Saturday, August 28, 2004

Blogger Help : What is "BlogThis!" ?


What have I been up to since I got this refWrite blog up and going, after the earlier Lawnch! of the older twin Anaximaximum blog, both here on Blogger, you may ask? Well ...

I finished up the second round of Modal-Scale charting on my pages on Neurons atWeb Crossing (URLs later). Then I went to my co-thinkers on Thinknet who have a taste for Vollenhoven's and Dooyeweerd's philosophies, and many of whom are modal theorists themselves. I posted a request to visit my Neurons' Modal Theory Chart, and I got feedback from several who had no trouble getting thru to view it. Altho no comments were made on the site, I did get Thinknet replies. Thanks to all!

Then, in my daily news scan, I came across an article in Washington Post, more or less pitting Vice President Cheney against Bush. I have a considerably different take on the difference between the two top political officers of the USA, and I have an approach I've derived from Herman Dooyeweerd the philosopoher, his student Andre Troost the ethicisit, and his student James Olthuis the ehticist and psychological counsellor - a derived view of what the state's responsiblity is in regard to different kinds of intimate ethically-qualified unions of two people with the vowed intention of permanence and stablity. So, I opened an account and posted to the Washington Post Forums and went to the Pollitical Talk section thereof and posted on the Cheny article. I remember one reply.

Then I made a big mistake, and strayed over to WP Forum's so-called Front Lounge, where upon surveying its posts, I found myself reacting to all the Hate-Bush blather, and started going after some of the posters. I spent the rest of the day there until I was exhausted and writing more loosely, spelling error prone, snappy, yappy. I may never go back. And then again, I may.

Today, I returned to my Thnknet communcations and stumbled upon the African Gospel Art page of Dr John Boer, who after decades of missionary service to the Tiv People in Nigeria, now concentrates on his massive Islamic study.

My next step was to return to Anaximaximum to see if I could get my webportrait by Abracax, a friend photographer, from my iPhoto app in my iMac, which I had some few days ago transferred over to Flickr where I house Anaximaximumphotographics so that I can supply digiphotos from a Mac to a blog on Blogger. Flickr is the intermediary; but it's more than that. I already have a Thinknet digifriend who has joined me as a contact on Flickr (his moniker is thesisbuster); we can comment on each other's photo's. I don't know what kind of computer he has, but he can probably get his visuals onto a blog at Blogger if he wants, and with ease. If it's a Mac he uses, he's all ready to use the Flickr site's workaround and to enjoy all the other public portfolios of photos by other Flickr users. We're both talking about putting together a page or two of a Rogues Gallery for Thinknetters who want to offer their mugs in a common page.

Just one thawt, if you start an account there, some Google ads will appear on your public page and that can be severely annoying. I didn't offer much of a profile there, but did note I was single and male; so, I imagine, with very little but that data to go on, Google imposed three or four of their little "personals" into my life by targetting my public page at Flickr. Fine and dandy, except there was one for bisexual contacts and another for ... dang! I can't remember the other annoying specifics. But, dang!, I wasn't going to pause and organize a rant to send to Flickr's GoogleAds bureaucrat, altho I did look for an email address and couldn't find it. For them o put such stuff on my personal pages because of Google's insensitive marketing machinery is an affront. Still, I must say Google has much to offer. For instance, the Google search engine will take a brief one or two word topic from you, and send you daily Alerts about the matter you're interested in. I have Google Alerts sent to me daily if there's anything new on the Web regarding two apps - Mail.app and the browser app Safari. I want to keep abreast of problems and new developments regarding both of them. Seems my computer activities are dependent on these apps.

But, speaking of search engines, there's another Apple app that interests me and regarding which I've spent some time today. And that's Sherlock 3. Now much of the work of previous versions of Sherlock in Mac computers has been taken away. On your own Desktop, the Finder is now so organized in the OSX operating system (Panther 3.4) that you can get easily to anything you've got onboard you're HardDrive or related like iDisk and LaCie external USB 2.0 HardDrive. The Finder now does all internal searches for your own immediate system.

And Google is built into your browser. I use it all the time, a little slot into which you write your topic and click. It'll bring up a Google page in your browser and a URL in the browser bar next to Google (a little slot, as I said, on the right).

So, what's Sherlock 3 good for? Google is so massive and so played-upon by rank-obsessed websites, that it's results are distorted, often quite distorted. To side step this problem, one strategy is to use Sherlock 3 by taking advantage of its capacity to house plugins for search purposes specialized to given topics or websites. I have VersionTracker's channel housed in my Sherlock 3 now. Click up Sherlock, go to My Channels, and there's your own private set of special plugins (with .src suffix); I click on the VT plugin and the website is immediately in front of me. I noted today on the VT daily list of new apps for Macintosh that there's a new Sherlock plugin being offered for a search engine named Wedlock. Getting married? Here's your own specialist pllugin which is geared to the priorities of fiancées using the web for their upcoming grand occasion.

That's all for now, my dear digifriends all. Signing off, Owlb. If I can revise this post, I'll be adding URLs later. And maybe making some revisions. - Owlb

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