Just listened to a voice mail message from Vonage that says because of the 911 regulations for VoIP services it is necessary to login to the account and agree to their terms “in order to avoid an interuption in service.” All those with Vonage accounts may want to do so ASAP, if you haven’t already done so.

CHANGELOG
Update 11/3/2005: v0.2 of the Pivot to WP importer is now available for download with the following changes/fixes:

- two database table name fixes (thanks sepp)
- added MySQL hostname variable to config area
- WP “more” code for intro / body compliance (thanks paradoxdruid)
- changed use of file_get_contents for older versions of PHP

Paradoxdruid noted on the Wordpress support he tested this importer with v1.3 beta 1 of Pivot. If anybody finds a version that breaks the program please use the comments section and tell me about it.

Original post
A couple months ago MakeYouGoHmm switched from Pivot 1.2x to Wordpress 1.5x. At the time of the switch I didn’t find an importer script to automate moving all the blog posts and comments from Pivot 1.2x to Wordpress 1.5x, so I wrote my own in PHP. After completing the import I asked if anybody else was interested in the code and recently a couple folks commented that they were interested. I promised that I would share the code, so here it is:

Requires: Linux, PHP and MySQL
Download pivot 1.2x to Wordpress 1.5x importer (5k ZIP)

The package includes pivot_to_wp1-5.php which has a small configuration area required before running the program and a small readme.txt file. There is no support offered for this program, but if you have questions about the code feel free to use the comment area in this thread only or trackback from your blog and I will probably respond when I get a few minutes.

I’m still using Pivot on a couple blogs so I might be using this code again someday. Hope others find it as useful as I did a few months ago.

Update 7/1/05: Omitted an important point that this importer is for *Linux* server compiled with PHP, not Windows or Mac and a working MySQL database is required (if Wordpress is installed and running then all is well). Somebody will need to write a conversion for those OS.

We don’t really want to cancel the Y! music subscription but for whatever reason it won’t stream the music on my son’s computer and he is the intended user for the service and nobody likes to pay for something they can’t use where they want to use it (that’s the big problem with DRM). His computer isn’t second rate, it’s a fairly new (within the last six months) Compaq machine that meets the system minimum requirements. Y! Music did work for awhile and then around the time a secondary administrator account was added to his computer Y! Music just stopped working. His username has administrative rights though so that shouldn’t have made any difference. We’ve tried the Y! Music software on two other computers here and it doesn’t work on the laptop but does work on one of my work desktop machines.

Is it just me or does Yahoo hide where specifically to cancel the Y! music service? They have a pretty detailed Report A Bug form. I was able to search Y! music Unlimited help to find the page pictured above.

Whenever I click the My Account link it takes me to another login form and then I filled that out and it 404s, grrr. They must be working on this today? Why the need for multiple login forms? The Y! Music Engine shows logged in but yet there is another login form for the account area? Why not just incorporate the two like Napster does?

We are now doing an entire reinstall on his computer of the OS. That should purge any changes and give a fresh situation to work with for the Y! Music.

If that doesn’t work then we’re heading back to Napster. Also, it’s easy to cancel Napster’s service. They aren’t worried that people will leave, is Yahoo?

Code for Hello World in 171 programming languages … and counting. Hello World is usually the first thing taught in a programming language and this single web page lists many different examples. Nice single page reference.

Yesterday on my way to an appointment in the field I was driving through a really bad and close lightning storm and decided to pull over and see if I could capture it on film. The problem I noticed was that I had to stay patiently waiting with my finger half-pressing the shutter ready for the lightning to strike and then react very quickly when it happened. I waited and watched for a good fifteen minutes trying to capture the strikes just as they happened every minute or so during this time.

When lightning strikes it seems like it happens a second or more sometimes, like it happens longer than just a brief flash of light, but once you get there with camera in hand, capturing that flash with your average digital camera isn’t as easy as it might seem.

I took at least a dozen shots and after each shot reviewed in the small viewfinder display. I didn’t see any lightning striking, just like in the picture above, so most the pictures taken yesterday were deleted seconds after being taken.

Just a little bit ago I was transferring all the photos to the computer and came across the pictures below:

And another one:

No, these aren’t Photoshopped pictures, they are authentic Washington lightning storm weather photos taken Tuesday 6/21/2005 illustrating the true force of Mother Nature.

Next time you are in a storm, pull off the road somewhere safe and try catching lighting. Just as long as it doesn’t catch you!

tags: lightning+striking, lightning, storm

Found something that made you go hmm? Think it might make others go hmm in one of the 20+ categories? Especially now that this blog has thousands of daily readers (thank you!), and continues to grow, it seems like a logical progression to offer readers an opportunity to submit their own drafts for possible publishing here.

So, if you are interested in doing so, then please go ahead and submit your drafts to us. We’ve opened it up so that anybody can register and submit a draft for possible publication.

Submission elligibility and guidelines
1. Any content/draft submitted may be edited and/or refused for any reason.
2. No third party hotlinking images or other content (including calling offsite scripts) OR any material that violates the TOS of the affiliate programs we are using (basically that means no pron). If you would like to include an image from your own site that you have/own the copyright to then make sure it matches the domain in your profile.
3. No spamming, stealing and/or crossposting (blatant copy/pasting) the same content from another website, blog, etc. Fair use referencing is welcome as well as including a link URL by itself (please use the “linkdump” category for links by themselves). Please realize that the basic idea is to provide your own opinion on why something made you go hmm, not be copying what made somebody else go hmm.

Note: If your draft submission only contains a URL then the assumption will be the site is a web service or software that speaks for itself. Please do not submit any links to software containing spyware, trojans or other nastiness.

How to submit your draft to MakeYouGoHmm
1. Register for this blog (I know, I know, not another registration, argh). Don’t worry, your email will only be used to discuss your submission if we have any questions (which we won’t in 99.9% of the cases). It will not be used to spam you or sell to partners or affiliates or anybody else.
2. Login once you’ve registered and click the “write” tab and then hit the “draft” button to submit for possible publication. Please save a local copy of any draft you submit. We will either delete or publish any draft submitted, we aren’t a draft clearing house repository. If you are looking for that type of service then try Blog Event
3. Wait for a response or write and/or submit another draft. There are currently two of us here that will be reviewing submitted drafts. If we decide to publish your draft, then it will be published and not show up on your menu any longer, if we decide not to use it, then it will be deleted off the server. Please don’t take a delete/denial personally unless you are a spammer, and then please do take it personally.

What’s in it for you?
Besides a link back to the URL in your profile if you provide one: nothing. So please don’t submit a draft if you are expecting more than a byline credit/link.

I contribute to some group blogs out there without being paid except for a byline credit and also I get paid for some other group blogging I do. Some 98% of the existing MakeYouGoHmm blog posts were written by me and (for those curious) I don’t have any plans to cut back my output any time soon. Well, except for our annual summer family vacation, that is, that’s fast approaching.

Now, if this all sounds fair to you, then show us Things That Make You Go Hmm!

Time is money and I dig using Photoshop custom actions to save time doing repetitive tasks. Actions are essentially macros.

Here’s how to make a quick Photoshop action, step by step, that will resize and save a picture. It will only prompt you to change the name or confirm the changed picture which at that time if you don’t like the changes then you can back out and manually work with the image.

Load into Photoshop any picture that needs to be resized. On the right menu choose the “Actions” tab.

Next to the trash can you’ll notice a “create a new action” button, click that and a “New Action” window will open.

Now you need to create a name for the action and optionally set a hotkey combination so you don’t even need to click with the mouse.

#1: I changed the name of the action to: “makeShrink”
#2: optional - changed so that pressing the F11 key inside of Photoshop would launch the makeShrink action.
#3: optional - you could check these boxes so that the SHIFT or CONTROL key plus the FUNCTION key would be required.
#4: optional - pick a color for the action so it is more easily found in the Actions menu.
#5: After setting the above options to start recording the makeShrink action then just press the “Record” buttong

Now everything you are doing in photoshop is being recorded so go through the following steps:

Instead of the following 12 different mouse clicks and input: (1) IMAGE -> (2) IMAGE Size -> (3) Change width to 400 with constrain properties -> (4) OK -> (5) FILE -> (6) Save for Web -> (7) Change quality slider -> (8) OK -> (9) CONFIRM -> OK

After clicking the last OK you will be back at the main Photoshop menu and you can click the black stop button (see step #2). Your action has now been created.

Next, find the action makeShrink in the default Actions menu — you’ll probably have to scroll to find it somewhere near the bottom — and then click and drag the action so it’s up at the top just below the Default Actions.atm folder in the Actions tab view.

Now whenever you want to shorten the nine steps explained above to resize a picture you can just load the image and click the “play action” in the Actions menu for makeShrink. You could make different actions for different shapes and sizes. Perhaps a makeThumb for a thumbnail sized graphic.

What cool Photoshop actions have you created?

A couple months ago I wrote about a search engine that seemed “kind of scary” called Zabasearch. It contains personal information easily accessible and searchable online. Well, ironically enough it also apparently creeped out a guy named Stefek Zaba (no relation he emphatically states) and Mr. Zaba jumped through the hoops to figure out how to get removed from Zabasearch (pictured above). Zaba has been getting a bunch of remove me requests.

Eleanor discovered a cool feature in Backpack (API), although she got the link wrong in her post:

Each page has a unique email address, and anything sent to that address is squirted straight onto the page. If your email has “note: [foo]” in the subject line, then it becomes a note called [foo] where the text is generated from the text of your email. You can upload images, files, and to-do list items like this, too.

Backpack has a slick .mov file demonstrating these features. Not sure if I’d use this or not, but I signed up anyway to check it out. Might be handy for forwarding interesting stuff from email to a private or public web place.

Who is Eleanor? Another one of the female-authored bloggers who commented on my call for female bloggers:

Since you wanted to hear from female bloggers - ding, that’s me. I currently blog about — well, technology, mostly. Although coincidentally, I’m studying marketing at the moment, and am likely to be mentioning marketing stuff of interest now and then.

I have written about Ta-da lists here (Ta-da Lists is a free service) before which is by the same company, 37 Signals, that make Backpack (Free, $5, $9 and $19/month plans) and also the project management tool Basecamp (Free for one project, $12, $24, or $99/month plans).

Coffee can be a very addictive habit. I gave it up many years ago by switching to water, occasionally with a slice of lemon or lime. Much better for me than caffeine. Steve Pavlina offers more coffee quitting tips:

As for the health effects, I’ve read evidence both for good and ill, so right now I don’t fall strongly on either side. One thing is clear though — caffeine is addictive.

Beside my main desk I keep one of those small fridges (photo above) that you can get at most appliance stores or Wal-Mart for like $50-$100 USD. Here’s a breakdown on the red numbers:

1 - sliced lemons and/or limes in a plastic container
2- keep a spare glass chilled with water in it, even better than using a fresh glass because it keeps the water cooler
3 - I duct-taped the cheap freezer shut since it’s not used and it didn’t seal as good. If the freezer leaks cold out too much then you end up freezing the items in the fridge. Most of the really cheap refrigerators don’t have separate freezer settings, so good old, reliable duct tape to the rescue!
4 - keep two gallon jugs in rotation with the one currently being used on closest to the desk and the one that is in chilling mode to furthest away. When you empty the first gallon then go retrieve a new gallon jug and move the chilled one closer you.
5 - I’ve found that it takes a couple normal temperature days for me to drink a gallon of water and by the time I’ve gone through the first gallon the other gallon is plenty cold.

Not pictured is a dish towel for handling the condensation that will occur when you remove the chilled glass of water and put at room temperature. If you don’t drink it very quickly then the glass will sweat and create a very watery desktop scenario. Be sure to use a coaster. I use a sealed CD-R case (see next to white phone) and then occasionally wipe the outside of the glass with the dish towel.