The Home Of ob81

Trapped Between RSS Readers - May 21st, 2008

Since I have gotten back into the social side of the internet, I have been debating which RSS Reader I should use.

Sites such as Friendfeed and twitter encourage me to share more links and media with friends. Desktop RSS readers have been great, but most of the sharing features are geared towards email, or sharing on a social news site like digg. I am not big on emailing, and I can’t digg everything that I feel is interesting.

Currently I am using Times RSS reader. It is fairly new, but it has been working quite smooth thus far. The only down side is that it doesn’t keep an archive type list of all of the articles from a certain site. Depending on where I place a feed, I can only see like 3-4 articles from a site. Also, when I add a feed on one computer, I have to remember to add it on my other computer, which has been a hassle.

I used Vienna at one point for a while, but when I got to work, I had no access to these feeds. I happen to work 12 hour shifts! This is what got me contemplating going back to Google reader. The sharing is much easier, and friends can easily check what I am enjoying via my friendfeed or via google reader itself.

I guess this post is mostly my attempt at convincing myself. Part of that is because I paid for the Times RSS reader recently! I wanted to see what others were using though, as I know there may be clients out there that I may have over looked.

What are you using for RSS? If it is google reader, add me! gtalk id - Mr.oberry

Back In The Game - May 18th, 2008

     Finally!  If you haven’t noticed, I took a HUGE break from blogging and social media in general.  I think there is some weird correlation between the heat and me blogging.  I started blogging last summer, and stopped around winter.  As summer approaches again, here I am! 

     It is really only coincidence though.  Once I returned home to my family after a long deployment, I was pretty lazy and rarely felt like doing much.  Blogging felt like a burden at the time (but mainly because I was being too strict with myself), and most of my spare time was spent with my family.  It didn’t help that I came back to a ridiculous work schedule, which completely caught me off guard.

     I just couldn’t stay away though.  As I slowly got back into surfing the web, I started itching to blog.  I revived my tumblr account first, which only had me craving more.  Eventually I gave in and started working on ob81.com again.

     I changed the blog around a bit.  I like the basic look and feel of it, and  I really enjoyed the upgrade to WP 2.5 also (yeah, I am late).  This time around, I will be taking baby steps, and won’t be as strict with my content.  My subjects may be a bit sporadic, but as usual, it will be things that I am interested in, and I think others may be interested in. 

See you around the site!

What are you itching to try out on Leopard? - October 17th, 2007

Well, the word is out. Leopard will be landing in stores on the 26th of October as rumored. The good news for Apple fans that recently purchased Macs, is that a purchase on or after the 1st of October is authorized an upgrade to Leopard. It is still hazy if it will be free or somewhere around $9, but we shall see. I will be keeping a close eye since I have recently purchased a Mac.

I checked out the 300+ new features for Leopard earlier, and was astonished by how much stuff they squeezed into the OS. I predict that I won’t use most of the features more than the one or 2 times I use them when I first upgrade.

I have been waiting for Spaces ever since the first Leopard preview. I often have several windows open at once, and at present, I have 9 open. Would love to throw my mail in a separate window, and maybe have some DVD burning going on in another.

The dashboard looks to have a huge makeover. One of the dashboard features I am waiting for is the drag and drop widget making. There is a lot of potential there, and I can’t wait to try this feature out for myself and see where it goes. I tend to be pretty widget happy, and being able to create widgets at will would be awesome.

Sorry Adium. You have held it down for well over a year now, but iChat is about to take back over. In Leopard, iChat supports multiple chat clients AND supports the voice and video features on your Mac. Adium was good while it lasted. I have it open almost every second during my surfing times. Sadly, whenever I want to do a video chat, I have to log into iChat to get it accomplished. Not all of my friends have iChat though.

I plan on walking into the Apple store and grabbing my copy. Don’t think I can wait any second longer than 10:00am on the 26th.

What feature are you guys waiting for?

Finally Home - October 11th, 2007

ob81.com has been a little inactive for the past week or so. For the few that may not have known, I recently returned home from a 7-month deployment in Doha, Qatar. Seemed like forever while I was there, and feels like it was nothing now that I am back.

Feels great to be reunited with my family, and it is odd hearing my son, who was 2y 5m when I left, say full statements now, and run around jumping without falling. My dog Chuck does not listen to me anymore though Hopefully a few more snacks will fix that.

I have been mainly trying to catch up on everything that I have been missing in the tech world and in the theaters. I still haven’t seen Spider-Man 3 yet! I finally got a chance to check out the iTouch also. Wasn’t impressed to say the least, but that is a whole subject on it’s own. I dived in and purchased an iTV for my bedroom and fell in love with the youtube feature. Can’t wait to see what else they throw on this thing! If you don’t have one, check it out.

From a blogging standpoint, now I can get in some first looks at new Apple gear and news due to being back home. I was seriously running dry out there in the desert where they were still selling the original Nano.
I am in the process of revamping my computer setup, as writing on this 13″ Macbook seems very uncomfortable at the moment. The 24″ iMac was looking nice, though I have been debating with being a cheapo and just grabbing an external monitor. We will see how things shape up.

If you have missed me on pownce the last few days, my inet connection chose to act up as soon as I returned home, and for the first time ever, I was too lazy to fix it until this morning.

Well, I will be on pownce and twitter as well as h_oberry@yahoo, or ob81@mac.com for my iChat users if you want to chat.

I finally feel connected to the world again!

Those Social Network Friends are as Real as your RL Friends - September 30th, 2007

I was checking out a blog post a while back that asked the question, “Are Internet Friends True Friends?”

Though a simple question, it really left me thinking for a while. Recently, interacting on a social network has become a big part of my daily internet routine. In fact, I can’t browse the internet without being simultaneously logged in to pownce, twitter, or streamy.

I have used features such as chat and forums to communicate in the past, and I have met some great people there. It never really amounted to much though, and the relationship only went as far as the hobby or topic that brought us together. Conversations were very limited, and rarely did I know what was going on in any of their day to day lives. Social networks today encourage more solid relationships, and make it easier to communicate for the most part. They are not built on one central idea, which would limit the amount of diversity that you would run into on the site.

Back in early March, I was sent on a deployment that would last for 7 months. I am not really a big email person, but I ensured that I had the email addresses of some of my closest friends so that I could keep in touch while away. For the first few months this seemed to be an efficient means of communication. You know friends and emails though. After a while the emails slowed and the news of friends going to the beach and enjoying summer seemed to only encourage home sickness.

Then came pownce. I signed up for my account and started meeting funny and interesting people right from the start. Over the months, I have learned a lot more about some of the individuals there than I know about some of my real life friends. I have exchanged advice and humiliating episodes in life with other users, and upon signing up for new social networks, I follow these friends there and they follow me.

I haven’t had a chance to personally meet any of my new social network friends yet, but it is very common for friends to meet up to hang out or go to an event or some sort. This makes social networks a bridge or another method of meeting new friends that in some cases end up being very close friends that you hang out with frequently.

I have met quite a few friends online these past few months that I would consider “close”, and that’s why the article I mentioned above, sparked my interest. Though some of them I may never actually meet, they are still friends that I share ideas with and spend time enjoying the daily activities in their lives.

Check out the article and let me know what you think!