Posts tagged twitter

Of Eberts and E-books (Part 1 of 2) Roger Ebert, arguably the most famous film critic writing today and at the same time the alleged destroyer of film criticism according to infamous contrarian and all-around party-pooper Armond White, is easily one of the more intelligently outspoken celebrities on Twitter. Very respectfully, I intend no pun in using that adjective: several years ago Ebert contracted thyroid cancer and later suffered complications that would eventually render him unable to speak. He has since taken to blogging and, more recently, to using the aforementioned social networking site, where he says — or rather, writes — with an almost religious zeal most of the things that come to his mind.  Not a day goes by that Ebert doesn’t update his Twitter feed with tweets ranging from links to his latest movie reviews to retweets of interesting and amusing reflections by the people he follows, and as well as throwing witty remarks at Sarah Palin’s numerous non sequiturs, he’s given to riffing on various modern and immensely popular inventions. Not long ago, he expressed his disapproval of 3-D in film. Afterwards, he argued that video games can never be art. Now, he’s picking a fight against e-books. “Digital books are like Near Beer,” he began,  pointing out that e-books just aren’t as good as the “real” thing. He then went on to make a case of the many characteristics of “real” books that are as yet absent in their electronic counterparts, such as the inimitable nostalgia afforded by owning life-furnishing books:  Hey, here’s that digital copy of “Gatsby” I got at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris 40 years ago, still waiting on my shelf! And their built-in capacity for authorial and paternal inscriptions:  Allan Ginsberg himself signed this e-book of “Howl” to me at City Lights in 1963!   Here’s my old e-book “10,000 Jokes, Toasts and Stories,” and written inside “To my boy Roger from Daddy.“  And their ability to keep tangible, flat, and potentially profitable ephemera between their pages:  In his e-book edition of “The Grapes of Wrath,” I found a check my father never cashed.  And their inherent tactility and affinity towards the passage of time and opposable digits: I’ve read my e-book of Shakespeare so many times since graduating college in 1964 that look how lovingly the pages are thumbed.  When I’m reading a long e-book, sometimes I’ll ruffle all those pages with an idle thumb.  And the impact of their covers, which I posted about recently:  I found this e-book on a top shelf of a used e-book store. Its cover somehow reached out to me.  We only met in the first place because she spotted the cover of the e-book I was reading across the aisle on the train.  You can find out a lot about someone just by glancing at the covers of their e-books.   In conclusion and in defense of his apparently Luddite attitude towards e-books, he tweeted:  Tired of my tweets about eBooks? It’s not about the eBooks so much as about the wit, poetry and poignancy of my tweets.  To friends complaining about too many tweets on e-books: A full refund is in the mail.  But while all this analog/old versus digital/new battle was unfolding, guess what yours truly was doing. This:  Downloading books by Don DeLillo, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and Donald Barthelme on iBooks. Current mood: d^_^b  That happy-camper emoticon depicts someone who is either enjoying good music or giving two thumbs up (a gesture which incidentally was made more popular years ago by Ebert’s thumb and that of his friend and fellow critic, Gene Siskel). Or, in my case, both.

Of Eberts and E-books (Part 1 of 2)

Roger Ebert, arguably the most famous film critic writing today and at the same time the alleged destroyer of film criticism according to infamous contrarian and all-around party-pooper Armond White, is easily one of the more intelligently outspoken celebrities on Twitter. Very respectfully, I intend no pun in using that adjective: several years ago Ebert contracted thyroid cancer and later suffered complications that would eventually render him unable to speak. He has since taken to blogging and, more recently, to using the aforementioned social networking site, where he says — or rather, writes — with an almost religious zeal most of the things that come to his mind.
 
Not a day goes by that Ebert doesn’t update his Twitter feed with tweets ranging from links to his latest movie reviews to retweets of interesting and amusing reflections by the people he follows, and as well as throwing witty remarks at Sarah Palin’s numerous non sequiturs, he’s given to riffing on various modern and immensely popular inventions. Not long ago, he expressed his disapproval of 3-D in film. Afterwards, he argued that video games can never be art. Now, he’s picking a fight against e-books.

“Digital books are like Near Beer,” he began,  pointing out that e-books just aren’t as good as the “real” thing. He then went on to make a case of the many characteristics of “real” books that are as yet absent in their electronic counterparts, such as the inimitable nostalgia afforded by owning life-furnishing books: 

Hey, here’s that digital copy of “Gatsby” I got at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris 40 years ago, still waiting on my shelf!

And their built-in capacity for authorial and paternal inscriptions: 

Allan Ginsberg himself signed this e-book of “Howl” to me at City Lights in 1963!  

Here’s my old e-book “10,000 Jokes, Toasts and Stories,” and written inside “To my boy Roger from Daddy.“ 

And their ability to keep tangible, flat, and potentially profitable ephemera between their pages: 

In his e-book edition of “The Grapes of Wrath,” I found a check my father never cashed. 

And their inherent tactility and affinity towards the passage of time and opposable digits:

I’ve read my e-book of Shakespeare so many times since graduating college in 1964 that look how lovingly the pages are thumbed. 

When I’m reading a long e-book, sometimes I’ll ruffle all those pages with an idle thumb. 

And the impact of their covers, which I posted about recently: 

I found this e-book on a top shelf of a used e-book store. Its cover somehow reached out to me. 

We only met in the first place because she spotted the cover of the e-book I was reading across the aisle on the train. 

You can find out a lot about someone just by glancing at the covers of their e-books.  

In conclusion and in defense of his apparently Luddite attitude towards e-books, he tweeted: 

Tired of my tweets about eBooks? It’s not about the eBooks so much as about the wit, poetry and poignancy of my tweets. 

To friends complaining about too many tweets on e-books: A full refund is in the mail. 

But while all this analog/old versus digital/new battle was unfolding, guess what yours truly was doing. This: 

Downloading books by Don DeLillo, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and Donald Barthelme on iBooks. Current mood: d^_^b 

That happy-camper emoticon depicts someone who is either enjoying good music or giving two thumbs up (a gesture which incidentally was made more popular years ago by Ebert’s thumb and that of his friend and fellow critic, Gene Siskel). Or, in my case, both.

It’s two books, actually. One is Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a copy of which, a Fully Booked customer service rep just informed me, already has my name on it. The other is the 50th anniversary edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, whose official Facebook page and, by extension, gorgeous cover, I just “liked”—something I rarely ever do, not even to “you,” “to move it move it,” and “big butts and I cannot lie.”

It’s two books, actually. One is Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a copy of which, a Fully Booked customer service rep just informed me, already has my name on it. The other is the 50th anniversary edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, whose official Facebook page and, by extension, gorgeous cover, I just “liked”—something I rarely ever do, not even to “you,” “to move it move it,” and “big butts and I cannot lie.”

The Long And Short Of It: How To Make Your Own URL Shortener URL shortening services are a dime a dozen these days. Ever heard of Curio.us? Or Zootit? How about x.se? No? It’s OK. Chances are you’re better off not knowing these obscure URL shorteners anyway when you can be perfectly fine with the more popular ones, like the Twitter default, bit.ly, the fairly self-explanatory tool, TinyURL, and the one with the best name, tr.im, which was my weapon of choice up until it demonstrated the impermanence of most URL shortening services a week ago prompting me to create my own URL shortener. All in a long, geekery-filled day’s work. Ta-da! I give you: http://go.aldr.in. That’s it. That is my very own URL shortening service. And by “my very own,” I do mean “mine and mine alone.” So I guess I should inform you right away that following the link to Go aldr.in! (I chose that name and subdomain because go was both relatively short and highly encouraging) will only take you to a login page that is practically a dead end to you, unless you know my password, of course. But fret not, because if you’re feeling a little geeky yourself and you want to make your own URL shortener for all your link-economizing and self-aggrandizing needs, then you’re in luck. First and foremost, you need a domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com), preferably a relatively short one (otherwise, you’re clearly missing the point, mister) and a hosting account. If you don’t have either one yet, you can register at any of the domain name registrars and hosting providers on the Web, like GoDaddy and eNom. Then, if you already have both requisites up and running, head on over to Sidepath and download the archive folder containing the files required to install the free shortening/redirection solution developed by designer and developer extraordinaire Sam Brown. You use Sidepath, once properly set up on your host’s servers, to shorten a long URL by appending a keyword of your choice to your domain name, resulting in a new URL that will redirect to the original long URL. Let’s take the slightly complex Rotten Tomatoes URL of my favorite movie, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harry_potter_and_the_prisoner_of_azkaban. I have assigned the keyword “hp3” to this URL, so http://go.aldr.in/hp3 will in fact lead you to the Rotten Tomatoes page of the third Harry Potter film. Especially if you’re familiar with this sort of stuff, Sidepath installation couldn’t be easier once you’ve extracted the files and created a database for the service (database creation and management can be accessed via your host’s control panel). Everything ready? Follow these steps. 1. Edit the config.php.txt file with all of your details and rename as config.php.2. Upload the Sidepath files in the archive to your desired folder (e.g. /go or /link). 3. CHMOD your desired folder 777 (World Writable).4. Open http://yourdomain.com/folder in your Web browser and follow instructions. The above steps are applicable if you want your URL shortener to be in the form, http://yourdomain.com/folder/keyword. But what if you want it to work on the top level of your domain, i.e., http://yourdomain.com/keyword, or subdomain, i.e., http://subdomain.yourdomain.com/keyword? No problem. Sam provided an easy-to-follow solution for that. 1. Edit the config file $url variable (e.g. http://go.yourdomain.com).2. Leave the $folder variable blank (e.g. "”;).3. Upload the Sidepath files into the top-level domain/subdomain.4. Create a blank file in the top-level called .htaccess.5. CHMOD the .htaccess file World Writeable, 777. You may notice that I chose to use the subdomain variant of Sidepath. I figured this was the most feasible thing to do since I practically gave up all subfolders (“/folders”) of my domain, aldr.in, to Tumblr when I opted to use it for my Tumblr site and, like I said, go.aldr.in sounds very encouraging. (Believe me, I need every bit of encouragement I can get.) So that’s practically all you need to know to be well on your way to making your own snazzy custom URL shortener. Just leave a comment on this post or send me a message via my contact page if you have any questions, be them long or short. And to finally wrap this baby up… The short URL for this post is http://go.aldr.in/sidepath.

The Long And Short Of It: How To Make Your Own URL Shortener

URL shortening services are a dime a dozen these days. Ever heard of Curio.us? Or Zootit? How about x.se? No? It’s OK. Chances are you’re better off not knowing these obscure URL shorteners anyway when you can be perfectly fine with the more popular ones, like the Twitter default, bit.ly, the fairly self-explanatory tool, TinyURL, and the one with the best name, tr.im, which was my weapon of choice up until it demonstrated the impermanence of most URL shortening services a week ago prompting me to create my own URL shortener. All in a long, geekery-filled day’s work.

Ta-da! I give you: http://go.aldr.in.

That’s it. That is my very own URL shortening service. And by “my very own,” I do mean “mine and mine alone.” So I guess I should inform you right away that following the link to Go aldr.in! (I chose that name and subdomain because go was both relatively short and highly encouraging) will only take you to a login page that is practically a dead end to you, unless you know my password, of course.

But fret not, because if you’re feeling a little geeky yourself and you want to make your own URL shortener for all your link-economizing and self-aggrandizing needs, then you’re in luck. First and foremost, you need a domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com), preferably a relatively short one (otherwise, you’re clearly missing the point, mister) and a hosting account. If you don’t have either one yet, you can register at any of the domain name registrars and hosting providers on the Web, like GoDaddy and eNom. Then, if you already have both requisites up and running, head on over to Sidepath and download the archive folder containing the files required to install the free shortening/redirection solution developed by designer and developer extraordinaire Sam Brown.

You use Sidepath, once properly set up on your host’s servers, to shorten a long URL by appending a keyword of your choice to your domain name, resulting in a new URL that will redirect to the original long URL. Let’s take the slightly complex Rotten Tomatoes URL of my favorite movie, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harry_potter_and_the_prisoner_of_azkaban. I have assigned the keyword “hp3” to this URL, so http://go.aldr.in/hp3 will in fact lead you to the Rotten Tomatoes page of the third Harry Potter film.

Especially if you’re familiar with this sort of stuff, Sidepath installation couldn’t be easier once you’ve extracted the files and created a database for the service (database creation and management can be accessed via your host’s control panel). Everything ready? Follow these steps.

1. Edit the config.php.txt file with all of your details and rename as config.php.
2. Upload the Sidepath files in the archive to your desired folder (e.g. /go or /link).
3. CHMOD your desired folder 777 (World Writable).
4. Open http://yourdomain.com/folder in your Web browser and follow instructions.

The above steps are applicable if you want your URL shortener to be in the form, http://yourdomain.com/folder/keyword. But what if you want it to work on the top level of your domain, i.e., http://yourdomain.com/keyword, or subdomain, i.e., http://subdomain.yourdomain.com/keyword? No problem. Sam provided an easy-to-follow solution for that.

1. Edit the config file $url variable (e.g. http://go.yourdomain.com).
2. Leave the $folder variable blank (e.g. "”;).
3. Upload the Sidepath files into the top-level domain/subdomain.
4. Create a blank file in the top-level called .htaccess.
5. CHMOD the .htaccess file World Writeable, 777.

You may notice that I chose to use the subdomain variant of Sidepath. I figured this was the most feasible thing to do since I practically gave up all subfolders (“/folders”) of my domain, aldr.in, to Tumblr when I opted to use it for my Tumblr site and, like I said, go.aldr.in sounds very encouraging. (Believe me, I need every bit of encouragement I can get.)

So that’s practically all you need to know to be well on your way to making your own snazzy custom URL shortener. Just leave a comment on this post or send me a message via my contact page if you have any questions, be them long or short.

And to finally wrap this baby up… The short URL for this post is http://go.aldr.in/sidepath.

I was at Fully Booked yesterday to take advantage of the markdown on practically all items on display, including the generally prohibitively priced graphic novels. God does exist. Facing the considerably wide selection of graphic novels, ranging from the immensely popular to the somewhat obscure, I honestly had no idea which one to buy and to award the distinction of being the second ever graphic novel to be included in my rapidly growing pseudo-library to. So I turned to my trusty old friend Twitter and tweeted a question to the expert. Yep, that guy who looks like he just consumed a slew of pharmaceuticals is none other than @komikero himself, the man from San Pablo, famed comic book artist and writer Gerry Alanguilan. Always a sucker for a good Batman story, I initially opted for either Batman: Year One or The Dark Knight Returns. Both of them though, I was informed, had just been sold out. Great. Then I saw what appeared to be the last remaining copy of V for Vendetta, which was highly recommended by @komikero. Stoked, I reached for my wallet to see if I was adequately equipped with cash. I wasn’t. Note to self: Books first, food later. And for Chrissakes recharge your credit card. As it was almost nine and I had to be in time for the last LRT trip, I went like lighting to the nearest ATM. “Hello,” said the ATM, “I’m an ATM, I operate 24 hours and I am temporarily unable to dispense cash.” Wow, just my luck. I’m going back for it in a bit and it better still be there. Or a new set of potent expletives will be invented.

I was at Fully Booked yesterday to take advantage of the markdown on practically all items on display, including the generally prohibitively priced graphic novels. God does exist. Facing the considerably wide selection of graphic novels, ranging from the immensely popular to the somewhat obscure, I honestly had no idea which one to buy and to award the distinction of being the second ever graphic novel to be included in my rapidly growing pseudo-library to. So I turned to my trusty old friend Twitter and tweeted a question to the expert. Yep, that guy who looks like he just consumed a slew of pharmaceuticals is none other than @komikero himself, the man from San Pablo, famed comic book artist and writer Gerry Alanguilan.

Always a sucker for a good Batman story, I initially opted for either Batman: Year One or The Dark Knight Returns. Both of them though, I was informed, had just been sold out. Great. Then I saw what appeared to be the last remaining copy of V for Vendetta, which was highly recommended by @komikero. Stoked, I reached for my wallet to see if I was adequately equipped with cash. I wasn’t. Note to self: Books first, food later. And for Chrissakes recharge your credit card. As it was almost nine and I had to be in time for the last LRT trip, I went like lighting to the nearest ATM. “Hello,” said the ATM, “I’m an ATM, I operate 24 hours and I am temporarily unable to dispense cash.” Wow, just my luck.

I’m going back for it in a bit and it better still be there. Or a new set of potent expletives will be invented.