Names is for tombstones, baby!
– “Mr. Big” in “Live and Let Die”

There are times, and in my view quite a few, when names are irrelevant.  I’m not necessarily referring to names of people, like the quote above was, but I am referring to names of “things” (e.g., styles, methodologies, technology).

On the computer programming side of my life, I’ve often ran into cases where I see mention of some sort of technology or methodology listed in some job requirements that I’ve never heard of, yet upon further research is something that I’ve known or dealt with for years.

Why?  Well, somewhere along the course of that “thing’s” lifespan, which often doesn’t happen at “birth”, it is given a name.  The early adopters have internalized the mechanics or methods and go on with their roles as programmers without giving it any further thought.  It’s become part of their daily routine.

Those who come along after it’s become more common-place (and therefore the marketing people have come along to bestow upon it a name) know it as “Such-and-Such” or “SaS” and think that anyone who doesn’t know “SaS” doesn’t know the stuff behind the name.

On the design and photography sides of my life, the same can be said for particular artistic styles.  Although here, it’s more that I’ve come into knowing of a particular style organically.  I’ve developed a particular style from observing others final works, not from some book of styles or style/design course.

In this method of learning, you learn to recognize (or adopt) the outcome, what a particular style (or combination of styles) looks like.  Most of the time, this type of learning will not teach you the names of the styles.  Those you’ll have to go in search of on your own at another point in time, if at all.

This post derived from my attempt at putting into words the particular style that I use for designing sites for another post.  I quickly realized that I couldn’t.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t know “SaS” style, it just means that I don’t know that’s what it’s named.

So.  The next time that you’re discussing something with someone else, before you assume they don’t know what “SaS” is, try describing it in terms other than it’s name.  They might fully understand and know it, but if all you use is the name, they might assume that you only know the name.  You do know more than just the name, right?

Conversely, if you get to the point where you are trying to name something and you can’t, perhaps that’s a sign that you need to go back to school (so to speak) and look into whether or not such a name does exist.

But, remember, “Names is for tombstones, baby!”  So don’t go putting too much emphasis on knowing the names for things.

If your life has many different facets, then shouldn’t any blog you run reflect that? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

For a business-type blog direction is important.  You want your visitors to know what to expect, not just from your blog, but from your business.  However, I feel that the sky’s the limit when it comes to personal blogs.  They are there solely to provide an outlet to your personality — a place for you to spout off share information and ideas.

That isn’t to say that your personal blog should be an unorganized jumble that is completely incoherent and impossible to follow.  There does need to be some level of organization and some level of direction for each of the organizational areas so as to provide your visitors with some reason to return.

I feel as if I’ve failed at this with My Humble Abode.  For that, I am sorry.  I honestly have spent more time thinking about other aspects of my life (such as my budding photography endeavor) than I have on what I wanted from this site.

That will change.  I have spent the last couple days redesigning the look of the site to give it a more personal touch and to visually “brighten” it up.  I felt that the old look of it, and honestly several previous versions I recently stumbled upon in my backups, was dark, drab, and dreary.

If you have comments on the new appearance, please leave them in the comments for this post (or send ‘em to me via the contact page) and I’ll take them into consideration.

As for the organization and content, well… that’s going to undergo some changes in the coming few days.  I’m going to try to reduce the number of post categories and number of tags used as well as to try and make them more useful.  Actually, I might just wind up consolidating the categories and tags and just using one or the other.  The rants and drivel will, probably, go as well, since I’m trying to make this a more positive and informative site.  Sure, I’ll still have opinions, but I’m going to do my best at presenting them in a better manner.

Sure, letting the folks over at WordPress maintain the underlying code-base would be a nice thing.  Sure, it might make it easier for people to log in to leave comments or read “member only” material (both of which I used to have on this site*).  But it takes away freedom from me by their limitations they have imposed — particularly the lack of plugins bit.

Wasn’t the whole point of WordPress to allow third party developers to extend the base software?  (No, really, I’m asking.  I think it was, but I’m not sure.)  So… using a limited base install of the software (what used to be known as “cripple-ware” before the web became big) just isn’t for me.  If it is for you, more power to ya.

* I had originally intended to expand the number of posts in the “Member Only” area that I had on this site, but I’ve learned a couple of things.  One:  Very few people actually honestly care about what I have to say.  Two:  Those few people who do visit my site are of similar types as myself and don’t want to have to register on a bazillion different sites — even if they know the person.  Hell… I hate it when I have to register on some site just to download a Joomla component or plugin.  Wait.  I hated it when I had to register on wordpress.org in order to report a bug on a plugin.  But I did.  Why?  It’s a fact of life.  Yet, I can understand when someone doesn’t want to register on here — after all, I don’t post all that much — so I’ve removed the “Member Access” plugin I was using and removed the (albeit unintentionally turned on) restriction to comments to only those registered users.

I am not going to launch into a morality debate here.  To me, this is a much larger issue — an issue of censorship.  But I will say this:  The problem with censoring things like “porn” is that everyone has their own definition of what “porn” is and what it isn’t.  Here’s my definition from a few months ago.  The definition used by many would label Michelangelo’s statue of David as “porn”.  As a photographer, I feel there is absolutely no difference in that statue and a photograph — statues of that period were very anatomically correct and were as close to a modern day photograph as they were able to get given the technology of the period.

As I’ve repeatedly stated on several occasions (although I’m presently unable to locate any such public postings on either Twitter or Facebook :shrugs:) that I am against censorship of any sort.  This is not to say that I feel people shouldn’t exercise restraint.  I just feel that people should not tell others what they cannot say.  After all, in this country we have the freedom of speech.

Forced censorship — by programming it into systems (such as what some large social networking sites have done) — it leaves people wondering where the line gets drawn and who makes that decision.  This is the direction that it is appearing that Apple is heading, hopefully they won’t go as far as censoring the messages sent by users of the iPad (or any other future devices).

“I don’t condone what Dr. Zoidberg did but I’ll fight tooth and nail for his freedom to do it.”

– “Old Man Waterfall” in the Futurama episode “A Taste of Freedom” (transcription)

It is a very sad thing, to me, when a computing device touted as a “savior” of photography begins to censor whole segments of photography.  This is a very slippery slope.

To be perfectly fair, Apple (and Mr. Jobs) is only censoring the applications sold via the Apple App Store, and not the web content visited with the Safari browser on the device, nor are they censoring the content directly placed on the device (e.g., photos or videos produced by a photographer and placed on the device for use as a digital portfolio).

However, ask yourself this, what is to stop them from trying to code usage of a distributed domain blacklist into the device’s browser?  That would be very easy for them to do.  But, what about the content you place on the device?  Well… there’s face recognition software that works good enough for it to be placed in point-and-shoot cameras (e.g., Sony W-Series released in 2007).  So… how hard would it be to alter that technology to recognize other parts of the body?  Couldn’t be all that hard, but I’m not a graphic software engineer — I went thru a different set of courses in college.

Do I honestly think that Apple will do these things?  No.  Do I think that Steve Jobs would if he felt it was the best thing for the iPad?  Hell yes I do.  He’d do it in a heartbeat.

What I’m left with, after reading about the programmatic censoring of content by large companies such as Facebook and Apple, is a sense of dread and worry that they’ll keep expanding such censorship efforts.  In fact, I’ve found myself debating whether or not I should mention Facebook in this post since my blog is being pulled into “Notes” over there.  This is not how people should have to live — under the fear that they’ll have accounts deleted or be unable to use a computer-like device for whatever they want — yet it is exactly what happens when companies start forcing censorship on their own.

More Reading:

• Steve Jobs Offers World ‘Freedom From Porn’
• How Apple is Watering Down Fashion Spreads
  • Favorite sound-bite: “A British fashion magazine has reportedly dubbed its iPad issue ‘the Iran edition’.”
• The iPad Will Change Photography Part 1
• The iPad Will Change Photography Part 2
• Will the iPad Save Photography?
• Facebook’s E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say

So… Who’s going to create the next big social networking site?  The next big thing?

Has it already been created, but just hasn’t yet gained the public’s adoration?

I feel that it’s just a matter of time — in fact I’ve spent the last couple of days seriously considering how much work it would take, what I would do, how I’d go about it, and (as of today) what I’d call that site — if I ever get around to starting in on building it.

I’m not the only one who feels as if Facebook’s time is beginning to wane.  A blogger for Wired.com wrote “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” a few days ago.  I tend to agree that it’s time for an open — community built and community driven — social networking site.  A site not run by someone who feels that privacy is dead — as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s CEO) is purportedly to have said.  (I looked for an attributed quote to him with those exact words, but couldn’t find it, though what I did find, if you read between the lines, does underscore that as his opinion.)

So… if you’re a developer, and have even remotely considered building your own social networking site, get to work.  The world needs a viable option to spring to and leave Facebook wallowing in the wake of bad decisions, just as MySpace was left en masse beforehand.

More reading:

• Gizmodo: Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
  • Honestly, I’m not quite there yet… but I do feel that everyone should be aware of what they’re sharing — and do like I do and regularly review the privacy settings on Facebook, even if they haven’t announced a change.
• Business Insider: Here’s The Privacy Line That Facebook Just Crossed…

…at least I think it’s the solution.  I tested it with a new fan page that I’m setting up on Facebook for something, but since I’m not really finished with that page, I only have one fan — myself.  And since I didn’t get the message I sent, I’m assuming that Facebook skips sending the message to the sender.  I’d test it with the other fan page I have for my photography, but don’t want to spam 40 people with a “test” message.

Update: This does not show up as a “Message”, but it’s an “Update”.  In other words, your fans will need to click on Messages, then Updates (highlighted in this screenshot) in order to see what you send.

So… here’s how I think things work, the steps you need to take, and screenshots to help things along.  I’m writing this since the official Facebook Pages Manual does not cover this information.

1. You must be the administrator of the fan page to send an “update” (aka “message”) to all of the fans of that page.
   • If you set the page up, you are the administrator.
   • If you did not, then the person that did set up the page will need to add you as an admin.
     • How to do this will be detailed later.
2. Log in to Facebook or go to the Facebook “Home” page by clicking either on the Facebook logo (upper left) or the Home link (upper right).
3. Along the left side you should see something like this:
4. Click on “Ads and Pages”.
5. You should now see a page that shows what pages you “admin” (administer) which should look something like this:
6. Click on “Edit Page” for the page from which you wish to send an update.
7. This will bring you to the fan page’s edit page, which should look like this:
   
8. In the lower right of the page, just above the admin profile picture, is a section entitled “Promote your page”:
9. Click on the “Send an Update to Fans” link.
10. This brings up a relatively normal looking page for sending a message:
    
11. Clicking on the “(edit)” link or the “Target this update” checkbox will drop in a few options which will allow you to limit the update distribution by location, gender, or age.
    
12. Type update.
13. Attach any videos or links.
14. Click “Send”.

After sending an update, the “Promote your page” section (step #8 above) will look something like this where a new option has been added allowing viewing of all previously send updates.

To add another user as an admin of a fan page:

1. Follow steps 1-7 above
2. In the lower right of the page, is an “Admins” section which (for me) looks like this:
   
3. Click on the “Add” link.
4. This will bring up a listing of your Facebook friends, from which you may choose others who you want to allow the ability to administer the fan page.

Hopefully you found this useful.

Here’s his “five reasons” in the order in which I would’ve listed them as well as my thoughts on each.

“5. You probably already have policies that govern inappropriate behavior.”

He calls the outcry by so-called (and I suspect self-declared) social media “experts” for every company to create a special media policy “a solution in search of a problem.”  I agree.  I see it as the same as governments creating a special policy to ban cellphone usage (or sending text messages) while driving.  It is already on the books. (I would be surprised if every local government in the country didn’t already have laws against driving while not paying attention.  Those laws cover it if you cause an accident while having sex, reading a book, watching TV, yelling at your kids in the back seat, shaving, eating, putting on makeup, as well as talking on the phone or sending a text message.)  Something special just for a supposedly “new” type of communication method is not necessary.

“1. Your people can be trusted.”

I’ve been saying this for years.  Trust me and I’ll work better.  Keep showing me that you really don’t trust me and I’ll eventually leave after my quality of work drops from low morale.  Employers should treat their employees the way they want to be treated.  And I suspect that is like an adult and not like a little child.  He asks “why punish the many because of the few?”  I wish I knew why companies (and governments) do this to the people from whom they claim they want loyalty.  I can only surmise that it’s out of laziness.  It is easier to write a heavy-handed strict policy than one that is

“2. Social media are just one more way to communicate.”

As I said above, it’s just a new type of communication method, it does not need a new law or policy specifically for it.  He asked if you had special policies for phone, email, and faxes.  Sadly, I must admit, that I’ve worked places where I’ve seen each of those.  Why?  Did the people writing the policies feel that they were needing to come up with separate ones to justify having a job?  Write one that covers “all communication methods now or hereafter known” and be done with it.  (That “now or hereafter known” language comes from the photography world where it’s included in almost every model release or contract out there that governs how the images taken by the photographer or given to the model or client may be used.)

“3. More rules only make your company more bureaucratic.”

Not only do more rules make a company more “bureaucratic,” but more rules also make it more likely that people will forget the rules — or simply not know that they exist.  And that goes for both the enforcer and enforcee.  When that happens, you’ll wind up with one manager knowing all the rules and being strict about them, but another who might not have the time to be as strict or know them all.  That situation will create morale problems, which is never good for a company.

“4. Formal policies only discourage people from participating.”

This really could be combined with his #3, above.  I feel that bureaucracies are historically the primary source of inactivity in both business and government.  People are inherently lazy, and when they are forced to go through a lot of meaningless (either actual or perceived) steps, they’ll just avoid those steps altogether by avoiding the cause for going through those steps.  In other words, if they need to jump through hoops like some circus animal to get from point A to point B, they’ll stay where they are instead.  If getting to “point B” is needed to complete their project, then the project will stall indefinitely as a result of the formal bureaucratic policies.

I wouldn’t mind working for Mr. Hyatt, if it wasn’t for one particular discrepancy that popped up in his post.  He stated “I don’t think you can legislate morality” but then he says his company’s employee conduct policy forbids “profanity” and “indecent or immoral behavior”.  Which is it, Mr. Hyatt?  You’re contradicting yourself, since you are in fact legislating morality by your own company policies.

His hypocrisy on morality aside, his post on social media policies is a good one, and one that I hope a lot of other CEOs will  read and follow suit.

Yeah.  So much for that.  :-/

I went into the Radio Shack in the mall & looked at what they had, talked with the sales person, and wound up going with the Samsung WEP850 partly because it had the two things I wanted, partly because it looked the most comfortable of the different ones they had, and partly because it was on sale at the time.  In an unrelated note, I went to Radio Shack because I knew they were out in CA as well and if something went wrong, or I got out there and wanted to exchange it for a different one, I could.

Things went swimmingly.  I talked with Mom on it for a long while and she didn’t have any problems hearing or understanding me.  And on my end, I didn’t have any trouble hearing her over the car noise — which was a concern as that was an issue with some wired headsets I’d used in the past.  (Granted, those cost one seventh what this one did.)

Jump forward a few months and I’ve ran into a few people here and there who’ve complained either about not being able to hear me or that my voice was sounding garbled and distorted.  All the while, I’m hearing them perfectly clearly.

A few of the people who’ve said things have been on Sprint cell phones.  (I’m on AT&T.)  But some have been on office phones (behind a digital switchboard on digital, IP-type, phones).  And at least one of the Sprint people has said that sometimes I’m just fine, but other times I’m not.  When I’m not, we hang up and one of us calls the other right back.  A lot of times that fixes it.

So.  I’m at a loss.  I think the voice quality of this headset is great.  The volume is loud enough (at least when it’s paired with my HTC Tilt 2) for me to hear the other caller, even with some environmental sounds.  And (when I have a good signal) the caller can hear me clearly.

But, as a result of the trouble I’ve had, I never use it when making an important business call.  Which sucks, because most of the time I’m needing my hands to take notes and the phone’s microphone is really directional — move the phone a half inch and they can’t hear me — so I’m left using speaker quite a lot.

Moving past the call quality, for a moment, and into functionality and you’ll find a different story.

The manual says to press the “talk” button (on the headset) to answer a call that’s coming in.  OK.  That works.  It says to press the same button to hang up the call that you’re currently on.  OK.  That works.  But, wait.  It also says that while you’re on a call, press that same button to take a second call that’s coming in.  Yeah.  That doesn’t work so great.  I’ve had it hang up on the first caller without answering the second.

You use the “talk” button — holding it down for a long period of time, instead of a quick press — to turn the headset on or off.  That works, but it seems to me that the delay in turning on is extremely too long — it’s about 8-10 seconds and it’d seem that 1 or 2 at the most would do.

This same “talk” button is also supposed to be used to switch between phones, if you have the headset paired with two phones.  I just can’t see why they tried making one button do so much.  Remembering all that the one thing does, or hold it down X-long for this and Y-long for that, seems to make it needlessly complicated for the user whereas simply adding a second button (or heck, toggle switch) would be easier — especially for the switching phone bit.  Want to switch phones, flip the toggle switch just seems to make more cognitive sense to me.

Other than the “talk” button, there’s one other button on the headset.  That is supposed to control volume.  Press it on the one side to increase, the other to decrease.  I’ve done that, but haven’t found that the volume level has changed at all.  Pressing both sides at once does actually turn the indicator light on or off, as the manual indicates it should.

Battery life is good.  I’ve not, to my knowledge, had it actually die on me while using it.  But I keep it charged — if I’ve used it, or just had it on for the day, I’ll charge it, just in case.

Lastly, it’s still just as comfortable as it was when I first got it.  If anything, it’s more comfortable now that I’ve gotten used to having it in my ear.

So.  Do I recommend you get this headset?  Nope.  Do I recommend that you don’t ever consider it?  Nope to that as well.  Am I going to run out and replace it?  Heck, no!  I don’t have that type of money.  This thing cost around $70!

In the end, it works for me, not as good as I’d liked and doesn’t seem to fully work as the manual indicates, but it does let me use my phone in a hands-free manner… some of the time.  And that’s really all I wanted.  I probably really would’ve been better off just getting the same cheap $20-$25 headset that my manager (at the time) got.  But I figured that something newer would be better.  Yeah… Perhaps not so.

The plugin gives a page, rather poorly laid out if you ask me, but a page nonetheless that allows you to select at the user and category level who has access to what categories.  Why “poorly”?  Imagine a grid with categories along the top, users down the side, and checkboxes at the intersections and you’ll have exactly how that page was laid out.  Now, this isn’t a bad thing if you don’t have that many categories, but do have lots of users.  But if you have lots of categories, then it’ll wind up with you scrolling horizontally — and that is never a good idea for a web page.

But, that’s just a design issue… and all of us web designers are different, and have different ideas of what is the “right” way to do something.

The reason that I’ve uninstalled this plugin (and temporarily moved all the posts I’m hiding to “draft” status until I can figure out a better solution) is that every time I added a new category, I’d forget that I had to go down to a different section of the admin interface and enable the admin user (me) to have access to that new category.  I’m sorry, but shouldn’t the admin have access to every category on the blog they’re administering?  Oh, and shouldn’t something that adds access permissions to a category enhance or extend the Categories page?  Or at the very least, stick it’s config page in the Posts section?  Hmmm?  Ya think?

So… I’m back to the drawing board, wondering why I had switched from Joomla — which actually has user access levels built-in — to WordPress.  Oh yeah… Joomla sucks as a blogging tool… but that’ll have to wait for another review.

“Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.”
– Dr. Adrian Rogers

Source:  http://www.lwf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=lis_quote