I was doing a little reading of The Bamboo Project Blog where Michele mentioned the 31 day challenge. That lead me to Problogger, where I found some more information about it. The idea is to look at different ways, over the course of 31 days, to increase the readership of your blog. I need to go even more basic than that. I need to start writing in my blog again!

I know it sounds cliche, but I’ve been so busy with work, with my volunteer work at Helping Paws, and the re-birth of my photography hobby, that I just haven’t found the time to do any blogging. Most of my spare computer time I’ve actually been spending at Flickr, which is a fascinating place to lurk, observe, and participate in.

So — I’m going to try once again to regularly write here. I’m not sure what all the topics will be. At least some of the posts will relate to the work I’m doing on Flickr. I still want to do some tips and tricks about my favorite operating system, Mac OS X, but I never seem to have the time to do it and there are so many good ones for that already. I’ll guess we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, look for some more posts from me.

–Pete

These are my links for February 2nd:

• Apple Matters | Getting More out of Leopard’s SIdebar –

These are my links for January 28th:

• The Black Rock Art Gallery – An old high school classmate of mine is opening up his own shop in NE Minneapolis. Cool!

These are my links for January 24th:

• It’s a Mac! It’s a PC! It’s … Both? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education –
• Apple – Education – Bemidji State University, Page 1 –
• BSU goes Dual Boot Macs –
• Bemidji State University goes Dual Boat –

These are my links for January 21st:

• brunerd » Office 2008, 502, and you –
• Macworld | Tiger Secrets: Preview – A bunch of cool tips for using Preview.app in Tiger or Leoaprd
• Remote Control: Add More Functionality to Leopard’s Screen Sharing –

These are my links for January 18th:

• Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | Explore Leopard’s Get Info window –

These are my links for January 13th:

• Turn Leopard’s Screen Sharing into a better “Apple Remote Desktop lite” | 9 to 5 Mac –

These are my links for January 7th:

• A preference for changing the login window picture in Leopard –
• BSU Today – Dual Boot Macs –

These are my links for January 4th:

• An interesting hint for restarting an Airport Base Station via AppleScript –

These are my links for January 3rd:

• Remembering Beck – A great photo essay taken during the memorial service of Gerry Beck.

This I Believe is, to quote their website, “A public dialog about beliefs — one essay at a time”. The idea is that anyone can submit an essay detailing something they believe in. The very best essays become part of the This I Believe radio series on NPR. For those essays that are invited to be part of the radio series, the author is invited to read their essay aloud in their own voice. I have found many thought provoking essays both on this site and by listening to the podcast version of the radio show.

The latest that resonated with me was by a gentlemen named Jimmy Liao, from Ithaca, NY. His essay was about using the turbulence that life’s obstacles create to your advantage, rather then letting it throw you off course. Where did he come up with this idea? By studying fish. You should read the rest of his essay here.

–Pete

These are my links for December 31st:

• 10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod | Open Culture –
• The Bamboo Project Blog: Want to Get People to Pay Attention in a Meeting or Training Session? Bring in the Toys! –

I use Gallery for my photo gallery here at Minnesota Geek. I like to have the ability for people to leave comments if they are so moved when they view one of my photos, but Gallery’s (version 1) tools are pretty primitive for dealing with comment spam. I just took a look and found over 5800 incidents of comment spam in my gallery. ARGH!! Fortunately, after doing a little research, I found a way to mass delete them and hopefully prevent much of that for the future. I’m also debating whether or not I even need to have my own gallery any more, since I’m posting primarily to my Flickr account now. What do you think?

–Pete

These are my links for December 2nd through December 27th:

• kare11.com :: KARE 11 TV – Local actors star in most important drama of their lives – Janet was my drama instructor in high school.
• Mac OS X Server version 10.5: Enabling wiki access for Active Directory users –
• Why CNBC chose Apple for network storage | Computerworld Blogs –
• Making Mac OS X play nicely with Novell –
• O’Reilly — Tethered Shooting in Aperture –
• TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Spotlight Strikes Back: In Leopard, It Works Great –
• iPod Diagnostic Mode – Pod Mania, the iPod Authority –
• Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Expose, Mail, and other 10.5 tips –
• Leopard Breadcrumb Navigation: Show Path in Finder – Tech-Recipes.com –
• Leopard Time Machine: Delete Files or Folders from Backup – Tech-Recipes.com –
• New Spotlight search options in Mail.app –
• Photoshop 911: Changing Eye Color –
• Photoshop Tutorials » Adobe Photoshop Tutorial – Selective Color » TipClique Tutorials –
• Learn a visual cue to tell if your files are saved or not. –
• Merge windows in Safari 3 –
• Mac OS X Leopard: Do More with Preview in Leopard –
• A quick tip to go straight into full screen Quick Look in Leopard –
• How to Change the World: Top Ten Leopard Tips –
• TidBITS Networking: Hidden AirPort Information in Leopard Menu –

It has been a while since I’ve written here, but I do have something to write about. Last Thursday, the younger of our two llamas, Placoon, was found dead in the pasture. Sadly, we have no idea why he died. My friend Steve, who owns the farm we keep the llamas at, saw him up and around around 5:30 PM and when he went to let the animals into the barn for the night a few hours later, he found Placoon lying dead in the pasture. There was no obvious reason why he died. He hasn’t shown any signs of being sick. He was eating and drinking fine. He looked and acted normal. I guess we’ll never know what happened.

Placoon was a special animal to us, as all of our animals are special. We’ll miss him greatly.

–Pete

These are my links for November 28th:

• Leopard Server: Using ACLs with Open Directory | –

These are my links for November 27th:

• Mac OS: Versions, builds included with Intel-based Macs –
• Don’t install older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computer –

These are my links for November 18th:

• Macworld: News: Analysis: The end of Netinfo –

These are my links for December 5th through November 5th:

• Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: See and use huge icons in OS X 10.5 –
• the occasional blog | Time Machine with SMB and NFS Shares –

These are my links for November 4th:

• the occasional blog | Time Machine with SMB and NFS Shares –