It's News to Me

This morning I discovered through my RSS feeds that version 0.9 of Flock was available for download, so I downloaded and installed it.  I am writing this post using its blog editor.  My initial impressions of the user interface are generally positive as it is quite different than it was when I last used it.  I have taken a hiatus from using each of the intervening versions since I ceased using it on October 30, 2006.  I'll spend the day experimenting with this version and see how I like it.  I'll update this post later in the day with my reactions.

Blogged with Flock

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In what I suppose will come as a shock to some who think of me as a »SuperFan» of Flock, I'm announcing that during the last week I have decided to change my default browser to Firefox 2.0, just as Tish is getting on the Flock bandwagon.  The primary reason for the change, in my case, is speed or the relative lack of it in Flock.  It may be just my system or it may be that because Flock aspires to do so much, it will always be slower than FF, but whatever the reason, there is enough of a speed difference that the extra effort required to make this change seems justified.

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The social bookmarking service, del.icio.us, turned three years old yesterday.

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The title of this post might be the headline if the Knoxville News Sentinel chose to cover the August 23rd meeting at 7:00 PM in South Knoxville of the nascent Knox Bloggers group.  Bloggers, after all, are a solitary breed, eschewing as they do associating even with editors, so the secondary goal of determining whether to meet on a monthly basis is a bit like skiing uphill.  Still the first gathering could prove interesting enough to warrant a return engagement.  It, I suppose, remains to be seen.

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Thanks to my friend, Shannon, I now have another computer (I still have the old one too), and the new one is running Ubuntu 6.06.  So my absence from posting for a while is at least in part because I have been on  «educational leave.»  If the truth be known, I've been quite busy on the Internet lately learning a lot of different things, but I just haven't been posting here.  So I am due for some serious «catch up» posts in the next few days, because I've been exploring some things that were very interesting, at least to me.

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Daryl and Mike and I met back on March 22 for the first Flock Meetup here in Knoxville.  Last night we were joined at the second Meetup by Dave and Gabriel, so our numbers are growing. For about 2 hours we discussed where Flock is now and where it is headed.  The new direction seems to be one that leads back to Flock's roots.  As Daryl explained it, originally there was a focus on correlating what you and your friends were doing online, what sites you were finding interesting and sharing links and news with each other.  The metaphor, apparently, was that as people aggregated their interests, they would all «flock» to the same areas of interest.  I've posted a picture of the group on my Flickr site.  As an aside, I might point out that I was with four young men who ranged in age from one half to almost one third my age, but despite that I didn't feel out of place at all. 

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I've just received notice from Daryl that due to some scheduling issues, he has had to change the date of the Flock meetup from Thursday to Wednesday, July 26, 2006.  It will be at the same place and time, however.

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Daryl has finalized the plans for next week's Flock Meetup.  Unless some unforeseen circumstance prevents it, we will meet at Barnes and Noble at 7:00 PM on Thursday, July 27, 2006.  There is a Starbuck's in the bookstore that has coffee and things to eat, so if you are hungry and/or thirsty bring money.  Otherwise, it won't cost you anything to attend.  I plan to be there and I'd like to invite you to come too.  If you have a laptop, you are welcome to bring it along because wifi is available.  And if you are also lucky enough to have a friend too, you are welcome to bring him or her with you.  You can get the most recent version (0.7.3) of the Flock beta at the Flock download site.  The whole event will be informal so it should be fun as well as educational.  I hope to see you there.

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Today Daryl announced his tentative plans for the next Knoxville area Flock users meetup one night next week when he said:

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For the last several days, I've been evaluating several new pieces of software.  As I mentioned in my Lessons Learned post on the 22nd, I needed to explore an automatic backup program that gave me an option for offsite backup.  The next day, Tom Simpson posted a piece called «Backups Should Be Automatic» that was, at least in part, a response to my post.  In it, he recommended a backup program that he had found recently called Handy Backup.  It provides the features that I need.  It can be set up to be automated, and it provides the option of backing up with FTP to some remote location, among other options.  It also provides the ability to backup to DVD, but since I don't have a DVD burner on this computer, that option doesn't do me much good.  Though you can backup to CD and though the program is smart enough to span multiple CDs if your backup is too large to fit on just one, that option, while viable for me, entails attending the backup so that you can swap the CDs when one fills up and another is needed.  Better than not backing up at all, of course, but not ideal.  So I am choosing to experiment with the FTP option to backup to my hosting service's servers.

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