Step 1: Pick a domain and check if it’s free. Try to make it something easy to remember, that you don’t have to spell out to people.

Step 2: Buy a hosting package.  I use 1&1 to host, and so far, they’ve been swell.  All you’ll probably need is the beginners Linux hosting package, it comes with a domain, 10 MySQL databases, and 10 gigs of space.  It’s $3.99 a month (but there’s always specials to be had).  You can host elsewhere, just so long as you have a MySQL database and FTP access.

Step 3: Profit!  Just kidding.  Download the latest from WordPress.org.  There’s a bunch of steps here, but rather than just plagiarize, I’m just going to point you in this direction for the general directions, and to here for directions using 1&1 hosting.

Step 4: Time to customize!  You can find easy to install themes to make your blog look more “you”. I believe in crossposting, because not everyone is going to put your blog in their RSS Reader, or even use one.  Here’s a handy MySpace Crossposter and a Live Journal Cross Poster. I also import my blog’s feed into my Facebook.  You probably want to use something like Disqus or IntenseDebate to turn your comments into conversations.  If you make pages such as the ever popular “resume” or “about me” pages, you may want to checkout this post on removing the comments section from the bottom of a post.  If you see any customization on my blog that you’re curious how I’ve done, let me know.

I’ll try to expand on this as I learn more myself, but for now this should definitely get you on the right track.  Happy blogging!

Please don’t take this too seriously or personally - as you all know New Year’s Resolutions rarely involve much “resolve” and are more likely to be a general direction one would like to head in than any hard and fast rules.  That being said, I humbly present for your critique my brainstorm on potential 2009 microblogging resolutions:

1. I will not #unnecessarily #hashtag nearly every #other word.  Not even for #ironic effect.
2. I will not post vague and mysterious emo crud, nor vague and mysterious emo lyrics.
3. I will not post and mention someone just to namedrop. Really. I will search my heart first.
4. I will not attempt to make ten consecutive 140 character posts instead of one 1400 character blog post.
5. I will not post a link to every blog post I make, but rather sparingly link to the ones that are pertinent to a conversation at hand.  Twitter is not my RSS feed.
6. I will use direct messages whenever appropriate, and make “quality over quantity” my mantra for posting publicly.  No daily “Good morning/night, Twitterverse!” posts.
7. I will try to filter Twitter lingo from showing up in my Facebook status, so as to be kind to n00bs.
8. I will not take Quitter personally, everyone follows and unfollows people for different reasons.
9. I will make connections offline, and use microblogging as a tool for rather than a substitute for real life. I will use it as a tool to rally friends for impromptu face time.  :-)
10. I will not overshare or post while consuming alcohol… which generally results in oversharing.
11. I will not be bullied into adding anyone on LinkedIn just because we randomly follow each other, I will retain my LinkedIn network as a list of people that I know that I would recommend professionally.
12. I will strictly limit my forays into the following topics: every cute thing my cat/dog/baby/significant other does, every slightly notable quote by every speaker at every conference I’m at, every food or drink item I’ve consumed all day, every address I’ve arrived at, and every change in the local weather… even if it is SNOPOCOLYPSE 2009 because Seattle got 2mm of snow.
13. I will remember that just because I’m bored at the airport, doesn’t mean that I should inflict that boredom upon everyone else.
14. I will never post a lone URL without some other text to describe why you should follow the link, unless the link is quite self-explanatory.
15. And for all that is good and holy in the world, I will stop rickrolling people already.  Even if I am Wil fraking Wheaton.  It’s 2009 already after all… we need to let it go.

In a nutshell: noise < signal.

Any suggestions for additions to this list?

I have the coolest friends ever, which means I end up with the coolest weekends ever. Really, you guys spoil me. Last weekend was spent with a small group celebrating Micah’s birthday in a beautiful riverside cabin on Hood Canal.

And this weekend? I’m hanging out with my lindy hopping crew. A group of twenty two (TWENTY TWO!!?) of us are renting out a huge log cabin in Leavenworth.

Ah, December. Full of rain and snow and win.

Leavenworth, Washington during the holidays

First, a definition, as the backdrop to my story and subsequent experiment on you, gentle reader:

From Wikipedia: “The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon occurs when a person, after having learned some (usually obscure) fact, word, phrase, or other item for the first time, encounters that item again, perhaps several times, shortly after having learned it. This is a specialised version of the effect of serendipity.”

There are several theories about the psychological explanation of the phenomenon, including a popular one that cites its primary cause as being the recency effect, in which the human brain has a bias that lends increased prominence to new or recently acquired information.”

Now, a specific example pertinent to my own personal life.  Browsing Etsy for Christmas gifts, I noticed this design on several pendants:

I didn’t pay it much attention aside from thinking it was a nice sentiment, until I noticed it was on a few designs from multiple sellers.  Surely, I thought, this must mean something.  The design haunted me a bit.  Perhaps “haunted” is too serious a word, but as a member of the microwave generation, which has grown up with information at our fingertips, the fact that I knew it meant something but didn’t know what that something was began to very subtly annoy me.

I had more pressing things to attend to, so ignored this subtle annoyance, but the next morning got an email from my favourite online tshirt store only to be slapped in the face with a reminder of my annoyance:

An obvious play on the original.  I had to know: what the heck was this from? What did it mean?  What was it’s significance, and why was it so influential that my favourite tshirt site was satirizing it?  I did the obvious Google search and found the history of the design, an interesting little story.  My curiosity appeased, I was now a happily satiated information junkie.

At lunch I noticed a poster directly outside my building, which convinced me once and for all that this slogan was now following me about.  Hours later after dinner, I found it again outside Hops and Chops at Linda’s, waiting for me without any hint of shame.  I took a photo on my trusty iPhone:

Now, the funny thing about this slogan and design is that now I know about it, I am keen to notice it everywhere.  That’s the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon at work.  It is like buying a Dodge Neon, and then suddenly noticing Dodge Neons everywhere.

And of course, it’s sort of a Catch-22.  Now that I know about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, I’ve been noticing examples of it in my own life, like my little story above.  My “Keep Calm and Carry On” instance happened only a week or two after I’d discovered Baader-Meinhof.  And I’d already been meaning to write about the phenomenon because I’m curious to see if once people are informed of it, it starts popping up into their lives as well.   So if you read this, I’m somewhat sorry, it’s like opening one of those vile chain letters that say you’ll now have to forward this to six people to kiss someone at midnight, et cetera… because the way the brain works, now that it has a label for it your brain will start to look for these Baader-Meinhof patterns whether you like it or not. I know mine certainly did. I’d like to hear about it if yours does too. 

The brain is an amazing machine.

(For even more info on the origin of the phrase: See Damn Interesting: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon)

Anthony Stevens did a great job liveblogging the MindCamp experience.  If you’re confused about what being at an “unconference” is like, I’d highly recommend giving it a read through for the play by play.  This was my first unconference myself, and I had no clue what to expect.  I suspected awesomeness.  I was totally right.  This is what I’ve gathered: true to the bar-camp, foo-camp, word-camp, Word-Ignite-Bar-Camp-Camp-Camp-Camp-Palooza-PDX (no, really) format, all unconferences hold to the idea that a conference would probably be just as useful if the speakers were randomly selected from the group going to the conference.  It’s an intriguing model: get space, get food, get interesting people together, and see what happens.  These are motivated folk.  A lot happens.

MindCamp is a 24 hour event (no sleep for the elite), and a good chunk of that is scheduled out by the participants suggesting session ideas and then everyone voting on which sessions we wanted.  Every hour, a new 45 minute session would start, and there were generally about six to choose from.  The schedule looked like this:

It was difficult to choose, to say the least.  I usually had about two or three I wanted to hit.  I only skipped one hour of sessions to take a break and upload photos.  Many of the sessions I did go to can only be described as fascinating brain candy, a few memorable ones were “How to be a Flickr Ninja” (lead by Stewtopia, who took the photo below), “Nerdcraft” (lead by Beth Goza), “Human Tribes and Social Media” (by the Brian Dorsey), “Portals: Making your Life an Adventure Game” (lead by Leif Hanson), a group brainstorming session on “Location Based Services” and “Political Activism and Social Media” (lead by Kathy Gill).

I also went to a session lead by Mónica Guzmán and Jason Preston in which we decided to make a “Viral Video”.  Now, I realize one cannot create a viral video, you create a video and it either goes viral or not, but we tried to make a video that had aspects which might make it popular: short, funny, something people could identify with, etc.  I wish we could have made the sound a little better in parts, but Jason did an amazing job with editing what we had.  We brainstormed the ideas and shot all the scenes in about 45 minutes, so I’m pretty happy with what came out of it:

It was a really fun and informative use of 24 hours, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone with a geeky streak. I met a lot of kindred spirits, and got to spend some time with good friends as well. A big thank you to Synapse who hosted us in their amazing office space in downtown Seattle, and Andru Edwards for organizing.

Well, it’s the last ten minutes of my youth.  So long, youth.  :-)

Tomorrow I turn the page on a new quarter-century of life.  When I put it that way, it’s sort of serious sounding, but really it’s like any other tomorrow: the first day of the rest of my life.

The last twenty five years have been quite an interesting journey.  I’m thankful for all I’ve learned and everyone I’ve gotten to know along the way, and how you’ve each impacted my life.  The nice thing about the years passing by is that good friends only become more cherished with age, like a fine wine.  There is a bouquet of history that slowly and sweetly blossoms as the memories compile and mature.  I’ve found nothing more precious in life than to have positive and caring friends - I am so very lucky.

One nice thing about getting old with friends is knowing that no matter how crinkly we’ll all look in another 25 years, we’ll probably be still silly and joyful on the inside.  And at 75, we’ll probably all be cyborgs.  ;-)

I’d like to take a moment to celebrate a much more ridiculous milestone in my life: my recent travels have put me well over 10,000 photos on Flickr.  When I realized this day was coming up, I thought to myself, Self, you should do something special for that 10,000th photo and whoever is in it. So here’s the photo:

Not a particularly handsome shot of either of us, quite silly and sun burnt, but I think it does convey a lot of the fun I have with Megan, so it makes me smile inside and seems an apropos 10,000th picture.  Megan, what should we do to celebrate?  This calls for an excuse to have some adventure.

Sadly, 26 is the end of my highly-discounted subscriptions to the ACT theatre.  If you’re 25 or under (which, looking at the clock, I see now that I am not anymore) check out the many theatre discounts Seattle offers you while you can.  My other advice for you young’uns?  Well, I’m glad you asked, since I’m a little older (and therefore wiser) than I was at the beginning of this post, here’s 25 nuggets of wisdom I’ve unearthed over my many, many years:

1. Don’t turn the heat on in the house until you think you might freeze despite all the extra clothes you’re wearing.  You’ll acclimate to the climate, and end up saving a ton. You might however drive your roommate bonkers.
2. Speaking of which, save a ton.  Use compound interest to your advantage.  Buy only if you have cash on hand, unless a mortgage or education is involved.  Hiding hundreds in cash in a pencil case and forgetting it was there for several months is also an effective savings plan.
3. Ninjas > Pirates.
4. Only bother going to the theatre for movies that have big explosions, and when you do go, go to The Cinerama.  The rest can wait for watching at home.
5. Don’t bother with television, you really won’t be missing anything.
6. If you really want something, wait.  If it’s that great, you’ll still want it later.  If you forget it, no harm done.
7. Always assume that you can, and figure it out as you go.  Accept challenges as opportunities. Attitude defines your perception, which defines your reality.
8. Don’t bother keeping up with the Jonses.  Especially in the area of electronics or cars.
9. Start running if your little sister wants you to, even if you hate it at first.
10. Have a zombie escape plan… just in case.
11. Make time for family.
12. Even text messages deserve some consideration of proper grammar.
13. Keep a calendar.  Fill it up but don’t double book, it causes stress and hurt feelings.
14. Volunteer, and not always in the area of politics.
15. Set goals and learn to say no to other things.  Every moment has an opportunity cost.
16. Make sure you have a little fluffy pet companion to love you no matter how you’ve messed up that day.
17. Remember that a vodka soda with lime is only 75 calories.
18. Blog if you must, but for gosh sake, not about anything too personal.  The internet is forever.
19. Don’t put ghastly pictures of your friends online.  It’s just not nice.  And again, the internet is forever.
20. Don’t hit lawyers on bicycles with your roommate’s car.  It’s just a bad idea.
21. Having brawls with a Cottonmouth Water Moccasin in a river or a whole hive of bees in an old shack can make for excellent stories.  Most scary experiences do.
22. Surround yourself with positive people.  Preferably those who enjoy terrible puns and cheesy jokes.
23. Enjoy the rain.  There’s beauty in most everything if you look for it.
24. When crossing tracks while riding a bicycle, cross at exactly 90 degrees to the tracks.  Not 70.  Not 110. Exactly 90 degrees. Absolutely perpendicular.
25. Wear sunscreen (this piece of advice is for those outside of Seattle).

I’m sure I could think of more (as an officially old person) but now that I’m elderly I’ve obviously become long winded and I need to go to bed!

Goodnight, world, you crazy bunch of kids.  (Get off my lawn!)

Love,
Cassie

P.S.  It seems sort of quaint to sign one’s own blog, as if you did not know who wrote this, despite that my name is in the URL.  However, we sign email just the same, even though it’s obvious who the email is from.  I feel it’s somewhat endearing.

I realized how comically ridiculous I am tonight when I found myself having a hard time getting around to leveling-up my D&D character for various reasons, but mostly because my Version 4.0 Players’ Handbook is completely in PDF and my MacBook Pro battery died, and I’d stayed out too late to see John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton at Town Hall Seattle and find myself sleepy because I’m still living on UTC-6 time.  This is normal, right?  Normal people procrastinate in leveling up their Half-Elf Paladin because they’re too busy meeting the “I’m a PC” guy… right?

Sigh… I think I may have shifted from geek chic to just plain nerd.

I’m a PC.

[I have an idea for a direction I'd like to take for a bit with my blog. A mini-series of posts, if you will, about my goals. Please excuse the lack of editing, this was "thumbed" out on my iPhone on a flight from Seattle to Chicago to Miami.]

Right now, I’m flying above the earth, pleasantly situated among friends, on the sunny side of the plane, and at a window seat. And while it’s true that half the journey is the getting there, we’re all looking forward to the destination. Direction is key. For all the times I’ve flown, all the times I’ve sat through an airline employee explaining to full grown adults how to buckle a seat belt, not once have I flown the friendly skies purely for the experience of it - a certain destination is always in mind.

Life is the same way. Without goals, we become lost in getting by and making do, and if those come easily any leftover energy is poured into keeping oneself entertained from day to day. Entertainment, while a legitimate respite from work, once moved into real excess dissovles into the doldrums of selfishness, boredom, and a total lack of accomplishment.

The cure for floating along sans meaning is a bit of reflection: you only have one life, what do you want to do with it? What do you want to be? How can you get there? When can you start? Goals drive us to challenge ourselves to accomplish more than just merely making ends meet or feeling happy in the moment - they bring us longterm joy through the satisfaction of real value wrought from this life.

Consider how quickly a year full of Saturdays slip through our fingers. It’s hard to recognize the scarcity of life because, as they say, one is immortal right up until they die. I heard the story of a man who calculated at age 25 that he would likely live until 75, leaving him 50 years left to enjoy, or 2,600 Saturday afternoons. To remind himself of how precious each moment was, he filled a jar with a marble for each Saturday he had left, and every Saturday he would remove one, a reminder that a Saturday once spent is gone forever. This physical representation of the hourglass of life struck a chord with me - how short life really is! How precious each Saturday!

With the Saturdays of my life on the decline (and really, whose aren’t?), I relize how much I’ve yet to accomplish. How much I want to accomplish. I despertly want to look back at a life well lived once I’m old and have things to be proud of, not just be able to say I fought off starvation and boredom for a century or less.

Recognizing you can’t go anywhere without stepping out in a specific direction, I’m setting some goals. Recognizing you can’t go everywhere, I’m keeping the list simple. Recognizing there will be conflicts, I’m prioritizing. I can’t try to do everything, but I can try to make sure those things I do really matter.

[To Be Continued...]

After watching today’s U.S. presidential debate, this quote came to mind, often attributed to an inspiration, Alexis de Tocqueville, though the author is technically unknown:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

This is serious business. If you happen to visit The Battle Station (my home away from office) please do not feed the wildlife (that is, Faye, my little feline companion).  The vet has informed me that Faye needs to drop a pound in order to be at the target weight of 10.5 pounds, otherwise she’s tempting the onset of kitty diabetes.  So, Fayzer Deja Wallender is on her first ever diet.

Oh lordy, I’ve become one of those people who blog about their cat.  But what can I say? I adore the little fuzzball.

Look how tiny she used to be! (No elf ear comments, please.)

In the last four years, we’ve grown up together.  I think our most recent picture needs a LOLcat caption:

Winner gets a special souvenier from my upcoming Caribbean adventure (which is in - holy moly - a mere 5 days!!).

Well, my bank has failed, and everyone’s talking and blogging and twittering about economics and politics, two topics I’m terribly passionate (read: opinionated) about.  In an effort to not get run out of town, I’m going to stick to this as my commentary for now, and try very hard to keep my mouth shut otherwise:

Why keep my mouth shut?  My opinions aren’t going to change yours, and this time of year, some (thankfully, some, not all) people start hating people who don’t think like them.  I like my friends, and would like them to continue liking me.  I know I’m not going to change your vote, so how about we just agree to disagree and go back to talking about Star Wars and web startups like we used to?  I guess I’m just also a little exhausted from political mud-slinging drama, and fairly bummed (dare I say depressed? *Ba-dum-ching!*) about the bailout. Can’t we just be friends?

This is rather silly but interesting in the “let’s take a snapshot of your life right now” kind of way.  I’ve been enjoying others’ posts, so I guess it is only fair to do my own.  So, here’s a moment in the life of Cassie, at work:

Photo Meme, originally uploaded by firewallender.

Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair - just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with the picture.

This is either my most pointless or awesome post ever (depending on who you are).

So, I was considering today the awesomeness of sandwiches available in Seattle, especially near my office on Capitol Hill, and decided to share with you my top picks (in no particular order).

• The Romozzager from The Honey Hole: Roma tomatoes, mozzarella slices, a dash of balsamic vinegar, romaine lettuce, mayonnaise, salt and pepper on a fresh French roll  ($4.05)
• The B.E.T. from Crave: Bacon, escarole, yellow tomatoes, and delicious goat cheese ($7.50)
• Chicken Salad Sandwich from Mia’s Off Broadway Cafe: So good. The perfect chicken salad, with raisins, and balsamic vinegar ($6.25)
• Lemongrass Steak from The Baguette Box: grilled organic ‘strawberry mountain’ lemongrass steak with carrots and some rutabaga-like veggie called jicama that I love ($7.50)

What are your favourite sandwiches in Seattle (or elsewhere)?

My Washington Mutual debit/credit card just expired at the end of August, so today I found myself using a different bank’s card. Why didn’t I just activate the new one they sent me? Without asking me, they had sent me one with RFID, which allows you to pay without even touching the sensor. Maybe it’s secure, but why risk it? There’s enough out there to lead me to believe it isn’t secure, and why should I believe the credit card companies? Of course they’d love to make our spending easier, with RFID we won’t even have to look at the total, and American debt can continue to increase at an even more ridiculous and undisciplined rate.

But spending concerns aside, there’s still security. Apparently, it must be pretty darn hackable, because Adam Savage of Mythbusters wanted to test it and the Discovery Channel quickly got bullied by a bunch of credit card company lawyers to basically stay the heck away from the topic completely “or else”.

Now, this irritates me even more. Security by obscurity is not a valid method in the information age. Notice that everyone and their mother has heard of lock bumping now? The best way to fix a security hole isn’t to hide it. BoingBoing already has showed you can make a RFID reader (and cheaply).

Tomorrow I’m going to my bank and telling them where they can put their RFID tags, and it isn’t on my credit cards. Someday, I might just have to be the nutcase with tin foil around their wallet and passport, but as long as it’s an option I’ll take the ten extra seconds it takes to sign my receipts in exchange for knowing my data stays in my pocket with my cards.

Maybe I sound paranoid, but this is coming from someone who’s been a victim of identity theft twice. I was beginning to feel like Sandra Bullock in The Net. There’s no way I’m going to make things any easier on these guys.

UPDATE (9/3/08): Adam has retracted his statements… sort of.

“There’s been a lot of talk about this RFID thing, and I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong, as I wasn’t on that story, and as I said on the video, I wasn’t actually in on the call,” Savage said in the statement. “Texas Instruments’ account of their call with Grant and our producer is factually correct. If I went into the detail of exactly why this story didn’t get filmed, it’s so bizarre and convoluted that no one would believe me, but suffice to say…the decision not to continue on with the RFID story was made by our production company, Beyond Productions, and had nothing to do with Discovery, or their ad sales department.”

Sounds like someone gets to keep his title as “dude with the best job in the world”.

The Penny Arcade Expo this year was even better than last year, despite the crowding that has resulted from being consistently awesome. Three days of constant “epic/legendary/monumental” everything managed to actually wear me out, which is a great feat, really.

I could recap the whole thing, but I am too tired. Instead, I will just post a link to the photoset on Flickr, and some shout-outs to those who made it great: Harmony for being the best sister in the world, Mike and Jerry of course for putting it on, the Enforcers for making it work, Wil Wheaton for calling me “baby” (swoon), Tony, Cameron, Sam, and Melissa for coming out, and especially the Twitteratti that made up my “PAX Posse”: @andy_k, @bethgo, @jtswinkles. I also had the joy of running into some great folks, albeit way too briefly: Jason and Montine, Colin Henry, Wade Rockett, Scott Robinson, and a bunch of new people I got to meet at PAX. Oh, yeah, and this guy dressed as Mario’s Princess Peach…

It was great to know so many people at PAX, that was a new experience and one I’m grateful to have had, because when it comes down to it, community is what PAX is about, or any conference for that manner. You can get so much information independently online these days, that now few conference panels can provide more factual information than can be easily researched by ones’ self (or viewed online after the fact, for that matter). After attending Gnomedex one weekend and PAX the next, two very different events, I’ve found that 95% of the value quickly becomes getting a chance to share an experience with a like-minded but diverse set of individuals who have committed their time to come together as a community.

So, though I’m tired, my extrovertism remains strong as ever. I feel so lucky to know the people I do, and am amazed at the seemingly non-stop flow of wonderful people in the world. It’s encouraging to know the world can be such a friendly place.

According to the PAX forums, there’s probably at least 250 “New Arcadians” jumping on the Twitter train in anticipation of North America’s largest open gaming convention, the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), taking place here in Seattle this weekend. I’ve noticed a bit of confusion, so I thought I’d post a few tips for attendees who are new to Twitter:

MASTER THE BASICS, YOUNG PADAWAN

Set your phone up on Twitter before you leave for PAX, and If you’re using Twitter by phone (SMS, specifically) learn the SMS commands. To post a tweet, just text it to 40404. Using me as an example, to be my Twitter friend you’d “tweet” follow firewallender. To publicly mention me in a message or reply to me, you’d say, @firewallender Nice post! To send me a private message, you’d say d firewallender Party’s at the Hyatt at 11! If you’re using text messaging (SMS), this would all be to 40404. Keep in mind the limitations of your text messaging plan, because otherwise, this might hurt a bit.

TRACK LIKE A BOUNTY HUNTER

You don’t need to add everyone who posted in the PAX forum as a friend, just track the term “PAX” and add people you find interesting along the way.

Tracking via SMS

This may or may not work, Twitter likes to turn this feature off. Text track PAX to 40404 to get everyone’s tweets (messages) that mention PAX. Use untrack PAX to turn it back off, so you can eventually sleep again. You probably want to track your own username as well, so you’ll always get replies, i.e., @firewallender Boba Fett? Where?

Tracking via a laptop/from the BYOC LAN party

If you’re using a laptop at PAX, use a program like TweetDeck to track like crazy. You can track multiple terms (but of course, you’ll want to track “PAX”) and you get a separate column for your friends’ tweets, replies to you, and each term you’re tracking. It’s rad.

An example screenshot of my TweetDeck tracking Gnomedex and PAX:

Tracking via the Web (mobile or otherwise) or the iPhone

You can always hit up http://search.twitter.com/search?q=PAX from your mobile browser or your laptop to see what’s up.

If you’re one of the poor saps using an iPhone, I recommend installing an application called Twinkle (you can find it in the iTunes App Store for free). If you post using Twinkle, it knows your location, and allows you to see all other Twinkle posts within a mile (or further, you can set your desired radius). You can also use it to post pictures.

NAMEDROP, YO

Notice that tracking “PAX” only works if “PAX” is in the tweet, so if you want your tweet to get seen, mention “PAX”! You’ll sometimes see #PAX. You can toss the “#” in to turn any term into a “hashtag”. PAX hashtags (#PAX) will show up in anything tracking “PAX”, but additionally they show up at http://hashtags.org/tag/PAX/ IF and only IF your Twitter account already follows @hashtags. Mostly, Hashtags are just messy (sorry, Hashtag guys!).  I wouldn’t worry about them if you can use the other methods mentioned to just track the word.

Alright, kids, that’s all I’ve got for now!  If you have any questions, please leave a comment and include your Twitter username. Welcome to Twitter and please say hi if you see me at PAX!  If you’re grateful for this post, please tweet about it to spread the word (and/or invite me to epic PAX parties).

(CW) out.

… but long from forgotten. I need a t-shirt that says, “I went to Gnomedex 8.0 and all I got was 7 t-shirts… and about 50 amazing experiences.”

Photo by Robert Scoble, I’m near the center in pink.

Starting Wednesday night it was a mashup of meeting wonderful new people from all over the world, and spending time with some of the quality Seattleites that make me so happy to call this place home, despite the current summer downpour.

The talks were quite interesting and not exactly what I was expecting. It was more like TED than I thought it would be, and less technical. Probably my favourite talk was Eve Maler’s talk on feed-based Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). The ability to manage one’s own data in a dynamic and powerful way is something that’s certainly due, Eve had some great thoughts on how it might be accomplished.

There were many touching moments too, emphasizing the theme of “human circuitry”. Beth Kanter challenged us to use social media for good, and we raised enough money to send a Cambodian women to college in 90 minutes. Scott Maxwell, the Mars Rover Driver Team Lead, showed us the view of Earth from Mars. Turns out, Earth is tiny! But, he said, we should not look at it and say, “we’re insignificant” - we should look at it and say, “our problems are insignificant - and we have so much to explore and discover yet.”  Jon Malkin showed us innovative research on a “Vocal Joystick” that would assist those with limited motor skills by allowing them to command a computer or a robot with sounds. Seeing technology add to the human experience in such powerful ways was very moving.

And speaking of moving, another highlight was dancing on stage with Matt Harding: a truly silly but wonderful experience.

I took only about 45 pictures (one seen below), but there’s well over 1,500 up in the Flickr pool. Wow.

New friends: Steve Spalding, Duncan Riley, and Eric Rice at the Edgewater.

It makes me feel like I’m twelve years old, but I can’t help but have that magical mix of excitement for all that I’ve just experienced and the deep sadness that “camp” is over. The community was definitely the shining star of the event - everyone added to the conversation in such a genuine way. I miss my Gnomedex friends already, but at least I can say, we’ll always have Twitter. At least until the Fail Whale strikes again.

~ Cassie

P.S. Yes, there was a presentation on the history of the Lolcat. Yes, I made myself look very silly on YouTube (again) and got 10,000 views (yikes). And yes, we started that ridiculous rumor about the Adobe Yahoo acquisition. Epic.