Michaelbox

Ear­lier today in the Word­Press IRC help chan­nel, some­one asked the ques­tion about what’s the “best” web traf­fic and ana­lyt­ics plu­gin that any­one knew about. I was answer­ing with Google Ana­lyt­ics as that’s what I used and had low issue with. How­ever, some­one else men­tioned Piwik, and being the curi­ous type, I checked it out.

It all looked stan­dard fare and what I’d expect out of web ana­lyt­ics. How­ever, I stum­bled across this bul­let point and that more or less sold me on try­ing it out.

You own your web ana­lyt­ics data: because Piwik is installed on your server, the data is stored in your own data­base and you can get all the sta­tis­tics using the pow­er­ful Piwik Ana­lyt­ics API.

I really liked the idea of own­ing my own traf­fic data instead of hav­ing it all reside on Google’s server. Over time, I’ve grown to become more sus­pi­cious of what they are and could be doing with the data they have on me. While I know I can’t avoid them com­pletely, gmail for exam­ple and android smart­phones, I can limit what they have on me in other areas. I no longer use them as my default search either, I’ve moved over to Duck Duck Go.

Nonethe­less, we’ll see exactly how well I end up lik­ing Piwik, but from what I’ve seen so far, I will likely remain happy for a long while, and retain my own data.

I really can’t recall when I posted these ques­tions, if ever, so I fig­ured I’d do that now. These were done over myspace prob­a­bly around the mid­dle of the decade. Text file meta­data says 2006. So it’s been quite a while. I think this was dur­ing my time of being inter­ested in hav­ing a music review col­umn + fea­tur­ing artists I knew of and loved. Any­ways, to the interview.

(con­tinue reading…)

I will admit that ever since some­time this sum­mer, I’ve slowly become a vinyl LP junkie. I was even slowly pur­chas­ing some before I even had a way to play them. By now I feel that I’ve gath­ered up a small but respectable library of mostly full albums, but also a tiny amount of 45rpm sin­gles. Thank­fully I have also since then pur­chased a record player and it works quite nicely for me. Down below is my library:

Full LPs

• An Amer­i­can Tail — Soundtrack
• The B-52s — The B-52s
• Back To The Future — Soundtrack
• The Ban­gles — Dif­fer­ent Light
• Big Pig — Bonk
• Billy Squier — Emo­tions In Motion
• Blondie — The Best of Blondie
• Blondie — Eat To The Beat
• The Cars — Candy O
• Cheap Trick — Dream Police
• Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival — Chronicle
• Cyndi Lau­per — She’s So Unusual
• Cyndi Lau­per — True Colors
• Dire Straits — Broth­ers In Arms
• Duran Duran — Rio
• Dusty Spring­field — Dusty In Memphis
• Eddie Mur­phy — How Could It Be
• Elton John — Mad­man Across The Water
• Fid­dler On The Roof — Soundtrack
• Fleet­wood Mac — Rumours
• The Great Mup­pet Caper — Soundtrack
• The Knack — Get The Knack
• Linda Ron­stadt — Heart Like A Wheel
• Mary Pop­pins — Soundtrack
• Mike Old­field — Tubu­lar Bells
• Mr Bun­gle — Disco Volante
• Nat King Cole — The Christ­mas Song
• Neil Young — After The Gold Rush
• Poi Dog Pon­der­ing — Poi Dog Pondering
• Rock­well — Somebody’s Watch­ing Me
• Roxy Music — Avalon
• Sat­ur­day Night Live — Clips from the First Season
• Sid Straw — Surprise
• Sly & The Fam­ily Stone — Great­est Hits
• Soul Asy­lum — Hang Time
• Space­balls The Soundtrack
• Thomas Dolby — The Flat Earth
• Thomas Dolby — The Golden Age of WIreless
• Van Halen — Van Halen
• Wil­low — Offi­cial Soundtrack
• The Won­der Stuff — Hup
• Young Franken­stein — Offi­cial Soundtrack

Sin­gles

• Peter Parker — Swal­low The Rockets
• Thomas Dolby — Europa and the Pirate Twins/Radio Silence
• Thomas Dolby — She Blinded Me With Science/Flying North

Which side do you rep­re­sent? (repost urged from fel­low Fedora Design Team members)

Vi(m)

or

Emac?

While the name “Jon Phillips” may not be instantly rec­og­niz­able to you, if you attempt to keep your thumb on a gen­eral pulse of the web design com­mu­nity, chances are you’ve come across him already, or at least his online mag­a­zine Spyre Studios.

I recall the day that the idea of inter­view­ing him came up. Selene M. Bowlby and I were talk­ing and I went to my twit­ter list to see who I could inter­view next. Jon’s pro­file showed up and to me, approach­ing him felt like aim­ing for the stars. I men­tioned the idea to Selene and she was for it 100%, She sug­gested to men­tion her­self in my intro­duc­tion email since her and Jon had con­versed a lot in the past. Thank­fully, Jon agreed to par­tic­i­pate and here we are, about to get to know Jon Phillips.

(con­tinue reading…)