SoloShootsFirst dot com

Hi, folks.

Added a bunch of new pictures today, in case you’re interested.  They are in the Madison and Eagle River galleries, from Punkin’s visit and Easter, respectively.

That is all…

Hey, I know that this isn’t very substantial, but to me it was huge (as in, took me about 6 hours huge).

Ever since I switched themes on the blog here back in the fall, I’ve struggled with finding an effective way to display photos.  I’ve had it on my list all this while, but today, I finally tackled the problems, and I feel like I have a nicer presentation of these images than ever.  I’m hoping this will lead to me adding pictures to the website more often.

So, if you’re interested, take a look at the Galleries page, and enjoy.

After we moved, there was a long period of time where all our spare moments were taken up with sorting through stuff, moving things around, putting things away, etc., and then all of a sudden it was the holiday season.  By about mid-January, I could sense that we were moving past that stuff and a little extra time would be opening up.  I’m glad, not only for the sake of my sanity, but I feel like I can start making lists of other things to worry about again.  A little quality time with this site is one of them.

I changed to a new ‘theme’ shortly before we moved out of Milwaukee, and I still like it quite a bit.  It has some limitations with a few things– the photo gallery “sub-pages” no longer display correctly, and using an image in the banner at the top is troublesome.  These are things I want to work on sooner than later.

A few other miscellaneous tidbits:

• I’ll be getting an event created on FB in the next several hours as well, but be advised that Michelle and I are inviting all sorts of peeps we know to come out to Sun Prairie/Portage on Saturday, 2/27, for a ski weekend at Cascade, followed by a party back at the “lodge” (i.e., our residence) about 30 minutes to the south.  More details to come soon.
• Speaking of event planning, it’s time to think about Brewers baseball (even though I hope to get *plenty* of skiing in before opening day).  I’ll add some other details about possible outing(s) to the Brewers 2010 page in the next couple days.
• I just realized that the Mozilla project Sea Monkey just recently came out with a 2.0 release.  They say there’s a better/easier extension system with this version, so I’m going to give it a go; if I can get most of my Firefox and Thunderbird extensions to work with SM, that would be cool.

OK, I should probably return some phone calls.  Have a good weekend!

When I was working at UWM, I had a lot more time available to me to write in my blog– I woke up just about as early, but I would have a good 2+ hours at home for web-surfing, blog-writing, and coffee-drinking.¹  I would also invariably have some time at work, as well.²

Things have obviously changed, and I’m going to try to take some steps to get back on the horse.  I’ve been enjoying the weekly sports podcast with Josh (even if *you* haven’t ), and I’d like to keep doing that.  I’m starting to wonder if a solo podcast (or *gasp* video) might not be a bad idea.  I’d like to solve the equipment issues I was having with the Bocko & Kyle podcast once and for all and try to get that rockin more often, too.

Still, it’s hard to create content on the Internet if you have nothing significant to say.  I could talk about some of my own things, but that’s only entertaining for so long.  You need some of your work to be commentary on the news and events of the day.  That’s why my morning webbie-time used to work out well with the blog.  These days, there’s no way I can get through all these feeds I decided I should follow.

And that is why I am going to purge my feed reader.  I mean, purge the crap out of it.  Here are a few stats on my netvibes page:

• I have 65 feeds
• 16 of them are for news
• 9 for sports
• 13 are podcasts or miscellaneous video sources
• 10 are blogs of people I know
• the rest are a potpourri of webtainment whose origin I can’t recall

Come with me, if you like, as I comb through and pare these down.  Ideally, I feel like I could roll with about half as many.  I think 32 feeds is more manageable.  Maybe to make it a little harder on myself, I should shoot for 25.

Starting should be easy.  I’ll say good-bye to the feeds that I never even read.  So, farewell to:

• MythTV news – it seemed like a good idea at the time.
• The A.V. Club Hater – I enjoyed you in print.  On the can.
• Evernote blog – If I start using Evernote regularly, maybe we’ll meet again.
• Portableapps.com – I can just visit your website time to time.  And I will.
• Financial Aid podcast – I listened to you once, subscribed, and never listened again.
• White House.gov photo gallery – you lost your luster post-inauguration
• Reuters Top News, video.  Meh.
• Reuters Tech, video.  Double-meh.

Next, bid adieu to the feeds that time forgot.  I loved you once, but it’s over now:

• WordPress DB Backup Support Forum – your developer fixed you, and now all is well.
• Pirate’s Log: The Musings of Droste – he who has ceased to muse?  At least on that blog…
• Convergence Tangent – I can follow the tweets to new posts.
• Amber on the Road – the road ended.
• The Inane Rantings of a Total Hack – let us know if you ever rant again.
• Reetsyburger’s Refuge – I would like to read it; I would.  But I’d be kidding myself.
• Sky Blue Waters – Gone the way of the War Pigs.
• mandolux – let’s face it; I get my wallpaper from digitalblasphemy.
• Washington Post opinions – If there’s a good one, some one will tell me.
• Onion Radio News – the Onion News Network is funnier, because they can say “fuck.”
• Journal-Sentinel Sports (general) – I get all the same stuff in the team-specific feeds.
• SI.com (general) – see above.

Some other random stuff to get rid of:

• Feeds to things on my own site.  Like I don’t know when those things get there?
• Ditto for my flickr stream.

That makes a huge difference.  I have a couple things I could use some help on:

• I have an AP New tab and a Reuters News tab.  Which should I keep, if either?
• If neither, news from where?

This helped.  Hopefully, more to come.

1. God, those mornings were nice.  Damn. [↩]
2. I was busy, but ungodly busy. [↩]