Category Archives: Techy Stuff

Video Blogging

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Last weekend at WordCamp Fraser Valley, Leah Coss gave a great talk on Vlogging (Video blogging) and how to make it work. She covered EVERYTHING from planning through technology to how to handle flubs. And all in about 50 minutes despite not having access to her PowerPoint presentation.

So I think I’m going to give it a whirl. Not as a full-time thing, but as a way to pull myself out of my shell a bit, and maybe earn some more readers.

Before we went away this summer, Chris and I bought a handy little Kodak video camera. It has some bells and whistles (high def) but nothing fancy. Between that, the webcam on my laptop and my iPhone, I’m pretty much set to record anywhere and any time.

Now I just need some topics and a bit more nerve, and I’ll be all set.

What I learned at WordCamp Fraser Valley

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Yesterday, Nov 20, I spent the day in Surrey – a suburb of Vancouver with a bad reputation – attending WordCamp Fraser Valley for the 2nd time. This was there 3rd year doing this event, but I missed the first one it seems.

The event had about 40 people in attendance I think, and they ranged from youngish (20s) up to pretty mature (grey hair, no guessing on their ages) and ran the gamut of experience from “I want to get a blog” to folks who have been making a living with WordPress for a long time.

I met some great people and added most of them to Twitter. It was funny to see several people taking notes on paper amid a sea of laptops. Our host/facilitator/organizer was Gary, who has organized all 3 of the WordCamps so far. Gary did a great job, even coming up with a decent presentation on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the morning of WordCamp because one of the presenters had a family emergency.

I took nearly 7 pages of notes in OpenOffice (no paper for me) that I need to review. 4 of the presentations really taught me something.

  1. John Bollwitt‘s talk on how he implemented WordPress as an intranet solution for 4 local radio stations. John detailed how developing Floyd (their name for the intranet) really improved communication, community and documentation for the entire staff of 150+ people. Even the GM now has a personal, weekly blog he posts to. It became a way to share events and photos, as well as corporate documentation. He posted his presentation here: http://sixty4media.com/2010/11/20/using-wordpress-for-an-intranet/
  2. Danny Bradbury‘s talk on how to come up with ideas for blogging. It’s challenging, but as a professional journalist he needs to stay on top of current topics, track stories and sources and be ready with ideas. He presented a number of great sites he uses for research and tracking. His presentation is online here: http://prezi.com/evjtna9a9x6l/finding-your-bloggy-muse/
  3. Lynne Robson gave a great presentation on Child Themes for WordPress. Child themes were something I’d heard about, but never understood before. Now having seen Lynne’s presentation, I get why they’re so powerful. Short version – you can override styles and add functionality that aren’t in the parent theme. AND, if the parent theme is written properly, your functions can replace theirs, so you can improve on them. The upshot? If the owner updates the parent theme, you can safely upgrade without losing ANY of your customizations. Unless they change a style name.
  4. Leah Coss’s whirlwind and problem plagued session about Vlogging (video blogging) was amazing. The technical problems prevented us from seeing her PowerPoint, but she didn’t need it. At least for me, her points were clear and well made without the visuals. She did show us some good and bad examples on YouTube though. Yikes. I may yet start posting videos here.

Not to short change the other presenters, but these 4 really taught me something new. Tris Hussey, Kulpreet Singh and Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega all gave great talks, and inspired me in other ways, but I didn’t learn as much “new” information from them. Kulpreet’s talk has me wanting to look at eCommerce again. Something I both appreciate and hate him for doing. LOL.

Overall, it was a great day, full of interesting topics and interesting people. If you went, be sure to say hi. If you didn’t but are interested, be sure to check out other WordCamps, possibly in a city near you. I hope next year I don’t miss WordCamp Vancouver again.

Drafts Scheduler updated

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Today I released version 1.3 of my WordPress plugin, Drafts Scheduler. I had initially numbered it 1.2 and added an Undo feature that was noted as missing by BlueFur in his review. Seemed like a good idea. I had noted that there was no undo feature in the notes and of course it caused people some issues.

So in v1.2, I added the ability to undo the most recent set of scheduled posts. If any of those posts were already published, the plugin doesn’t reset their status. It was simple. I’d started out making harder than it needed to be, but after ignoring it for a week, I found the solution.

In v1.3, I added 2 new features to Drafts Scheduler, both suggested by users who sent feedback.

  1. Check for the existence of drafts before showing the options.
  2. Schedule an exact number of posts per day in “Surprise Me” mode.

I also moved the menu option from the TOOLS area up into the POSTS area where it makes more sense.

Anyway, I hope these features work for everyone and I look forward to more feedback.

Hello, Internet? Can you hear me?

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In the last year or 2, we’ve replaced our router 3 times. Primarily for technical reasons.

First, we went WiFi with our laptops, netbooks, phones, WDTV Live and Wii . I think the toaster is connected too.

Then we decided that wasn’t good enough. Transferring a movie from our computer to the drive attached to the WDTV Live was taking too long, so we needed (yep) to update to 802.11 N because it’s faster. And that was cool. Except we found out that Chris’s Netbook isn’t compatible so he’s still on the slow connection.

For some reason, the D-Link router we were using kept dropping out. I constantly updated the firmware etc and made sure our computers were up to date as well, but nothing worked. Nearly every day we had to reboot the router in order to get online again. I think the longest we went was about 3 days.

Finally we decided to upgrade and see what happens. So, I did a bunch of research and found that the NetGear WNDR 3700 was getting good reviews and great performance. It also uses 2 different frequencies, including the 5GHz range. Apparently the 2.4GHz range is getting crowded with other devices like wireless phones etc. So 5GHz means less interference.

Once again, it turns out that Chris’s netbook isn’t 5GHz compatible. But my laptop is.

Regardless, once we upgraded, all of our problems seem to have stopped. We’ve been on this new setup for 2 weeks and it’s been flawless. My speed is AMAZING and consistent. Yay! We may have finally rectified the problem. As an added bonus, the router features RapidShare meaning that we can plug a hard drive into it and have instant access to shared files throughout the house. Neat.