Simply testing RSS aggregation (to be sure Twitter and Ping.fm aren’t double-posting to Facebook)

Hey everyone. As you’ve noticed, I haven’t been updating this blog very much, and I haven’t really been online much at all. Well… I haven’t really been doing anything. I’ve been barely Tweeting, and scarcely talking on IRC. It’ll all change soon when summer hits. I’ve been really busy this past month, and haven’t had much time for the social-media and internet side of my life (damn studying). I’ll be around here and there for the rest of the month, but when June hits, I’ll be on full time again.

Thanks.

I was on my mobile connection, and decided to do a speed test. Below are the results. My mobile connection screams, doesn’t it?

How’ve you been, everyone? So lately, there have been a few updates on the interwebz lately, that I’d like to point out:

1. New Twitter Username–Yes, I’ve finally done it… I changed my Twitter Username. After a long transition from TheCellist42 to samferry on many of my profiles all over the web, I finally decided to change my Twitter profile. You can now find my Twitter updates at http://twitter.com/samferry.

2. AceIRC.org Overhaul–Okay guys, this is a bit of a change. The other day, Adduc and I (Ace Opers) completely overhauled AceIRC.org’s pages. First off, a new server map is in development, so look for it. Simply put, we innovated the AceIRC home page posting system. A wonderful script written by Adduc grabs the RSS from the AceIRC Forums’ News and Announcements feed (just the topic post, no replys) and posts it to AceIRC’s home page. It sets the title of the post to the title of the post on the forum, and even displays the author who posted it. Also, after a few simple modifications, the date and time of the post are listed as well. This is a major overhaul for AceIRC.org, and is long overdue. Another thing done was the restructuring of the AceIRC Staff Page, which included a better over all layout, with staff members categorized by position.

3. samferry.com Redesign–Last, but certainly not least, we have my personal blog’s redesign. After battling with themes all day long, I finally found one I loved, and added my simple banner/logo, and setup my options. — After using loads of free themes, a few free Woo! Themes designs (and being moderately successful), I decided to purchase an ElegantThemes subscription, and have access to the premium themes they have available. I’m impressed. Thanks to ElegantWPT, I have an… elegant, simplistic, smoothly-styled theme for my blog. I’m absolutely happy with the result.

Do you know of any good WordPress themes I might like to try? Link me! Simply leave a comment, or send me an email (address on the Contact page).

Thanks,

Sf.

Unfortunately, I haven’t encoded the email addresses properly (whatever), so for now, you’ll have to just copy the email addresses directly, since the mailto: links with MailHide are broken. I’m debating just disabling MailHide altogether, which is what I think I may do.

Sf.

This post is useless, and simply testing my new syndication service. With these new settings to my social syndication, I’ll be able to post RSS items from this blog to Twitter, Identi.ca, Utterli, Plurk, Rejaw, Koornk, BrightKite, Plurk, and more.

Enjoy.

I never seem to know what to post these days. Lately, my life’s gotten a hold of me (lol?) and I’ve lost track of everything! I seem to be able to find some random line to update all of my social networks (i.e. micro-blogs) with (Ping.fm Mobile rules), but I can never seem to come up with a good idea to post about.

I suppose I’ll go off on a tangent… Should I use a new theme for my blog!??!?!??!?! I’ve liked this theme both because of it’s layout and font choices, but I am unsure if I should continue to use it. If you think I need a new theme… any suggestions? Send me some links since you probably have my email address (contact page). I like this theme, but I’d love to find a bold–but classy–theme with a good, simple, and smooth structure, and nice colors that work well together (I prefer darker colors, e.g. gray and black).

Anyways, there’s your random, useless post of the day [week, whatever].

Enjoy.

Sf.

Well, I finally began taking advantage of my Ping.fm account, and I’m loving it. I setup Ping.fm Mobile, too, and I am glad I can “ping” all of my social services from my horrible cell phone. With Ping.fm, it has categories for certain networks (e.g. micro-blogging), and with a certain tag (@m), it “pings” all micro-blog oriented social networks, like Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk, and the like. With Ping.fm, I can finally get back into social networking (like I kinda drifted from). Ping.fm rocks.

Sf.

Technorati Profile

Whatever.

Sf.

Do you take screenshots? (If you haven’t been on IRC with me, you wouldn’t know that I take A LOT of screenshots… lookie at http://profile.imageshack.us/user/samferry/images. What programs do you use to take these? Do you use the simple Print Screen key and paste it into MSPAINT? (Ewww).

Personally, I’ve grown to love SnagIt. SnagIt is an innovative screenshot application designed by TechSmith. Now, eventhough it isn’t free, I can almost guarantee that it is worth the price you pay. It has annotation features and such that can allow you to add notes to your images or whatnot. Look at my above link to see some of these things (I have them on my screenshots).

Feel free to comment on this post, or email me, telling me what programs you use, or maybe one you think I should try.

Thanks much,

~Sam