Moved My Blog to AprilPastis.com

I've moved my blog. If you're not redirected, please go to aprilpastis.com. I've fallen in love with the WordPress software, and decided to write all my blogs on that. Thanks for understanding.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

Image via WikipediaI have been fortunate enough to have had many wonderful women in my life who each left an impression on me in some way. But today, in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, I'm sharing a few of the women who inspired me.  Ada Lovelace was the worlds first computer programmer and on this day many people take the time to remember women of science. I want to honor the great women in my life.

Number 1 would be my mother. I was lucky enough to come from intelligent stock. I learned a lot from her including my love of books, of learning, of history, of technology, and on and on, but what I think I learned most from her was perseverance. My mother had a very tough life, but she was like a phoenix, rising from the ashes again and again. Finding something to laugh about, gave her the strength to continue the fight.

Number 2: Mrs. Crabb was my fifth and sixth grade teacher. She believed in me, which, allowed me to realize that I was OK with who I was and if there was something I wanted to do, I shouldn't worry what anybody else thought but just do it. I had been publishing an underground newspaper called "The Toilet Stall Times," and knew it wouldn't be long before I got into trouble for it. Boys were breaking into the girls bathroom to get a copy. Mrs. Crabb came up with the idea of publishing a book and that was how I started my life long publishing dream.

Number 3: Jan Rawson, my journalism professor, was a stickler for everything. A stickler for facts; a stickler for grammar; a stickily for ethics…everything. Getting a paper back from her meant red ink and rearranged paragraphs with more pages of suggestions than pages in the original article. No paper was ever done. If it weren't for deadlines, I don't think anything would have ever gotten published. Exhausted from working all-nighters to get the newspaper out, I could barely keep my eyes open but she would still be at it up to the last minute because the idea of an error getting published was unacceptable to her. Jan gave me a drive for perfectionism, but also the value of a deadline. She also introduced me to my first "computer." Little did I know then, that that paper-tape spewing monstrosity was the beginning of a beautiful love affair with technology that still exists today. Rather than fear the machine because it was foreign, she taught me that it was just another tool and if you used it right, you could inspire the world.

Stop the Stream to Honor Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is dead.

The news makes my life pass before me. I stare at the screen where Facebook users continue their posts about Farmville rewards and I want to yell Stop! Stop all the game posts; Stop all the Tweets! Stop everything for one second and recognize the man for the way he changed the world. Can't you pause for a second to pay tribute to the man whose contributions lead to the creation of all these live streams of posts.
He's been a part of my life for 26 years and yet, I only met him once. As I think about his life, I can only smile and say Thank you. Thank you for sharing your dreams and making them ours.

Please observe a moment of silence at least to honor this great man. There was no one else like him and we're all better because of him.

Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Shout Out To My Heros: Help Boards

Today, I'd like to do a shout out to the unsung heros, help boards. Most of the time, these over-worked administrators and moderators only hear the rants and ravings of an unhappy poster. But, you can bet if you've got a problem that you need solved, there's a help board with the resources you need to solve it.  I want to say thank you! You've saved my butt on numerous occasions.

Like the time I needed to hook up a Plasma TV to a LCD 15 minutes before a speaker was to go on--Thank you High Def Forum!

Or the time an app was preventing my computer from booting--Thank you Mac Community Forums

Or the time a software update crashed my site-thank you Stack Ideas forum. and Red Component Forum.

Sure, there are some boards I'd rather not visit at all for various reasons: too hard to search; bad attitudes; flamers; or its just not a topic I'm interested in, but most of the time I came to that forum searching for the answer for a very specific problem or area of interest.

When you are looking for assistance on a forum, its best to narrow down the forum to the exact product or question rather than go to a general topic forum. It's a real time saver because you're all speaking the same language so to speak. If you don't understand the conversations, then be honest and confess that you're a newbie and need the instructions as simple as possible. 

Some of the best forums out there are forums supporting open-source software. Open-source makes it's code available to everyone and so their support forums, because of its very nature,  creates the free exchange of ideas. One of my favorites is the Joomla Community Forum because there are many helpful, knowledgeable people.

The key to a good forum, I've found, is the tone of the community and the knowledge of its users. The key to getting answers to your questions is to know the guidelines of the forum you're posting which can usually be found at the top or bottom of the front page of the forum. Check it out before your first post. 

The second way to get your question answered quickly is including all the specifics around the item that is in question. For instance, if you're asking about a TV connection problem: give the product number, and the exact name of the unit you're trying to connect it to. Try not to voice your frustration too much or be too sarcastic. We all know you paid good money for what ever it is, so there's no need to re-state it. You can never say too much about what the product is because the more information they have, the better your chance of getting an answer.

Also, if you run across a forum post where you know the answer, it'll increase your Karma by sharing your knowledge. If you kinda, maybe, somehow have a hunch you have the answer, hold back posting until you can be more sure. There's nothing more frustrating than following bad advice.

And, the next time someone helps you in a forum, please respond to their good deed. Let them know that it solved the problem for you. That way they can mark the problem solved and others with similar problems can also benefit from the answer to your question.

Finally, remember to thank them.

I means what I means

If you could hear me when I'm using Google Search lately, you might think I was doing a Popeye impression; I mumble a lot. Ever since Google changed its search algorithm in March, I'm having to reteach myself to surf. I go to Google and type something, say ""Monkees" like ice cream" and I'm half way down the results page when I realize that Google's suggested a different search for me:

"showing results for Monkeys like ice cream
search instead for "Monkees" like ice cream"

"I means what I means," I mutter and click on the link to search for what I originally typed.
I really do like change. Change is good. Change is necessary. Change is life, and all that hyperbole. But, come on! I've been searching this way since way back when AltaVista still existed. My head knows it's time for a change, but my fingers still do the walking, er typing, and they want to put phrases within quotes.
It seems in Google's attempt to assist us, they have started ignoring power users by over riding what we search for. Their own help files tell us that a phrase search works like this:

"Phrase search ("")
By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell."

However, they may need to update their help site as they is no longer an absolute. It used to be preferable to use the double quote boolean term to get exactly the phrase you were looking for within Google, but now its hit or miss.
According to About.com, "Boolean searching is built on a method of symbolic logic developed by George Boole, a 19th century English mathematician. Most online databases and search engines support Boolean searches. Boolean search techniques can be used to carry out effective searches, cutting out many unrelated documents. "
There are tons of search strings available, but here are the terms I find most useful when searching on Google:

• "Exact Phrase Here" -- If it's in quotes, Google is supposed to look for those words in the exact order.
• +Exact+Phrase+Here -- The + before a word tells Google that each of these words must be in the results.
• +Word -other -- Using the - sign, tells Google not to return any webpages with that word in it. In other words if you want to find Justin but not Timberlake you'd type +Justin -Timberlake
• word site:weburlgoeshere -- If you want to find something within a specific website use this. For example, if I want to find singer Pink's videos on Youtube I would type this: Pink site:youtube.com

Currently the results of my search seems to change by the hour. I'm guessing it all depends on how much Google likes me at the moment of the search.
It's hard enough when Google's autocomplete, Google Instant, starts filling in my words before I get to the fifth letter. I surf using my keyboard, hitting return after typing in my text, which most times means that Google Instant has replaced what I typed or filled in more than I typed milliseconds before I hit the return key sending me to ridiculous results. Type in "do m" and get:

• do midgets have night vision?
• do men like virgins
• do my thang lyrics

You can stop Google from using instant search. According to Google's help files:

"If you don't want to see results as you type, you can opt out by accessing your search settings under the  gear icon on any search results page. When you opt out, we'll save that preference on a cookie, so you'll stayed opted out until the cookie is cleared. Note that the preference will only apply to that particular computer and Internet browser, and it is not tied to your Google Account."

To turn it off, go to your Google preferences. At the bottom of the page is the Google Instant options. Simply click the button next to "Do Not use Google Instant"
I like Google Instant, but if you don't use it, you get the added benefit of being able to increase the number of results given on each page of a search. With Google Instant turned on you only get 10 results per page. With it off, you can choose 20, 30, 50 or 100 results per page.
While you're in your preferences, you might want to reset your SafeSearch filter. If children are using the computer, you can have it filter out adult content. The default is set to moderate filtering. For me, I don't want to be filtered at all so I click "Do not filter my search results." Don't get me wrong, I'm not a perv, I just don't want something computer program telling me what it thinks is appropriate for me to see. I can make my own decisions, thank you. I'm a big girl now.

INSTANT PREVIEW
On September 22nd, Google changed its Instant Preview feature so that you no longer have to click on the magnifying glass to view what a website looks like before you click its link. You can now simply hover your mouse over to the right side of one of the results. When you do, two arrows " >> " appear, hover over that and a a preview of the site appears. This is very handy if you're looking for a specific site but can't remember it by name. One glimpse tells you whether you're in the right place or not. If it's not the specific site you want, hit the down arrow key on your computer keyboard, to view a preview of the next result.
I'm not getting too attached to any of the new changes though, because Google made an announcement yesterday that they'll be rolling out even more changes soon. In the meantime, I guess I'll just cross my fingers while surfing.

Cheating is the symptom of educational woes

I'm saddened by the news today that five children paid someone to take the SATs for them and as a result they could face serious time.

“Colleges look for the best and brightest students, yet these six defendants tried to cheat the system and may have kept honest and qualified students from getting into their dream school,” DA Kathleen Rice said. “These arrests should serve as a warning to those taking the SAT this Saturday that if you cheat, you can face serious criminal consequences.

I've heard a lot of teachers complain how rampant cheating has gotten, but we need to start asking why. What's going on that our students have thrown morality out the window? If you look at the very basics of our humanity, you will see that people cheat based upon our survival instinct. Let me explain with a scenario:
A man is caught stealing at a grocery store. He's guilty of theft and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But, what if, you learn that this man stole a sandwich because he was starving? Or, what if he stole a loaf of bread to feed his children? You would be a monster if you ignored his reasoning and sent him to prison and left the starving family to fend for themselves.
When anything threatens a person's livelihood, income or social status, they enter survival mode. I believe that the system itself lead the students to their moral breaking point.
During the economic downturn, the biggest losers have been our educators and students. Every time I turn around I read about another cut to funding in education.
Due to the drop in funding, colleges have increase their fees, limited enrollment, and increased their entrance requirements. The result is that students are doing what ever it takes to get what they feel they need to survive.
Children are told from day one, that the only way to make it in this world is to get a good education, to get into the best schools. In California, we took pride in guaranteeing a higher education for all, but now even community colleges are feeling the burn.
I am not condoning cheating. It's wrong. But, I'm saying cheating is the symptom of a much bigger problem. We've got to take a look at what's really going on. We've got to stop our politicians from taking money away from our schools.

What responsibility do we have to our followers?

This past week, I've gotten quite a few (hundreds actually) new followers on Twitter and Google+. What's going on? Does this have anything to do with the new changes on Facebook? Do people hate it that much? Or, does it have anything to do with Farmville changes? 

It's nice to have all the new followers, but with new followers I feel a bit of responsibility to come up with good tweets and links. 

I tried to find some great quotes by joining  quotesdaddy.com. It is pretty good, but, still it doesn't seem to be enough. So, I've been retweeting a lot. 

Oh sure, I know that the marketing gurus are saying to themselves that they'd be doing a lot more than just repeating quotes. But I don't feel its right to blanket people with ads. Don't we have some responsibility to our followers?

I think my responsibility is to only share stuff that I find interesting enough to read. So my question is: What responsibility do we have to our followers? Please tweet me @geekesse.