What is that widget at the top of my blog?

If you are reading this post in a newsreader/aggregater, this post still applies to you. 

There is now an audio player for a podcast called What's New in News located just above my recent blog posts. It does not long for you to understand that I am part of this podcast. The podcast, about journalism issues, is a weekly series, with new episodes every weekend. 

More will be said about the show in the coming months; we're rolling out with a "soft launch" right now, with 'full court press' coming later. 

In the meantime, enjoy our podcast! For anyone interested in what's going on with news and industry issues, it is a perfect discussion for you. (Better yet, it is a call-in show, too. More on that, later on.)

Extended Vacation

I'm back from my camping trip at Brower Park. I'll have a post about that coming soon. But until then, this blog will take, in theory, one more vacation day.

Lite posting

I'm getting ready for a camping trip and have a few other items to attend to, so blogging will be lite for the rest of the week. I'll be doing a post at some point about the new comic book-to-movie, The Watchmen. (Don't ask me what the movie is about, that's half my post.)

In the meantime, I've been taking some sports photography this summer. Check it out the team blog I post on, Russ' Softball.

Short blog post

Life goes on, but so must this blog.
Expect a full post tomorrow.

To play tricks with time

Did you know that you can blog for the future? Blogger allows you to write up a post, edit the time and date for the future, and the blog will publish your text at that specific time in the future. So I could sit down in one afternoon, make six blog entries and stagger the posting times for the rest of the week. It would then look like I'm posting every day, but, the truth is that some robot is posting days-old messages for me.

The reason I say this isn't because I'm necessarily planning on doing that, per se. But because I changed the time date stamp for each post to read "by Charles Jurries for Month, Date Year" instead of "by Charles Jurries on Month, Date Year." See the difference? By saying a post was written "on" a particular date, it implies that I was, in fact, at a computer that day and typed the post, instead of delegating the posting to a robot. I can correct that, however, by saying that the post was written "for" a certain day. Suddenly the automatic publishing becomes less and less of an issue, and whether or not I'm posting or a robot is posting a week's-old message from me, the post is still intended "for" that day.

For the record, I wrote this post yesterday afternoon.

Yards, not miles (Or, welcome to the new home)

There are still a few tweaks to be made, but the new site design is now up and running. The paint is still fresh and I'm bound to make a few changes here and there, especially with the sidebar. But it's not a marathon anymore. Instead of running miles, I'd be skipping a few yards, as it were.

Definitely

The new template for this blog is looking MUCH better than this, so, I will change the look of this blog. It will be different, but, a good different.

WARNING

I have an itching to re-design this blog again.. We'll see if it happens or not, though.
(And I'm talking a major re-design. It would look totally different.)

Blogroll

I've also added some "real-time" blog feeds to the sidebar. Blogger in Draft is just too much fun! I've also cleaned up a few items and may change some others. Nothing like a little late spring cleaning.

I call your attention to the right

On the right-hand side, on the sidebar, is a live webcam image from a camera on top of the Bridgewater Place building in downtown Grand Rapids, MI. I think I have it set to refresh every 330 seconds, so if you're on the site this long (thank you!), then the page may refresh on you. And now you know why.

Coming to you from the future

Blogger is currently beta-testing a feature that will allow automatically posts a new blog at scheduled times. So I can write up a post and then tell it to post it Friday at noon, and it will do so. How cool is that?

New blogs!

I am pleased to announce that we are getting the Collegiate blogs off the ground. You can find a complete list of them here. I am helping to write the TV blog and the movie blog. Check those out, check them often, and check others, too. It is pretty exciting, and I will be posting there a lot more than I am here currently.

TV Writer's Strike Not Affecting "Bemusings"

Top-level sources, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed that Bemusings will continue as scheduled and will not be impacted by Monday's writer's strike.

A request for a new blog post has, however, gone unanswered.

Welcome to the same-old same-old

Welcome to Bemusings, the exact same blog as The Epsilon Institute but without the corporate structure! You see, rather than spare you the details about stock buyouts and backstabbing chairmen, I'll just let you know that this will be the same type of blog that TEI was. It's just now known as Bemusings, that's all.

NOTE: That header may not be final and is subject to change.

Imagine No Direction

Chances are, you can imagine a direction. You may be able to imagine no direction, but that would be quite difficult. After all, if you've arrived at one point, you should be able to go back. That would by itself be one particular direction.

Anyways, I know I want to do a typical annual makeover of this site. And I may even be changing the URL, too. But, the new title and the new design still elude me a little bit. I know kind of what I want to do. But, also, I'm not sure I do. (The blog may shrink down to a normal size, instead of the full-size that it is now. Maybe not, though.) If any changes happen, I'm sure you'll be able to see them right away.

UPDATE #1: Site currently under construction.

Contemplating Changes

I may be moving away from the Institute branding on this site. I may not be, though. (Which, in my experience, usually translates to "I will be.") We'll see.

The New "Delta"? Is TDIN Dead?

As you may have noticed, The Delta Institute Newsblog has been abandoned after the death of Gerald R. Ford. This is not intentional, I just haven't updated it yet. So I was looking at the site and thinking that it could use another graphics overhaul again this summer, then I began to think of different things I could do to spruce up the site. Then I got to thinking of instituting Tabula Rosa, a clean slate. A new blog. Called Page D7. So I went to a different blogging service and created this new blog. I made a couple quick posts and put together a image of how the site looks like. (If you click on the image below and view it, then it's just as if you were at this top-secret site yourself)


How come I'm not giving out the link? Because if I decide not to change to this blog, then it'd be somewhat pointless. It's certianly not impossible to figure out, mind you. At all. But just the same, a image will suffice in the meantime.

If I decide to take up news blogging again, and if I decide to start up Page D7, I'll let you know. But, until further note, TDIN is still alive and is my official news blog.

CONFIRMED: Epsilon is spam

Blogger's anti-spam robots detected that my blog had "characteristics" of being a spam-blog. Would it be the long, long boring posts? Because, that could be spam. Could it be the massive amounts of content in the sidebar? Sure. Or could it be that the bots simply saw the "hacks" that we made to the template to make this site so beautiful that they got jealous and tried to shut us down?

No matter, we're back to full-speed now. My thanks to the folks at Blogger for getting this blog un-locked. They did it for me once before for GRsermons.com, after that was thought to be a spam blog as well. (And that I can definitely understand how the AntiSpamBots thought it could be spam.)

Now, I guess the main reason my site was flagged was because of my links(?). Whatever. But if it was just presentation alone, well, then I'd be willing to change the look of the site. But what would I change it to? I could go to a different template and start with a clean slate (tabula rosa), or, I could replace the current header with something completely different. What'd you think? Too loud and shout-y? (If you click on the image you can view it full-screen.)


OR... With a image in the header instead of the big, yellow, redundant "Epsilon". (The "E" in "E Institute" is the Greek symbol for Epsilon. Tricky, I know!) And then I could change the picture in the header every few weeks or so.
I better stop talking about this, or else I'll actually do it!


Actually, that "bolder," "for the visually-impaired" look might look better on Delta. Hhhmm...

Year in Review: The Graphics

If I didn't have the graphics for Delta, I wouldn't keep that site up. Sure, I loooove looking around for a story that's A) not topical and is B) interesting and C) is being pretty much "ignored", but if I didn't afford myself an "artistic release" through Photoshop, well, I'd probably be a sad, depressed individual. I may not be good at is, but I've been into various mediums of art throughout my entire life. It's fascinating, and although I currently wouldn't use art as a career (then I'd have to wear a beret), as a pastime, I love it. And celebrating in that tradition, I'm now going to post some of the graphics that I've made for the Twin Institutes that I really, really like. Enjoy!

Epsilon's Deleted Scenes

Have you ever stuck around for the credits of a movie, only to be awarded with a extra or deleted scene from that particular film? Well, Epsilon is kind of employing that same idea for this site. You see, now at the bottom of the page, after all of our posts (which are as boring as some movie's credits!), you'll see two badges. One is for Flickr, the other is for Facebook. All they do is basically show you what's going on in the life of Chuck, outside of the Institutes. I'm currently planning on updating my Flickr site fairly frequently, so that badge will be changing constantly. Facebook, well, the only change that you'll really notice on the badge is my status.

The point is, not only can you now watch YouTube clips that I like, listen to my music, read about my thoughts and ponderings, visit my favorite sites, but now you can keep up with my photos and Facebook account as well. If only all of that aforementioned stuff were actually really interesting, then we'd be compelled to actually, truly care! :)