I just submitted a short story to the Southshire writing group’s anthology of short stories related to food. They call it their “Pepper Pot.” We’ll see if I can make the cut. In any case, here is a snippet from my submission. I wrote about my experience with Turkish coffee. The story begins here with an Arab boy delivering my first cup of coffee at my friend Reuben’s photography shop.
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Articles on Web Applications
If you can persevere, Wired News has a series of articles on Web 2.0 and free applications that are well worth looking into. If you don’t know what Web 2.0 or 1.0 is for that matter, these articles are worth reading and applying.
Is Web 2.0 Caught Up in its Own Noise?
Folksonomies, giving it all away
If you persevere through all 3 of these articles, you can read a very interesting list of quotes from Steve Jobs here.
Technorati Tags: web 2.0, steve jobs
Directories are out. Tags are in.
I have my web sites listed in a number of online directories either for blogs or web pages. You can find them at the bottom of the right column. One of my frustrations has been with the difficulty of categorizing my web sites. Is this a writing site? yes. Non-profit site? yes. Photography, web tips, volunteer tips, administrative tips, Vermont news, open source tips? yes.
So I’m happy to hear about a new way of keeping track of web sites. Tagging has become the new way to go about this. By simply attaching a tag from a site such as Technorati, you can be found based on your content, and specific content can be accessed immediately.
An exampe of this system will be started by the directory: blogs4god. They explain the way it all works on their site. I look forward to seeing how this catches on. If you’re not tagging your blog posts or web site, look into it. It takes a few seconds and will make your site easier to find.
Technorati Tags: technorati, tag directory
21 Publish: Too Good to be True?
In uncharacteristic fashion, I gave in and clicked on an ad this morning. The company is called 21 Publish, and they offer free, hosted blogging for communities. In other words, you have a web portal or home page where you can post links or general content, and list all of the blogs in your community right there. The template can be customized and you can host it under your own domain name or it can be integrated into an existing web site.
It looks very attractive at this point, but I need to take it for a test drive first. You can get an idea of what it does by looking at some blogs they list: East Central Elementary School, Amnesty International USA, and Platform 27. Click here for a full list of Platform 27’s features.
What You Can Do With Blogs
While there are some really nice web sites out there with static designs, I am a big fan of web sites that change content often and offer more interaction. My experience consists of Nucleus, WordPress, and Typepad, but another popular program is Blogger. Though the standard Blogger designs are not much to look at, you can make some very nice looking sites with it.
And personal blogging aside, organizations can also use Blogger to make some very nice web sites. Jordon Cooper, whose blog I peruse daily, has a nice clean blog design that utilizes Blogger. He recommends a series of blogs/web sites by Pernell Goodyear. There’s his wife’s site, his church’s site, and his church’s blog.
I’ll have to start up my own blogger site in order to give it a review, but the price is right so far as I can see and it’s possible to customize it quite a bit.
Sugar Shack Journal
We spent yesterday visiting a number of sugar houses in the area for the open house weekend. I was browsing the Bennington Banner this morning and found they had a picture of the place we visited yesterday. It was quite an operation.
The owner works in the construction industry, but apparently does maple syrup on the side in the winter. He has quite a bit of land with over 600 taps. While driving on the narrow dirt track know as Maple Hill Road, you can seen tons of tubes running down the hillside into holding tanks. While traditional tapping is done with a spout and a bucket, the latest trend is to run lines. It makes collecting the sap a whole lot easier. I recorded a short video of one of these lines. With the sound on you can hear the sap flowing. View the video.
The sap is then put into this huge evaporator machine. There basically is a rather large warming tank that gets the sap hot. The sap will start out clear and does not have any flavor that can be distinguished. Once the sap is warmed up, it is sent into several hot tanks that look like larger versions of the vats you would use for french fries. The picture here is of the evaporating end of the machine where the fire burns the hottest.
Merck Forest Hiking
We took several outings to Merck Forest this past week to Merck Forest(www.merckforest.com, but their web site is out of commission right now). it’s a wonderful place with a great mission. They protect tons of land for hiking and camping, as well as operating a sustainable farm with organic methods. Here’s what you can see at Merck.
Eavesdropping: Writing Exercise
One of my favorite writing prompts is eavesdropping on conversations and pulling a line or two out of context. These lines become the starting point my writing. I typically give myself 15-20 minutes, but will keep going if I’m having a good time with it. Here are a few gems that I heard recently:
“He’s religious but sensible.”
“There were dead cattle on the road, no one would talk to us, and we couldn’t get a ride. We had to ride a bus back and he was furious.”
I wrote something based on the first one at inamirrordimly.
Introducing the Bethany Network
I have decided to launch the Bethany Network, which can be found under the heading on this site: Bethany Net. Here’s a short introduction to this new kind of non-profit:
The Bethany Network
Promoting spiritual and physical wholeness.
- Partnering with non-profits who provide essential social services. When we address physical needs, we open the door for spiritual healing to occur.
- Providing free and lot cost administrative support such as creating flyers, newsletters, and web content.
- Providing tips and reviews of books, software, movies and other products relevant to non-profit organizations.
Recharge, refocus, refresh
The Bethany Network is a different kind of non-profit. Working from the grass roots up, the Bethany Network seeks to support non-profits on a shoe-string through networking and an open source approach.
Red Ink Revisions
A friend from my high school days has started her own edited service. She’s been all over the US working in a wide variety of jobs and has a solid editorial background. The company is called Red Ink Revisions.
It’s worth visiting the web site just to see the top notch job done by Red Frog Design.
