I am not quite a self-contained as D’arcy and probably won’t be. He dumped Flickr and I don’t see myself doing that anytime soon as I really like Flickr and the service it provides. I see it more as a backup for my photos than the main storage so it is not my end-all, be-all  for image files. I have tried Coppermine and, to be honest, really didn’t like it at all.

But, I have all this “power” with my Bluehost account over installing MySQL databases, adding users and so forth. I wanted to wield that power!!

The Hippie Hosting co-op is intriguing but I have invested way in advance wlth Bluehost and have no complaints so I am going to stick with them for a while.

Thus far, I have installed Lessn for a way to shorten URLs ala Bit.ly and tinyurl to keep them local rather than relying on a third party service. Seems to work fine but my main concern is that the domain I am using (audreyjwilliams.info) is so darn long it might not be as helpful for URL shortening as I would have hoped. I guess my decision is if something t-f.net is available and worth the $20/year for another domain.

I also have installed Scuttle for bookmarking. After Delicious was purchased by Yahoo and then leaked that it might be “sunsetted”, I really was concerned about my bookmarks as I had LOTS of them (I have been using it since 2005). I jumped to Pinboard and that has worked but I also liked the idea of having a local version of these bookmarks, just in case. I do like how Pinboard gathers my URLs from Delicious as well as from Twitter so it really is an aggregation of all the places where I save URLs.

Also, installing Scuttle allowed me to become a bit more of a MySQL admin as I had to create a new database, new DB user and then run SQL scripts to create the tables, etc. I have always used something like Fantastico and SimpleScripts to do this in the past, so I was happy that my efforts went off with no problems.

But, wait, it can’t be all smooth sailing

Image: 'The droids we're googling for' http://www.flickr.com/photos/49462908@N00/3951143570

However, when it came time to import my Delicious bookmarks into Scuttle, I did hit a roadblock. Scuttle only will import XML files from Delicious. Delicious used to be able to do that so I was off to my best friend, Google, for some suggestions.

I found a Python script on GitHub that sounded good and learned that I can run Python from TextWrangler (awesome!!) However, that had some kind of error in it so I could not get the XML file generate.

I found deliciousxml.com was another often mentioned alternative that no longer answers as a webpage (Doh!). However, I did find on Tech Cocktail that you can use this URL:

Use command line prompts to export your bookmarks. Visit the following URL:  https://{your username}:{your password}@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all > bookmarks.xml to get the bookmarks as bookmarks.xml

That worked great and I know have my bookmarks in Scuttle from Delicious. Now, if I can figure out to get all of my bookmarks from Pinboard into Scuttle – I would really have the funnel in place and a nice redundancy for this collection.

Back to my good friend, Google!

I am firmly a creator but also a conversationalist primarily. What are you? How does it fit into the demographics of “your people?”

So far, I have helped:

• a movie director create a film in Brainerd, Minnesota
• a new social networking platform
• a bakery/blogging business in South Carolina
• a digital storytelling class

The most interesting aspect, IMO, is that I have some form of connection to almost every person that I have funded. For the movie, I knew someone from Brainerd through a conference and he told me about the project. So, a friend of a friend connection. The social networking platform came into my knowledge based on a tweet from someone I respect who had funded it. That influenced my decision. The blogging bakery is being developed is by a WordPress developer who I follow on Twitter and the storytelling class is also a Twitter connection but I have also met him in person at a conference. I think without that Twitter or other connection, I would not be inclined to make a donation to the Kickstarter appeal. So crowdsourcing is an amazing thing but I do see that the crowd has to be connected and willing to share that connection in order to motivate folks to share as well. It actually is more crucial than I first realized.

Now, I need to come up with an idea to put up there for funding!

Visit CheerLights for the details. And, if you don’t have a strand of the CheerLights (like me), then get the Android App! (I will soon)

Maybe I need to learn how to build one of the actual strands…..

This set of predictions from JWT Intelligence is much more widespread covering fashion, art, food, travel, business, technology and more. It was fascinating.

Some of the predictions were right up the T-F mindset like:

33 – alternative social networking sites to Facebook. Like Diaspora, which I helped fund in its Kickstarter campaign.

59 – the Life in A Day user generated documentary. I participated in that as well. Doubt my footage will be selected but I find the whole idea of collaborative art projects really interesting and a nice mix of the technical with the psychological

83 – Social Objects which will allow folks to scan or otherwise interact with objects merging the digital and the physical. My pals Brandon and Lia are all over this trend with their materialmashup site.

and, of course

93 – tube free toilet paper!! What????? Where will all of those kids find raw materials for their art projects?

Or even the professional artists might have problems with this one…

What do you find most interesting?

Enjoy.

It reminds me of the other science related media that I have loved like:

The Element Song by Tom Leher

And, of course, any Schoolhouse Rock like Electricity (although their science entries were weaker than the math, politics and grammar ones). I was privileged to hear the creators of the series at a conference a few years ago. They related that the idea came from observing that one of their sons could not learn the multiplication tables but could memorize the lyrics for every Jimi Hendrix song.

And, the wonderful tunes from They Might Be Giants:

Presenting my faves for the end of 2009 and the end of the first decade of the 2000s (naughties? noughties? oughts? aughts? What did we call them?)

DJ Earworm – United States of Pop 2009

NPR All Songs Considered Best Music of 2009
I always find new music via NPR’s All Songs Considered

Lifehacker’s Most Popular Hive Five Topics of 2009
Crowdsourcing has grown in popularity, easy and usefulness. And why not? It usually works!

Entertainment Weekly’s Best of 2009 (highs and lows)
Since this is my guilty pleasure reading at the gym, I felt that I must put it in here

The Top 10 Everything of 2009  and the Best Movies, TV, Books and Theater of the Decade from Time Magazine
well, they said everything…

Top 10 Internet Moments of the Decade from ABC News

And, for good measure, I just had to use the “My Year in Status” application in Facebook to build a status collage for 2009.

I also had to go visit Wordle and do something there with my blog posts from 2009. And, here it is.