Wikify your paragraph
Recently I started a US Navy History blog that is (so far) doing nothing except re-posting what is found on the "this day in history" page of navy.mil. I did this for a couple reasons. The first reason was that they don't have an RSS feed over there that I can subscribe to. The second reason is that I wanted to add to the usability of the article. To do this, I wanted to insert links to Wikipedia for quick and easy reference to topics covered in the paragraphs.
First I found wikify@appointment.at. This was pretty good ... except 1) they request that you put 1 second between each query and 2) they only support single words. I wanted to "read" through the article and smartly insert hyperlinks.
Here's what I came up with:
example:
1898 - USS Oregon departs San Francisco for a 14,000-mile trip around South America to join the U.S. Squadron off Cuba.
1917 - The Navy Department authorizes enrollment of women in the Naval Reserve with ratings of yeoman, radio electrician or other essential ratings.
1942 - The Secretary of the Navy gives the Civil Engineering Corps command of the Seabees.For more information about naval history, visit the Naval Historical Center Web site at www.history.navy.mil.
This code works well for me. It is a little messy with some checks I put in to only give me words that I care about, but as I said, it gets the job done.
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E-Libraries
What are libraries doing in this age of electronic and i-everything? It looks like they are keeping up!
While I do not know the behind the scenes legalities that the libraries are working with the publishers, I really do like the results. Libraries have lists of books that can be 'checked out' onto your Kindle/iPhone/iPad/Mac/PC/etc... You check them out for a certain amount of time and then they are automatically returned.
It is as simple as that. So here's some links to help you get started:
The service that I have found super useful is called: OverDrive
So far I have used their iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod) app which can be found: (free) OverDrive Media Console
Help on other devices can be found here
Once inside the app, there are menus to search for local libraries. I found both San Antonio and Cincinnati have ebook rentals available.
For my readers in the Navy, check out: http://navy.lib.overdrive.com for some great reading lists that you can check books out through as well.
Happy 5th Birthday
The day almost passed without me realizing that it is the birthday of this blog. March 10, 2007 I started not my first blog, but this blog. It has changed domains over the last few years, the types of posts have changed as well, but a full archive of all the posts is still up and available.
Over the years I have used this blog mostly as a personal journal. Sure there are posts that are geared towards specific audiences, but they are few. I love having a place to write that is public, but is not being held to any level of quality or standards other than my own.
This last year has probably seen fewer posts than any year prior. This last year has brought much change to my life. In this next year, though, I'd like to change the rate of posts. I have always held myself to the standard of writing at least once a month. I'd like to increase that to once a week. It was not an issue for me to write once a month, typically the end of the month would draw near and I'd casually think about something that was going on at the moment and write. It will be a challenge, at first, to write once a week.
Writing has always been a joy of mine. As I try and better myself as a Navy Officer and person in general, it becomes more apparent everyday the need to organize and clearly express my thoughts and opinions with words on a page, whether physical or digital. This of course helps me organize my thoughts in my mind so that I can be ready to discuss them verbally if ever the need arises.
As always, thanks for reading. I love analytics, so here's a few for those interested:
- Number of posts: 333
- Number of comments: 118
- Page Views: 21,690
- Most viewed post (1,789 views): Photos in iMovie Trailers
- Most searched term (196 searches): oar test prep
Decent Men
Here's another excerpt from Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (amazon):
From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two--the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race"--and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.
The "this" in "From all this..." is the author's explanation of the grace sometimes seen from camp guards and officers in the concentration camps he was attached to.
While decency is left up to interpretation, a lot can be taken away from the paragraph.
While the "pure race" is most likely in reference to Hitler's ideology, this paragraph is very applicable to our current world. If men were defined by their decency in today's world, we'd all be better off.
Mustache March Haiku
One change I would like to make to my blog is to write more with fewer words. What better way to kick this off than with a Haiku!
Say goodbye top lip
Thirty-one mornings no blade
Happy Mustache March!