On another website I manage, we have been toying around with the idea of podcasting a few of the audio and video tracks we have accumulated over the years. The only problem is this: How in the heck does one ‘podcast‘?

Now, some of my friends have done it with much success (of course, because I’ve downloaded them all to my iPod). So, the task was to determine the best way to use WordPress with some sort of PodCasting plugin that would give us exactly what we needed. With as much programming experience I have, I never felt that I would not be able to determine the best solution.

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If there is one thing I distaste about most blogs, is the rambling front page with endless entries. I like my websites to be concise, organized but interesting to the eye. That’s one of the biggest reasons I am using the Gridlock theme. It has that… magazine style of front end that appeals to me. So, when my previous ‘Art of Wasting Time’ entry, I was rather upset with myself for letting it get it get so long.

So, I have decided to continue along the the ‘Best of Online Video’ theme, and continue with what I consider to be some of the greatest clips I have found.

It took me some time to think back to previous clips that I had noticed and laughed considerably afterwards (or during, if it was particularly amusing). I have to give my ‘props’ to SNL… you’ll see why.

You know… I haven’t seen ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. I have, however, read the book. I like most Sci-Fi moral tales…. except Harry Potter. I guess it’s just me. I’m more of a ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy‘ kind of guy.

Last summer, my two kids (Jared and Haley) and myself worked on a digital-short which they had written themselves. It was a pretty novel idea. It was spawned from the ‘Intro to Film and Video’ class that I took over a year ago here at the University of Iowa.

Yes. It’s a shameless plug. But, hey, it’s my kids. They are pretty stinkin’ smart… obviously they get it from me…. maybe.

Some of the funniest clips are those that should never have been leaked out to the general public. If you know what I mean, then you’ve seen the ‘Star Wars Kid’ clips. If not… where have you BEEN!

Begin Short Break-Down: Some kid at school used their equipment to film himself doing light-saber stunts using some kind of long pole as his weapon. Someone else grabbed the footage and posted it online. It spurned a whole series of clips that placed him in odd situations, usually super-imposing him atop of ‘Neo’ of the Matrix or Uma Thurman in ‘Kill Bill’. This is my favorite clip… the Star Wars version. For more info on the whole story, read about it here. Here is more on from Wired.com.

For those that simply cannot figure out EXACTLY how to add new pages they’ve created for their blog into the header. I may have more detailed instructions:

You’ll have to manually edit the the header.php file in the Theme Editor. Toward the bottom of the file, you’ll find where the page listings are stored. Just locate the the comment that says:

— change these links to suit your site –

You should find the div class=’nav’ tag that adds the ‘home’ link just below that. Just copy & paste another version of that line for each ‘page’ button you want to add. Edit it the copied line like this:

<div class=”nav”><a href=”<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>/name-of-page” title=”name-of-page”>name-of-page-to-display-in-nav-bar</a></div>

I hope this helps.

Now that the complicated hosting switch from Linux to Windows and BACK to Linux is completed, I can get back to rebuilding this blog. For the Comics In Action website, there are still a few items that need to be fixed / tweaked:

1. Rebuild email contact list. I recall transferring the hotmail contact list to another format, before I could import them into Net-Sol’s email contact list, but at the moment I forget what I needed to do. I just wish I hadn’t deleted those files after I completed the transfer the first time. Oh, well.
2. Fix the newsletter form. I think I can do this by tweaking it’s css file. I wish that Net-Sol would allow me to edit existing cgi forms, rather than force me do delete them if they don’t look right.
3. There may be a bug in the current javascript for randomizing a couple graphics. I suspect it may have to do the HTML 4.0 / 4.01 Transitional DTD all the pages currently use. I’ll have to check out www.w3c.org to confirm this.
4. Danuuc has yet to get me the graphics that Spoon & Butters want me to use for their Agent pages.

Is that it? I’m sure I’ll find more stuff as this week rolls by.