A Renewing Mind

I’ve been using del.icio.us for a few months now, but yesterday some of the real power of tagging started to dawn on me. First was the realization that all of the bookmarking I do in FireFox is nothing more than trying to create a taxonomy. There is nothing wrong with taxonomies, but they are terribly difficult to build and maintain. I have long since passed the point where it was easy to determine where in the taxonomy to place a new link. As a result, I have a mess that I try to reorganize every few months. Without really thinking about it, I’ve started using del.icio.us as a replacement for bookmarking. I may not remember where I bookmarked a site, but I likely do remember one of the tags I used for it. It would be interesting to pull those del.icio.us tags into the browser so I could use them as quick links. I think I’ve heard that flock is doing something along these lines.

A second slick use of del.icio.us is subscribing to my own feed of tags, as well as those generated by others with whom I share an interest. I often want to write something about a site that I tag, but going through the process of tagging at del.icio.us and then separately creating a post is a bit cumbersome. Having the tag info show up in my news aggregator makes it easy to follow up with a blog post at a more convenient time and in a more expedient way.

Listening to Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte’s Inside the Net #4 yesterday, I learned about ProtoPage. This is another start page/personal portal effort, similar to the Microsoft Start Page, but completely Ajax-driven and potentially much cooler than Microsoft’s. Good RSS support, but a little light on tools at the moment. I’m going to try it out for a bit. I’ve included RSS feeds for my ToDo lists from TaDa and Delicious. More on these in a moment.

For most of the last two years I have been forced, in my role as an IT Architect, to repress much of my geek inquisitiveness – including the desire to write a line or two of code. Yesterday it all kind of boiled over into nearly 12 hours of complete indulgence of my inner geek tendancies. More coming up.

South Haven Tug Boat

Originally uploaded by markswoods.

I am trying out the Flickr/Blog email upload feature. This is a picture I took of a tug boat on the Black River in South Haven, MI in 2003.

Park District Basketball 003

Originally uploaded by markswoods.

That’s Steve in the foreground at a game this last weekend. Great game Steve. Good luck on the grill tomorrow.

I was checking out the new Google Video store today and was initially excited about some of the content like I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone. I was soon disappointed. Most of this content is copy protected and by Google’s terms that means it can be played only in Windows with their special Google Video Player while connected to the Internet. No iPod viewing. No PSP viewing. No viewing on an airplane. Ugh! I guess I won’t be stopping back here until Google provides some interesting content for the existing hand-held market.

I love grilling and smoking meat – pork, beef, fish, chicken, shrimp, clams, turkey. I guess it doesn’t end there, I also like grilling vegetables like corn and potatoes and garlic and onions. I’ve always enjoyed grilling, but the real turning point came for me when I bought a copy of The Passion of Barbecue from the Kansas City Barbecue Society. Following the suggestions in this book dramatically improved my technique and my appreciation for good ‘cue.

But that’s not the reason for this post. My thirteen year-old son, Steven, has grown more interested in cooking over the last year. We’ve been doing stir-fry together recently, but this last weekend he asked if he could try his hand at the grill. I’m thrilled to pass on some of the knowledge I’ve gained. We are going to start with barbecue pork chops tomorrow night using a rub and some soaked apple wood chips for smoke flavor.

Just some thoughts on barbecue and technology, maybe some other stuff.

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!