I love that WordPress shows search terms that are pulling your stuff up on the Internet. In fact, I love a lot of things about WordPress. I am also a big fan of Google Docs, and when I first began using this “blog” thing, I wanted to use Google Docs to post my entries.

Unfortunately, as my first post indicates, I had troubles getting it set up. I got the following message: Error decoding XML-RPC response.

Now, I’m not technical genius, and I can only vaguely describe what that error message means, but I played around a bit and got things working.

I started posting all sorts of cool stories, technical ideas, and anything else I felt like sharing. Unfortunately, nobody was interested.

At least eight people have searched for a solution to this problem and were sent to my blog and the number one search term that pulls me up online is “error decoding xml-rpc responce” from Google Docs in one way or another. I guess not too many people actually have problems with this message, but those who do have no idea where to find help for it. I may be wrong, but I also want to help out where I can. So, here’s how I solved the problem. It may not be the best way, but it has worked for me.

I’ll provide a screenshot, but essentially I didn’t use the preset settings for WordPress found in the Google Docs options for posting to a blog. At the top of the “Blog Site Settings” window I clicked on the “My own server / custom” radio button. Here are the rest of the settings I used:

(RED text means you should insert your personal information. Black means yours should be the same.)

(Click the image to view it full size.)

API: “MetaWeblog API” URL: “http://mereman.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php” -(If you really do host your blog at a different URL, the wordpress.com part my be different too. The part before the “/xmlrpc.php” is the address you give to people so they can visit your blog.) User Name: “mediocrerenaissanceman“ -(This is the whole user name you log into the site with.) Password: “wouldn’t you like to know?“ Blog ID/Title: “The Mediocre Renaissance Man“ -(This is the title displayed at the head of your pages and at the top of the WordPress site while you are at your dashboard.) Last of all I have the box checked that says: “Include the document title when posting (if supported)” and I think you should too if you want to use the document title as your posting title.

The only warning I should mention is that when I use Google Docs to post it doesn’t go immediate. When I go to WordPress afterward it says the post is scheduled for seven hours later. If I want to post immediately I then go in and edit the post at the WordPress site, changing the settings to “Published” and the time to five minutes earlier. This works, but if anyone knows of a better way to get Google Docs to do it immediately, I could use the help.

I hope this helps, and if you have any more questions or ideas, please leave a comment.

Ever since I was a young child I have had ideas.  Some of my ideas are novel, others impractical, while most of them are hardly noteworthy.  The problem is, not much has ever been produced from my ideas, other than the ideas themselves.  In the end, all I am left with are more ideas.

Take, for instance, an idea I had as a Freshman in High School in 1997, the same year the Nintendo 64 gaming system was released.  The idea began brewing long before then, but I know for sure that I began imagining the particulars during that first year of High School.

My idea really took off that year because we got our first glimpses of what some of our favorite games could be like in a fully three dimensional world.  Playing Mario 64 I was impressed with the level of freedom the extra dimension offered, but I still felt limited.  So I began imagining my own version of the perfect game.

It began with my version of the perfect Mario 64 game.  In stead of levels limited at the edges by invisible walls or impossibly steep hills, why not connect all of the levels?  There could be extra terrain blending the different environments that each level contains, and the whole thing could be one massive world.

On that note, my logic continued, why not make the whole thing into a giant planet?  It could be the Mario 64 world.  A whole planet filled with Mario levels.

Then we got a new game, Mario Kart 64.  This, being another Mario game, instantly began crowding its way into my already busy imaginary Mario world.  In the Mario Kart game, one track takes place in the same setting as the beginning of Super Mario 64 - outside the Princess’s Castle.  I thought it would be cool if you could get out of your race kart and enter the castle.  Of course, in my imaginary 3D Mario world, this would be possible.

The next game I remember getting and loving completely changed my imaginary game forever, and that was Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.  This game allowed me a visual companion that took my 3D game into new galaxies.  Of course, it didn’t happen so fast.  At first, I saw the opportunity to have other planets and space ships that could fly around in space, allowing you to land on other planets.  Then, another game (this one for the PC) got me thinking even more.

I just spent the last half hour researching and trying to find the name of this game I used to love playing, but found nothing.  I have no idea where I got it, but it was a shareware game where you controlled a small ship and tried to conquer a galaxy.  There were two or three star systems, each with planets in orbit.  It was a simple, 2D game but I loved playing.  You used the up arrow key to fire a single thruster, left and right to rotate and orient the craft (like Asteroids) and the down arrow key to fire your weapon.  The physics reminded you that there is no friction in space, and gravity can pull you off your course.  The planets weren’t all that much bigger than the orbiting landing platform you began on.  You moved out from your planet and found unclaimed planets to make your own.  All of your planets worked on upgrades for your ship such as new weapons, shields, etc.  There was a complicated system for colonizing and developing your planets, but it seemed to take care of itself in the background as long as you kept flying around claiming more planets.

The trouble was with your opponent, who was constantly trying to attack and conquer your planets.  Anyhow, there was a little more to it that that, but I think you get the point.  I decided my game had to have aspects like that.  You could either play around on the surface, or you could go from planet to planet and try to gain control over as many of them as you could.  Then I got to thinking about other jobs, tasks, and so forth that could keep a person busy in a universe like this.  People could play the game to race, to run around on missions like in Golden Eye 007 or Perfect Dark, try to save people like the Star Wars game, fly people from planet to planet, compete for money, use the money to buy ships, cars, and other things…  The list kept growing.

Eventually, I realized this sort of thing would be more fun with other real people if they could be connected over the Internet.  In a recent letter to a loved one, I wrote the following (this person is still using a dial-up connection to the Internet):

Too bad you’re on dial up still.  I was just remembering dial up this week when I was recalling my first experiences with the Internet.  My dad’s place of work had supplied him with a  notebook computer and he had some responsibilities online.  He subscribed to AOL for Internet service at home, and I remember hearing about websites and pages from friends, on television and at school, and wanting to check them out online.  So, I would occasionally ask my dad if we could go on the Internet to look at one thing or another.

Every time we went online it was an adventure.  Not from the discoveries, learning or witnessing of new technology as one would hope.  The experience was an adventure because our connection would get refused a couple of times, then we’d get on with a painfully slow connection speed, and lose the connection five minutes later, only to repeat the whole process again and again.  I remember my “last straw” was when we decided to try filing our taxes online for the first time.  It took many, MANY hours.  Again, not because it was confusing or difficult, but because our connection was unreliable and slow.

A few of these “adventures” and I was convinced that the Internet was a useless, frustrating fad that would pass before I graduated high school.  That was one of my last wrong predictions.  As soon as I heard about “T-One Lines,” “Cable Modems” and “DSL,” I realized that the Internet didn’t have to be a slow, unreliable pain in the rump and a whole flood of possibilities became apparent.

Among that “flood of possibilities” was the idea that the Internet could connect gamers so they could interact in the same virtual world or universe.  Little did I know, but online games were already in existence, and at around the same time as I was developing my ideas for an online multiplayer game, MMOG’s were also developing into the 3D worlds they are today.  Now, games very similar to the final version of my idea exist (and they are making their creators a lot of money), but they lack the personality and flavor of my imaginary universe.

Spore and Second Life are two examples of ideas like mine that were capitalized on rather than sat on.  In Spore you get something more complicated than what I imagined but more centralized and less ambigous.  However you get the same level of scale and interactivity.  In Second Life you get the social networking, interactivity, creativity, ambiguity and freedom, but you still don’t have the video game style play.  I just think the themed worlds would be fun (imagine a Link and Zelda world).  I also think playing as your favorite video game character should be an option, as well as the traditional creation of an avatar.

In the end, though, my idea is still an idea.  I’m writing about this because I am once again faced with an idea that keeps escalating.  If I don’t squelch the proliferation of ideas soon, my idea will once again become too impractical to create.

Once again, my idea is for a game.  It is a simple game this time though, one for children or adults.  At first, while designing the code on paper, I realized that a modular approach would be easier to work with and make the whole project more flexible.  Then I decided I would like the program to help create the code for the game, making the game easier to edit and change.  I thought it would be good to make the game files separate from the code so it wouldn’t be hardwired into the actual program.  Then I decided to integrate the editing function into the final product so users could create their own games like mine, telling their own story.  Then it just got more complicated and more intricate until I realized I was going to have to back some of the features out if I’m ever really going to program this thing.

Only once did this tendency of mine to escalate ever pay off.  I was in High School, designing a program to help decode some encrypted messages for a contest I was working on in the evenings (instead of doing homework at home).  It worked out because I started getting the extra ideas while I was actually executing the project.  I started with a simple program that helped count characters and plot a graph to help me decode substitution ciphers by character analysis.  Then I got involved in a harder, multi-alphabet substitution cipher that required yet another function in the program to facilitate its decryption.  Eventually I got it to work, and it did its job beautifully.  I was very proud of this program, and to this day I regret the harddrive crash that wiped away every last line of its code.

The dilemma I am faced with is one of practicality.  Is it better to cut off an idea before it gets out of control to keep it feasible, or is it better to dream big, aim high and resign myself to a life full of ideas that I will never bring to life?  I like dreaming big, I love my ideas, but they are too big to execute.  This world we live in moves so quick that if I don’t do something about an idea fast enough, someone else will think of it and do it before me.  I have had numerous ideas that became big a few years after I dreamed them up.

Am I an overambitious, lazy and unrealistic dreamer or am I an under-ambitious genius who lacks the necessary gumption to do something about his ideas?  What do you think?

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… Ned’s alarm clock continued relentlessly until he shut it off and forced himself to leave his warm bed and prepare for another day at work.

Still waking up, Ned shuffled into the bathroom. Slowly, he positioned himself in front of the mirror and tried to remember what he was doing in there. Right, getting ready to go to work. In the distance he could hear a soft beeping sound, rhythmic and mundane. Must have forgot to turn off my alarm, he thought to himself.

Back in his room Ned checked his alarm, but it was quiet and properly set to go off the next morning. In his room there was complete silence, the beeping could not be heard. Strange. Ned set his alarm clock down on the dresser and returned to the bathroom, again trying to remember what he was doing.

Got to get ready to go. While he prepared his toothbrush, he realized he was hearing the beeping again. Where is that coming from? He looked around, moved to the window, put his ear by the vent. Nothing. He could only hear the sound while standing in front of the mirror. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… Muffled and faint, it nagged at him while he brushed his teeth, shaved and washed his face.

While he was rinsing his face, his wife wandered in to the bathroom. She went straight for the toilet, but Ned stopped her in front of the mirror.

“Do you hear anything?” he asked her.

“What, dear? Hear what?” She rubbed her eyes and looked at the toilet.

“I don’t know, it sounds like an alarm clock or a smoke detector. Do you hear it?”

She listened for a second. “No, I don’t hear anything.” Breaking free of the conversation she reached for the toilet. “The neighbors’ alarm clock is probably just going off. Don’t worry about it.”

Ned agreed. I don’t need to worry about it, it’s nothing. The trouble was that it nagged at him and he couldn’t help but worry.

All day he thought about the beeping. He wondered where it was coming from, what it meant, if he could do anything to stop it. Finally, just an hour or so before returning home, he quit thinking about the beeping. His attention was instead turned to an important problem that needed resolving before he could leave work. When he finally arrived home his mind was free and he enjoyed the evening at home.

The next morning his alarm clock yanked him out of sleep in the usual, most dreadfully stubborn manner, refusing to be silent until Ned held the reset button down.

This time, however, when he shuffled back into the bathroom to get ready to go to work, he stopped in front of the mirror and froze. There it is again. He stood there, listening. Several minutes went by. The steady beep was almost hypnotizing, and he didn’t snap back to reality until his wife made her regular visit to the toilet.

She entered the room and bumped into Ned, who was standing motionless in front of the mirror. Sitting on the toilet, she asked, “Are you alright? What were you doing?”

Slightly startled, he took a moment to gather his thoughts. “I guess I was daydreaming.” The truth was that he was daydreaming about where the sound could be coming from.

“It’s strange, it looks like you haven’t gotten anything done and you need to leave in ten minutes. Are you feeling OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He reached for his toothbrush. Suddenly, he felt the blood rush into his right cheek. He put his hand on it. The whole right half of his face was nearly numb and freezing cold. He looked at his wife. “Do you feel cold at all?”

“No, it’s nice. We’ve got the air conditioner on and I’m pretty warm. Why?”

“Nothing, I’m just feeling a little chilly. I’ll put on a sweater.” A sweater wouldn’t do him any good though, his whole body was warm. The only part of him that was at all cold was his face, only on the right side, and it was almost frozen. He finished his business in the bathroom as quickly as he could, but was still a little late for work.

Sitting at his desk he touched his cheek. It was warm now. He tried to get some work done, but this time he never managed to get his mind off the beeping. All day it was the only thing he could think about. When he got back home, he went straight to the bathroom.

Using his hands, he probed around the area in front of his mirror, trying to find out why his face got so cold. After just a few moments, he found a space small enough to cup in his hands that was colder than the inside of his freezer. He couldn’t see it, but it was easy enough to feel. It seemed to be emitting cold air. When he moved his ear closer to the cold spot, he could hear the beeping.

How strange, he thought. He knew just the right person to call though. Ned was still in contact with a friend of his from college. They had taken some general education classes together before parting ways. Ned had studied business and his friend studied physics. They kept in touch over the Internet but had never really had a good reason to talk before now.

Ned went to his computer and wrote a message to his friend explaining the strange place in his bathroom and asking if he would be interested in coming to his house to check it out. In the message he left his phone number and asked him to call immediately.

Ned’s friend, Professor Randal E. Thorpe of the Harvard University general physics department, called twenty minutes later and made arrangements to come over in two hours with a few professor buddies from different fields of specialization who would bring equipment and take some readings.

A feeling of satisfaction and relief swept over Ned. The nagging quit. Now it was in more capable hands. Now he didn’t have to worry about it so much. It was already getting late, so he decided to use the next couple of hours and take a nap before his friend arrived.

As he approached the bathroom, en route to his bedroom, he felt a chilling but soft breeze rushing down the hall with him. Closer still and he began to hear the beeping, only this time much louder than before. Peering into the bathroom he heard the beeping echoing off every tiled wall. The whole room was covered in an icy layer of frost. He could see inside the toilet that the water in the bowl was frozen solid.

Interesting, but out of his hands. He didn’t need to worry about it. He would wait and let the professionals deal with any new developments. He got in his bed, went to sleep and had dreams about penguins and doughnuts.

When the professors arrived, his wife woke him up and had him show them in to the bathroom. Ned had to put slippers and a sweater on because the whole house was cold despite the thermostat being set to the hottest setting.

“This seems much worse than you initially made it seem, Ned.” Professor Thorpe was helping one of his colleagues set up some equipment.

“Whatever it is, it is definitely worse now than when I sent for you. It’s giving off more cold air and the beeping is louder.” Ned surveyed the equipment, wondering what it all did and what they were going to learn about the anomaly in his bathroom. Out of my hands, he reminded himself.

“Well, Ned, if you like you can go back to sleep and we’ll let ourselves out when we’re finished. I don’t know how long it’ll take for us to gather the data we’ll need, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to stay up with us. We’ll clean up after ourselves and everything. Don’t worry about a thing, and I’ll call you tomorrow to tell you what we find out.” Professor Thorpe patted Ned on the back and they shook hands.

Ned was glad they would call to tell him what they learned. His curiosity was growing, and so was the cold spot.

When he woke up the next morning he was almost shivering in his bed. He could hear two alarm clocks clearly now, one in his room and one coming from the bathroom. He shut off the alarm clock in his room, then went to check out the bathroom.

Sure enough, the professors were all gone, and so were any signs that they had been there. It sounded like his alarm clock was still going off in the bathroom, but there was no physical clock in there at all.

The water in the tap was frozen, so he really couldn’t use the bathroom to get ready for work. He shaved with an electric razor and brushed his teeth in the kitchen. At work, he waited for his friend to call with more information. When no call came at work, he went home in the evening and asked his wife if there had been any calls for him. There had not. He decided to call the professor himself to find out if they had learned anything new.

He went to look for the cordless handset. On his way, he heard it start ringing. Now where did I put it? he asked himself. It sounded like it was in the hallway somewhere. The whole hallway was cold and starting to form a layer of frost on the carpet. I’ll have to seal that bathroom off to keep the cold in, he decided. As he passed the bathroom he thought it sounded like the phone was inside. He opened the door, and the ringing got louder, but he couldn’t find the phone anywhere. He could hear the phone, but there was no phone inside.

Looking around the rest of the house he eventually found the cordless phone in his bedroom. He could still hear the faint ringing and beeping coming from the bathroom, but his real phone and alarm clock were quiet. For a moment, the ringing stopped. A minute later it started up again. This time it didn’t last as long and soon all he could hear was the beeping.

Ned dialed his friend’s number and waited. After a few rings the professor answered. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any news to share. The data were still being analyzed. There were no firm ideas as to what the thing could be, but he would call as soon as any theories had been formed.

Ned was disappointed. He decided to turn his attention to sealing the bathroom off. He was tired of being so cold all of the time.

Using everything he had available, he set to work. Towels, extra bed sheets, painter’s plastic and duct tape went on, layer after layer, until Ned couldn’t feel any cold air coming out from the bathroom any more.

An added benefit of the seal was that the beeping was a lot harder to hear through all of the padding. Now it was only a faint sound, as though it were coming from the far end of a neighbor’s house.

A few days passed. The seal was working great. Every morning Ned turned his alarm clock off, heard the faint echo of that same alarm as he passed the bathroom on his way to the kitchen to get ready for work, and left his warm home for work. Every evening he got home, used warm water and a wash cloth to bathe, and retired to his warm bed to repeat the whole thing again the next morning. It was good to have his routine back. The only thing missing was that call from his professor friend. He curiosity about the strangeness in his bathroom had not completely left him. Plus, if his friend could figure out what it was, perhaps they could do something about it. He hoped it wasn’t getting worse. It seemed to be contained, but there was no way to know for sure.

Then one morning he woke up cold again. He shut his alarm clock off, but the beeping didn’t stop. He stepped out of bed and shivers went up his entire body. The floor had frost on it. He checked the seal around the bathroom, but it was intact. The wall next to the door had a big patch of ice on it. Whatever was growing inside the bathroom was beginning to leak out into the hallway.

Ned went to work and called his friend again to tell him about the new development. The professor apologized for taking so long, but some of the data were presenting intriguing problems and they had enlisted additional help from around the country. He promised that as soon as he had any news he would call. Ned picked up two cold weather sleeping bags from the store on the way home.

He got home and found his wife bundled up in a heavy coat, slippers and gloves. The cold was biting and overwhelming. Despite the weather in the house, she had the whole living room completely rearranged, a lot of things still unplugged from being moved. She said she wanted a new look for the house and needed something to do to keep warm. He didn’t mind, it looked good. The television was among the unplugged items, but they were tired, he wasn’t interested in watching television and they decided to fix it all in the morning.

They set up the sleeping bags under the covers of their bed. They slipped into bed and held each other for additional warmth. Ned was starting to drift off when he remembered that their telephone answering machine was in the living room.

“When you were moving things around out there, did you plug the answering machine back in?” he asked his wife.

“I don’t think so, I just moved everything around and left it because I wasn’t sure if I would want to move it all around some more or not.”

“I’ve been waiting for the professor to call, and I don’t want to miss what he has to say.” Ned thought about getting out of bed to plug the answering machine back in. “Do you think I should go plug it in?”

“No, don’t worry about it. If he calls tonight we’ve got a phone right here. We can answer it. I’ll make sure I plug it in tomorrow morning. Just go to sleep.”

She was right. He drifted off. He slept well that night. He slept so well, that he was not conscious when the anomaly in his bathroom exploded in size, almost instantly freezing the entire house.

In the morning his alarm clock went off just as it did every morning.

As for the professor, he and his colleagues were getting close to a solid theory about Ned’s problem. The thing in Ned’s bathroom appeared to be a rip of sorts in time and space. It had properties unlike anything any of them had ever observed before in the real world and it was generating a lot of excitement in the scientific community. Professor Thorpe decided to wait a couple more days before calling Ned, but things were definitely looking good.

Back at Ned’s house a couple of days later, the phone rang. It rang and rang and rang. Finally, the professor hung up, thought for a minute, and called back one more time.Then it was silent in the house.

Except, of course, for that persistent alarm clock.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…

I don’t remember when it started, but today it stopped.  I had been doing so well, I was in such a good habit, then one day, one morning, I tore it all down.

When I was very young I observed that good habits and bad habits have inverse properties.  A good habit is hard to form and easy to break, and a bad habit is easy to form and hard to break.  Basically, anything good and worth doing is difficult and takes time.  Anything bad and not worth doing happens quickly and easily and is hard to get rid of.  This principle applies to so much more than just habits.

Several months ago I started getting up early every morning to write when I didn’t have to go to work early.  I also set up a schedule with an hour of writing time Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  For a month or two (I don’t keep track of time well) I followed the schedule perfectly, never making even one allowance.  Then, one morning after an especially difficult night with the baby, I decided to give myself another hour of sleep.  I slept in the next morning, with no justification.  A day or two later I managed to get up to write, but I was too groggy to write anything worth reading, so I did other writing related activities (which I allow for) and went back to bed when I was finished.  Since that Saturday morning I completely stopped getting up early to write.

In the mean time I completely stopped writing in the evenings as well.  My creativity suffered, despite a few good ideas that came from time to time.  Even now, having gotten up early, my ideas are jumbled and my thoughts are muddled.  It’s going to take time to get back into the habit, but it is so important for me to write!

While I have been neglecting my writing time over the last few weeks, I have noticed a considerable degree of edginess and frustration brewing in my demeanor.  These are normal elements of my character that I consciously battle on a day to day basis, but I begin losing the battle when I give in to my lazy tendencies or fail to give myself appropriate creative outlets and stimulation.

Now I’ve got a couple of extra days off for the holiday making this a four day weekend.  It’s even harder to get up on a day off from work, but I’m resolved to make this the beginning of a good habit again.  No more sleeping in.  I may have to give myself a free day once or twice a month, but I’ll come up with an accountability system to prevent those free days from putting an end to a good habit.

Oh, and tonight, I’m taking my writing hour.

Ultimate Intelligent List Handler for People Who Love Lists

This is a quick outline of the features and organization I think belong in a good list handler. I love lists, and sometimes just assembling a list of things I want can make me feel as though I have received what I wanted. It’s like getting a craving for Mexican food, then collecting pictures of Mexican food items and having the craving satisfied. That’s what lists do for me, and I know there are other people like me out there.

I shall now use this description as my model and go out looking for the perfect list handler to meet my needs. If I can find nothing close enough, I may have to create my own program (which I am capable of doing given enough time). I have found one online wishlist handler which almost does what I want it to do, but it lacks some simple ideas which would make it more useful to me.

So, here is what the perfect list handler should be able to do:

List Groups
An individual list can be a part of one or more list groups. Group specific image and icon options would make these a good basic organizational level. Groups are like categories, in that you can have a “Wishlist” group and several different themed wishlists could belong to that group - “My Christmas WIshlist,” “My Spouse’s Wishlist,” and so on. A wishlist for video production equipment that is in the “Wishlists” group could also be a member of the “Future Purchases” and “Expensive” groups.

Lists
Each list can have a description, representational image and icon, and a list of creators & benefactors. Additionally, the list can be tailored to meet special needs. A list can be started by just adding items to it, or a more complicated list can be begun by outlining item types that would be needed. A more complicated list formed on a frame of “types” could give a variable, flexible budgeting plan with options to help organize what item would do best in what slot in the list. Lists can be ordered or unordered, based on priority, price, alphabet, date added, etc. You can simply put one item above another item because you like it there if you want, or you can assign priority values and have the list grouped by priority. You can even have phases, where the list is grouped into items that need to be purchased first, second, third, etc.

Once a list has been made, it can output HTML, Documents, perhaps even Spreadsheets with the items, costs, descriptions, images/icons, etc. using options made possible with the item types.  These outputs could be tailored to fit in budgets, show a time line of when to purchase what, and so many other possibilities.

Item Types
Inside of a list, several options could be variable. To help organize the variables “types” would become important. For example, if I am creating a list of things I need for video production, I can have requirements (specified at the List level) such as camera(s), light(s), microphone(s), and so forth that would be types. Each item I add to the list would then be grouped into a specific type. Each type can have characteristics associated with it that would specify how many of each item I need. Perhaps I find three different camera models I like, but I only plan on needing two cameras. My “Camera” item type could be programmed to know that only two cameras need purchasing and that any of them could fill the spots. Then, when I am outputting a cost breakdown, a range of camera prices would show based on combinations of the prices of the cameras filling that type position in the list.

Items
Items can be associated with more than just one type or list. Once the program has an item inputted, adding it to another list can be achieved easily by pulling the item up in the new list or from another list and adding it. Items can have more than one image associated with them, one as the main image, and they can update pricing and get new images easily within the program. Links to different vendors and prices could also be retrieved within the program.

Keywords & Tags
Sorting, organizing and browsing items, lists and groups would be handled primarily by tags & keywords. By searching one or more keywords an item could be found easily to be added to a new list.

If you know of anything that does all of this, please let me know in the comments. If you have any other ideas of what a list handler should be able to do, also leave a comment!

When you’re stressed, tired or just four months old, three can seem like an awfully large number.  We had three events today, all of them sizable, and all of them enjoyable (when taken one at a time, per day).

First, a movie!  I love movies, and I especially love Pixar movies.  Today we saw what may soon be known as my favorite movie - WALL*E.  I generally consider movies either one of my favorites because I don’t want to actually say one good movie was better than another good movie.  In this case, though, you’ve got some great animation, wonderful characters, good story, fun laughs, stunning visuals and strong emotional elements.  Before this movie I loved Stardust, A Knight’s Tale, The Incredibles, and a few others - each as one of my favorites.  Now, though, I may begin saying that WALL*E is my favorite movie (until I find something better).

After the movie my five-year-old had to go to the bathroom and I was left holding Sophie in the lobby.  There was a huge, cardboard model of WALL*E, so I had the baby pose for some pictures in front.  Click on the smaller images to see larger ones:

Next, a birthday party for two little girls each turning one in the same month.  Silly?  Yes.  Excuse for adults to get together and drink?  Also.  We left at the first signs of tipsiness from one of the hostesses.  Not because she was getting drunk, but because we have a four-month-old and we had other things to do.

Before I leave the subject of that little party, I have to mention that it is so funny to watch the four-month-old baby when she gets her little fist wrapped around a Twizzler and starts to suck on it.  She absolutely loved the Twizzlers and the chips (don’t worry, I only let her suck until they got too soft but before they broke apart).  She also enjoyed sucking on ice and baby carrots.  Oh, and Laffy-Taffy.  She enjoyed the Laffy-Taffy for almost fifteen minutes.

Finally we headed over to the home of our friends (D’n'A) and ate dinner.  After dinner we played some games among screaming babies.  It was a good time despite my utter exhaustion and high stress levels.  I get stressed for reasons most people would scoff at, and the stress often gets worse if I begin worrying about whether my stress and social awkwardness are making others uncomfortable with me.  Fortunately for our friends D’n'A, I don’t stress much at their house because I don’t worry about whether they are uncomfortable with me or not.

At last we ended up at home with a very tired baby girl who had too much to do in one day.  I played a few minutes of a Wii game while my wife fed the baby, then I started typing this (which turned into a much longer project than I thought).  I think I hear the baby making some noise now, so I’m off to work.  Soon I’ll begin writing for the sake of writing again.  For now I’ve been using this mainly for family updates.  Before long I’ll get back to work!

I’ve had this little gem of a video stuck on my phone for a long time now.  Finally I took the time to transfer it to a mini-SD card, pop that into an adapter to stick in the computer, and upload it to YouTube.  I want to embed it here so you don’t even have to go to another site to see this great video.  If you’re close family you may have seen it already, but it’s a good one to watch again!

Remember I have a YouTube channel.  If you have a Google account or a YouTube account you can subscribe to my channel and get notifications of new videos I upload any time you visit the YouTube.com site.  This is a great thing for anyone who already visits YouTube from time to time.

To use your Google account login information, go to YouTube.com and click on the Sign in link, then look for something that says “Sign in with your Google Account!“  If you’re already logged in to your Google services, clicking that link will automatically sign you in to YouTube, unless it’s your first time - in which case you’ll need to fill in a quick form with a little bit of YouTube related information before proceeding.  If you had a YouTube.com account before, you can link the two (I can’t remember what the link says, but it’s easy to find).

This is our family’s mission, as drafted over a year ago while seeking inspiration from God for our family.  No changes have been made in the entire year since these points were adopted, and when followed they bring great peace, order and love to our home.  Sure, we’re not perfect at doing all of these things all of the time, but we like that it is basic, easy to understand, and within all of our reach.

Our Family’s Mission

Our home is a house of prayer, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of order, a house of God.

The mission will be accomplished by living the following rules and virtues:

• Leave it like you found it, only better – if you open it, close it.
  
• Only you can prevent household messes.
• Use indoor voices.
• Be kind.

Kindness –

• Love unfeigned; charity, caring for others’ welfare despite any wrongdoing.
  
• Gentleness; soft, not treating others harshly.
• Meekness; humility, uncomplaining, and teachable.

Gratitude –

• Acceptance; seeing others in eternal perspective, reflecting only the good you see in them, and judging with compassion and patience.
  
• Use manners and be courteous.
• Trust; lovingly allowing others to exercise their agency to choose right or wrong and to accept the consequences patiently.

Integrity –

• Responsibility; acknowledging and assuming your role in any situation including repenting for past wrongdoing.
  
• Being honest, a personal commitment to righteousness, wisdom and learning.
• Reverence; a deep respect and love for God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and all they have done and created for us.

Of the many things I’ve been called, these are a few of my favorites (perhaps because I feel they are the most accurate).

Aloof, absentminded, wise, strange, lost, smart, inventive, anti-social, patient, caring, cold, focused, determined, stubborn, hard-worker, genius, detail-oriented, imaginative, talkative, creative, weird, warm, loving, detached, distracted, lazy, scatterbrained, precise, sociable, quirky, odd, quiet, intuitive, sharp, quick, slow, out-of-the-loop, courageous, thoughtful, and brilliant.

Notice the several contradicting pairs of adjectives.

Have I missed any? What would you call me? What do people call you? Please share in the comments.

]]> http://mereman.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/what-ive-been-called/feed/ Mediocre Renaissance Man