You’ll need to freshen up that beverage before you sink your teeth into this article. If you don’t have time now I suggest using Instapaper to save it for later.

/via Justin Blanton.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some people that look like fish and some that look like monkeys but that doesn’t mean they were descended from them in some evolutionary chain. It just means their ugly.

The article also incorrectly states that there is fossil record proof that we are descended from fish. So far there has been no direct link in the, still very incomplete, fossil record that definitively proves the theory of evolution whatsoever. Any article that states otherwise is overstating the matter. Scientist have built hypothesis based on, what they consider, evolving bone structures from the earliest time of life to now. Several commonalities between the bone structures of all living things. But that does not mean that they evolved. It means they were made by the same designer.

Consider this; an architect designs 10 houses to his own taste. Some of the elements of these homes will, no doubt, be very similar because they were all designed by the same guy. Is it without question that, if there is a designer of all life, that several elements will be similar throughout all of his works? I don’t think so.

I do not believe there is a conflict between a belief in science and a faith in a creator but many do. Oh, and I’ve asked Justin to have a public forum someday to chat about our conflicting ideals but he’s scared.

Following up on my obvious love for Notational Velocity is this little nugget from Justin Blanton via Twitter. The latest build of Notational Velocity can actually handle bulleted lists in plain text using unicode bullets and some smarts.

Here is how you do it, again, via Blanton;

“Do [space][some bullet-type char (I use "•")][space][text][return] and you’ll get another bullet.”

That “dot” you see there can be found in about 1,000 variations using your Mac. The easiest one to key, in my opinion, is keyed using OPTION+8. So, simply key Space + OPT+8 + Space + Text + Return and you’ll be editing a list.

Thanks Justin.

Inspired by Justin Blanton’s eloquent plea.

This morning I’ve installed the bookmarklet from the site, installed the free version of the iPhone application, created a Fluid SSB with this really nice Userstyle by Florian Holstein, and I think I’m all set up to begin using Instapaper.

Stay tuned for how it goes.

“If it tastes good, it is probably bad for you.” We’ve all heard this saying and for the most part it is true. Although I tend to like all food (my vice in life) – most of the food that you crave, that you pine for, that you’d be willing to walk 12 city blocks in the middle of the night in New York City for, is typically not all that good for you. Heck, I’d be willing to say that the food usually has as much nutritional value as… well, I simply can’t think of anything worthless enough to make my point.

Today while catching up on Tumblr I ran across Kyle’s ‘reblog’ of KFC’s Double Down chicken sandwich, which he found through Justin Blanton, and I was all at once appalled, intrigued, and overwhelmingly desirous of the sandwich. Let’s take these emotions and elaborate on them one-by-one.

Justin Blanton succinctly stated, after finding out that KFC had a sandwich that – instead of using bread as its primary means to package the contents of the sandwich – uses fried chicken to keep its bacon and cheese filling neatly packed, “Of course they do”. This is where the appalling feeling came from. Of course KFC would be so brazen as to offer a sandwich that would smash together bacon, cheese, and fried chicken.

But, then came the intrigue. Remember the days of The Atkin’s Diet? The diet that pretty much said “bread is bad”. That anything that has a carbohydrate in it will go straight to your hips! That if you so much as look at a plate of pasta you’re bound to never fit into swimsuit ever again! So is it bad that KFC had done what any good Atkin’s dieter had been doing for years… remove the bread from the sandwich and only offer the innards as the meal. Take away the carbs, eat the fat.

Then, like a torrent river of blood that started in my ears and went to my toes, the desire to eat one of these seemingly delicious, incredibly irresponsible sandwiches surged through my body. I must have succinct friends because Kyle simply stated “Wow. I need to try this.” and I have to agree with him. Even though I want to try this I’d be kidding myself, and lying to you, if I didn’t say I need to try this.

Hey Kyle, the next time I’m in town we’re going to find a KFC and document the noshing of this Atkin’s Diet friendly abomination. Because we need to.

Reading his review, albeit late and after an update has already been released for it, has inspired me to dive into the application a little more fully. I’ve found even more than I thought was there before. Tweetie is a fantastic Twitter application for the Mac.

Yeah, I’ll go with mind == blown too.  I wonder where a brother can find out what these things taste like.

Source: See A Fish With A Transparent Head.
Via: Justin Blanton.

Update: It turns out that this fish isn’t a new discovery but the fact that their eyes rotate and that their heads are transparent is. More info.

Source: This is why you’re fat.
Via: Justin Blanton.

I remember one of my favorite activities while in the fourth grade was playing Oregon Trail – on a Macintosh – whenever possible. It forced you to make choices, to read, to do math, to learn a little about geography and the limits of what humans can be asked to do. Oregon Trail, for many people my age, is one of the classic games we’ll never forget.

Well, now you can play Oregon Trail online, for free – right in your browser.

Source: Play Oregon Trail online.
Via: Justin Blanton.

In this review Justin describes his experiences with the BlackRapid R-Strap, a shoulder strap tailored for photographers with DSLRs that would like to have quick access to their camera and also enjoy a hands-free experience when they are not shooting with that camera.

As Dan Benjamin points out – be sure to watch the videos. 

Source: BlackRapid R-Strap.
Additional resources: BlackRapid’s Web site.

“Since installing the app, I find myself reading news a lot more in bed, before I get up in the morning. I roll over, grab my iPhone (which is sitting on the nightstand because I used a podcast to help me fall asleep) and start rocking and rolling with the days’ news. By the time I actually get out of bed, I’ve already made a sizable dent in my feeds. This works only because the app is not annoying; indeed, it’s quite a joy to use.”

It should be noted that Justin does not use NetNewsWire on his Macintosh.  He and I share a love for Google Reader although we both have a lot of experience with NetNewsWire on the Mac.

Currently I don’t read any feeds on my iPhone. I have dabbled with Google Reader’s iPhone interface, but found it really hard to breeze through quickly for a number of reasons. However, his fairly thorough review of NetNewsWire for the iPhone makes me want to give it a try.

He is, as far as I can tell, omitting a huge caveat to using NetNewsWire for the iPhone and Google Reader on the Mac. Syncing.  If I read something on NetNewsWire, on my iPhone, in bed – will I have to read that same post again when I pull up Google Reader at my desk?  That’d suck.

Source: I ♥ NetNewsWire (on the iPhone).

My site is setup to post links to Twitter, every 15 minutes, if there was a new post here on my site. I try to add a little context by adding the category before the Twitter status (e.g. “Link:”) and I also include the title of the note so that people can choose whether or not to click the link from Twitter back to my site.

But I could see this getting pretty annoying for some.

Someone whose opinion I value, Justin Blanton, had said in October 2007, on Twitter no less, that he didn’t like the whole “use Twitter to link to your blog” method of letting people know when you update your site. In some ways I agree with him but in others I find it fairly useful when I am not near Twitter to automate the process. I’m torn.

This process all started when I started to post mobile photos with my iPhone. At first they were going to Flickr and so I once Flickr updated the RSS feed for my photos, I had a script that would notify Twitter of the new photo. Once I began to post my mobile photos here on my site, I figured I would do the same thing.

This slowly expanded into, what is now, a script that will post to Twitter every single time I publish something to my site.

So, I ask – should I continue this? Is it annoying? It is useful? Should I only do it for mobile photos and nothing else? Please let me know in the comments.

He took the time to write what he did, and didn’t like, about the plugin and why he chose to fix it. Read his entry where he introduces Slugger+.

To me, this is the perfect example of why I love writing these little plugins. I may not personally be the best person to write some of these plugins (due to my inability to watch for things as detailed as someone like Justin obviously is), but I did have the idea and at least I was able to “get it out there” so other people could improve on it.

And that is exactly what Justin has done. He took what he thought was a good idea for a WordPress plugin, fixed what needed to fixed, and offered a better version of it to everyone for free.

Thanks for updating the plugin Justin. I’ll use it religiously.

First, I grabbed a modified version of Cutline and made my own little tweaks (which I’m not quite finished with yet). Obviously I changed the way the headers work and brought back my featured headings in order to highlight certain posts randomly. I’ll be adding many more banners over time, since there are ton of posts that should be highlighted. I’ll be doing a little more of this by creating a “random note” area in my right-most sidebar soon.

I also edited the way that the sidebars work. I wanted a 3-column layout to allow me to pull in my flickr photos, some posts from Viddler, ChanceCube, and The uber geeks, as well as a place that I will soon be putting various other collections. However, I wanted to have only 2-columns on my single entry pages because I like having the width for things like photos. Also, some of the pages (like the new diet page), have 3-columns, while some only have 2-columns.

On the frontpage you will notice the latest posts from the other sites that I write on (mentioned above). This section is powered by BDP RSS Aggregator. Obviously I could have built this type of functionality myself but after seeing how well thought out this WordPress plugin was – it made the decision to use it very easy. BDP RSS Aggregator does far more than what I am using it for, and if you are looking to syndicate some feeds on your WordPress powered site, I highly recommend you looking into it.

My most recent Flickr photos, on the frontpage, is powered by FlickrRSS. Since BDP RSS Aggregator has so many options, I could have technically used it and ended up with the same result, but I chose to use something that was specifically built for grabbing my photos from Flickr. Obviously Flickr’s API could have been used for such a task, but all I really wanted was a cached list of my 4 most-recent photos, and using the API would seem like a little overkill. FlickrRSS does an excellent job, is easy to configure, and has just the right number of options. Another plugin that I highly recommend.

For my recent comments I’m using a highly modified version of the recent comments plugin. I’ve added support for Gravatars and a few other options that it didn’t have out of the box. Once I clean up the code I hacked to get it done I may submit the changes, but since it is reliant on someone using the Gravatar WordPress Plugin (site currently under repair as of today) too, I may not. If you want this, just give me a shout.

For my archives I’m using Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives plugin. I like my archives simple, and this plugin allows me to have just that. I see now that its been updated recently, so I may have to get me a fresh copy.

For my keyword tagging I can’t do without the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin – which in my mind is the best keyword tagging plugin for WordPress. It allows me to use MarsEdit to write my posts and put my keywords inline – which has increased the accuracy and ease of searching quite a bit too. There are many benefits to using this plugin.

I’m using Shaun Inman’s Widon’t plugin to help clean up the straggling words on my post titles. This layout doesn’t succumb to these problems as much as the last one did, but this plugin is handy nonetheless. Plugins that work completely behind the scenes and yet make such big differences in your site should really be applauded.

My feed is being delivered through Feedburner via the Feedburner WordPress plugin by my friend Steve Smith. It is all transparent to you on your end, but to me it adds a nice little layer that allows me to pull some nice stats on how many people and who are subscribed to my site’s feed. If you are using Feedburner and WordPress, this plugin is a must have.

Obviously I’m using ChanceCube‘s Slugger plugin to help me never to see WordPress’ administrative area as well as HappyPals to take advantage of my XFN relationships in my links. I also have Mike Stickel‘s Simple Countdown plugin installed and activated, but you’ll have to wait till the weekend to see why. These three plugins have become indispensable for me in how I publish, Slugger the greatest of these. I could never stand using WordPress’ admin (or any administrative area that I’ve seen) to write my blog posts. I’m happy I don’t have to anymore.

I think I covered pretty much everything. Poke around, if you see anything outta whack just let me know. Other slight tweaks will have to wait till the weekend as I have a fairly busy week this week.

Oh! For those of you on the diet that have recently been contacted by me (which most of you have, and if you have not then it probably means you’ve been fairly active in the dieting area over the last few months) – I’ll be updating everyone today or tomorrow but suffice to say that Tuesday begins another 20-week (minimum) run of updates. More soon.

[tags]cdevroe.com, redesign, shaun inman, wordpress, plugins, chancecube, mike stickel, slugger, happypals, simple countdown, ultimate tag warrior, justin blanton, smart archives, flickrrss, gravatar, recent comments, bdp rss aggregator, viddler, theubergeeks, cutline, theme, steve smith, feedburner, flickr, api[/tags]
[slug]cdevroe-v0207[/slug]