This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series.  It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments.  The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation.    So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen.   This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets.  Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings.  My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with.  This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above.  Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed,  and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same.   When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest.   It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing.   Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath.  Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity.  Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor.   Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then).   I think my grandparents ending up paying for it.   It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said.   I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would.  I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air.   I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe.   My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother.   Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches.   So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work.  Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools.  I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was.   It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job.    She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program.  that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced.   I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her.    I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us.   The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself.   I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line.  I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about.   If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”.   Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off.   These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces.    Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned.    I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it.   I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

Read Part 14 Here

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Read Part 20 Here

The Internet with it’s promise of a revolution has succeeded in it’s goal of changing the landscape of information and how it is disseminated to the public at large.   We deal with issues that new media and remixing is causing in the areas of old copyright.   I’m one of those that bemoan the constant increasing of time before works enters into the public domain.   I would like to see more information enter into the public domain quicker and I think the creative commons idea is the future of copyright law, but this isn’t about that.   It’s about the loss of public domain works.

It is true that efforts are underway to save and collect media that exists in the public domain.   There are even people creating new work specifically for the public domain.   We have libraries of public domain works and sites that collect information form past websites.   Videos are being collected and maintained where the copyright slipped by and were not renewed in time.  These things are great.   However there are too many people that could care less about the public domain or the ideas that spings out of it.

Most of the time public domain media is considered old and out-dated.   People want things that are new and exciting.  They want constant progress with no respect for the ideas of come from,  and don’t what forge from which the ideas have be tempered.  This leads to a loss of ideas, stories, pictures and music.

I once had an argument with someone in my support for the public domain.   I pointed out all the music and stories that have been lost to the ravages of time and may never be recovered.   Their response was if it was popular it never would have been lost.   This statement is almost as asinine as stating that I have nothing to hide, so it’s a good idea to perform surveillance on everyone.   While the latter statement points to no respect to your own privacy, let alone others.  The former statement has no respect for what has been created.

While we can look at three hugely popular sites for public domain media, Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Wikipedia; these are all very niche sites that serve a particular purpose.   They each have a primary focus in what they want to maintain.  Since these are the big players in their directed niche they are considered one of the authoritative sources for the type of public domain media and information that is able to be retrieved from their site.   What about some of the niches that aren’t covered?

Project Gutenberg has a long standing history of salvaging books that have entered into the public domain.   They do a great service that literally takes hundreds of volunteers to take books form a print medium and convert it to digital text available to all.  They are known for their e-books, while they do have some other things that they try to maintain, this is what they are known for.   If you are looking for a book that is in the public domain chances are you will be directed to them first.

Archive.org on the other hand, while authoritative in some respects is the jack of all trades in the public domain sector.   You would use them for website history research using their way-back machine site, or you may check with them for public domain video or audio.   It is a haphazard gathering of people that seem to utilize the best of breed mentality, the problem with being the jack of all trades, is sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to use.   Archive.org’s usability is one of the worst of the mainstream big sites that I’ve used.  It’s hard to find exactly what you are looking for.

Then you have Wikipedia, which essentially the public domain research encyclopedia.   Yes, there are issues with it.  Sometimes you can’t trust.   Sometimes it can be edited.  With all these problems, it’s authoritative.  You can’t do a Google search on a subject most of the time without seeing a Wikipedia link on the front page.   People link to Wikipedia since it’s trusted and becomes the cumulative knowledge of humanity over time or does it – the question will be discussed in an upcoming blog article.

However there is plenty of other types of information and media that is not collected and adequately cataloged so it’s easy to use for a layman.   There are for-profit companies cataloging and maintaining repositories of public domain information, but these companies charge a fee for information that truly and legally wants to be free.   It’s just that no one cares enough to invest the time or money to create archives.   I’m not saying companies can’t make money from these ventures, but I think our higher institutions and governments should take first run at them until they are large enough to be spun out into it’s own non-profit organization.

What type of information am I talking about?

Legal Transcripts

Architectural Plans

Sheet Music

Video

Audio

Photographs

General Art

Etc, etc, – if it has been created it should be saved.

I will state of the big three mentioned above, some of those dabble in all of these things, but not to any appreciable level that exists outside of their primary focus.   Yes there are niche sites, this whole thing started out of looking for public domain sheet music.    No site is authoritative, they all have their own issues, and ironically enough they don’t normally have the same data the other site has.    There is no reason for this, scans are not proprietary or unique, nor do they count as a derivative work.

The other issue with this is global acceptance and resources.  Most of the collections of public domain works exists only within themselves.   There is a lot of cross work done by universities scanning the exact same item to be in their collection that another university has already scanned.     This is wasted man power since their is no authoritative repository to put this information into, or cross reference against.   So this leads to the popular stuff normally being at the front of the list and most likely to be duplicated again and again and again, while the more obscure things are left unread and unfound.

Archive.org, Wikipedia, and Gutenberg all of something else that these other niche sites do not have, global mirrors.  Being an American I could easily say the library of congress will eventually have everything public domain online.   The first part is if I actually made that statement it would be naive on my part.   The second thing is that it means other countries are counting on the United States to save the public domain data.   I’m sure we won’t put the same care to local translation and books, compared to American editions when it comes to preservation or public dissemination of the work.

I’m angry and annoyed.  I’ll be revisiting this topic, but hopefully this primer of where I am coming from is something for you to think about and comment on.

My grandfather taught me a thing or two about respect.  I’m not going to say we see eye to eye, but I did manage to learn a few things.   The largest being that you earn respect.   My father taught me that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.  My mother never learned either of those two lessons.   Somehow because she had the biological ability of having children that it meant that her children would have to respect her.   I however never had such a notion.  I also have never claimed that my mother was the sharpest tack in the pile.

My mother complained a lot to me that my seventeen year old sister called her a bitch all the time.   I stated that this was normal for seventeen year olds.   I also felt that my sister was working 20-30 hours a week, going to school, and planning for her future was better grounded then my mother who worked maybe 4 hours a week.  My mother would call my sister a bitch, and wonder why she got the word thrown back at her.   I’ve brought this up to her and she denies it.   I have witnessed it though.   Xie has witnessed it. My sisters can attest to it.   However my mother turned my grandparents against my sister over this.   They thought was sister was the wild child that no one can control (do we need to go back to school and work compared to my mother?).  They thought my mother didn’t deserve that language tossed at her.   They also have a strong refusal to believe that my mother would ever call any of her children such language.

HA.

My mother was using that language directed at my sisters before they were even teenagers.   My grandparents still think that I (in my thirties mind you) is still just telling stories and making things up about my mother. I don’t know how my grandfather who taught me you have to earn respect ever gained it for my mother. The only thing that comes to mind is that she is a woman. Xie sometimes gets annoyed when my grandfather states that if I die, that I need to make sure that I provide for her. My grandfather is a bit sexist and thinks that women have a hard time to provide for themselves. I don’t completely fault the man, he comes from a different generation and my grandparents fit into very traditional gender roles that younger generations don’t follow any more.

Their daughter has not earned the respect of any of her children. Instead of inspiring her children to do more and be an example, she tries to elicit pity from them. This isn’t anger, my mom generally gets pity to pity her so she can get things. This is her control mechanism. This is why my brother states he will take care of her and my grandparents still do. I want help from people because I need help, not because they pity me. To be pitied is all around just sad, to be truly undeserving of pity because you got yourself into the mess; doubly so.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

I really didn’t have time to write about this last week when it first came to my attention but it seems that Creeva.com has been banned from Technorati for gaming the system.   It states that I republish materials from other sites onto this blog.   This is not untrue, though 90% of my posts actually originate from there.   If I write something I centralize it all on creeva.com.   It’s simple.  It’s efficient.  It allows me centralize and backup my writing.

That being said, they aren’t wrong.   One of the underlying experiments that this blog does is crossposting.  It crossposts to myspace, facebook, tumblr, blogger, and many more.   I don’t make huge piles of cash (haven’t made a dime in my pocket yet).  I don’t blast people with ads, though on some sites including the main there are some that are there.   I’m not doing it to drive up profit in any way.  I’m doing it so different communities can read my stuff.  I won’t harp on it, I’ve written about my crossposting before.

The question is how relevant is Technorati becoming.   I know this question has been asked before, and I used to believe in Technorati.   I didn’t start 500 blogspot accounts to promote the material.  I used 1 public site per service.  For the point of experimentation and proof of concept.  I also have been slowly working on a whole article series on how to crosspost.   With the myriad of services and the fact that data is not yet truly portable, but beginning to become so.   How can these services accurately  track where information is originating from.

Like I said I’m not annoyed, I can live without technorati.  When people are posting links to their site on tumblr, friendfeed, twitter, and others how long before there are more people like me?   Services like Ping.fm and HelloTxt serve in a market segment only to fuel this further.   I’m not someone who has a targetted truly branded blog beyond self branding.   I don’t have a certain topic set I cover and regulary write about.  I’m a schizophrenic writer that is all over the place.   The only thing I hope is consistent is my voice.  Beyond that take away from my writing what you will.

There was an article on mashable today questioning if ping.fm and hellotxt were helping the web world or hurting it.  I understand the authors point that if you are using these services that you are not taking an interest and active use in the social community that you are using these services to post to.   I can say from hits for ping.fm beta code requests on my blog, that lots of people are interested in getting access to ping.fm.   Now that it’s out of private beta I’m sure I’ll lose my number one spot in google for the term “ping.fm beta code”.  

If people want this what does this say?  It really means that we have diverse friendships.  We have communities that we want to share information with.   We don’t have time to manually copy or paste, nor do we have the time to try convince everyone we know to use a single service.   Since we can’t bring our friends to the service (much to the dismay of the social network providers), we take our information to them. 

We want to share our information, we don’t want to hoard.  I for example do all my writing on my main blog, twitter, and handful of other services.   Yet I have friends on almost every little social network out there.   Why should I be forced to chose between friends and the information I share with them.   Yes I’m sure some actual readers that are not into crossposting get annoyed over the repeated information on multiple services.   What about my friends though?   Where does the line of a healthy blogging business end and friendship cross?  My friends are the ones that inspire, the will always have the information directed towards them.    I am more then willing to take my information to them.   At what cost, a minor annoyance to literally a handful?

No one is forced to read my messages.   No one is forced to follow me.   No one is forced to my site.  If the author doesn’t follow ping.fm links, so be it.   I’m not losing what I truly care about.   Maybe when the a single network has all the features I want and 99.9% market dominance – then I’ll stop cross posting.   Until that time I’m proud to be a crossposter.

I’m annoyed.  I am really and truly annoyed.  I don’t know what to write about (and I have only a vague notion of what I’m writing about in this post as I go word to word).  I have five to six unique sites that I have to write on and go forward with, however I’m not aving much success.   I’ve moved back to taking some of my writing out of the context of anything goes, which is still the point of creeva.com and everything else off site it crossposts/filters down to.   Some topics however it’s hard to write on topic and come with the subject matter.

Journeytogetpaid.com – this was supposed to document how I make money online, well I haven’t really been successful at the monetization side yet – so I don’t have much to write up.

Parentphobia.com – ok I have one story in the works, and I have to get a scan in so Xie can publish something – so part of that is just laziness – but there isn’t a bunch of news on the pregnancy.  Maybe I’ll get on some of that tonight, since there is a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.

Spoilershorts.com – this was supposed to be a group review site, I think this site will be going away though when the subscription runs up, I have better venues for this type of information.  We shall see though.

Unnamed Retro Project – I bought a retro domain and was going to write about my retro passion and different items – I’m a few articles in, but I want sixty days worth of material before I launch, that is taking a buttload of effort that I haven’t had the time to put in yet.

Unnamed Life Vaulting Project – Some people want to know more about my life caching, or life vaulting as I’m referring to it now.   I have a domain registered, I want 30-45 articles first before I open this up to the public.

I’ve already started future writing articles for Creeva.com so for another couple weeks you can be graced with a guaranteed one article per day, it just seems if I’m not on top of it writing gets pushed to the side.  It’s not that I don’t want write, I truly do.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy or fun writing – I do for that also.   It’s the coming up with the ideas and being able to generate enough content to make some of these other sites worthwhile.

I do have help on a couple of these sites  – Parent Phobia is also written by Xie and the retro project I’m supposed to be getting help on – I’m hoping for a late september launch on both of my unreleased projects.  I’m backlogged on howto articles, but on the plus side in alot of my future writing I’ve done more personal growing up stories.

I’m sorry you’ve had to read this big post about nothing that essentially has gone nowhere, it really hasn’t help me deal with my frustration, but it has allowed ot get something out.  Something new and something written.

Thank you for patience and continual readership.

Picture from here

A couple years ago we removed cable from our house.  We didn’t watch anything really besides Law & Order and it’s spin offs.   Law & Order was not worth $80.00 per month.  While we’ve gotten our TV fix from either Netflix or legal streaming from teh major networks something was missing, Law & Order.   We were both always annoyed that Law & Order was not on NBC‘s website, but endured.  We could have received Law & Order disc by disc from Netflix, but that would have been a pain in the butt.

Recently we discovered that Law & Order is available for streaming from Netflix’s site , we are on season 4 of SVU – thank you Netflix for bringing back the normal TV fare to our lives.

Picture from here

I get distracted when I get home from work.  I’m easily amused and have the “Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh Shiny” mentality type of distraction.  I don’t deny it.   I don’t exactly revel in it either.   By the time I actually get around to doing some of the things I need to get done, it’s late, I’m tired and cranky.   If I put things off until the weekend we end up doing stuff and getting involved (“Is that a shiny over there?”) and so things once again get overlooked.   I’m not sure I would actually sleep if I didn’t know for certainty that it helps save my job and my marriage.   So what can I do about it?

Picture from here

Things I have tried with little or no success:

• Wall Calenders
• Sticky Notes
• Todo Tasks in Outlook
• Todo Tasks on Google
• GTD sites
• Web Calenders

Nothing so far seems to work for me – I’m mundane blind.  When there is a shiny I don’t even notice the mundane.

Like many geeks, corporate types, etc.   I live and die by e-mail.   This is something I greatly increased in focus when I was a consultant.   Now I can handle literally hundreds of e-mails a day, and I can’t stand a cluttered mail box.  I normally use Gmail‘s interface just through a browser, but I’ve been known to dabble in POP3 and IMAP access (the insanity!!).  Mostly though I just use the web browser.  It’s the same at work, home, and on the go.   The one thing I hate most about my mail box, is when it get’s full.   I hate a cluttered inbox, I hate coming back and seeing more then one page of e-mail waiting for me (which does happen if there is some strange reason I don’t check my email for two days).

Picture from here

So I stumble on the idea of combining these two things, hatred of e-mail clutter and a need to get motivated and GTD, so now I’m email my tasks to myself (and now Xie has joined into the game).  The first thing when I went down this road is to send myself a daily list of tasks to do, well I tried that once in the past and that doesn’t seem to help.  Neither do reminder services, since I easily dismiss them.

The format I use when I mail myself is TODO (task) – this forces me to stare at it every time I look at my e-mail.   I’m hoping it will succesfully burn the task into my brain.   When I actually complete the task it get’s archived, thereby saving me space in my inbox.   Too many tasks and it will roll over to a second page, I would be highly annoyed if that happened.   So essentially I’m going to be GTD by annoying myself.

Meh.

But it may work.

Image from here

Where can you post by E-mail?  Well this is the easiest of crossposting methods (especially if you use Blogger).  There are lots of plugins for wordpress or movable type that can send out your full post as an e-mail to another address.   In most cases you would send this to your own e-mail address so you had it for reference.  What about sending it to another site entirely?  What if that site could send it to another site?  You can see how this chain can work.   If you are using Blogger then you can send out your post to ten e-mail addresses.   This means that your post can replicate like bunnies.   What are some of the sites that can receive e-mail posts?  Let’s get into that.

The original Creeva’s World was hosted on Blogger at creeva.blogspot.com.  This is where I started writing and I didn’t want to abandon it after migrating over to wordpress.  This was the very first site I crossposted to from my wordpress blog.  Crossposting allowed me to not abandon my site and any readers that may go to that address, but I could enhance my own experience while keeping theirs the same.

Lifelogger is the “cooler” blogging service, at least that’s what they say.   I’m not going to use any blogging platform again that I can’t customize to the fullest extent.  WordPress has spoiled me.   Though I do maintain a site there.

Unlike some major social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Myspace), Friendster does support e-mailing in your blog messages.

Blogr is just another blogging host that accepts e-mail.  Very blogger like, but crossposting friendly.

Evernote is unique unlock some of the rest of these sites, Evernote is a notebook service.   It allows you to e-mail in snippets (or use the desktop applications) to send in information that you can then share with your friends.  You can e-mail in text notes, audio, or video.

Busy Thumbs is a simple moblog site that accepts posts via e-mail.

Twine is similar to Evernote, but it’s about collections and community.   Think of it as sharing what you have with your friends.

Google Groups is a spot that I used to use as an online backup for my blog.   I have a private google group that only handles my own blog posts.   No you can’t join, not like you would want to.

I’ve just recently start crossposting to an old Yahoo Group that I used to moderate.   Mostly this is because I can share my thoughts with my friends that are still in that group, but that group is essentially dead.   So this is the only thing that it’s around for to keep me from pulling the complete axe on it.

Each Day is designed to handle your memories and save them so you can go back over your life.  It handles multiple media formats but all I’m concerned about is the e-mail option.

Multiply is a social network in the same vein as Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook.

Over at Vox I maintain a page to integrate with their community.  I’ve posted in the past how vox is a unique community and because of that I receive unique feedback.   They refer to their e-mail inbound service as moblogging.

I like to think of all of my blog posts as separate documents.   After working on this for awhile, I decided to start e-mailing all of my entries to my google docs account let’s me to search and repurpose documents a little easier then searching through the blog.   It’s my dump all account for documents.  I am annoyed that I can’t e-mail blog posts to Zoho Writer for redundancy, they only take documents as attachments.

When you are looking for a new site to crosspost to check and see if they have an option where you can post by e-mail.  Some sites may refer to this as moblogging.  Also remember to e-mail your post to yourself so you have a backup you can control.

Oh, I use the DJ E-Mail Publish plugin to push out posts from WordPress.

In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover Blogger more in depth.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 – RSS Feeds to Crosspost

To get an n810 or not is the question.   A few days ago I wrote a couple blog posts from my wife’s new n810.   I have some reservations about the keyboard for “power writing”, but that can be handled by a seperate bluetooth keyboard.   I think that’s not an issue.

Would I use it instead of a laptop – kind of.    Right now through work I have a Mac Book Air for my mobile device.   It’s great, it’s light, it does most of what i need it to do (what it can’t do would require linux or windows so it’s forgiven).    The one thing I run into with the air is the same thing I run into with my normal laptop, accessibility.   For normal computer use they are highly accessible, but if I do make it to HOPE this year or other travel venues it would be MUCH better to not bring a full laptop (if I do take an 810 to HOPE I’ll be accessing the internet through an encrypted Hamachi VPN tunnel to home and using a proxy there to access the Internet – no clear text information is going to be slipping by me – I can deal with the speed hit that will cause).

It’s much easier to have a bluetooth keyboard and an N810 to haul around to these places more so then a full laptop.   WIth a full laptop I need to worry about power (n810 has better battery life), privacy due to larger screen size,  finding a place to sit versus standing and using the n810.    These things are all things that go through my head while debating this purchase.

So yes the N810 would make me more mobile, and be more convenient.   I know for me (extreme power user) it won’t replace a computer or laptop, but for some people (like my sister) I could see this as a 100% computer replacement.   Too much geekery for me it seems.   So then we open up the question, could I live for a week with just the N810?

The N810 isn’t really designed for offline use.    If it has an internet connection that’s great.  I would be able to do most my blogposting and status updates via email so when I hit wifi I could sync up and go.   In alot ways I think this is enough.   To check this I need to menally compare it to my my Palm TX.

I’m not sure that the N810 will fully replace my Palm TX (then again no one said I couldn’t keep it).  WIth my palm TX I use it as an email platform, a web access device, a centralized syncing device, and an ebook reader.   Anything else I use it for is mostly games so that’s not really an issue – IM has always been painful on it do to .

Since the N810 does not have heavy document handling and I don’t think the resolution is quite right for ebook reading (the two thing I think I would keep my TX for)  it does have better web page filtering (my blog almost breaks the TX).   I would also be able to do IM since I wouldn’t be forced to stay on the IM screen like I do on the TX.   Email should be equal or better on the N810 versus the TX, Web Browsing would be better, and IM would be better.   The occasional full need to document editing and e-book reading would mean the TX could sit on the bottom of my bag (and a bluetooth keyboard would work with it – two devices one keyboard).

So theoretically I could replace my laptop about 90-95% with the two devices.   With having a much smaller footproint and ease of use in carrying these devices with me.   Having the N810 would mean that I no longer have to carry an iPod around since it would handle my podcast playing – bonus to the fact that it will auto scrobble to last.fm something that I have never gone working to a level I liked with an iPod and linux.

Movies however I’ll probably still use my palm TX – I can play full divx movies on it without having to re-encode them.   Bonus to me.    This will also have the side effect of saving me battery life on the N810 if the TX is with me.   I don’t watch movies too often on the go though.

Through hackery I would be able to sync my calender on google with my N810 – something that never worked right on the TX.   I would be able to compose music on the N810 (yes it can compose music).   Someone is also working on an instrument tuner – which is something I was going to buy this summer – so I’ll save 30.00 there.     I was going to buy an iPod, but with the 10 GB I can max out on the N810 and the fact that I only really use an ipod for podcasts would mostly make that that a non issue  – so a savings of 150.00 – so far I’ve saved myself 180.00 on stuff I would probably buy this summer.

There is an NES emulator (that works better on then on the TX) and a GBA emulator – this should save me from carrying around my GBA (which I ironically use more then my DS).   I also play RPG’s so the slight frame drop won’t really effect me.    I can use skype which really isn’t to much of an issue for me since I mostly would call my wife and we have free phone calles between us.   With utterz I can use my phone to “call in” blog posts.

I would be able to start geo caching with the N810 built in GPS, I’ve watned a gps for a long time, not for driving directions since I can look at a map easily and I’m able to figure out where I am.   My wife is sometimes jealous of my innate directional sense.   Usually I get way to lost sometimes by actually reading a map, wrongly at that.   I could get a cheap GPS for 90.00 – but that would take my total electronic purchases to 270.00.   We are approaching the N810 price.   (We actually match it if you figure out it would handle my gaming needs – but I already own those devices)

I like the N810′s keyboard versus the N800′s touch screen which my wife tried out first, but it still a small small keyboard and I have bigger fingers then her.   I can enter information quickly enough for a mobile device I can whip out real quick – and 500% faster then I can do on my phones keypad.     If I utilize bookmarks and saved password this should help limit my typing.   The less need I have on this the better.    Once again if I’m going to write a long blog post like this one is becoming i would have to have a bluetooth keyboard.

My tmobile internet connection is very slow on my cellphone, but being able to stop by any mcdonalds or burger king for quick internet access kind of alleviates that concern.   Granted wifi coverage isn’t ubiquitous but it’s common enough that I think I would be fine.

I’m probably going to decide tonight to get one.   Working through this post has helped alot.   I think I started with the fact that this would replace my palm TX, and going through that thought process I don’t think it would.   I think it will however handle the fact if I’m gone for a week or two away from a computer (though I can fathom two weeks away from a regular computer) that I could be just fine in a solely mobile solution without a laptop.    Using the host mode hack on the N810 coupled with the card reader program on the Palm TX means I’ll be able to utilize the Palm TX as a removable storage space on the N810 if I need it with normal SD cards instead of needing a thumb drive that would drain the N810′s power quicker.    This would allow me to throw another 8 GB and make the card switch out very easy for me.

I’ll keep everyone updated on what I decide.

My teenage years however gave me lots of time to get yelled at for cutting through lawns.   Once we destroyed a guy’s mailbox in retaliation for yelling at us one night.   It was beaten in to me.   Though I flaunted authority and didn’t care even going so far to save 15 steps I would cross someone’s lawn.  Now I’m an adult.  I am the authority.

I’m not one of the anal retentive people with immaculate lawns, far from it.   I take care of it as little as I need to, and I prefer it that way.   I’m sure my neighbors would love it it I was like my grandfather.   He’s one of the lawn hobbyist that mows his lawn more then once a week.   I would almost imagine if it was feasible he would take out scissors and trim it all by hand.   Though if he did it would be too long where he started and it would never end.    I think because of that I;ll never be that way.

But here I am protective of my space.  Space that I have intruded upon others for.  Maybe that makes me selfish.  Maybe that makes me a hypocrite.  Possibly though I am just a human being who wants to be left alone.   Whatever it is sometimes I don’t want to deal with it.  At least though I’ve come full circle and I bet half those people whose lawns I did cut across were just like me as a kid.