bytes 0f life .v2

This post is coming at you from postbot. The app i am looking at now is wptpgo. This mobile interface for wordpress has quite a few of the missing features i observed in postbot. If I focus on usability, then postbot wins even with the missing features.

Saving drafts is probably the biggest annoyance with wptogo. Each time you update a draft you have to provide a unique name for it. With postbot, you can continue to update the same draft many times. For posting on-the-go, i think this is fairly important.

I suppose that one might be inclined to pass this off as a feature. After all, saving multiple versions of a draft allows a pseudo revision history. If you end up not liking your third draft, you can easily go back to a previously saved version. However, you can do this fairly easy with postbot by changing the post title and then saving the draft again.

Even if you decide to salvage the annoyance of multiple draft versions, it all comes apart during the cleanup phase. Wptogo only allows you the option of deleting ALL saved drafts. This is no good and pretty much negates the possible positive.

The ui for wptogo is extremely cluttered and non-intuitive. I find myself longing for the simple KISS principle that is obviously adhered to when it comes to the postbot interface.

To be fair, i will point out what you can do with wptogo.

* formatting options (like bold, italic, etc)
* assign a current category from a dropdown
* assign tags
* add pictures
* write for multiple blogs

Tagging is wonderful. I miss this feature a lot using postbot. So, i will give some credit to the wptogo developers for including this. However, not being able to manage your categories pretty much seals the fact that wptogo is just not powerful enough to do the job.

It is my opinion that while postbot lacks a few features that all wordpress users will miss, if you are going to blog on-the-go, postbot is the way to go.

My final market rating is 2 stars for wptogo. Sorry, guys, go back to the drawing board.

I don’t know why I can’t seem to finish anything. I swear it must seem to everyone that I have a goal of starting the most projects in a lifetime without finishing. I probably won’t finish that, too!

What are some of the things I have started?

* paintings
* music (songs)
* programming (so many ideas)
* tarotwicks (see programming line)
* sdsmedia
* slay for pay
* building a studio
* basement
* learning java (this one is ok)
* photography
* art (in general)
* music, songs, and bands
* this post (most likely)
* lots of emails that needed to be sent
* the draft worked (this post might make it)
* every song I have ever written pretty much
* paintings (sorry, carly)
* college
* high school
* broadcasting school
* I should have just said school
* drawings
* books (reading)
* books (writing…like the overlords)
* wicks anything
* monitoring system
* bounce manager
* band management
* learning new languages

When it’s all said and done, if I have done it, I have quit it. What does that mean? What purpose does it serve? Perhaps I just like trying a lot of different things.

Perhaps I just get bored easily. I can’t say that I always like a challenge, because I am very happy when things come together easy. I guess I should change that to: “I don’t *require* a challenge.”

Whatever the reason, back in the recesses of my mind, I want it to end. It should be as simple as that. Of course, in order to stop quitting, I must quit. What a paradox, eh?

At least I was able to write this post, which is really just a test of the G1 app wptogo. I even added a pic I took at the BLS concert to try out the picture feature. Overall, I think I will stay with postbot. I will post my official review a bit later.

This post is coming to you from my G1 using the postbot app. I searched the market for “wordpress” and out of the 25 apps returned, only two of them were interfaces for a wordpress blog.

Postbot is simple, but it does the job (with limitations).

What can you do?

1. Write up a new post.
2. Save a draft of a post and come back to it later.
3. Add/remove images to your post (which I did…notice my brother and the trusty beer bong).
4. Assign a category.
5. Add a new category.
6. Submit the post.
7. Handles multiple blogs.

That’s it. There is definitely not a lot to this app, but what it does it does well. I am not going to list the limitations, because they seem fairly obvious to me.

I am giving this app 3 market stars. It does what it does, but it doesn’t do much else.

Edit: I am editing this post using the g1 app “wptogo”, which I will review later.

So, I figured it might be useful for some folks if I actually posted my painting process here. This has been posted over and conceptart.org and gfxartist.com, but I don’t know if those links even work anymore. So, here is the ‘making of’ the paiting ‘Reflecting’.

This painting was done digitally. I used a Wacom 10×12 Intuos tablet and a my current laptop at the time. It probably took me about 5-6 hours overall. If you have any questions, comments, etc…then ask away. That is what the comments section is for. Yes, I require that you sign up, but that is NOT so I can spam you…it is because I don’t want spammers.

Enjoy.

Step-by-Step / Tutorial of Painting Reflecting

Just a taste of something me and my brother-in-law are working on. The song is called “Become a God”. Click the the link below (mp3).

Become a God

It’s a beautiful autumn Saturday. A nice breeze. A light rain. The leaves are falling more and more with each passing day. The yard is covered with wonderful oranges and browns. College football is on in the living room.

BAM!

Now, it is time to face the music. My disorganization and procrastination has put me in a very difficult position. I am behind with my work. I am behind with my family. I am behind with my life. I have to tackle this now or something is going to give. What do I need to organize? In a word, everything. I have way too many things going on in both my business and in my personal home life to be able to successfully keep up.

Here is a quick list:

• Projects
• Tasks
• Deadlines
• Team schedules
• My schedules
• Notes
• Ideas
• Code
• News
• Documents
• Syncing all of this between computers

Here are the tools I have at my disposal

• Mantis (Bug tracker that is also overMISused as a project management system)
• File servers everywhere (Yah, just directories full of shit.)
• eTools (Document sharing used by some people.)
• Sharepoint (Document sharing that we are supposed to migrate to at some point.)
• Trac Wiki
• Fisheye / Crucible
• phpbb forums

So far my research has uncovered many different techniques. I am discovering the best course of action is to define what I want. The easiest way to state what I want is: “I want to organize everything listed above (the quick list) in such a way that all of the information I need is at my fingertips when I need it.” That’s not asking too much is it? I should probably just design and build a robot secretary. That’s a separate post.

Bringing a little order to chaos

The first missing piece of the puzzle is something that allows me to organize my projects. My wife created a OneNote notebook for me and it looks like a great way to organize the information I have for my projects. It doesn’t help me with deadlines and planning, though. I may not be utilizing it to its full potential. Here is a link outlining the various project management tools out there. It’s really a desert out there for anything that doesn’t mimic Microsoft Project.

At this point, I do not think adding another piece of software to the mix of tools I have available is going to help anything. I need to figure out how to make the best of what I have. I have to use Outlook, so I should be figuring out the best way to leverage Outlook. You will find no real help with available plug-ins. The vast majority of them are related to spam control or something stupid that doesn’t have any value where organization is concerned.  From the multitudes of available plug-ins I have found the following to be, at a glance, usable:

Don’t get me wrong. I see a lot of plug-ins out there and I am sure they are helping a few people out. For the most part it seems like plug-ins are made for an individual or a small group of individuals and it eventually finds a place on the Internet for the vast anonymous cog to consume it.

My Bottleneck el Supremo

Email is definitely a bottleneck for me. This is a single point of failure in my process because most of my work is born from email. I need to be able to find stuff quickly and right now this is not happening. In order to use Outlook effectively I need to start working with:

Changing the scenery a bit (the theme). Might as well talk about design. Want a clean wordpress theme? Try Corporate, Blue Dream, and the Google Chrome Theme. That about does it for me.

Installed some usefulLESS plug-ins to play with. Time for prep work. Time for prime-time. What the hell am I talking about?

I am supremely lazy when it comes to web design. Therefore, I appreciate a nice theme to use. However, those are few and far between. The internet is jam packed full of blogs that all look alike. Mostly because these poor bastards share the same laziness. Perhaps some are inept. Either way, I think it’s my responsibility to make a decision on a theme as a starting point.

Is it weird or normal to smell when something is about to die?

http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/paranormal-phenomena/wierd-death-smell-67790.html

Sort of. The site is back up, at least. Who really knows if I will ever post anything useful.

Basically, I deleted the config file for wordpress a few months ago and it has taken this long to fix it. I care.

It’s for sale, because I can’t afford to keep my art anymore.