Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Archives for January 22, 2006

Housekeeping

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Doing some bloggy housekeeping today, so if you should happen to visit and witness things blinking in and out of existence, that’s why.

The most visible change i’ve made so far is the much better implementation of the “hearing” section of the sidebar, which is powered by Brandon Fuller‘s fantastic Now Playing plug-in. The iTunes plug-in, which was a reasonable $10, FTPs your recent plays as a RSS to your website, where you can manipulate just about any information iTunes passes along (number of plays, album, stars, link to your Amazon referred ID, et cetera).

I had been meaning to get album covers up and running, and with only an hour or two of extra work i have it inserted tiny stars and more intelligent play counts. If you buy it and already use a little PHP on your site i’d be happy to help you get it to do what you want it to do.

For a while now i’ve been wanting to include a sidebar RSS feed from an integrated wishlisting website – i.e. one that you’d use for an online Baby Registry if you planned to draw from multiple different stores. Yesterday i found the best implementation of the idea i’ve ever seen, the very smart The Things I Want. After subscribing to the site you create a bookmark(let) in your browser, and whenever you view something you want you just load the bookmark – which guesses the item’s title, price, and image. You can add buy-priority, comments, and tags. So far the only downside is that any RSS feed is of your WHOLE LIST, which is a little cumbersome, but for a relatively new site it already gets a hardy recommendation from this blogger.

Also, some new incoming links! Heart be still. Age Old Songs is a very nifty blog that will find its way onto the sidebar later today. Also, perennial hot favorite from across the country Min Jung Kim apparently still knows i’m alive. Plus, the usual highly appreciated love from good friend Rabi @ Wockerjabby, and the continually nifty Philly-blog collective Philly Futures.

In a world of people reading me via RSS feeds in an integrated reader, or on a site like Livejournal, i often forget that some people (like me) still have good ol’fashioned domain blogs and give good ol’fashioned links to other people they read.

If you’re one of those ol’fashioned folks and i’ve recently missed you link, feel free to let me know, as i’m not the obsessive statistic whore that i was in olden days.

Speaker Quandary

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My very friendly and generous South-Philly co-worker AnnaMaria bought herself a surround sound system for Christmas. It didn’t work out in her living, so she returned it, but she was unable to return the assembled stands she bought for her speakers.

Our system came with front stands that we co-opted for rear stands; our front speakers have always sat on our front window sills. However, due to the recent parlor-reorg, the speakers are now being a bit obscured.

I volunteered to take the stands off of AnnaMaria’s hands, thinking that we’d use them for our fronts (and maybe the rears too). However, once she brought them over i realized that their system of being screwed on isn’t compatible with the screw-holes on the back of my speakers (thumb included for sense of dimension).

Now, you might have never done a shop-call with me, so let me explain to you that i’m hardly shy about doing things with tools and powered drills and custom-cut bits of wood. However, i am mightily shy when it comes to doing such things to things i own and rent.

So the question i pose is – how would you mount my speakers onto AnnaMaria’s stands? If it isn’t possible i am going to put the stands on Craigslist on her behalf, but i’d prefer to keep them.

So far the only idea i have is that they can be held on by a single screw through the top hole on the speaker through the top hole on the flat side post, which would be the only way that would provide stability. Not ideal, but at least they’d be used.

If you figure something out, please email me at uprush dot org, to the address krisis (or, if reading on LJ, just comment on the CK-feed).