tEch kNOwMAD

tEch kNOwMAD — 3 Comments
14
Dec 08

Powers of 10

Get some macroscopic perspective on where you stand in the grand scheme of things when:

  • looked at from 10-times farther away (up to 100M Light years) every 10 seconds
  • looked at from 100M Light years, moving in 10-times closer every 2 seconds

After doing a macroscopic to-and-fro journey, go in the other direction to get a microscopic view by looking at the final destination 90% closer every 10 seconds.  Watch the legendary Powers of Ten video that presents just that:

A film dealing with the relative sizes of things in the universe .. and the effect of adding another zero.

Made by the office of Charles and Ray Eames for IBM.

Video source: YouTube | Powers of 10 ..::.. Image source: crainium.net

Personally, this (video) makes me WONDER at the profundity of the seeming “nothingness” that is at the macroscopic and the microscopic ends of our existential spectrum and (yet) that which encompasses within, all the things that are seemingly “something”, “nothing”, and “everything”.

Okay, I lost myself there .. in the previous statement.  Guilty as charged if I did you too!

Update (21Jan09):
Seems like the YT video has been taken down. See original video from the Powers of 10 site – http://www.powersof10.com/index.php?mod=watch_powersof10

Update (04Sep09):
Updated the YT video to this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY

Check out the following Venice video on hulu.com:

tEch kNOwMAD — 7 Comments
6
Dec 08

inderSTADT, a complete makeover!

It seems like I have fallen into a Thanksgiving pattern of revisiting and revamping parts of my digital existence to something more relevant and/or manageable.  Last year, it was the move from JAlbum to Flickr for publishing my digital photos online.  This year it is the complete makeover – cosmetic, content management, and hosting – of my web presence: www.inderstadt.net.  If you are reading this post then it means that the makeover mission has been accomplished.

Well done, yours humbly!

So why the makeover?

  • It was becoming increasingly difficult handcoding HTML and keeping the site up-to-date.  I needed a light weight web content management system (WCM).  Something a little more than a simple blog but well short of a true web content management system.  Don’t need some of the unnecessary overheads of the latter.
  • The custom Java bean extensions I wrote for my galerie application on JAlbum had aged considerably.  And, I was in no mood to write code to keep that galerie up.  As good as JAlbum served me as a photo publishing tool for 4+ years, it was not intended to be a community-based photo sharing environment.  I am still testing the waters on the new JAlbum hosting, which seems to be community-focused.  But, for now, Flickr is serving all my needs – publishing, sharing, mash-up, discovery, and value-added fremium services from its ecosystem partners (e.g., QOOP).  So I needed an environment that will mash-up dynamically with Flickr.
  • Make the Isai Dhanyasy section of the site primarily a dynamic, podcasting site.
  • Blogger dropped support for publishing posts through FTP to a site that is hosted elsewhere.  It seems like this might have been revived recently but my interest in Blogger was lost.  Hosted WordPress (from wordpress.org) in conjunction with a custom CMS theme gives me more freedom to do what I want.  And, no, there is no host-it-yourself version of Blogger.  It simply is not in their (Google) roadmap or DNA to offer that.
  • 1and1.com hooked me in 2003 by giving their home-hosting package FREE for 3-years.  I have been a PAYING customer since 2006 but it is now time to move on.  I do not have any negative feedback per se on 1and1.com.  But it seems like there are other hosting environments that are better in helping me meet my objectives (primarily, my specific WCM problem).  For example, if hosting your own WordPress is the way to go then I feel a provider like bluehost.com is more user-friendly, viz., ease of installation, administration, and e-mail support for comparable pricing packages.

What all is included in this complete makeover?

How much for the makeover?

  • I was paying $5/mo for the before version on 1and1.com.  The after version on bluehost.com now costs me $8/mo for unlimited storage and bandwidth.  A comparable package on 1and1.com would have cost me anywhere between $10 and $16 (with the right promotions and à la carte menu selections).
  • A one-time fee of $70 for the Arthemia Premium WP theme.  This one is completely worth it right from the word go!  Installation (so easy it was) of this theme magically transforms WordPress, from being just a blog, into this nifty and light web content management system
  • $25/year for a Flickr pro account
  • $24/year for a podbean.com podcasting account
  • In summary, $70 CapEx and about $12/mo OpEx

How long?

  • The galerie migration from hosting myself (JAlbum was just the publishing tool) to Flickr took about a month to reach 100 photos online.  Truth is I have become more selective in what images I publish online.  So from many thousands of photos, it is now down to a little over 500 on Flickr and that has been in a year’s time frame
  • Moving the rest of the site to the new Arthemia theme on WordPress took 3-4hours max.  Any hours spent beyond this was simply fussing along the lines of applying lipstick many times over, on an anonymous pig.
  • It did take almost a week to have my domain name transferred from 1and1.com to bluehost.com

and, ..

  • The result is what you see as you read this post
  • For me personally, the move has been completely worth the effort and monies so far .. knock on that proverbial wood!
  • From a publishing standpoint, I like the ease of use, the multi-modal, and mashed-up nature of the site
  • Arthemia Premium theme has been a revelation.  Besides the WCM feature, I have used the theme as is, cosmetically.  I like the visual architecture of Arthemia
  • Discovery and SEO options are much better now
  • Can’t be happier!

See below for some before and after screenshots of the site.

Before:

Home page before makeover

Home page before makeover

About page before makeover

About page before makeover

After:

Home page after makeover

Home page after makeover

###

tEch kNOwMAD — No Comments
4
Dec 08

tEch kNOwMAD

Etymology: tEchnology + kNOwledge (or the lack thereof) + (drives me) MAD; more suitably, see technomad

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam diam lorem, luctus ut, viverra quis, scelerisque at, nulla. Vestibulum enim risus, luctus vitae, vulputate et, tincidunt et, sem. Nunc nibh neque, mattis sit amet, tempor eu, feugiat non, metus. Donec magna. Donec quis nulla. Sed suscipit faucibus lectus. Nunc pretium elementum odio. Nullam condimentum eros ut tortor. Nullam hendrerit, purus at eleifend faucibus, sapien risus blandit urna, sed fermentum velit turpis eu turpis. Suspendisse potenti.”

Before you pounce on me, let me clarify that the above is not placeholder text in dont-make-sense-to-me Latin that I forgot to remove.  It is how most technology looks like initially to me before some start looking like the below (my precious):

(image source: technabob)

There are lots of brilliant (and otherwise) minds answering tech questions online, posting reviews, and analyzing/forecasting trends.  This section – tEch kNOwMAD – is going to do none of that .. at least, not as its intended mission.  Instead, it will be but an attempt at documenting technology tools and use cases that solved my own particular problems in staying connected and maintaining an online presence.

Or simply, some musings along the way in my never ending journey from the state of lorem ipsem to the (im)possible iPhone halo!