It's News to Me

On October 18, 2007, the newest distribution of Ubuntu (Version 7.10, code named «Gutsy Gibbon») was released, and I downloaded the ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso image and, after checking the MD5 checksum, burned it to CD.  I was able to use this Live CD to boot into the new version and install it on the Dell 4100 system I have here at home.  Because the checksum of the downloaded image verified and the Live CD works on my Dell system, I know there is nothing wrong with the CD itself.  I took the screen shot at the right showing the desktop with the included program, Tomboy, on the screen.  (If you click on the image above, a larger version will open and you can read the two open windows to learn what a neat little utility Tomboy is.) 

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If you are like me, you have a few friends who rely on you to help them out occasionally with using their computer.  I often find myself talking with these folks by Skype both because it saves money and/or minutes on the calls and because I enjoy being hands free when I'm talking with them.  In addition Skype offers the ability to chat while you are talking which frequently proves useful for sending links to explanations or other resources that can help resolve the issue I'm working on with them.  But sometimes words fail me and it would surely be nice to be able to show them what I am talking about.  That's where the Jing Project comes in.  It's called a project because it's not yet a product nor is it a beta, as the FAQ explains.  This video explains in less than 2 minutes just what it does.

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In this short video, I demonstrate a few of the shortcut keys I use in reading RSS feeds in Google Reader.

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I was a bit disappointed yesterday after installing version 2.0 of Windows Live Writer that it didn't give me the ability to create new Pages or to add Categories from the interface in WLW.  So this morning I went to the WLW MSN Group and joined it where I found a thread describing the same problem I was experiencing.  I added my confirmation of the problem to the thread and later this afternoon, I went back there and found that Joe Cheng of Microsoft had posted the solution. 

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A week ago today I posted some thoughts about the tools I am currently using to discover and understand the traffic I get here at my blog. Several of you commented on that post and offered some helpful suggestions (i.e., W3counter -- thanks Dan Grossman) and encouragement, all of which were much appreciated. Since that time I have also been carrying on an email dialog with a friend and fellow blogger about his experience, and in today's post I want to relate his statistical success story and see if we can draw some lessons from it. At his request, I won't mention who he is or link to his blog, but you may, I think, find his story as interesting as I do.

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In this post, I want to talk a bit about how I am monitoring who is viewing my blog and how often they appear to be doing so.

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Yesterday I learned another two-part lesson. I was trying to figure out how to change the stylesheet for one of the blogs that I administer so that it would indent the first line of all the paragraphs in a post.

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This video is courtesy of Lee LeFever. Thanks, Lee.

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The other day when I was talking about Google Notebook, I mentioned that I searched for help on this new tool but couldn't find any. I don't know whether it has just been added or whether I just discovered it, but now I see it does have a Help section. There is also a Tour that you can take for a good overview of the service.

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My son Mike has frequently called me while driving around and asked that I look up some business on Google and give him the location or the phone number. We've jokingly referred to that as his connecting with «Dear-Old-Dad Central» or «the Mother Ship.» However, now such calls are no longer necessary.

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