Michael Phipps

I’ve got a dumb idea for a comedy movie called “Meet Kevin Smith”

Based on the idea that Smith is a pretty popular last name, and because of that, there’s likely to be a large number of “Kevin Smith”.

One day a mad scientist named Kevin Smith decides to build a machine that will let him be director, actor Kevin Smith by transporting his mind into Kevin Smith’s mind.  Of course, it doesn’t work, because it transports ALL Kevin Smith’s into other Kevin Smith’s bodies.

Hilarity ensues as people named Kevin Smith wake up in other Kevn Smith’s body, and then start trying to convince their friends that they aren’t Kevin Smith, well, not the one they are looking at…

You could play heaps with the idea.  It could be funny, could just be stupid.  I just had to get it on paper so I’d stop obsessing about it and do some work :)

I am in the process of moving this blog from Tumblr over to Drupal.

Tumblr doesn’t have an export option, although it does have an excellent API, and right now there are no Tumblr Import Modules for Drupal, so I’m building my own.

I’m using the Tumblr API Drupal Module as a starting point, although I’ve made some changes to the api so that it works a bit better. (The Tumblr API doesn’t have an official release, dev, or public at the time of writing)

My first goal is to import regular type posts from Tumblr into Drupal nodes, something I’ve almost achieved.  Then I will review the best approach to import quote, photo, link, chat, video, and audio posts as well.

This work could be designed to require the Tumblr API, but because the tumblr module is not officially released, and I’m not really sure of it’s status, I don’t know the best way to proceed.  I’ve contacted Roger López (the tumblr api drupal module developer) to see what he’s up to and based on his response, or lack of response I will know how to proceed.

I hope to have a module up for you soon!

This website goes through the process of adding social bookmarks to your wordpress theme:

• http://blog.themeforest.net/wordpress/add-social-bookmarks-to-your-wordpress-theme/

This website has a list of wordpress codes for quite a number of popular social networking tools:

• http://thedesigned.com/2009/06/13/plain-text-social-bookmark-links-for-wordpress/

And this website has 30 nice social networking icon buttons you can use to make it all look nice:

• http://jwloh.deviantart.com/art/Social-me-90694011

sleepydumpling:

Pedo-bear

ihatemyparents:

yoanaconye:

O.K. lesson learned.

A map showing the position of all the McDonalds stores in the US.  The creator built this map to see where he could be the furtherest point away from any McDonalds store.  He’s probably just given McDonalds a great advertising campaign.  There’s always one just nearby…

I’m curious why the east is so much more dense than the west.  Is there a mountain range or state line that splits the US in half?

Over the weekend I built an application that lets my wife easily manage here personal library of books.  Armed with a barcode scanner, she can quickly zap her collection and automatically add full book details into her personal website.  It’s still a work in progress, so isn’t really available for public consumption.

Of course, this is already available in existing websites, as I later found out from @sleepydumpling who suggested LibraryThing, Shelfari, and GoodReads.

They all look like great apps for organising and sharing your library online, so I thought I would mention them.

• http://www.goodreads.com/
• http://www.librarything.com/
• http://www.shelfari.com/

According to @sleepydumpling, GoodReads is easiest to use, Shelfari is the prettiest and LibraryThing has more Australian content.

At least now I have the code to build and manage my own library easily, which I can reuse on other projects :)

Recently the push has been to get your business into social media, and get yourself out there.  It’s free, so everyone is doing it, figuring it is free publicity.

This has the unpleasant side effect of companies now loosing their search engine position, to their facebook profile.  WHAT?

Somewhere along the way, people lost the plot with social media.  With everyone pushing “Follow me on ….” from the front page of their website, It’s no wonder that their social media profile is quickly surpassing their actual website in the search results.

Here’s an example.  Do a search for “circlet press” on Google, and then do the same on Yahoo!.  Notice how the entire first page of Google is taken up by social media websites. The Yahoo results return the company’s website first, which is the result you really want.

Everyone is being encouraged to drive traffic to their social media profiles, when they should be using their social media profiles to drive traffic to their website, and only promoting their social media profiles on their website as another method for visitors to stay informed with what your company is doing.

This may just be a case of Google loosing relevance by placing too much emphasis on social media, but in any case the trend is worrying, where we place more importance on gossip and hearsay than what is coming directly from the horses mouth.

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NOTE: This article discusses search engine rankings which are in constant flux.  Search engines demonstrated the behaviour described above in September 2009.

I know how to use auto follow to my advantage. I choose not to.

I need to use GNU/GPL as that is what the original uses. Thanks for feedback @Anthony_Mills

Want to release something open source. Is the GNU GPL the standard way of doing this?

What’s the technical term when you are including “fat” in an estimate?

I really like the music Hybrid make! http://hybridsoundsystem.com

Ambulance called to David Hasselhoff’s home. Story developing.. http://bit.ly/CUrdN

RT @lauermichelle: @w_z_a “Staging Drupal” from DrupalCon Paris 2009: http://bit.ly/DNjVq

Drupal core is CVS, not SVN. I’ve been trying “svn up” for 5 minutes wondering why it wasn’t working… duh…