Aranworld

TKGA Master Knitter Program

I have been knitting off and on ever since I was 15. Ever since 1998, my knitting has been very sporatic, but in the last couple months that has changed. To help me get back into the swing of things I have joined The Knitting Guild Association and am now starting on their Master Knitting Program.

This is a pretty intense program in which I have to complete a series of knitting tasks and send them in to be judged. When I am complete (after probably 3 years) I will be awarded the title of "Master Knitter", and can even go to a Knitting Guild conference and get my award pin in a special ceremony.

I'll keep you posted as I progress through this process...

Note Taking Software

After a long search looking at various products such as TuxCards, Key Note, and Treeline I finally found Treepad.

Treepad is a multi-platform hierarchical note organizer. It is what I have been looking for for many months now -- ever since I first found TuxCards hidden deep within my SuSE 9.1 distro.

Anyways, Treepad wins by the simple fact that it offers a free version that is compatible in BOTH Linux and Windows. AND the product is totally self-contained, which means that I can store the device and all the notes on a USB thumbdrive.

I can't believe how hard it was to even find Treepad, because it is an incredible product. I can thank the product called Key Note. That product, which is very good (but not Linux compatible) included the ability to export a series of notes to Treepad format. That led me to search Treepad on Google.

This brings up one of the problems of the internet. Sometimes there is a product, or part whose category name you just don't know. What was TuxCards? A hierarchical note-taker? Without a simple product type to search in Google, it was very hard to find the product page for Treepad. Sometimes, you need to get the name of the product from another source before you can find it with Google.

Future Proof URLs

A good rule of thumb to follow is that if you are linking to another website, try to avoid having urls that end in xxxxx.html. Instead strive to edit the URL down to the point where it ends with a trailing slash '/'.

One of the common problems with running a long-term website is that when you include a link to another website, the link will often become broken without any warning or notice to you.

Even if your link doesn't become totally broken, sometimes a domain name itself will pass from one group to another. Just recently, I found out that on one of my sites, a link in a press release from the year 2000, that once directed the user to an anti-handgun organization, now directs the user to a porn site!

So, as a website manager, how do you go about keeping track of this type of thing?

There are some fairly complex solutions involving databases and programming, but if you can't do that right away, there are some very simple practices one can follow that will help minimize the problem.

Do Not Include 'index.html' or Similar In URL

Often when you cut+paste a webpage url from your browser's address field to your article, the url will look something like this:

http://www.aclu.org/about/aboutmain.cfm

But what if this organization renames their "aboutmain.cfm" page to be "index.html"? Then your link will be broken.

Very often, when you visit the main page to a website's sub-section, you will see a similar pattern. Most often you will see something like www.foo.com/about/index.html, or www.foo.com/contactus/contactmain.php.

In almost all cases, the main entry page to a website's sub-section, does not require the part that looks like "somtheing.xxx".

So the example above could be re-written to be:

http://www.aclu.org/about/

and it would still end up working the same way, and will stand a much better chance of working for many years to come.

There are exceptions, but before ever including a link on your page, first see if you can remove anything that looks like "index.html" and still display the same page.

Trim The URL to the Smallest Working Version Possible

On a website like Amazon, the urls are often much more complicated and it can be harder to figure out what you can remove. Often the last part of a URL will contain information that points to the currently active user of the site. Many of Amazon's products at their root have simple URLs that involve the domain and then a product number of some sort. When you can figure out where the product number is, then try to cut out the trailing part of a URL that is not referring to the product number, before using the URL in an article.

For example, here is the URL I get if I search for the movie "Phenomena" on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000IBRI/
qid=1111705823/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-5724750-2398567?v=
glance&s=dvd&n=507846

In reality, however, all of the junk after the 'qid' in this URL can be safely removed, so that the following URL ends up referring people to exactly the same page:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000IBRI/

This type of thing comes up ALL the time when dealing with URLs. The key is, that if your job is to add a URL to an article, spend a little time upfront seeing if you can simplify the URL down to a level where it is in such a simple form that it is less likely to ever change in the future.

ALL CAPS, READABILITY AND PRESS RELEASES

The tradition of using ALL CAPS in press release headlines needs to die. By using all caps, PR people are severely limiting the readability of their press releases and making them even more difficult to read when published online.

IT HARDLY NEEDS TO BE SAID ANYMORE THAT WHEN TEXT IS SET IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IT IS MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO READ. THIS IS BECAUSE MOST ADULT READERS ARE SO WELL VERSED IN THE LANGUAGE THAT WE NO LONGER READ WORDS AS STRINGS OF SINGLE LETTERS, BUT WE ACTUALLY READ WORDS BY RECOGNIZING ENTIRE WORDS AT ONCE. WHEN A WORD IS WRITTEN USING lower case letters THE FULL SHAPE OF THE WORD BECOMES APPARENT AND WE ARE QUICKLY ABLE TO RECOGNIZE AND READ THE WORD. WHEN WORDS ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS THE SHAPE IS JUST A BOX AND THE READER IS THEREFORE FORCED TO READ EACH WORD LETTER BY LETTER SLOWING DOWN THE READING PROCESS CONSIDERABLY.

However, there remains a tradition in press releases for the headlines to be written using ALL CAPS. Surely this tradition dates back to when press releases were typewritten and it was just plain faster to write a headline in ALL CAPS than it was to capitalize properly. Anyways, it amazes me that so many people who publish press releases online still hold to this tradition of using ALL CAPS. When people do this, they are dramatically reducing the ability of readers to QUICKLY read through a listing of headlines.

When someone who knows about proper typesetting comes along, needing to use the headline in another format -- like a blog -- they are then required to re-write the headline using correct capitalization. This is not only annoying, but can lead to possible mistakes meaning your carefully worded headline could get reproduced incorrectly.

An illustration of various factors effecting readibility

A general list of tips for press releases including advice on ALL CAPS.

Recording Streaming Content: Part II

I kind of like my idea below, but just the day after posting it, I got a Maximum PC magazine in the mail and they detailed how to do basically the same thing with only 1 computer, which more or less makes me feel like an idiot.

It took some messing around with my audio mixer, but all it turns out I had to do was go into my Roxio Sound Editor and select "stereo mix" as the source of the recording. That just loops back anything getting sent out to the speakers to my recorder allowing me to record anything that my computer plays.

But is that really as much fun as stringing together two computers?

Sometimes doing things the wrong way is ultimately more fun than doing it the right way.