cranky pixels

Happy Fun Baby has been somewhat nap-resistant lately. Actually, what he’s resistant to is being put down; the not napping thing is just a side effect. If I’m holding him (or sitting on the floor with him, or whatever) he’s the happiest, most cheerful baby you can imagine. The instant I set him in his crib or his Pack N’ Play, his face crumples and he just weeps. Weeps, and chants “Ma, ma, ma” in the most heart-rending manner possible. While reaching for me.

As you can probably imagine, I’m not getting much done these days.

When he’s not actively ripping the heartstrings from my chest, Ellison’s busy training for his triathalon. A couple of days ago he began standing unassisted. Just went straight up from his frog crouch and stood there for five seconds or so before toppling over onto his butt. He’s gotten very good at falling. He did the standing routine a few more times, just to make sure we’d caught it. He’s hilarious – he acts all blase when he does something like that, but he’ll check right away to make sure we’re watching and then soaks up praise like a rock star. That’s my kid: lord of all he surveys.

Next step: teaching the kid to sleep by himself. Ha!

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The verdict is in.

…sigh.

I wanted to like Dailymotion. In fact, I do like Dailymotion. They’re based in France and have all sorts of international users – the TV commercials alone are enough to make me fall deeply and unreservedly in love, and posting to a blog couldn’t be simpler – two clicks and you’re there. The only problem (as you can see from this post) is that the video is weirdly resized in the viewer window. I tried uploading a different video and it did the same thing.

VideoEgg looks really, really cool, but it doesn’t want to play with my Panther OS iBook. I might be able to get it working with the iMac, but that’ll need to wait until I get the office set up, and where’s the instant gratification in that? Also, it doesn’t integrate directly with WordPress. Which is fine, but doesn’t give me any particular impetus to make it work, you know? I may test it out once the iMac’s up and running again, seeing as all the videos will be stored on that hard drive anyway. Or at least I think they will. Moving on.

On a whim, I tried out Google’s video service, and behold: we have video. It’s fast, it’s sized correctly, and it posted in my blog with no problems. (Google, like VideoEgg, doesn’t offer a direct post to WordPress, but they don’t directly post to anything so I guess that’s okay.)

My choice?

Google Video is the clear winner. All hail Google.

technorati tags:google, video, dailymotion, videoegg, wordpress

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Matt and Jessica’s pre-baby Christmas card. See Ellison before he was Ellison! Or just marvel at the hugeness that was my belly.

After all that kvetching about calendars, I signed up for not one, not two, not even three – four calendar programs. My requirements were simple: needs to provide at least minimal communication with iCal, and should have some sort of clever code to put on my website(s). The only one that works?

Google Calendar. I know, I know, I didn’t want to use Google Calendar. I wanted to use one of the cute little betas with the clever logos and entertaining slogans. But would they successfully import my iCal data? Nooooo. CalendarHub claimed that my import was successful, but inexplicably showed only about a third of my data. Kiko left me hanging on an import screen, then wouldn’t re-load, then logged me out, then – surprise! – hadn’t imported my data either. Plaxo didn’t even want to play – it only supports .csv files, so screw Plaxo. (Note to self: uninstall annoying Plaxo add-on to Address Book.)

But Google imported everything beautifully, including a subscription to my existing iCal feed (meaning I don’t have to change things in two places).There’s a WordPress widget for Google Calendar, but I’m not sure it’s exactly what I want. We’ll see. I’m sure there will be something soon. Widget developers, I’m looking at you.

technorati tags:plaxo, ical, google calendar, calendarhub, kiko, widgets, wordpress

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So I’m in the early stages of trying to decide on an online video service and a calendar service. The two don’t need to be the same. In fact, it would be weird if they were. Videos + dates to remember?

Anyway, the ones I’m looking at are these.

Videos:

You Tube. Everyone has You Tube, right? And it’s fine. I guess. I just have no feeling about their logo (which, let’s face it, is half the reason I like Flock) and they seem awfully MySpace-y for my taste.

VideoEgg. Now, this is classy looking, but a little delving into the FAQ seems to suggest that you have to use their viewer and the non-premium service uses ads. I don’t like ads, and I don’t want to have to use a proprietary viewer (makes imbedding difficult).

Dailymotion. There are lots of things I like about Dailymotion, not the least of which is it’s from France. All hail web apps that didn’t originate in Silicon Valley! It’s clean, cute, and seems to be exactly what I want. The downside? I’ve never heard of anyone using it.

Calendars:

Google Calendar. Blah blah Google blah. I love Google as a search engine; I’m ambivalent about them for anything else. Their calendar looks fine, but the main drawback as far as I’m concerned is a lack of two-way integration with iCal (but then, none of these is fully integrated with iCal. I don’t know whether to blame Apple or the rest of the world, but blame I do). It’s a pretty calendar, but it feels to mainstream to me.

Kiko. So cute. So cute. Again: I don’t know anyone who uses this, and I got a strange error message when I tried to return to the front page from the demo screen, but it looks good and has some nifty website add-ons.

CalendarHub. I think this is the winner, although I’m going to have to try it out. Unlike the other two it syncs with published iCals (meaning at least I don’t have to continually download and upload my calendars to keep them current). I like the interface (even if it isn’t as cute as Kiko) and it’s a beta, so I can feel all cutting-edge. I can’t tell from the non-member info whether it’s got blog widgets, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t. I’m signing up for an account now so we’ll see.

technorati tags:calendar, web 2.0, video, beta

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It’s nine thousand degrees in Portland right now, which means that there is somewhat more cranky than usual in the Cranky household.

Extended Weather Forecast for Portland, OR

Currently: 95°F
Fair
103°F | 66°F

I don’t deal well with the heat, and apparently Happy Fun Baby has inherited this. Do you remember the story August Heat? With the large man and the chisel and the tombstone and the sweating? I’m not that bad, but I empathize.

So, yeah. Hot. And nothing takes the edge off a sweltering day like a big crock pot of beef stew! Seriously, I don’t know what I’m thinking with that one, except that it’s what we have and our temporary but extreme poverty means making do. On a related note: I hate being poor. Hate hate hate. Things are going to be tight until we finish paying back the moving expenses, which won’t take too much longer…but in the meantime we have, like, $20 to our names.

Whenever money gets scarce my Po’ White Trash gene begins thumping and I start craving food. All sorts of food. In large amounts. This goes a long way toward explaining my caloric shame spiral of the last couple of days, brought to you by The Daily Plate. Remember, I’m only supposed to be eating 1900 calories a day if I want to burn a pound a week. Calorie breakdown:
Thursday – 1805
Friday – 1749
Saturday – 1990
Sunday – 2519.

2519? The hell? I’m going to be the size of a truck if I keep eating like that! Granted, there was some exercise in there, but not nearly enough. Sigh.

To distract me from all that, I’ve been scouring the web for new exciting things. Want to know what’s not exciting? JK Rowling announcing the death of two more Potter characters.

Children’s author J.K. Rowling has revealed that at least two characters will die in the seventh and final installment of her bestselling Harry Potter series, but was careful not to say who.

Rowling says 2 characters die in final Potter book – Yahoo! News

Why does she do this? It’s like she’s begging for someone to break into her super-sekrit hidden safe and hold her manuscript for ransom. I don’t want to know that people are going to die. I spent all of – what was it, book 5? – trying to find clues about who was going to bite it in that one, and the plot took a backseat to my (fruitless) sleuthing. It’s going to be a surprise anyway, right? I’d rather be completely surprised than half-assedly “prepared.”

Happy Fun Baby is kvetching to a background of Oobi (He’s Oobi, Oobi Oobi Oobi Oobi Oooo-bi). Perhaps he would like to share a juice pop with his mama.

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