Clarkosaurus

Wow.  iTunes 8 and Genius playlists are really, really, stunningly good. Brilliant.

I’ve been slowly moving all my web sites over to Joomla this year and I really have to say that I like it. I’m a doctor, not a programmer, so I like to be able to grab and install components and modules (and templates!) that do what I want, install them, and off I go. Even if they cost a little money.

One component in particular has been a godsend: Joomla Updater by Intellispire software. It does two things really, really well:

1. It tells me when there’s a new update to Joomla 1.5 and can do the installation for me.  I’ve used the updater my hosting service offers and it failed several times.

2. It tells me when there are updates to components and plugins that I have installed and can do the installation for me, thus saving me the time of having to go to developer sites to check for new version personally.

Both are huge time savers for a non-programmer like myself. Nick Temple, the owner, is also ‘Joomla Smart’ and I find that, in general, associating with smart people makes me look good, too.

I think the most coveted Secret Service assignment right now has to be protecting Governor Sarah Palin.  I said it (privately) right after she was nominated and I’ll say it again after reading this touching story.

Or should I say, I knew I was hacked for the first time today? A hacker managed to insert a link to an executable file on one of the sites that I run with Joomla. I’m not sure how they got their nose under the tent, but they did. I finally managed to fix everything and, of course, changed all passwords (good thing I have 1Password to keep track of all of those long passwords!).

Charles Krauthammer is a physician and Conservative commentator.  Here’s another jewel from his column this week:

By an overwhelming margin of 2-1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the last 27 years.

Democrats have been adamantly opposed. They say that we cannot drill our way out of the oil crisis. Of course not. But it is equally obvious that we cannot solar or wind or biomass our way out. Does this mean that because any one measure cannot solve a problem, it needs to be rejected?

And also this piece:

By any reasonable calculation of annual tire-inflation and tune-up savings, the Outer Continental Shelf holds nearly a hundred times as much oil. As for oil shale, also under federal moratorium, after a thousand years of driving with Obama-inflated tires and Obama-tuned engines, we would still have saved only one-fifth the oil shale available in the United States.

Read the whole thing.

10 Facts About Biodiesel.

After struggling with for a year with my Yamaha electric standing bass, I asked the folks at Upton Bass to make one for me. It arrived last week and Robert Kain of the Country String Shop set up for me. Now to get those calluses back on the finger tips of my left hand….and beg my teacher to take me back.

One of my favorite apps for OS X is Agile Web Solutions’ 1Password. It’s a strong password generator and place to store passwords that integrates seamlessly with OS X and OS X web browsers. It’s so easy to use that my online work is more secure because it’s so easy to create strong passwords instead of just using one password for everything. The app sees like it’s updated almost daily….except for recently.

And today I found out why! They’ve been working on their iPhone OS 2.0 1Password application.

We just ordered Diesel VW Jetta TDI from Autohaus Lancaster. Well over 40 mpg highway. Sold.

GCalendar is a very nice component or Joomla 1.5 that can display data from a specific Google calendar as a module on your Joomla site. I just figured out that turning on Search Engine Optimization interferes with Gcalendar and results in the module showing no upcoming events. Turn off SEO and everyting works fine.