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Testing

/ hsoi

Let’s see if I can get WordPress for iPhone to post not just this text but also a picture.

Updated: It appears to work. 🙂

The image is hosted out of WordPress’s files area, which makes sense, but isn’t where I normally host my pictures. As well, it was resized smaller (which is an option in the app, which I can turn off, but I think is OK to do for network/transmission purposes). All this is OK, as they can be edited after I get back to home base.

I also don’t like that the WordPress for iPhone editing is severely limited (e.g. no style). You can do raw HTML but it’s cumbersome on the iPhone’s keyboard (e.g. the < and > are on the third keyboard screen). Of course, this is understandable as the iPhone interface is small and limited, so they had to keep things simple.

But at least the basics are there and that’s enough to make a basic posting from the field.

Housekeeping

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Fiddling with the blog settings.

Comments should show avatars. RSS feed should show summaries instead of the full text. Fiddled with the CSS slightly. Other little settings changes.

All of this continues to be subject to change.

That is all.

Updated: Went back to full-text RSS feed.

The Making of an Agent

/ hsoi

A story of one class’s journey to become US Secret Service agents.

A good read. It’s just a good story and a peek into the training involved to become a Secret Service agent.

You can also pick up a few bits of good tactical advice, like “keep moving.”

Bad business move

/ hsoi

So the makers of Pez are suing a guy with the world’s biggest Pez dispenser world’s biggest dispenser of Pez.

Talk about your bad P.R. move.

The guy builds this dispenser and runs a museum dedicated to Pez (which happened by accident, out of just love for the product and collecting it). This is nothing but good for the Pez company as ultimately all those profits go back to Pez. It gets people to love the product, support it, keep it alive, keep buying it… and I’m sure they buy a lot of it in the museum’s gift shop. And the Pez company is hurt how?

Yes, strictly speaking I could see trademark issues or other branding issues. Yes there are strict legal issues here. But the Pez company had a choice here: embrace what the guy does because ultimately it supports them, or treat him like a criminal and let your actions come back to bite you in the ass. In the end, Pez is only hurting themselves.

So yeah… sue your fans, treat your customers like criminals. Seems Pez is taking lessons from the RIAA and MPAA, and unfortunately a growing number of industries.

Blog fiddling

/ hsoi

While I like the theme being used on my blog, there are a few things I didn’t like about it. I just purchased the CSS Upgrade and am fiddling around with it to tweak the look of the blog to my liking.

One thing was I felt that links were not distinct enough and people were missing them. So, that’s the first thing remedied. We’ll see what else I do. Never worked with CSS before, so this is all new to me. If you note any problems, please comment so I can fix them.

Thanx.

Cell phones as defensive weapons

/ hsoi

Davis has a good posting about how you can use your cell phone as a defensive weapon.

But of course, it’s not quite what you think. 🙂  Quite a good strategy for what he’s getting at however. It reminds me of those gadgets you can keep in a pocket. You are entering some situation you don’t want to deal with, slip your hand in the pocket and press a button on the gadget. In a couple minutes the gadget will go off, like a cell phone ring or a pager or some such thing and then oh, I’ve got to take this, sorry, gotta end the conversation with you or I need to leave the room to take the call or whatever. Amusing.

Still tho, there is potentially a bit of serious self-defense application here. The key point is being aware of your surroundings.