May 31, 2007

43 things

Today's topic isn't as excting as the last 2 but it's pretty interesting in such a way that the "life to do" list keeps you focused on your goals (short or long terms). Compared to my black book or my cellphone where i put all my schedules and stuff to accomplish, 43 things(I have no idea why it's 43) is made public and anyone could have access to it. You could b cheered by strangers and get some thumbs up to keep you going, you could share your own experience and advices on stuff you've already accomplished with those with the same aspirations.
You can connect with locals in your city and around the world if you plan on going places; you could also meet interesting people; track what you're consuming and get some advices and recommendations and so many other stuff you could do.
The site itself is really straight forwad to use and require to create an account that has to be activated through a link sent in your email account.
Add your to do stuff and tag them, in case of already done stuff, the site provides an option of marking the event as already done. Beside every entry there's a statistic of the number of people with the same tag as your entry and the site provides also a maximum of 5 cheers. You could also publish your experience after completing a goal by a certain date and "create your own consequences".
You could also reorder all your entries by choosing the "Re-order" link and choose the hierachy of your things. This list can be put onto the blog by going into "Edit Your Account" and choosing"Post on blog". From the provided list of blog platforms, choose the one and provide the required information for identifification and finally save the new setting. Unfortunatelly I haven't seen mine appearing on my blog as i was expecting, maybe it takes time before the list is uploaded, let's wait and see...
This is a cool thing to try and would be really nice if someone you don't know reminds you of something you've put onto your life to do list.
My list is on the following link

http://www.43things.com/person/SouljahK

May 29, 2007

Podcast

A couple of months back I was wondering what could be the most effective way of having my favourite shows, movies or music always with me on my Ipod and access them anytime and anywhere I wanted to, the solution came with this new topic: Podcasting!!
Basically, all the files are obtained online via RSS feeds and these files are played on devices such as Ipod and others.
My favourites are:
http://biblestudypodcasts.org/
http://blog.pandora.com/archives/podcast/2007/03/reggae_ska_rock.html
http://www.dubsession.com/podcastbroadcast.htm

The all experience has been really cool and i don't see myself loose track despite all the daily loads of school work, i still afford a moment of enjoyment thanks to podcasting.
The first podcaster has some pretty interesting themes and above all has a bible study programme.
The last two webcast some of the hot juicy reggae music that i can't do without.
With the evolution of science I think there are new ways of living we should emulate and adopt technologies that are sustainable. I buy audiobooks, not because i don't like reading but it's a whole way of saving a couple trees from being cut...I've decided to go green!!
My main source of audiobooks is audible.com ; i get my audio sport magazines and other TV shows.
I'm very picky when it comes to audiobooks since i don't get them for free!! I'm very specific on whatever i wanna get but they always meeant for entertainment and less educational.
The all idea of audiobook is really great but the only problem, the coolest audiobooks aren't always free!! the free ones aren't of good quality.
One of the biggest problem i've come across since starting getting podcasts has been the space to store them, my Ipod is almost full and my laptop as well, i had to get an external harddrive meant only for all these files!!
Some offerings and purchases plans of the sites i looked at were pretty interesting but i discovered that the cheaper the plans, the less quality product you get out of them.

May 24, 2007

Online Generators

WOOOW!!!
I must confess, this is the coolest stuff so far(well in every lab i discover lot of new and cool stuff but this one is da bomb!!).
Seems like that era where only superstars had their posters or photos on covers of magazine, of CDs,.. is now over!!
I'm my own superstar!! with my photo on a billboard in Time Square or the cover of my "movie" and many more...
All it takes is to choose a template, edit it and post it. Just as simple as that, no need to know photoshop or other "hard to use"photoediting software to edit a cover of a magazine. The only buzz to this; you are constrained to the available templates provided by the generator.
I've come across many of such generators some pretty interesting and relating various types of generators such as CSS, Button, flash, Menu, Text, Image, Tag, blog, website,... I could resiste to the temptation of playing with "The Face Transformer" generator(http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk//Transformer/index.html); Try this generator and see how you would look if you were Afro - caribean or Causian or East Asian or west Asian; you could also select the age range as well and see how you would look if you were an adult East Asian or a baby Afro Caribean. I Tried it with my ex girlfriend photo and i would say the output was 80% exactly compared to her 10 year old photo!!
I also edit avatars(http://www.dookyweb.com/avatars.swf), created my own cartoon (in french http://www.gnomz.com/creerunebd.html) and many other cool stuff. The online generators are really simple and straight forward to use

For more generators check this link:
http://www.kalagoo.com/onlinegenerators.htm

Coming in Theater


Coming in Theater
Originally uploaded by SouljahK.

Count Down to France


My creation
Originally uploaded by SouljahK.

Time Squarre


My creation
Originally uploaded by SouljahK.

May 17, 2007

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Today it's about flicking Flickr. I've been using the PitureTrail another photo sharing website for the past 4 months or so, PictureTrail and Flickr are in some ways similar, they both are used by bloggers (PictureTrail is mainly used by people using MySpace).I won't say which of the two is great since i haven't really fluent with Flickr but so far PictureTrail has been really cool. I found some pretty nice features with Flickr as well, such as categorising your photos using tags, putting photos that have the same titles. I also find that i could set my photos to private or public or make them available to a particular group which is a cool thing but initially all the defaults options are set to public. I put a link of my photos on my blog that way i don't have to load my space on my blog but instead using just a link that redirect to Flickr for anyone wanting to see my photosOne of the interesting pictures that i found can be found on this link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tglow/501390052/I also played around with http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/sudoku/flickrsudoku.asp but definitelly, Flicker is really interesting than this one.

May 15, 2007

Del.icio.us is really delicious

Folks, today we've got another impressive feature used by bloggers: Del.icio.us. This stuff helps you store ,share and discover bookmarks on the net. Any stuff posted on del.icio.us can be viewed publicly by default but you can still bookmark it as private, bookmarks that are imported are set to private by default. This feature is pretty cool because i can display my favorites links on my blog.
Let's talk briefly on how this stuff works:

You need to create an account with del.icio.us to start, during the process you'll install a set of command buttons (one has a TAG on it)that'll help you add new stuff to del.icio.us. click on the "tag" button or "post to del.icio.us" and save your bookmark, but there's another way to do that (which i learnt the hard way since i didn't have any administrator authority on the machines in the lab to install the del.icio.us toolbar); all you've got do is click on "your favorites" and in the search bar, you specify what you're looking for either in del.icio.us, or on the web; then you click on "save this" at the end of the link you wanna save.
Adding a couple of your buddies to your network isn't a big deal, click on "your network", fill in your friend's del.icio.us username and add him/her; his/her name will appear at the bottom of the search bar.
Using del.icio.us you could also subscribe to a bunch of newsletters or webpublication, what you've gotta do is click on " subscriptions", do a search and once again "save this". You can also send a particular link to your fellow who's on your network by clicking on "for:his/her username" in the process of saving the bookmark.
Finally you could also post your favorite bookmarks on your blog simply by copying some ugly and freaky line of codes from your linkrolls onto your blog.

May 10, 2007

Tagging, Blogging and Paparazzi Ooops Technorati

Today the topic is about Technorati, that name sounds a little scary, reminds me of paparazzi, those punks who make the lives of celebrities a living hell... well, Technorati is kinda some search engine that traces latest gossip in the world of blogs or live web: Better watch out what you say about your prof or boss on your blogs, the old days of trashing people on the net are now counted!! good or bad, well it all depends on which side of the gun you are standing.

Back to the main:
Blogs with RSS keep their users posted on the latest entry; This feature named "tagging" have made my blogging life even easier. To my understanding, tagging works like this, as i throw something on my blog board let's say a photo of my favorite cartoons (Family Guy) and tag it "Family Guy", the paparazzi search engine Ooops Technocrati search engine takes that tag and retrieves recent posts, photos and other stuff with Family Guy as Tag; basically tagging has made the spread of information in the world of blogs a lot faster. Basically you could be read lot faster by thousands of people around the globe but ...As I said always mind your language you never know who may end up reading your childish or offensive comments!

Tagging seems to me very interesting but it requires some sort of standardization; imagine someone tagging an article as CAN and another uses the tag Coupe Africaine des Nations and somebody else C.A.N; there should be a way of figuring out that they all are related to the same topic. Definitelly some clean up need to be done in that direction just to keep organised the world of blogs.

I've choosen 3 blogs for this project, that i find interests in, one relates to a Bob Marley who is of my favorite artists, another is about Reggae Riddims from 2000 to date, most of my favourite riddims fall into this range of time and finally I got some really interesting young christian girl, exchanges with her friends on various issues such as class,...the very reason I took this last one is for its religious conotation, i do Believe in Christ (no offence):
http://abobmarley.blogspot.com
http://blog.myspace.com/farmgurl115
http://blog.myspace.com/djchakalous

To find them, I typed in the Technorati search bar key words (Bob Marley, or Riddims, or Jesus Saves), then i specified where i wanted the results to come from (in blog posts or in tags or in blog directory) i got for each search results from which i picked those i've got interests in, once selected, i checked for a small heart icon on a green or red background, and added them to my list of favorites. Another way of doing it was to type the URL of the post and the tags in the URL box under the " Add a Favorite" section.

I guess the very last question is about if :"i'll be using the RSS reader, or Technorati more often"; it's all depends with what i'm intending of doing, if i wanna reach many bloggers as fast as i can, definitelly this feature is useful, but again i'd also rather be careful on what i should, in order not to offend people; Obviously, i would be checking my RSS often to get the latest news and gossip.

May 8, 2007

Blogging Experience, RSS Stuff



This is a brand new cool stuff that I've just discovered it's called RSS, it's basically a "web feed" kind of; it frequently updates blogs or podcasts. To get this stuff to work I had to have a feed readers, well i used the google reader... I subscrived to a couple of web sites i check often and all this software does is, it checks for my subscribed feeds to see if there are new updates or content since the last time i checked, then retrieved that update and post it on my blog: AWESOME!!!
Definetelly that's the kind of technology i'll be using.
This feature allows me to stay tuned by retrieving the latest news from my favorite sites, it allows me to save a great deal of time by not going into each individual sites and i don't need to join these site's email newsletter; i need also to mention that the sites i added to my feed reader syndicate content!! to spot such sites, i checked for that orange speaker look alike logo in the adress bar, some of the sites had an XML button with an orange background and others had an RSS on a blue background.
To Add a site to my feed reader:
I went in my reader google account and clicked on "Add Subscription" in the left side of the screen and entered the site, that's how simple it is!!
Importing all my favourite link to my blog i had to click on the button "Add to Blogger" in the right side of the screen and a scary looking mass of ugly codes appeared, i guess some programming language, but thanks god, i didn't need to know what they meant but instead just copied and pasted them in my blog in the spot meant for HTLM codes and the links appeared on my blog!!

May 3, 2007

First Snow

Yo what's up!
I'd like to share my "first snow" experience with all new comers to canada, those willing to face the canadian winters (not the faint hearted) particularly those from those sunny tropical countries.
First of all guyz, please don't trash me coz of my funny written english, it's way better than listening me talking, sometimes i've got the impression of hurting people's ears with my funny accent which is a mixture of five african languages and of course the old romantic french, adding on this nice confusion is the "canadian" english i'm trying to emulate; see guyz, it's very easy to spot a canadian in a bunch of people speaking english, the american would say 4 instance: hey, nice day!, the canadian fellow would go: nice day eh! well that's a few things i've been trying lately ... Ok back to the main, how did I survive two winters in a row that's still a mystery to me; I recall my first canadian snow, was in the library trying to spot this missing comma in a 150 lines of code in my program when i spotted by the window what appeared to me like small balls of cotton(first time to see snow guyz, lol)...Still in the amaze, my canadian rezz bud who was watching me from a far and who appeared to be entertained by my surprise took me outside and showed me a few fun games, she made me do a "snow angel", we had a snow fight, tasted snow , buit an "igloo" and she delivered the famous advice:" never eat yellow snow"... I couldn't figure out why there was yellow snow but one fine day i finally spotted a four legged culprit into action and thanked my bud for that advice.
things got pretty intense as days moved on, the thermometer was reading negative 1 celcius and whenever i was outside i had the impression of being in a huge freezer! Most of my canadian friends found the temperature mild and most of they were wearing a few layers and someitme only a sweater; well it was just the opposite for me:
I had my heavy cotton long sleeved Tshirt underneath my 2 layers of sweaters, which were under my heavy hoody sweater and my winter jacket entirely zipped to cover the nose, a scarf, gloves, mittens, hat,.. and anything that could help cover any exposed area to the cold. Back home, +10 celcius is really cold for me, going below zero that was pure madness!! I guess, I was litteraly hibernating and many times skipping classes(won't happen Jamie i promise lol) just to avoid the weather outside, pondering how i was missing the sunny days from home: How come canadians enjoy winter?