded the photos just fine but it’s not intuitive as to how I’m supposed to get a full-size and not thumbnail-size photo in there. I don’t want thumbs. That negates the point of posting pictures, in my opinion.

I could’ve easily asked this quietly, but maybe a discussion would help everyone else.

And now that I’ve posted this publicly, I’m sure I’ll fumble around and find it out for myself. I kinda like that part.

I had to refer to Dawn’s category rubric to know how to categorize this post; I do think the categories will grow more intuitive as we use them.

Anyway, most podcasts available in iTunes actually have a blog associated with them, and one I’ve found that I absolutely love is Escape Pod.  If you don’t have an iPod, and don’t even use iTunes, you can still download and listen to the podcasts via the website; podcasts are just MP3 files.

Escape Pod is an online audio fiction journal that publishes readings of science fiction and fantasy stories.  The Podcast you download will consist of a few minutes of commentary, followed by a complete story.  Whether the authors are professional or amateur, I don’t know; I know little about writers of this genre.  However, the readings are professional quality (no mispronunciations or annoying “ums”), and I find the stories to be generally well-written and the commentary literate and even a little scholarly.  Check it out, and make the most recent story, “L’Alchemista,” your first download.

I’ve just set spam karma to “nice.” Hopefully, that will fix the problem we have been having with comments being misidentified as spam.

Voting is now open for the sixth annual Webblog Awards, also known as the Bloggies.  I’d suggest Post Secret as deserving of a vote for Weblog of the Year; it’s nominated in several other categories as well.  Also, WordPress itself has a nomination for best Weblog application.

First, these categories were fun to make up, trying to think of things that might actually be in a junk drawer and what might correspond to them.  Todd was frustrating to work with, however, having little grasp of the concrete.  He kept suggesting really abstract categories like “Everyone Must Get Stoned,” and I would have to ask, “so how is that something that could be in a junk drawer??”, but eventually we got it done, and he did have some good ideas

Here’s what we had in mind for content within the various categories, but really, it’s all pretty loose:

• Cat Treats, Dog Leashes, and Fish Food:  Pet/animal stuff
• Emergency Numbers:  Requests for help, blogging advice, that sort of thing.  Anything other brooders can answer or help each other out with.
• Lint and Toenail Clippers:  The odd junk that doesn’t fit anywhere else
• Newspaper Clippings:  Speaks for itself, I think.  Links, comments, etc. on news items.
• Passports and Postcards:  Travel
• Sixth-Grade Snapshots:  Pictures, not necessarily of you in sixth-grade, but that would be ok too
• Yo-Yos and Uno Decks:  Fun stuff–weird websites, jokes, outrageous but truth things, etc.

You cannot be an alt-rock fan without being a fan of Wilco in my honest to garsh opinion. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is simply an extraordinary CD. And I have just located a huge number of demos from that CD free for the download. Enjoy.

I couldn’t stand it any more.

Hello world. This is our junk. My junk will be junky junk. As if my own blog wasn’t junky enough.

Happy?