nick prignano

01/14/2008 In blogging Tags: tumblelog, WordPress

Tumblelogs are a wonderful idea for anyone who: A) can’t write decent content to save their lives; or, B) want to keep a personal web history with notes (or not) in a blog format. I fall into the latter category - I keep a blog (and this one) for my well formulated ideas that can be read and comprehended by my readers, and I also now have a tumblelog (or tlog) to keep track of my brain dumps and such.

Both my blog and my tumblelog are powered by WordPress (for the moment). They run on separate a single installation, of WordPress, both to make posting to the tumblelog simpler and to keep my main blog feed free of trivial posts to the tumblelog. However, I used the same database for both installations to simplify search queries/results and tags, as well as user account and comments synchronization. Of course, once I come to that bridge I will discuss how I get across it right here so stay tuned.

Also, I installed a plugin called QuickPost in my tumblelog installation. This plugin comes with a bookmarklet for your bookmarks toolbar. Once you configure the settings, this nifty little button allows you to pass yummy variables to Wordpress from a webpage. A popup comes up and you have a slimmed down post interface to add your thoughts to the post before sumbitting. Then, assuming you have a theme setup to handle the various types of quickposts, you have a clean and pretty log of your web finds.

My tumblelog theme is available on the Downloads page; you can get the QuickPost plugin I spoke of here.

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01/12/2008 In politics Tags: elections, politicians, propaganda, racism, Ron Paul, welfare

Is Ron Paul a racist?  In response to a public outcry over the content of a newsletter series bearing his name, this seems to be the question of the hour.  In the past five days, every single political news outlet I have visited has had at least one article on the subject, most pointing to the demise of the Ron Paul Revolution as the only logical outcome of this news.  So, as such, I feel it necessary to respond to the madness which has so freely permeated throughout the blogosphere.

“I honestly don’t care if Ron Paul was a former Klan member, I am still voting for him.”  I stand by this claim, and here is why: Ron Paul is perhaps the only politician, and certainly the only candidate running for President, who stands up for the Constitution and the freedoms of EVERY American.  Maybe this fact was overlooked somewhere between the Iowa caucus and the “discovery” of this “damning” evidence.

I am hardly asserting that we should not seriously examine these documents and the implications that they bring.  However, I strongly disagree with the notion that this newsletter, nor the beliefs expressed therein, are of any consequence to Ron Paul’s mission. Regardless of Ron Paul’s personal opinion on these ideas and in spite of the inflammatory nature of these ideas, the point is not what was said or even who said it.  The point is the audience who the ideas were presented to.

Unfortunately for Dr. Paul, the Libertarian platform has not always been so openly accepted in this country.  In the early 90’s, America was wholeheartedly embracing programs, like Affirmative Action, which we now realize were paramount failures and subversion of government.  Ron Paul, however, openly opposed these welfare programs because they did not address the real problems and simply allowed the problem to continue.  Ron Paul, being the Constitutional prodigy that he is, saw through the propaganda and identified the programs for what they were: unconstitutional.  Taking such a stance made Ron Paul a pariah in the political world, leaving him with a small base of “freedom fighters,” most of whom would be identified today as separatists and/or racists.

Having such a base would explain, if not justify, the ideas and language presented in this newsletter.  Clearly, pandering to such organizations in order to hold an elected office is shameful.  However, the concept of pandering to one’s base is part of the political process.  Recent attention has been given to Rudy Giuliani because of an ad he put out that was in Spanish, including him speaking his endorsement of the ad in Spanish as well.  Anybody who has followed the GOP debates, be them Rudy supporters or not, know that Rudy is running on a platform that includes requiring all Americans to be able to read, write and speak English in order to obtain citizenship. He did so because he is trying to appeal to voters.

Ron Paul may still be racist in his heart of hearts.  Frankly, I do not care because I know that before we are black or white, we are all Americans.  Dr. Paul has been fighting for the rights of all Americans since he entered the public arena.  The sentiment amongst those who have withdrawn their support for Ron Paul is that this is clear evidence that Ron Paul is a closet racist, and that he is just running on a Libertarian platform because it is convenient.  In fact, Ron Paul has always been saying the same things.  Only now are they so important.  And only now is such a big deal made out of something he said, not in his official role, over 15 years ago.

The propaganda machine is hard at work, doing whatever it can to ensure that we stay in our place and do not begin to question authority.  To quote John Edwards, “Anytime [politicians] come out in support of change, the establishment resists.”  I, personally, am not going to let the distractions of personal opinion cloud my mind.  I firmly believe that the establishment is what is wrong with America, and that Ron Paul will break their stranglehold on us.  So long as they do not dig up evidence that Ron Paul is a closet neocon, he has my vote.

Watch on Youtube

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01/10/2008 In politics Tags:

(TITLE WAS MISSPELLED ON PURPOSE)

I recently discovered a law that was passed last year, which makes annoying someone online anonymously a federal crime.  You can actually spend two years in a federal penitentiary for spamming, be it on a message board, via email, instant messaging.  Read below for yourself, the language is very vague, yet very damning:

Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act

Sec. 113, Preventing Cyberstalking

“Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

What we should take away from this that the government has the power to bring federal charges against 98.5% of all online comments and their posters.

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01/09/2008 In blogging Tags: photo management, WordPress, ZenPhoto

Most everyone today who uses the Internet has occasion to view, take, or edit a digital photo (or ten thousand) from time to time. For those of us who take online productivity to the next level, online photo management is an invaluable tool. Uploading your latest set of photos to a website like Picasa or Flickr allows for instant sharing with friends and family around the world.

While hosted photo management is great and all, I prefer to keep my data under watchful eye on my own servers. So for me, there are numerous options for managing my photos online while not relying on the resources of a third party. Since I use WordPress to blog and design and generally waste time, my options are limitless still. However, I have found only one option for online photo management that works well with WordPress: ZenPhoto. (I no longer stand by that claim, read here for why.)

ZenPhoto is a liteweight yet powerful platform for organizing photos and generating thumbnails, slideshows and pageviews on-the-fly via PHP. And, as I recently discovered, it integrates quite easily with WordPress. If you click on the Photos tab at the top of this page, you can see it in action here on my site. (If you are looking for a photo management software that runs completely independent of WordPress, ZenPhoto is the answer. If you are looking for fully integrating your image gallery with WordPress, you need to check out this plugin.)

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01/07/2008 In politics Tags: Hillary Clinton, politics, Ron Paul

Another interest peaked by the recent ABC/Facebook Presidential Debates was the war of words that was being waged in the Democratic Primaries. Never before have I seen such political mastery coming from more than a single candidate, that I am honestly impressed. Watching Hillary being taken to task on numerous issues by Barack Obama, I couldn’t help but wonder how many people watching the debate saw what I did.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I was in the minority with my take on the debate between Hillary and Barack. In almost every Facebook discussion thread regarding the topic, the general consensus was that Hillary has a better plan on every issue. Don’t get me wrong, Hillary supporters were outnumbered 3 to 1 in those of discussing the debates. Regardless, people see Barack Obama as an inspirational figure more than a policy master. I, on the other hand, think the guy has the right idea on most of the issues at hand.

At one point in the televised debate, the host asked Hillary and Barack to dialog about Hillary’s claims that Barack Obama was not experienced enough to be President. She jumped on the opportunity to quote an AP article that said “Barack had changed his postion on so many issues, he could have a debate with himself.” She went on to call him out on “almost every issue,” saying he had changed his position on healthcare several times over 3 years, blah blah blah.

When she finally stopped, Barack returned with an apt retort, telling her that the AP article was quoting Hillary campaign staffers. Hilarious. He then went on to explain his healthcare plan and point out the key difference between his and both Edwards’ and Clinton’s plan: Obama addresses the fundamental problem of a broken insurance system, while the other plans address forcing everyone to have coverage. Not much attention was paid, apparently, by the general viewing audience to that distinct fact.

After watching the debate, then seeing reactions on Facebook and the media, I have a better understanding of how Hillary Clinton can fool so many people.  When there is a lack of effort on the voters part combined with a lack of conciense on the media’s part, its easy to spin any issue in favor of Hillary Clinton.  Through surgically crafted sound bytes and bias pundit reactions that immediately follow the debates, the minds of unsuspecting Americans are easily manipulated.

I am glad I watched the debates in their entirety, as well as their replay on CNN.

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01/06/2008 In religion Tags:

When I consider how many influences I am subjected to at any given moment, I am astounded that I have maintained any ability to think for myself. Between mass media, the Internet, and word of mouth, I am inundated with thousands of opinions on a daily basis. For many people, this type of barrage jades the mind and alters convictions, but for me it creates resolve.

From the time I was a child, my favorite reaction to garner in another person was disagreement. Be it something I did, or how I spoke, my every fiber was engaged in rebellion. Many of my juvenile outbursts landed me in trouble, my misaligned viewpoints aft destroy friendships. However, throughout it all I have developed a wanton disregard for persuasion.

My challenge to all humans is regain control of your minds. Free thought, reason and logic are the forces by which our destinies are determined, not predestination. Do not wait until the end of your days to realize that you are only given one chance, one life, one shot on this earth. Leave here satisfied, fulfilled and complete, rather than full of regret.

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01/05/2008 In politics Tags:

I thank Ron Paul for the information I am using to formulate my opinion. This enlightenment came near the end of the ABC/Facebook Republican debates, during Ron Paul’s response to the following question: Given the fact that oil went from $61 a barrel in January 2007 to $100 last week (January 2008) , don’t you have to level with the American public and tell them that the price of oil is going to stay this high and if anything go higher? Ron Paul, being an expert on the issue of the Gold Standard, pointed to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the subject of oil prices, which illustrates the price of oil over the past decade, in terms of three forms of currency: the dollar, the euro, and gold.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, in terms of the dollar, oil prices have increased 350% in the past decade; but, when the price of oil is measured in terms of gold, the price has stayed flat. According to Ron Paul, what this means is that our country is printing so much money that the value of our dollar is actually declining at that rate - 350% over the past 10 years. Frightening concept to ponder.

You may be saying “surely, this can’t be true. How can America still be standing if the value of our dollar fell that dramatically, that fast?” Well, its not hard to accept when you consider how the value of the dollar is determined. When America created the Federal Reserve, it abolished the gold standard, it created this problem. The problem: the value of the American dollar isn’t determined by an actual measure, but rather faith in the value of the US dollar. Circular logic, wouldn’t you say?

Due to the fact that American dollars are not backed by gold, the value of the dollar is ever declining as new dollars are added to the system without taking any out. When a dollar is traded for a tangible good on the world market, less can be bought as a result. And this is the basis of inflation.

In short, the revelation I am making here is that the gas price issue is not a matter of the cost of oil going up, but the value of our dollar going down.

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01/04/2008 In power user Tags: Ubuntu

Microsoft has a lot in common with crack.  From what I have heard, when one tries to drop an addicition to crack, the beginning is always the hardest part.  One finds oneself with big gaps in one’s life that used to be filled with crack.  The biggest challenge becomes filling these holes left in one’s life by the absence of the drug.

It is in this way that switching from Windows to Linux is very similar to giving up an addiction to crack.  At first, the world seems to be over when one realizes that Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) do not work in Linux AT ALL.  There is no simple How-To to get it working, there just isn’t.  The sooner one realizes that Microsoft software is gone from one’s life and not returning, the better off he or she will be in the long run.

As someone who was born and raised on the Microsoft platform, coming to this realization was nothing minor.  If I rememebr correctly, I spent many a sleepless night with the shakes and repeated trips to the toilet…. or maybe that was when I quit crack…. (totally kidding, I never did smoke crack in my many years as a drug addict). But, regardless, I am not being fecicious when I say that giving up the beast (Microsoft) was one of the hardest changes I have ever had to adjust to.

But, in the end, I did it (for the most part).

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12/23/2007 In blogging Tags: design, PHP, WordPress

UPDATE: I ditched the Tasteful theme I developed to originally power this blog.  Therefore, I am no longer offering it for download as I will not be maintaining it.

The ubiquitous large and usually pretty header image is far from rare in the realm of free WordPress themes. In fact, they are pretty common these days. Still, the large, pretty header image approach can have positive effects on your reader’s perceptions of your blog, especially if the content leaves something to be desired. But the key to a positive WordPress experience is picking a theme that you can and intend to modify to fit your personal style.

When considering starting points for the design of this blog, I almost passed over Tastelessly because of the static header image. But after careful consideration of the clever color scheme and overall uniqueness, I realized that the possibilities were abundant. My first modification to the theme came in the form of PhotoMatt’s rotating image script, written in PHP. You can see where this is going I hope.

So, after obtaining the latest release of the script and giving a once-over to the limited documentation about the script available on the download page, I uploaded the script to my images folder and I was on my way to slight diversity.

The next step was to obtain a good set of images, of course I went to stock.xchng to collect my samples. If you haven’t heard about this site, go there now and thank me later. Not the best stock photos out there, but they are all free to download and use (per the individual license conditions). After about an hour of meaningless meandering through the abstract > playing with light category, I had about 50 images to work from, cost to me just one hour of my life.

After a quick comparison of each photo to the look, color and layout of my site (done via side by side windows, one being PhotoShop the other, Firefox with my site loaded), I began editing my photos so they would fit the size of my header image (978×263). Some pictures were okay to stretch, others weren’t. Suffice it to say I spent another 90 minutes editing the photos I downloaded.

Once that mess was finished, I uploaded my new header images to my theme’s images directory, set the minor options inside the plugin file, and finally changed the reference to my header image to link to the rotator script (aptly named rotator.php). Save the stylesheet back to my server, refresh my homepage (ok, I did it 30 times because I was bored), and bada-bing - I have a rotating header image.

Now, of course, you will notice that the header image only rotates when the page is refreshed. There are other methods that use javascript (inaptly coined AJAX by the ignorant masses) to rotate images at a given period of time. I may discuss that method here in a future post, as I continue the struggle to birth a semi-unique blog before the eyes of the public.

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12/17/2007 In lifehacking Tags: Comcast, Facebook, work

I spent no less than five tedious, boring days without an Internet connection at home. Now, some may see this and bash me for feeling sorry for myself when more than 50,000 of my fellow Chicagoans spent almost as much time without power. But, in defense of my position, I feel that having power but no Internet connection is worse. What a tease it is to have all of your utilities but no connection to the vast and fulfilling Interweb. What is a computer nerd (myself) to do without his daily Facebook fix? Take it from me, the last person you want to hang out with in the office on Monday is your computer tech when he hasn’t had Internet all weekend.

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