Discover why I’m going fixed width on all my Thesis sites (and why you might want too)

May 10, 2010
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I’m going fixed width (pixel based) on all my Thesis sites because I don’t want them looking like just another apple in the Thesis barrel. Now, please read the argument and rationale. I was having a conversation with another Thesis developer last week, talking about what we liked most and least about Thesis, when I [...]

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Storming in Sunderland

May 6, 2010
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On May 4, 2010 there was a storm that whipped through Western Massachusetts. It knocked out power to many places in the area. This video was shot in Sunderland, MA, where these types of storms are frequent in the summer. Sugarloaf Moutain and the surrounding area is a place of sometimes turbulent, strange weather. The [...]

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Don’t be just another WordPress Chump

May 5, 2010
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One thing about WordPress drives me crazy: people that don’t change important default settings when they set up a new blog. Here are the 2 most common settings people forget to change: user display name and the tag line “Just Another WordPress Blog”. Photo by karola riegler photography and republished here under a Creative Commons [...]

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Do you make these image mistakes with your Web site design?

May 2, 2010
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Yes! Ninety-five percent of Web design is typography. That’s why that other five percent — images and video — is so important. If your design goes screwy with images or video, it’s like a turd floating on the Web page. How can you read the text with that turd floating in the sidebar?! Since I [...]

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How I wrangled Thesis for WordPress in 5 minutes and got a static CSS layout

May 2, 2010
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This brief tutorial will show you how to customize your Thesis theme, changing it from an em based layout (flexible) to a pixel based one (fixed). If you look at 100 Web sites built with the Thesis theme and WordPress, I would estimate that 98 of them are using the em based layout (the default). [...]

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The way epic filmmaking was 28 years ago — what happened?

May 1, 2010
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Last night I watched the 28 year-old bio-epic movie, Gandhi (1982), directed by Richard Attenborough. Of course, the story is an inspiring one, about the life long struggle Gandhi fought for human rights through the use of non-violent protest. As a film buff who watches and studies many movies, what shocked me was the grand [...]

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Get the most out of Google Analytics and Thesis for WordPress

April 30, 2010
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There are many things you can do with Google Analytics, WordPress, and a little Thesis theme magic, but really the tips I’ll go over here don’t require Thesis. Most of what you’ll learn here can also be applied to just about any WordPress theme with a bit of customization. Before I lay the tips on you, let me [...]

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Creating quick watermarks in iMovie ’09

April 20, 2010
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You can find a lot of tutorials on how to create watermarks in iMovie ’09. Most of the tutorials require you to use an alpha image (transparency) like a png or gif file. My method is quick and easy, and doesn’t require creating an image. Watch how you can create a quick watermark for your [...]

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Tax resistance in Western Massachusetts [VIDEO]

April 19, 2010
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In 1992 I made this 30 minute documentary about federal tax resisters in Western Massachusetts. The event precipitating the video was the arrest for nonpayment of taxes by US Marshals and IRS agents of Randy Kehler on December 3, 1991. Kehler, his wife Betsy Corner and daughter, had been living in their house since 1989 when [...]

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Don’t drink craft beer in a catatonic state

April 16, 2010
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What’s the point of drinking a beer that tastes like water steeped with recycled copy paper and lemon? Beer should have a flavor profile that makes you ponder its origins, and daydream about the cool people who crafted it. If you can’t picture in your mind real people crafting that beverage, then you’re probably drinking [...]

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No Fishin’ In The Ditch [video]

April 15, 2010
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I was doing my regular walk in Sunderland, MA, when I came upon what I thought was a nut fishing in a drainage ditch. Turns out she wasn’t a nut at all, but a graduate student from the University of Massachusetts Amherst doing research. This drainage ditch/brook overflows often, so Colleen Samson’s thesis project is [...]

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Give birth to 10 WordPress blogs in 30 minutes

April 15, 2010
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If you need to roll out multiple WordPress blogs, this article is for you. I’m going to show you how to set up 10 blogs in 30 minutes, or I’ll eat my hat! Not only that, but we’ll set them up with a standard group of plugins, extra search engine optimization, and security hardening to [...]

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Beck’s cool cover versions of INXS songs [VIDEO]

April 14, 2010
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It’s fasinating how musicans can take songs written by someone else into a whole new direction. One of my favorite cover songs is Aztec Camera’s version of Van Halen’s “Jump”. Here is Beck Hansen in the studio working on some INXS songs: “New Sensation,” “Devil Inside,” and “Guns in the Sky”.

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Help me write one of the best blogs of 2010

April 14, 2010
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I have high ambitions this year: write a weblog that’s good enough to be on one of those end-of-year best of lists. I’d at least like to write blog that garners noteable interest in 2010. I’ve been blogging off and on since 2001. Mostly off. But in January of this year I was meeting with [...]

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Getting wine to flow on the Web — working with Amherst Wines

April 13, 2010
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I’ve been working with Steve Freedman, owner of Amherst Wines & Spirits, for more than a year now. Some of the things we’ve accomplished are create a new Web site (using the content management system, TypoLight), set-up an email list using Mailchimp, and offer Web communication consultation. Helping people learn new Web technologies to communicate with [...]

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Sustainable Seafood For People With Lobotomies

April 12, 2010
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Mark Bittman writes in the New York Times today about a company in California that’s claiming to be selling “sustainable seafood.” The company, I Love Blue Sea, sells only seafood that’s found on neither the Greenpeace Red List nor the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Those lists track seafood fished in an unsustainable manner, which [...]

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Banal Failures of The Springfield Republican’s Phoebe Prince Coverage

April 12, 2010
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Among media observers in Western Massachusetts, The Springfield Republican has a well earned reputation for protecting select powerful and corrupt people. That’s what I assumed was happening with the Phoebe Prince story, because much of the Republican coverage has been lacking. However, based on my investigation, the explanation is more banal: I’ve discovered an incompetent [...]

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Making Twitter Follow Friday Useful

April 9, 2010
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Following on the heals of Chris Brogan and moving his Twitter follow Friday meme to his blog, here’s my shout out to people whose blogs or Tweets I read mostly religiously. I like Chris’ logic in moving these little promotions to a blog post format: trying to put all this information into 140 characters strangles [...]

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Profiling a social enterprise: Memory Magic

April 8, 2010
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I needed to get a VHS tape transfered to DVD for a project you’ll see on this site soon. By word of mouth (Twitter, really) I found Memory Magic, a local business that provides all kinds of digital transfer services. The interesting thing about Memory Magic is that they’re run as a social enterprise by [...]

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Do You Know The Most Dangerous Roads To Bicycle In Western Mass?

April 5, 2010
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It’s Spring in New England which means people are digging bicycles out of storage and hitting the roads. Where I live, on Route 47 in Sunderland, MA, cyclists often jam pack the road — it’s a very scenic ride, if not always a safe one because of the narrow road at times. But Route 47 [...]

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Jason Kottke and Hugh Hefner: men with a common project

April 3, 2010
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I‘m sure you’ve heard of Hugh Hefner. And you might have even heard of Jason Kottke, who’s been blogging since pretty much the beginning of blogging in 1998. Did you know that Hefner and Kottke have something in common? (This is totally safe for work, trust me.) Kottke’s Scrapbook I’ve been reading Jason Kottke’s blog [...]

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How to use Craigslist and Google Reader for power searches (and getting free stuff)

April 2, 2010
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Have you found discovering good deals on Craigslist more trouble than is worth the effort? If you know exactly what you’re looking for, the search works great. But returning day after day is a pain. What if you’re looking for good deals on stuff, but aren’t sure what you’ll buy?  Let me show you how [...]

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How to loose 60 Twitter followers in a matter of minutes

April 2, 2010
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What a drag. I wasn’t trying to spam anyone, market to anyone, or be a pain in the ass; I was just trying to pass along what I thought was a nice story. This experience sort of reminds me of the saying “no good deed goes unpunished”. But more to the point, the lesson to [...]

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How to be generous and drive more traffic to your blog

March 27, 2010
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Don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but yesterday I did a little experiment that’s going to change the way I write and publish blog posts. I learned that the more generous I am with crediting photographers who offer their photos with a Creative Commons license on Flickr, the more traffic my blog [...]

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