Fragments and Shards

Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:54:55 -0700

Let's call this a little backup link to this post, okay? :Open letter from Cavs owner

Dear Cleveland, All Of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers Supporters Wherever You May Be Tonight;

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us.

The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.

There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be communicating much of that to you.

You simply don't deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

You have given so much and deserve so much more.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE"

You can take it to the bank.

If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to Cleveland, I can tell you that this shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own has shifted our "motivation" to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.

This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown "chosen one" sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And "who" we would want them to grow-up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called "curse" on Cleveland, Ohio.

The self-declared former "King" will be taking the "curse" with him down south. And until he does "right" by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.

Just watch.

Sleep well, Cleveland.

Tomorrow is a new and much brighter day....

I PROMISE you that our energy, focus, capital, knowledge and experience will be directed at one thing and one thing only:

DELIVERING YOU the championship you have long deserved and is long overdue....

Dan Gilbert
Majority Owner
Cleveland Cavaliers

Why spend more?

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Mon, 31 May 2010 10:01:13 -0700

So I had to buy a laptop backpack recently and when I started shopping around I found it a bit much that the average price was around $100 for anything good.

I mean, I'm not cheap, but it's just a bloody backpack for Pete's sake!

I wanted the laptop compartment, so a cheap Walmart model just wouldn't do. I soon narrowed the search down to a nice Targus pack with an Asus logo. Quality and good looks. I found it at Canada Computers and checked it out in person. They also had a $20 pack (iCAN) but you could easily tell the quality difference, and with my history of zipper problems I didn't want any issues.

However, at $59.99, the Targus still seemed too high. I didn't want to spend $100, $80, or even $60. And CC told me it didn't come with a warranty.

I kept searching. There HAD to be something good available online (tried eBay, shopbot, Google). The problem always comes down to the shipping. I finally found a place local that carried the same pack for about $26 and local pickup. I was almost ready to pull the trigger, but then the site had an invalid/expired certificate so I was scared away.

Then all of a sudden I thought of those liquidation type places that sell bankruptcy repossessed and overstock items for cheap. Googling again, I came across FactoryDirect.ca. They had an outlet near me and I could not believe the pricing.

Sure, it may not have been my first choice, but for $19.99 how can you go wrong?! And it even comes with a limited lifetime warranty! The same bag currently sells for $32.99 at TigerDirect.ca and of course you still have to pay shipping on top of that!

That, in my opinion, is one hell of a deal.

Changed layout

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:37:27 -0700

I quickly grew tired of the look/feel of the blog and so I decided to change it up. I also wanted to have more than 3 columns so this one suits be better.

I also cleaned up the "About" link/page and removed the dead nav links that I probably won't get around to utilizing for quite some time (if at all).

Overall I'm liking this way better. Feel free to let me know your thoughts.

Twitter Feed

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:49:37 -0700

Added real-time Twitter feed to the right sidebar.

Website traffic monitoring

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:25:24 -0700

Added Google analytics. It takes about 24 hours to start reporting.

Wiring the blog to Twitter

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:22:53 -0700

My next self-assigned task was to wire my blog to my Twitter account.

This post will be the test. Unfortunately, it will not auto-post to Facebook. But I suppose that might be a good thing.

Wiring everything together is actually quite fun. Next step is to figure out how to leverage all of this...

How to import facebook contacts to twitter

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:41:41 -0700

This entry is part SEO experiment and part why-not-try-something-new challenge.

I initially signed up for a shiny new Twitter account when it first launched and gained all that buzz. However, my last tweet was about a year ago - needless to say I didn't really embrace the concept at the time.

But things have changed quite a bit recently. Social Media has taken over both the normal goings-on of the internet, and also seems to be the dramatic new wave of the marketing industry. Mastering these techniques may come in handy...

Tweetdeck is a nice example of a brilliant application that takes full advantage of the interconnectedness of various social media platforms. It allows you to control from one place almost everything thing you would want to get your hands in.

My first question was... Since I hadn't been keeping up with my contacts on Twitter... (I didn't even know who was/wasn't on Twitter)... how would one add their contacts from other places to Tweetdeck/Twitter?

Taking a look at Twitter itself, I quickly discovered the Find People page, and the Find Friends importing function. Sadly, at this time, it is only capable of importing your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL. Facebook is still the number one online social hangout, so naturally the next question was...

How to import facebook friends to Twitter?

A quick Google search revealed many 3rd-party apps that purport to help you accomplish this task. But the idea of giving some unknown developer full access to my Facebook and Twitter accounts didn't sound particularly appealing.

Then I stumbled on this post. Bless his heart. I was able to import my contacts into Hotmail. Then export to a CSV file. Then import into Gmail. Then finally, import from Gmail into Twitter. A few hoops for sure but the bonus is those accounts now also contain all my contacts.

My wiring job is well on its way. Next stop is wiring in this blog. Then on to mobile apps...

Mobile optimization

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:14:28 -0700

I just added a s9y Mobile plugin that auto-detects the browser/client (ie. mobile device) and then formats a special version of this site to fit the medium.

BlackBerry and other basic browser devices will see a much simplified version with reduced image sizes and larger text, while iPhone users will have their own special version.

I've looked at these "feeds" via the Firefox user agent switcher and also on my own BlackBerry Bold 9700 (I don't have have an iPhone).

I'm kind of torn. On one hand the idea of mobile optimization is to reduce bandwidth, speed up page loads, and ensure the content (mainly the text) is as readable on those little screens as possible (and minimize left-right scrolling).

But with a browser like on the iPhone, the plain formatted colours and text just looks plain boring compared to the full-blown FireFox version. The regular site even looks better on the small BlackBerry screen, even though the text is quote small and you have to scroll from left to right to see everything.

But I guess the idea is you just want the quick basics when you're surfing for something quick online. How many sites have we seen that just don't even function when you browse on a mobile device?

I'll leave the mobile stuff reformatting in place for now, but I imagine I'll be addressing this again in the near future.

First Task

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:38:34 -0700

I switched up my first self-assigned task. I had that mis-quotation hanging on the last entry and I thought I would hook up a font-replacing technique for it.

Voila.

All I had to do for this font was put it in a blockquote.

I think I might play with this idea a little more...

so it begins again

nospam@example.com (James Tilberg) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:02:59 -0700

I had a blog once. I believe it was was circa 2001 (the Internet Archive only has a record since 2002 but that's not my fault). Back then my blog was something that I coded by hand. These days, with so many (free) blogging platforms available at one's disposal, who would even bother with that? Everyone has a blog now. But I digress...

That which changes remains the same

And the same can be said for what is in common both then and now: Let's face it, blogs are a bunch of hot air signifying nothing. (Okay, now I've misquoted twice in one paragraph).

My intention this time around is to, yes, publicly archive my thoughts about meaningless trivia. But also, and hopefully more predominantly, use the medium as a catalyst to stay honed in my craft (development) and perhaps even contribute something useful at certain junctures to whomever decides (or is otherwise lead to) read my rantings.

The first task I'll be assigning myself is to "hook-up", aka "wire" this blog to as many other social mediums as is reasonable for one individual to maintain. This may take some time as I haven't figured out exactly what I want to accomplish by doing this. For example, am I trying to cross-promote (aka spam) as many media streams as possible? Or am I looking for a flexible and easy way to get out the same message from any medium of my choosing? Or something else? We'll see.

I'll be thinking about that in my spare time. (this will be an on-going inside joke I'm sure)