Enjoying Tim Horton's and Having Fun

Life is good. I have a woman that loves me, good friends and a incredibly intelligent and wonderful 5-year-old son. I love what I do for a living, and I have plenty of hobbies to dabble in.

One of those hobbies is blogging. Yes, it's a hobby. I haven't made a dime off blogging, and at this rate, I probably never will. And that's okay. I keep up with social media news and follow the blogosphere celebrities on Twitter. I register crazy domains left and right.

There are some real talented writers out there. You used to only read their work in newspapers and magazines. Thanks to the rise of Internet media we have unprecedented access to writers from all over. Now a talented author from Denver who once could only be read locally can syndicate himself globally for virtually no cost.

What pulls the amateurs like me in is the fact that we can rub elbows with the pros with very little effort, which is unlike any other interest out there. If you play golf, what are the odds of you catching up with Tiger Woods and shooting a round with him? (Unless you look great in a bikini. Ok, low blow.) If you're out playing catch with your son, what are the odds Derek Jeter will pull over in his Porsche and holler for you to throw to him?

But as a blogger, you have a chance to write something great, post a link on Twitter, Facebook, submit it to Digg or some other outlet, and before you know it you may have your article commented on by an industry heavy. Happens all the time. Just not to me. Yet.

But even if your blog is never read by anyone more than your girlfriend and a couple of her friends she strong armed into clicking on a link, at least you have a place on the Internet that is yours. You picked the template. You designed the logo. You choose the topics every day. You've created your very own journal that you can look back on with fondness. Your life is documented. Your thoughts are recorded. Your voice is a piece of historical value for those reflecting on the life and times of the 21st century.

I love blogging.

Relax With Jack Daniel's Filled Chocolates

So I was about to win a game of professional Farkle when I got nailed with a six dice Farkle in the last round and I had my victory snatched from me! This was after I made a Hollywood story-esque comeback from being down by 5,000 points.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about: be glad. Be very glad. Farkle was put on Facebook by Satan to steal your soul in four hours increments.

So after I pounded my desk and screamed out a defiant "NO!" I came back to my senses and realized I deserved a nice treat.

What better treat than a chocolate packed with whiskey?

These chocolates by Turin state that a serving size is three pieces. Well, the good folks at Turin didn't have to tell me twice as all three pieces went down the hatch.

Delicious and satisfying... now I'm trying to figure out if that twinge in the back of my head is the start of a buzz or me beginning to slip into a diabetic coma.

Mmmmmmm-mmm.

SHURL.MOBI: Shortcuts for your Mobile Phone

While in Iowa this weekend I had lots of time to think and kick around ideas during downtime. Part of that time was spent checking the availability of domain names.

I know most experts agree that your product/idea should be completely fleshed out and ready to implement long before a domain name comes into the picture. But for some reason my brain doesn't work that way. Having a name to build around is what makes the journey more exciting and personal.

Not the best analogy here but it's almost like raising a child. Before you've ever taught them one lesson, shown them any compassion, or begun to bond with them you've given them a name. You don't wait until their 18 to look them over and say "Well Concept Child #717341, you look and act like a Bob would, and it's catchy, so... your name is now Bob."

Besides, domains are cheap. If you picked the wrong name, so what? Buy a new domain when you're all done. There's just something about having your .COM flag waving out there waiting to be populated with your product, your idea, your mental sweat that gets the blood pumping!

This weekend one of the ideas flowing around my head was: "Wouldn't it be great to have a tool that I could quickly convert any website into a mobile browser friendly site, and get a shortened URL to punch into my phone to view it?"

First domain name idea that came to my head was chop.mobi. And for a "reasonable" price of $4,000 it could have been mine. Pass. Cut.mobi? Gone. Clip.mobi? Forget it.

So after running down the list, finally SHURL.MOBI emerged as the winner. (Mostly because it was available.)

Now that I had the domain, what to do with it? Enter a great free PHP script called YOURLS. By configuring and installing the script on your server it lets anyone manage their own URL shortening site. The setup was incredibly easy: create a MySQL database for YOURLS on your server, edit the configuration file to match the setting you want, create a .htaccess file that gives YOURLS the permissions it needs, run the installation.php file and you're done.

But that was only a third of the battle. How do I convert the pages into a mobile friend format? That's where Google's Mobilizer comes in. Google Mobilizer takes any URL and converts it into a mobile browser friendly format. It's not the prettiest, and in the case of some blogs you have to scroll past any content they have in the left column to get to the article you were trying to read (LifeHacker.com, for example) but for the most part it's a decent tool that makes sending requests to it easy as pie. You simply have to insert the site you want converted right in the URL.

For example:

http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http://eatwithaspork.com&btnGo=Go&source=wax&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Simply replace http://eatwithaspork.com with the URL you want converted and you're done.

So now I have the domain, I have the shortening script installed, I have the mobile converting tool selected... now it's time to bring it all together.

The magic happens in the sample PHP code that comes with YOURLS. When creating the INDEX.PHP file from that sample code, I simply slipped in two new variables before the $url definition.

$part1 = "http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=";

$part2 = "&btnGo=Go&source=wax&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8";

Then I changed the $url line to include the two new variables:

$url = $part1.$_REQUEST['url'].$part2;

With the changes made, each time a URL gets shortened it automatically gets fed to the Google Mobilizer as the complete and correct URL.

Thus http://shurl.mobi/1 appears as http://eatwithaspork.com converted for the mobile screen.

Could shurl.mobi be better? Absolutely. Statistics tracking, the ability to turn images off, and cutting out the Google middle man by doing the conversion directly are some improvements I see right off the bat.

Interested in making something happen? Let's work something out. This might be a project worth funding myself if the price is right.

Photo by Pawel Kabanski

The Man Likes to Write

I love to write. Most of the time, it's about nothing. But sometimes I have something profound to say and I lose it while driving in the car.

And why is that? Why do we have the best ideas at the times when we have no way to record to them?

Remember when the first pasta pots first started to appear a few years back? As soon as the first infomercial hit the airwaves about 10,000 Americans and I suddenly remembered that great idea we had while we were driving somewhere one day.

You know what I'm talking about. Something happens to you and it causes a short lived flash of brilliance. A thought that starts off with, "if only there was a way..." And as quick as the thought forms, it's gone.

I made a New Years' resolution to no longer let stuff like that go. If it hits me, I write it down. I don't care if it's on paper, Evernote, or the back of my hand. Those ideas are worth gold, and if I can't make them happen, I can sell them, and if I can't sell them I can give them away here.

And maybe, just maybe, if you pick up an idea for free from me, and it works... well you'll be a little more likely to buy into my next one.