I'm afraid I won't be able to post here (or on my tumblelog) very often for a while, as we don't have internet access at the moment. I'll post immediately when we do. :(

My New Tumblelog!

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before? lol

Tumblr is a neat little blogging service that lets you do much more than just blog. It allows you to add subscriptions to your other accounts (think Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, other blogging counts, etc, etc), allowing you to have a very active blog very easily.

http://ntg.tumblr.com/

Why YOU should get on StumbleUpon! \:D/

How to make Web 2.0 Style Logos with Only Freeware Tools

What You Will Need:

The Font Thing

Inkscape

Gimp

A few Web 2.0 style fonts

Reflection.js

Step One – The Fonts

There are many websites offering free fonts. Below are just a few:

1001Fonts.com

PixelFonts

9800FreeFonts

fonts.com

SearchFreeFonts.com

Fontica

Fonts500

dafont.com

better fonts

1001FreeFonts

urbanfonts

If those sites just aren’t cutting it, a simple Google search will reveal many, many more.

Step Two – Choosing Your Font

Screenshot

After you've downloaded an undefined number of good web 2.0 fonts, you need a good way to figure out just which one you're going to use. Don't use Word or the Windows font folder for this! You'll be there all day. Download the small, simple utility "The Font Thing" (link above) for easy, painless font browsing.

Step Three – The Color

Screenshot

Once you've chosen your font(s), go fire up Inkscape, zoom into 100%, choose the "text" tool, type out your name, press the color settings button, and add a nice gradient, with dark on the bottom and a lighter shade on the top. Don't be afraid. Experiment with the color and lightness, with the text size and wording, with caps or no caps (or a combination), and with even the font.

Step Four – Export as PNG

Screenshot

First, select all your text by dragging a box around it. Than, go to the "File" menu, and press "Export Bitmap…." Choose your destination folder, make sure it's set to export "selection," and press "export." Only press it once, lol.

Step Five – The Nice Shiny Look

Screenshot

Now that you have your beveled text png'd, browse over to it and open it using the Gimp. Use the Circle Selection tool to get a nice rounded selection about one third to half way from the bottom of your logo. Once you have achieved a desired selection, press the "adjust hue and saturation" button, click on your text inside the selection, and click to the left of the lightness slider three times so that the lightness slider "jumps" to the left three times. The box with the up/down arrows beside the slider should say "-30." Press "Ok." For those of you who do not have this button set to appear in the main Gimp window, you can access it via "tools > color tools > hue saturation" in the "tools" menu of your editing window.

What we've got so far

Step Six – The Nice Shiny Table Look

What we've got so far is ok, but we want to make it look really snazzy. Head on over and download the "reflection.js" javascript and install it on your website as detailed in it's readme file. After inserting your picture into your website, give it the class="reflect" attribute, and, tada!, you've got a pretty nice web 2.0 logo if I do say so myself, all without paying a cent. To download my finished product, please click here.

Finished Product

So I logged into the internet this morning only to find in my StumbleUpon inbox, to my great surprise, a message from a friendly fellow stumbler informing me that she had just submitted my personal website to the StumbleUpon database. Wow! I'm going to have to post more in my blog with such nice people browsing the StumbleUpon universes! So, there you have it. Thank "TheJunky'sWife" for doing her part to breath some life back into this blog. :)

*hurriedly goes off to prepare some more posts*

Just recently I changed my theme to a nice clean cool snow theme! :D Drop a comment and tell me what you think.

Meebo online (mentioned previously) and KoolIM online and GoogleTalk online and (now) Yahoo! IM online! Oh, my!

(Know of any others? Post 'em in the comments!)

StumbleUpon, eBay, and Google

Several weeks ago it was announced that eBay was about to acquire StumbleUpon for around 45$ million. Though I have not found any conformation, I am assuming the deal went through. It will be interesting to see what they have planned for the social bookmarking service, as this seems somewhat out of their realm. Perhaps they'll add a section for eBay category interests so users can stumble upon interesting eBay auctions? (It seems others think this is probable.) Or how about letting people receive eBay notifications in their SU inbox?

Right on the heels of eBay, Google added similar functionality to their toolbar, allowing users to receive randomly chosen pages based on their search results. Though I would have much rather seen Google acquire StumbleUpon, I'll be interested in seeing what Google does with this. However, I do have several concerns. How does Google intend to protect user's privacy? Or, on the other hand, is there a way to block "naughty" content, like on SU? Let's say, in theory, that someone borrows your computer and you forget to log off your Google account. They could totally screw up your recommendation profile. In SU, it's all in the user's control. From what I've read so far, this thing's no SU killer. In reality, though, I echo John Battelle. Even if the service does have some quirks and obviously has political motivations, it's always nice to see Google expanding it's "toolbox." (And, if this thing does take off, a little competition can only be a good thing.)

How I Made Del.icio.us Work for Me

Just recently I have officially made the switch from Windows Bookmarks to the social-bookmarking service Del.icio.us. I had to. With over 1,000 bookmarks, it just simply wasn't manageable in the default Firefox hierarchy system. In the transition I found that Del.icio.us doesn't exactly have the most user friendly interface -- a fact I've heard voiced by several other people. So, I've decided to put down how I made Del.icio.us work for me.

Don't Use the Official Del.icio.us Firefox Extension

I strongly recommend you skip the official extension. It stinks. No, really. You have to sign in every Firefox session, the pop-up is a web page (not good for people on slow connections), and after you bookmark something, it reuses the tab you just bookmarked to take you to the Del.icio.us homepage. Not fun. And I've found that most bookmarklets are little better. So, what's a guy supposed to do?

Use the Del.icio.us Firefox Extension made by Yahoo!

I have found the Yahoo! Del.icio.us firefox extension to be superb. All your bookmarks are easily available (even when offline) in a sidebar togglable via ctrl+b. It can even (optionally) replace your Firefox bookmarks menu with a minue of it's own populated by a list of your favorite tags, which act like submenus. The extension comes with a bookmarking button which brings up a (fast loading) bookmarking dialog, allowing you to edit the title / description and add custom tags, popular tags, and/or tags suggested by Del.icio.us. The whole experience is a seamless integration of Del.icio.us into Firefox. I never even go to the Del.icio.us website anymore!

Fun Tag Cloud Thingy

Well, I was going to get the previously-mentioned USB CORSAIR Flash Voyager 2GB Flash Drive, but, sadly, it was out of stock. So, I was forced to get the slightly more expensive (but nicer) CORSAIR Flash Voyager GT 2GB Flash Drive. And, so far, I'm impressed. I loaded a 700 mb file to the stick in a very short amount of time. I did have a bit of trouble getting Vista to accept it, but the problem seems to have fixed it self, and the drive works with Ready Boost. Oh, and about it being durable... This thing has officially gone through -- and survived -- the washing machine. (No I didn't have the guts to do it on purpose. It was an accident. lol )