Archive for the 'work' Category
protected
I’ve locked down a good chunk of the archives on a post-by-post basis while I do some structural and organizational changes around here. It’s a clunky way to do it, but the fastest way to do it for now. If you really feel the need to read any of those protected archive posts - just ask and I’ll give you the password(s).
So I’ve started really investigating ways to restrict access that are both easy on me and easy on those I want to grant access to. In case any of you want to do something similar - like maybe separate access to public and private or work and life posts, here are some of the things I’ve found so far that I will be taking a deeper look at. (yes, I realize I’ve ended a couple few sentences with prepositions so far in this post, and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.)
Most of these WP plugins came from a really comprehensive list of restriction plugins on wordpress.org and a few were also recommended to me via email (thank you).
Angusman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin - “Allows you to make your content accessible only to registered and logged in users.”
Category Access - “Restrict (protect) categories on a user-by-user basis. Useful for restricting Categories seen when writing a post.”
Category Visibility - “Adds a new admin menu for setting category visibility settings for the front page, searches, feeds and archives.”
Demo Mode - “Puts your blog into a demo or maintenance mode except for authenticated users.”
Disclose-Secret - “Only shows WordPress content to other users if they meet certain access criteria.” Note: the documentation has been translated into English, but some of the translation is a little rough.
Page Restriction - “Lets you hide specific pages from unregistered users.”
Post Levels - “The Post-Levels plugin allows you to set a numeric “level” to each of your users, and then author posts that are only visible by users above that level.”
Role Scoper - “Control reading and editing access by defining role requirements and assignments by page, post or category. Can assign roles by user, WP Role group or custom-defined group. Ridiculous feature set threatens to crush author but is very actively maintained and forum-supported. For WP 2.2 to 2.6.”
Simply Exclude - “Provides an interface to selectively exclude/include categories, tags and page from the 4 actions used by WordPress. isfront, isarchive, issearch, isfeed.”
WP-Members - “By default, WordPress allows all content to be “open” and viewable by anyone and allows the site owner to restrict specific content if desired by setting a password for the post. WP-Members operates with the reverse assumption. It restricts all content by default and allows the site owner to “unblock” content as desired.”
WP-Password - “The other day I got asked if there was a way to password protect a WP blog where the author didn’t have access to .htaccess, didn’t want to create users, send/remind them of their passwords, or manage post security levels. “I just wanna password protect the damn thing. Is that so hard?” Well, at the time, yes. It was. But not anymore!”
And last, but not least, I also found a discussion on client login ideas that may also address some of the same concerns.
I hope this helps you all. If you have any suggestions, feedback, etc. Feel free to comment - but know that as always, your comments will be moderated.
No commentswine-o
it started like this in an email we got on June 13:
Hey Everyone -
So we have done bowling events, Round Rock Express baseball game events, cooking class events, etc., but this one sounds really fun.
On Thursday June 26th we are going to have a company wine tasting tour (employees only). We will tour 2 wineries outside of Austin and then hit historic Luckenbach, TX. We will have coach bus come pick up all of us here at the office at 10:30 that morning. We have a driver (obviously) and then two people (one I have used before named Mitch who is a chef at Eddie V’s) who will educate us about wines as we drive to and from the wineries. He will pair us up on the coach with wines that match well with specific foods. Educational and fun. We will also have lunch at a restaurant in Johnson City. We will end up back here at the office by 6pm. Hopefully those of you that plan to partake in much of the wine tasting can have significant others be here at 6pm to pick you up and drive you home. Otherwise, the company will pay for some cabs. There will be non-alcoholic wine and other beverages on the coach as well throughout the day.
I have done this before with a group of 10 and it was a blast. We will provide more information and an evite to get official confirmations from each of you. The idea was that people come in around 9am that morning, answer any emails or other logistics, we have a quick company meeting at 10am and then we hit the road for the tour…
and the meeting maker that we got on June 13 said this…
Subject: Wine Tasting Tour
Location: Hill Country, TX
When: Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:30 AM-6:00 PM (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada).
Please be on the bus by 10:15 am as it needs to leave by 10:30 am.
We will be touring Texas Hills Vineyard first, having lunch at the Silver K Café, and then touring Becker Vineyards. We will end the day with music in Luckenbach, which I hear is very much like Gruene without the additional shops (basically a VERY small historical town).
So yeah, tomorrow we’ll be wine touring all day long instead of working. I’ll be taking my new camera and hope to stay sober enough to get some great shots of the Texas Hill Country. Jealous?
UPDATE:
Here are some of the wines we tasted while on the Texas Grape & Green Tour:
White
2006 Messina Hof Gewürztraminer (pdf)
Fall Creek Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc
Red
2006 Peregrine Hill Pinot Noir
2006 Sister Creek Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon - 3 blend
(50% Cabernet - 30% Cab Franc - 20% Merlot)
Dessert
2007 Flat Creek Estates Muscato Di Arancia
Cellar Select Lanno Estacado Texas Port
2004 Messina Hof Tawny Texas Port (pdf)
oh and photos are on flickr although some are only available to friends and family.
No commentsProtected: dogged
subject: OOO
This is just too good not to share. This is an email conversation that’s been going on in the office today. It’s Friday, so of course we’re all a little less than serious. Names have been changed to protect the “innocent”…
subject: OOO - 3:30pm today (and a quick blurb about Oslo)
p1: Norway time is creeping up on me…. Will head out today at 3:30pm.
j1: Ditto for me. As to the trip outside of work, it was fun. We saw the city, got well acquainted with planes, trains and automobiles and learned that any beer under $15 here in the US is a bargain. Oslo is one expensive city. We have some fun Norwegian treats for a happy hour early next week.
m: What with the hop shortage of 2008 and rising fuel costs, there might not be too many beers under $15 here in the US for much longer… Luckily, even if beer fails us, scotch and bourbon are both inelastic goods. Have a great weekend, looking fwd to Norwegian happy hour.
l: I also remember an agave shortage that spawned White wine margaritas throughout NYC one year. Such a sad year.
d: I propose a First World Relief Fund. So our grandchildren won’t have to endure pan-tragic epi-travesties such as these!
m: I would like to subscribe to your newsletter and donate to your charity, but I just took out a 2nd mortgage so I could stock up on IPAs, tequila and can/bottle openers: the family will be well-prepared for the upcoming Peak Beverage crisis!
p2: i’ll contribute once there’s a catchy tune and marketing campaign that costs more than the fund actually brings in ~ we can make a difference!
d: Oh man… We don’t have the theme song ready yet. But we’re working on getting some real generous down-to-earth heavy-hitters like Mariah Carey, Kid Rock, and John Oates to kick off the song. It’s gonna be called “Yo, Can You Top This Off For Me (For The Childrens)”. I’m really excited about it.
And marketing-wise, we just have the logo. I think it sums up our point of view quite nicely.
s: Just to note: if you’re unable to procure those specific celebrities, I think this group of Japanese celebrity impersonators will do in a pinch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36w-CyqCO1A&feature=related
d: Wow. Although I was much more fascinated by the folks impersonating an excited audience! Good stuff.
PS – OOO is the new NWR. Please update your mail filters accordingly.
p2: pfftt… that jerk bono too good for us huh?
d: There’s always someone who just can’t see the big picture.
l: Oh boy. This is going to sting, but Bono and Kid Rock have joined up with my alternative cause. I have organic tshirts under my desk for only $18 dollars, the price of a beer in Oslo.
d: Well who needs you and your more-clever foundation! I’ve still got John Oates on my side!!! And my shirts are free-range hemp!
j2: You’ve left out someone very crucial to your success:
d: who’s that?
and then the side-bar IM discussion…
d: when i was doing a google image search for the $100 for my foundation logo, the first one ended up being a fill-screen goatse. You’re welcome, R.
me: oh dear. I am crying over that one.
d: so was i.
d: then i was trying to make a SFW goatse joke about that oprah pic but couldn’t come up with one. can you believe it?
me: oh lawdy - that might’ve been retinally damaging
d: oh god, no! i was just going to use words!
me: oh thank goodness
d: i was IM’ing s. and told her that i think i went too far by dissing oprah. that’ll turn any room against you.
1 commentProtected: fear
researching
Since considering, I’ve been doing a little more research, and found…
WordPress 2.5 released.
and BlueHost is no bueno.
on tumbling…
I’ve pretty much decided that I am far too verbose to rely entirely on a tumblelog for the meat of everything. I’ve been playing a bit with tumblr - mainly just seeing how it handles RSS feeds. And well, it handles them but things do get out of order when it pulls in a big feed dump hourly. I DO like that I can email a quick thought to the blog - with the plan that I am on for my iphone, email is way cheaper than sms.
Either way, I’m pretty sure that it will make sense to have a tumbled portion - I am trying to decide what bits would be best tumbled in whatever I end up building. I may play with tumblr a bit more and just embed it (since it’s already hosted) or better yet, I may play with chyrp for the tumblelog portion. I’ve heard okay things about it so far from other people that have been playing.
chyrp feedback I received: “I’ve been *this* close to embracing it, but have yet to do much with it. The functionality and add ons are fantastic, but the development community is fairly small. That, and it isn’t quite as flexible as I’d like it to be design wise. Figuring out where to put my templates and CSS code isn’t at all intuitive. Then again, that might be because I’ve spent so much time with Movable Type. Still, I’m planning to mess with it a bit more and might relaunch my site with it. At the very least, it’s worth playing with.”
on micro-blogging…
Yep, I’ll more than likely stick with twitter. I was reluctant to adopt it for a long time, because it just seemed silly, at best. 140 characters to talk about the cheese sandwich I had between longer blog posts about cheese sandwiches? Wha? It proved more useful than dodgeball during sxsw and certainly less annoying. Pre- and post-sxsw, it has been nice to keep up with the little nuances of my friend’s lives. Still don’t get twitter? Watch Twitter in Plain English.
reminders about comments…
On vox, there are some “barriers to entry” - people who don’t have a vox account generally don’t comment. Way back when I did blog, I remember what an annoyance comment spam was. It’s gotten better - well the tools have gotten better for filtering/moderating, but I’ll certainly moderate. I’m all for free speech, but my webspace is not necessarily your webspace for having that voice. It’s sad but true that not everyone will follow the Blogger’s Code of Conduct. There will always be trolls. There will always be assholes that are assholes just for the sake of being an asshole or because it’s so easy to hide behind anonymity. I have to delete comments frequently on flickr. Although, disemvoweling is an interesting method, just one that boingboing deals with moderation.
on content management…
I’ve been looking through the list of free and open source cms software and it can be a tad overwhelming. There are so many now. But I am really leaning towards this latest release of WordPress - WordPress 2.5 - for many reasons including the “comfort zone” aspect. It’s familiar and there is a strong community around it so help is a click away. I want control over things, but I don’t want to eff with it so much that it gets in the way of the creative process. After all, any new web presence I create right now is geared towards being a digital sandbox and not an electronic resume.
on hosting…
So narrowing it down to wp, I can take a more targeted look at hosting providers. Just yesterday someone told me to look into BlueHost’s censorship. Wow. And yes, right there in the TOS for BlueHost (aka Hostmonster and Fastdomain) the third bullet point down states: “Foul language and profanity in the site content, and in the domain name are prohibited.” Fuck that, I say. I do enjoy dropping the f-bomb and don’t want my site to be shut down if I choose to do so.
I don’t want to research this to death really. I’ve heard not so good stuff about DreamHost and I’ve also heard that some people are really happy with it. Right now though, with a wordpress 2.5 auto-installer, 1TB of disk space and 10TB bandwidth for $7.95 a month with a 12 month pre-pay? I’m leaning almost to the point of falling over towards DreamHost right now. But AN Hosting has a pretty tempting deal as well. And so does HostICan… Unless you can point me to another better deal dear readers.
So now that I am nearer to making decisions, I need to get off my ass and do something about it. We’ll see how long that takes…
1 commentlessons
Now that sxswi is considerably larger than it’s ever been before, I think a few procedural changes are in order… or a least it’s time to start considering some changes for next year. Yikes, this post vaguely tip-toes into almost slightly professional territory.
1. we need a freakin’ plan
There are too freakin’ many panels that are entirely too spread out to make a snap decision. The geeky part of sxsw used to be all segregated in one area of the convention center (ACC). There used to be maybe 4 or 5 panels to choose from at any given time. And at least one year, they were divided more or less into different tracts.
I understand that there is more complexity to our industry now. I understand that we have to think about more than if we build something in tables or use the pure pristine goodness that is clean code and css. I get that. But holy moley there were too many panels this year. And not all of them all that useful. And then they’ve got clever names and even more clever descriptions - it makes me think that some panelist/moderators put more thought and effort into the description of the panel than the panel itself.
I don’t want to bitch just to bitch here though. And yes I know that my failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on your part (or however the saying goes). But if there are going to be that many panels there needs to be a better way for attendees to filter all this down and pick the right thing to go to so that they can make the most of their investment - both time and money-wise.
Much like the conference has nearly outgrown the convention center, it has also outgrown the structure of the website. I’d need to look at that a little more in-depth to have concrete suggestion on that. But I can say that it needs to support tagging, offer filtering, sorting, saving, etc. so that I can plan out my conference experience before I get there.
Some of this is part of a bigger problem for me, and one that I know I seriously need to work on and fast. I need to figure out how to take things one thing at a time instead of getting overwhelmed when there are too many things and shutting down. This is a bad pattern of behavior anyway. But I know I am not the only one (I heard it from a few people actually) that felt that this year, sxswi was just almost totally paralyzing in the amount of choices it offered.
I like to go with the flow some. But I also like to have a plan. It’s oddly comforting. And yes, the week before south by generally seems to go nutzo at work anyway, but this year it really did and I didn’t have much time to study the panels before the conference started. And when I did - I didn’t know where to begin - there were too many.
So what I want for next year is this. I want the panel descriptions to be tagged - appropriately tagged - with tags like: legal, design, music, drm, ux, moderated, q&a, etc. that would let me filter down to the panels that most match what I am interested in. Then I would like to read, mark as favorite and save my own little personal conference schedule. Even better and cooler would be if I could save this in some sort of iphone and/or web app that had *my* schedule and alerts and even a little walking map of the convention center that would get me from panel to panel. Wouldn’t that be cool? Don’t we have a few geeks at this conference that could build such a thing?
well fuck, that was a long-winded number 1, on to number 2…
2. not all free things are good things
There is a crap overload in the schwag bags now. I know that companies are paying for placement in these bags, but geez that’s a lot of wasted paper. I’d really like to see huge recycle bins either inside or just outside the convention center so that we could bag-purge and recycle right there.
Yeah, some of the people that paid to put their stuff in the bags might be pissed, but hey - they can look at it this way. It’s a focus group - one look in the recycle bin and they’ll know if their schwag was a flop. A few notes… Adobe, your fortune cookies were insulting and quite frankly, food in a schwag bag scares me - I have no idea if you over ordered for a conference months ago and these were just the ones you had to get rid of. Those cookies could have been ancient. Buttons again this year seems to be the cooler schwag to get - I’m amassing quite a collection. Pens an/or sharpies also good. As are notepads, sticky notes (c’mon think of the interaction and user experience designers - we keep sticky note people in business!) and cool business card holders. Another shitty, poorly designed postcard? Toss.
The other free (or cheap) bit that I need to remember next year is the alcohol. Just because it’s there and free does not mean that I need to drink all that is offered to me. I had too much this year. Luckily, oddly, not enough to ever really be hungover, but enough to have some brazen moments - some of which I remember. *shaking my head*
3. transportation exasperation
I did okay with this for the most part. I didn’t drive when I really shouldn’t have, but it was a pain in the ass to manage a car a few times. I need to have a better plan (yikes it’s ALL number 1) for next year. Maybe I can park at someone’s house who lives closer that I do and just rely on cabs for the week.
4. location, location, location
Maybe I can alleviate number 3 if I am just closer in general to downtown during sxwi. Maybe I can go in with some locals and/or conference attendees to get a vrbo.com rental near downtown for the week or chip in on a hotel room. It so much easier when you’re right there and not worried about getting home. Which leads me to number 5…
5. extruded plastic dingus*
“You know, for kids.” I have a slightly different issue, well, not an issue - my kid is not an issue. But I have a different, well, situation with my kiddo because he’s older. But I noticed, and talked to, a lot more parents at sxswi this year.
For me, it was a little straining to try and balance time between the conference and hanging out with my kiddo. He’s old enough that he has his own social calendar and is always on spring break during south by. But I still wanted to make sure that we’d see each other and get some time together every day. Next year, I may see if I can find him entirely alternate plans like going to my parents’ house or an extended stay with friends. In my first several sxswi’s he was with his dad during the conference, but dad is AWOL and so that’s just not an option.
I want to do more thinking and collaboration on this subject with other parents though. Especially the ones that have younger children. We all agreed that it would be too big of a liability for the conference itself to take on as - to provide child care or alternate family-friendly programming BUT if enough of us get together and do some planning I’m sure that we can come up with something that answer the needs of us aging old skool sxswi vets that have kids now.
*name that movie and you can be my BFF for a day or maybe two.
6. work-life balance
I’ve realized this more and more the past few years during sxswi, it is damn near impossible to balance life with work. Body aches plus brain aches plus increased alcohol consumption and minus sleep makes for less than normal productivity which leads to way too much stress. I am starting to be convinced that there cannot be a balance during sxswi week - the whole scale needs to tip to the all-consuming “life” that is south by. Next year, I’m scheduling vacation, way in advance, for sxswi and the days that follow it - the entire week.
7. why doncha take a picture? it’ll last longer…
Yeah? Why didn’t I? I didn’t take a single photo this year. That will HAVE to be remedied next year. And another one in general - I really need to get back into it and using my toy cameras.
8. remember what else I was going to write about.
I know I had a few other big (and little) ideas. I’ll add them here, if and when I ever think of them again. They might have something to do with avoiding the SXSW Flu™ or as it has been renamed - SxSars.
considering
It’s been a while since I managed a domain name. It had been a while since I was blogging… but now that I am writing more regularly, maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time to have a more permanent space again - to go from “renting” on vox to “owning” someplace else. Someplace where I have far more control over markup. I’m definitely going to give this further consideration.
So I still own a dot org domain name… any suggestions on hosting providers and blogging cms? geez I am out o’ the loop.
Back in the day, I used movable type on pair. Since posting the above part earlier, I’ve since also been referred to dream host (with a referral name) because of how easy it is to use word press. It was also suggested that I look into chyrp when I have free time (what’s that again?).
any more suggestions?
I’ll log additional suggestions for the sake of no duplication…
hosting:
pair
1 vote for dream host 1 vote for NOT dream host
a2hosting
* blue host
AN Hosting
WebFaction
in motion
cms:
SimpleLog
movable type
* word press
Protected: perfect
microflickr?
Flickr + Microsoft = ???: The MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR Pool
As you can tell, I usually just write about the personal life stuff, because it’s generally FAR more convoluted than the day-to-day work stuff.
The vary loosely falls into the work category, but yeah, flickr isn’t work…
BUT… I’m having very conflicted thoughts about Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo. There are a lot of Yahoo services/tools that I use and love, like flickr, and I’m not sure what would happen to them.
I’m also not sure yet about a Apple+Google vs. Microsoft+Yahoo! thang. Will that make it more difficult for the little guy to compete? Will that stifle creativity? I just don’t know and clearly haven’t had enough time to think about all of it - there’s a lot to consider.
In the meantime, visit the link and marvel at some of the horrific, but funny, photoshop “skills” in the flickr group.
No comments