It’s a blog!

I noticed two things today that I haven’t experienced in a while:

One ) it’s cold as balls.  I’ve been in cold weather, but not this cold, and not in November.

B ) While I was walking out to my car, late at night, freezing cold, all alone, I looked up and saw Orion, and I couldn’t stop myself from verbally expressing amazment. I’ve seen stars before. In fact, the only college classes I did well in were Advertising and Astronomy.

It’s amazing when you find something that can amaze you. And that’s pretty amazing that amazing things can amaze you.

I’ve been getting used to using two computers recently, one at home, with all my photos, music, blah… and one at work, a temporary machine loaded with stuff I’m working on. So, the question was, how to keep all my bookmarks and rss feeds syncd across computers, so I don’t come home and have to look at how many unread posts I’ve already read.

And, surprised, the inexpensive alternatives come from the free platform, Firefox, and the mammoth, Google.

First is Google Bookmarks, enhanced by Google Browser Sync. What it does is automatically sync the bookmarks from your computer in your Firefox browser, and updates when you add or delete bookmarks on Google account, then when you open Firefox on another computer, it updates the bookmarks there. So your bookmarks are right there on the bookmark menu wherever you may be.

The other is Google Reader, enhanced by Google Reader Notifier. Google Reader is a nifty way to keep all your blog/news feeds in one, convenient place on the web, that you can access from anywhere. Google Reader Notifier sits at the bottom of your Firefox browser with a clean, simple display of how many unread posts you have.

As far as Google Reader goes, I’m not too thrilled that there seems to be no way to separate feeds by friend’s and industry blogs, however, I’m thrilled that it displays Flash Video from YouTube, and the like.

Ther requirements for all this fun are a Gmail account, and the Firefox browser, two things most of you should have by now.

The other cool thing I found was imap mail, which is an alternative to pop3, which is what you’ve probably used if you use Apple mail, or some other mail program. Gmail doesn’t support imap, which is why I’ve fully switched to using one of those paid email accounts I get with my domain name.

But, if you’re so inclined, you could get a dotMac account and get all of this stuff a little more seamlessly.

It was a disorienting morning. After getting home at about 4, I woke up late for work to find my inbox flooded with an email from Mason. I had totally forgot that there was something I needed to do:

Whiskerino