Thought Box

Site Updates

So, I’ve continued messing around with the blog because I love getting involved on mini-tech projects.  This time I installed about a dozen plugins and went to town making sure they work exactly how I want them to.  Most of them are “under the hood” type stuff, but there are a couple that you’ll notice and possibly take advantage of.

RosenBlog for Gamers
So, I don’t officially call my blog the RosenBlog, but I very well might in the near future…  The point, however, is that you can now view my blog in an optimized format on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable (PSP), or the Apple iPhone.  Each browser displays a tiny bit differently, and now I’m set to optimize for each of those browser configurations.

(Sorry, I don’t have screenshots…)

Greet Box
The Greet Box is kind of fun and new. Depending on how you get to the blog, you may find a semi-personalized message for you as you access a specific post. For Example, when coming from a Facebook.com link you might see the following:

These messages are pretty discreet and are easily closeable.  I think it’s kind of a fun way to encourage spreading the word…  This also works for those who come in from Digg, Reddit, or all by themselves (displays a recommendation to add an RSS feed).  Nothing too huge, but kind of fun.

Sociable
Sociable is a simple sharing tool that gives a reader quick access to the correct link in order to share a specific post with the rest of the world. You should see the following buttons beneath every post if you visit the actual post page (not just the main page with multiple posts listed).

Facebook Connect
Now my readers can post comments with their Facebook ID which does a couple different things… One, it makes them a “user” more or less that can have their comments tracked on the site (I think – pretty sure). The other is that it allows users to post directly to their Facebook Feed that they have visited my site and commented on one of the posts.

You’ll notice below (if you’re on the single post page, not the main feed homepage) that you now see the Facebook Connect button:

(Note that I hate the way it is currently formatted and I will be modifying it as soon as I can find the right code… The padding and the text above the button are hidden away in some .php file within the plugin, and I’m not finding it.)

Once logged in, you’ll see this fun addition to the corner of your browser window:

Once you’re logged in and setup you just jump down to the comments box, input your text and it will post your information while your credentials come from Facebook.

You’ll have the standard Facebook stuff pop up and ask you a couple questions (like if you want to post a note in your profile feed or not) and then your comment will be up for moderation. Nothing super amazingly spectacular, but I’m all about providing options to people, and I think this one is kind of cool.

Statpress
Ok, so this one isn’t one that the rest of you can see, but I think it’s cool enough to share… I installed Statpress to do some simple analytics work for me. Nothing super spectacular (though I can install a couple other plugins that would work in coordination with this one to provide a LOT of info), but I think it is pretty cool to get some basic information from my users in terms of how they got to the blog and what they’re checking out. I don’t get tons of traffic, nor do I care all that much, but I like to feed my curiosity every once in a while.

(click on the image to embiggen and actually see the text)

That’s about it! Just thought I’d share some things. Nothing huge to update in the personal life other than that I’m enjoying the summer and my friends. Definitely looking forward to Travis and Annie visiting (likely) around Thanksgiving, and I’m pumped for Tony’s wedding in September. Also, I turn OLD on July 6th… Weird…

Fiddler on the Roof

It’s no major secret that Fiddler on the Roof is probably my favorite musical…  I have been dying to see it in a professional show for years, trying to satiate my love for the story with the movie and semi-decent high school performances – but the wait is over!  Not only did I get to see the show performed by a professional company, but I got to see the greatest Tevye of all time – Topol!

When I first moved to Houston I took a look to see what shows would be coming through the area (not sure whether or not to trust the people who told me that the Theater District is one of the best) and I saw that this tour was coming through.  I pretty much Mountain Dew’d my pants on the spot and added 2 or 3 reminders to my calendar to check for tickets.  Eventually they come up on the ExxonMobil discount page (we get a small discount by purchasing group tickets) and I snapped up some good seats in the lower section towards the middle.  I got 4 tickets in my excitement!

My new best friend, Jenny, and I went with Matt Anderton and his wife (who was in the dark until we walked into the theatre and she finally saw a sign telling her what show we were there for – she was pretty euphoric).  Honestly, I had probably about 20 nerdgasms during the show as I tried to hold myself back from singing along and cheering during certain dance numbers.  Topol was everything I could have hoped to see in person – at the 74 years old he still has an incredibly powerful voice, a ton of character, and the energy to keep going!  Jenny and I noticed in the playbill that he has performed the role over 2,500 times throughout his career!  We may as well have been watching the real Tevye from the original short stories…

This was definitely one of the “Before You Die” goals that can now be crossed off.  I’m still smiling on a Monday morning back at work – and I hope the smile lasts for a looooooong time! :-D

New Homepage Design

The other day I was floating through some links on a friend’s blog and noticed my buddy Andy Wheatley’s website. The funny thing about that is that his page looks EXACTLY like mine. I actually thought I had hit the wrong link or perchance hit the “Back” button on my mouse, but nope! Check his page out here.

Anyway, I used this as an excuse to update the main page. I’m thinking of ways to modify it a bit more than I have, but I had about 15 minutes at work to play with something new, so this is what I went with:

click the image to enbiggen

Let me know what your thoughts are – I think I like the general “landing page” look to it. I’ll most likely change the image, but the guitar certainly works for the time being.

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Quick Update:

I’ve modified the look a little…. :-D

Click the Image to Enbiggen

Chip Meets a Storm Trooper

I caught this during the ten minutes when I actually had a break at work today

I cannot read the gallery's xml file: /home/.laundry/rbaugh/rosenbaugh.com/blog/wp-content/photos/Star Wars Chipmunk/gallery.xml
Please check that the gallery's files have been created on the admin pages!

Seriously, some people are crazy creative – and it make life a wonderful thing!

Ayn Rand Hates Me

Once in a while I get into these really introspective moods, and I begin trying to figure myself out. For the longest time, I considered myself to be the humanoid equivalent to “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” – something that may or may not have multiple levels, but can certainly be easily deciphered by those with yet developing minds… These days I feel like Ayn Rand has risen from the dead (I’m assuming she’s dead) and decided to rewrite Atlas Shrugged with a new main character. Not that I am suggesting that I’ve even read Atlas Shrugged, but look at the size of it and imagine the complexity of an Ayn Rand novel that could even attempt to be that long!!! (That’s correct, I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, though it is on my list of future titles to peruse… Along with the 10 books [I just counted] sitting on top of my desk that I’ve purchased in recent months.)

Now that I am fully disclothesed (this spelling makes you wonder…) on my history with Ayn, I suppose I have to apologize for defamation and continue onward with why I feel as though I’m all of a sudden complicated.

I am no longer predictable to myself. I can no longer walk into a situation and feel as though I know what emotions and thoughts I might be having once I exit. I have found myself getting angry over things that never would have angrified me, feeling passive towards things I am often passionate about, and saying things I would normally not. Perhaps this is an evolution of how I choose to interact with the world, but the interesting thing is that I’m not sure it is for the better!

For example, I am becoming increasingly passive with many of my friendships. Normally where I would have fought to maintain a friend, I am deciding that a friend breakup might be the better option. Instead of outwardly claiming that I have a ton of friends and declaring that I like everyone around me, I’ve become more selective of those I spend time with in realization that very few people in my area are just not the type of people I really enjoy being around. Perhaps we’re talking about different core personalities or different life ambitions, but either way I have become pretty apathetic. Does that sound like the Jeff you’ve all known for years?

I don’t want to paint like Goya and suggest that I am suffering from all kinds of inner turmoil that is ripping me apart from within, because that is simply not the case. I’m not particularly bothered by the way I am responding to daily stimuli; I’m intrigued by it! Some of the emotions and thoughts that have coursed through my veins in recent months have been novel and new – and I’m moving away from the version of Jeff that was somewhat of a pushover because I was so concerned about making everyone around me happy. I think I could be moving in the right direction, but I need to take consistent evaluations to validate that I have not veered towards some form of destruction.

This has mostly been running triathlons through my brain over the last few weeks since it is apparent that few people get me. I am consistently surprised by how those around me choose to interact with me based on some sort of social perception of what my character must be, given that others with somewhat similar personalities have preceded me. I don’t get the Chris Farley thing as much as I did in High School, but I certainly feel like I am compared to other individuals within my sphere of sociality.

Now, this could be that I am becoming increasingly more diverse in my individuality, or it could be a condemnation of the laziness of a society that feels it is easier to discern the soul of someone by creating Venn diagrams and going through the compare and contrast process that we were all taught in grade school. I am guilty of this as well, though hopefully to a lesser degree… It seems as though social convention is to now categorized people by specific predominant personality traits and then to interact with them, and all others within that category, in a predefined manner. As the world grows smaller, we interact with more and more people, and I would argue that our interactions become increasingly more shallow. No longer do we attempt to search the bottomless depths, it is more economic and productive to surf along the surface.

I find human psychology interesting… :)