Starting tomorrow, I begin a new project called 365Lessons.com. What is 365lessons.com? Glad you asked.

Friend and fellow online geek, Drew Vogel made a new year’s resolution last year to document every meal he made/ate for a year. He made that happen. As 2004 dawned, I thought I would like to do a similar project and bounced around several ideas. Some that did not make the cut were:

• 365shirts.com: A blog of all of the shirts I wear, but that would soon become repetitive.
• 365faces.com: A blog of daily facial expressions, but it has been done before.
• 365dates.com: A chronicle of dating, but I do not have that much time or money.

One of my criteria for this project was it should somehow contribute meaningful value (beyond the occasional chuckle) to the vast body of content that is the Internet. So, as I pride myself of trying to learn something new everyday, I struck on the idea of a journal of daily lessons learned.

While there are bound to be some entries reminiscent of Chicken Soup For the Soul, it is not my objective to continually wax philosophical or maudlin. Rather, I plan to throw out little everyday things that I think may help someone else. These should also act as a reminder to me, as I tend to learn something several times over before I “get it”.

So, there you have it. Check it out if you are interested. I’ve reserved the domain name (365lessons.com) and should bring it online in the next week or so. Until then, I’ll commit entries here.

Happy New Year everyone!

Back home, we used to say “the devil is getting married” if it rained while the sun was shining. If that is the case, what the heck is going on in when it snows in the desert?

I woke up this morning to the wonderful surprise of my car covered in about an inch of snow. Back in Cincy, folks are saying “What? Are you crazy? It is only an inch of snow.” But, snow is one of the things I miss about Cincinnati. I was born a snowman, so this morning’s precipitation had me grinning ear-to-ear on the drive in. Surprisingly, the drive to work went fine. Native Las Vegans do NOT seem to know how to drive in the rain, but snow does phase them.

Fellow Las Vegas Ryzer, Caprice Johnson Atamian took some photos. I am hoping she will share so I can post them here.

UPDATE: As you can see below, Caprice came through. She rocks.

John’s announcement of Trackback and Atom compliance will soon have this site undergoing some revisions. First, I will migrate from Moveable Type (MT) to Xaraya (X) as my backend. Rabbitt has already written an MT2X conversion script, minus Trackback. Once John solidifies the Trackback implentation, I will add Trackback to Rabbitt’s tool and go to town.

This is no knock on MT. I love it and have learned a ton from it. But, I am a PHP coder, not a PERL guy. So, jumping to Xaraya makes the most long-term sense (and was always the plan anyway). Once I am using Xaraya on a daily basis, I hope to bring my MT experience to bear and help polish Xaraya’s admin UI.

Also, the site will undergo some cosmetic changes. The general theme will remain, but I am dumping alot of the icons to the left, they add to page weight. I’ve already removed some and have added some new links to my blogroll. Check them out.

Finally, I am considering breaking the site up into several different domains. I will probably leave this domain for personal news and commentary. Other master topics will likely move as follows:

Ideally, each new site will be less diluted and speak to it’s core audience more directly. This will also give me a testbed for some ideas I’ve been bouncing around for Xaraya multi-sites functionality; something MT does very, very well. So, stay tuned.

John Cox has been a busy little beaver over the holidays. No doubt bouyed by the phenomenal stretch run of his Eagles, Santa Cox went into his workshop and delivered two great presents to the Xaraya community; Trackback and Atom API compliance (details below). For those not familiar with these technologies, follow the links above. Both provide solid overviews of the technologies and, as you read, you should begin to see their inherent benefits pretty readily.

Xaraya and the Atom API

I have a little work left to do to make sure that the Atom API is working but for a start it isn’t that bad. Here is what is left:

The ID tag is a hack for the time being, as I have changed the themes module to manually add that in. I’d rather just do it once, and not have to manually add in the tag structure. Likewise, I am not 100% sure that I am right on with the tag. I am using URI with the date of the first feed. I need to investigate it just a little bit more.

The Last Update date is not correct either, as Xaraya doesn’t really know the last time it was updated due to the extensibility of the system. I haven’t really thought to hard on the subject though, but without the date, then it will throw off the cache’s of the systems. So, there is just a little more work to do there.

Wyome :: Xaraya and the Atom API

Trackback and Xaraya

I am now pretty happy with the implementation. I have done quite a bit of testing on the trackback, and it seems to conform to the specs.

There are a couple of hooks for pinging. You can trackback on a new item, on an update for an item or just flat out add a trackback from scratch. There is also a display hook for the auto-discovery which seems to work well, but I am hoping for someone to test for me on MT or another blog.

I still need to make a bookmarklet, but to be honest this is pretty low on my priorities.

Wyome :: Trackback and Xaraya

Congrats and Thanks John!

• Stand up halfway through the movie and yell loudly, “Wait…where the hell is Harry Potter?”
• Block the entrance to the theater while screaming, “YOU…..SHALL….NOT….. PASS!” - After the movie, say “Lucas could have done it better.”
• Play a drinking game where you have to take a sip every time someone says, “the Ring”.
• Point and laugh whenever someone dies.
• Ask everyone around you if they think Gandalf went to Hogwarts.
• Finish off every one of Elrond’s lines with “Mis..ter Ander-sonnn”.
• When Aragorn is crowned king, stand up and at the top of your lungs sing, “And I did it…. MY way…!”
• Talk like Gollum all through the movie. At the end, bite off someone’s finger and fall down the stairs.
• Dress up as old ladies and reenact “The Battle of Helms Deep”, Monty Python style.
• When Denethor lights the fire, shout “Barbecue!”
• In TTT when the Ents decide to march to war, stand up and shout, “RUN FOREST, RUN!”
• Every time someone kills an Orc, yell: “That’s what I’m Tolkien about!” See how long it takes before you get kicked out of the theatre.
• During a wide shot of a battle, inquire, “Where’s Waldo?”
• Talk loudly about how you heard that there is a single frame of a nude Elf hidden somewhere in the movie.
• Start an Orc sing-a-long.
• Come to the premiere dressed as Frankenfurter and wander around looking terribly confused.
• When they go in the paths of the dead, wait for a tense moment and shout, “I see dead people!”
• Imitate what you think a conversation between Gollum, Dobby and Yoda would be like.
• Release a jar of daddy-long-legs into the theater during the Shelob scene.
• Wonder out loud if Aragorn is going to run for governor of California.
• When Shelob comes on, exclaim, “Man! Charlotte’s really let herself go!”

Many thanks to Todd for this list of chuckles.

After three party quarts I like to put on lipstick and pretend I’m Cindy Crawford. Wonder if either of these women would like to lend me a silky unmentionable.

www.lileks.com

David has all of the greatest links to off-beat humor.