Author Archives: Chris

How to connect YouTube with other accounts w/ new YouTube interface

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With the new YouTube interface, some of the screens/options have changed.

This page shows you where to change the services you share videos, favorites, likes, comments, etc.

First, log in to your YouTube account and then go to

http://www.youtube.com/account_sharing

or click on the Settings under your account menu (top right). Then click on Sharing on the left menu. This should be the Sharing and Connected Accounts page.

Click on “Connect” next to the the accounts you want to connect such as Facebook, Twitter, orkut, or MySpace. Ofcourse connecting accounts requires you to have, and log in to, the accounts.

Click the checkboxes next to items you want to share like Comment on a video.

Click Save Changes.

That’s it.

Stop SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act

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Here’s a copy of the letter I sent from http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

To Bill Flores, Kay Hutchison, John Cornyn
NOTE: Each recipient will only see his/her own email address.
Subject Please stop S. 968 and the PROTECT IP Act!
Message Dear [Recipient],

I am writing to you as a voter in your district. I urge you to oppose the House version of S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act. The PROTECT IP Act is dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted. The House version — introduced by Rep. Goodlatte — is far worse. Over the coming days you’ll be hearing from the many businesses, advocacy organizations, and ordinary Americans who oppose this legislation because of the myriad ways in which it will stifle free speech and innovation. We hope you’ll take our concerns to heart and oppose this legislation.

Sincerely,

This is to stop H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and S.968 – PROTECT IP Act of 2011.

The Texas Senators are Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn.

The District 17 representative is Bill Flores.

I urge you to contact your congressmen and tell them these bills are bad. They are the first step toward eliminating online freedom of speech and innovation.

Oven Baked Spare Ribs

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I call this the 4 by 4 oven-baked spare ribs. The recipe takes 4 hours and cooks 4 pounds of spare ribs (and probably uses 4 feet of tin foil).

Step 1: prepare your rub mixture of spices. Wash the ribs and remove the membrane from bone-side. Cut off “the skirt” – a small piece of meat on one side that sticks out – this makes the rack of ribs look more rectangular. Sprinkle both sides of the ribs with your rub mixture. Place in a baking dish, bone-side down. Wrap the dish with tin foil. Let it sit at room temperature for 1 hour. (Towards the end of the hour heat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Step 2: bake ribs for 1 hour. Remove foil from baking dish and drain any fat from the pan. Slather both sides with barbecue sauce. Place ribs back in the baking dish, bone-side down. Leave the tin-foil off.

Step 3: bake ribs for 1 hour or until meat separates from bone. Remove from oven and wrap the rack of ribs in tin-foil. Place the ribs in a paper bag, and fold the top of the bag closed.

Step 4: let sit at room temperature for 1 hour. Enjoy your tender, fall-off-the-bone spare ribs.

Inspiration: TheMeatSource.com Oven Baked Ribs Spare Ribs.

Easy Rider, Vanishing Point and Network

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Two great movies every one should see. Although Easy Rider (1969) received more acclaim, Vanishing Point (1971) is the film people can’t seem to forget. They are driving films going in opposite directions: Easy Rider is Los Angeles going to New Orleans (hippies meet voodoo), and Vanishing Point is Denver going to San Francisco (mile-high meet hippies). Easy Rider is chock-full of stars. Vanishing Point has relatively unknown actors.

Another one I just thought of is Network (1976). In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Movember

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The Art of Shaving and Movember.com have teamed up to sponsor Movember:
During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

I joined as teamsiems, and I’ll take a picture of my mustache once a week to show my progress. You should join my team, donate to men’s health, and follow this Mo Bro as I help by growing some facial hair.

HighEdWeb 2011 Wrap Up

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Every year I go to HighEdWeb I write a pre- and post-conference blog detailing what I want to see, and what I actually saw. I wrote a pre-conference blog back on October 2, 2011 – Looking Forward to HighEdWeb 2011. Let’s start with a review of last year.

Review from HighEdWeb 2010

Last year I summerized my predictions with the following:

What are the lessons for next year? High Ed Web 2011 will be in Austin, Texas. We should be able to send two people next year. I’ll go out on a limb and predict the hot topics next year. Semantic content (Web 3.0) for mobile, desktop, vehicles, televisions, toasters, etc. (We can make content inter-operable; maybe using a CMS.) Location-based (geo-loco) applications with a side of augmented reality or geo-fencing. (Facebook Places exploded this year. Foursquare has the most users, for now. Gowalla is based in Austin.) HTML5 and CSS3 are growing, even if at a slow pace. (The W3C made an announcement about holding off deploying HTML5.)

Hits and Misses

Semantic web was a topic at the conference, but it was more of an underlying theme of the HTML5, mobile and accessibility topics. Mobile and accessibility were hot topics. Of the 70 talks, 13 (18%) had mobile in their title. There were 5 talks (7%) with accessibility in the title including Shawn Henry’s keynote, Embracing Accessibility – Go for the Carrots.

The CMS vendors where there en masse: Hannon Hill, OmniUpdate, Campusuite, Jadu, Ingeniux, TERMINALFOUR, Zivtech.

The big 3 geo-loco company’s weren’t a hot topic, but SCVNGR, Google Venture’s geo-loco, made a surprise appearance. Jadu, sponsored a SCVNGR hunt – where we had to collect check-ins with the other vendors at the hotel. SCVNGR sponsored Tuesday’s keynote – Better Education through the Web with Chris Wilson from Google.

Your Own Backyard

Having the conference in Austin this year, I didn’t have far to travel. When I introduced myself it was followed by, “it’s 90 miles that way” and I’d point towards the northeast. Austin felt like Austin, comfortable, relaxed, fun. The two evening events weren’t spectacular – no “Karaoke Plane” moments happened – but I had fun watching the World Series (Go Cards!) with other high-ed folks. I played some pool, ate some food, drank some drinks, and talked a lot of shop with a lot of people. Two dinner spots worth mentioning are P. F. Chang’s and Fogo de Chao.

The launch party for LINK magazine was at Buffalo Billards. The Tuesday night excursion was at The Highball.

Remember the three rules of the office (or life):

  1. Don’t put your tongue on it.
  2. Size does matter.
  3. There are stupid questions.

Grilled Eggplant Moussaka

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Here is a recipe I took from allrecipes.com and modified a little. It makes 8 servings, so you’ll need two 9×13 glass baking dishes.

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup and 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup and 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/4 cup and 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 5 ounces feta cheese
  • 5 cups milk
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1-1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 4 eggplant
  • 1/2 cup fresh parsley
  • 1 onions
  • 2-1/2 pounds potatoes
  • 5 tomatoes
  • 2-1/4 pounds zucchini

My Notes:

I only have one kind of olive oil on any given day. Extra-virgin or not, it makes no difference to me.

Directions:

Slice eggplant into 1/4 inch rounds, slice potatoes into thin (1/8 inch) rounds, slice zucchini length-wise about 1/4 inch slices. Brush with olive oil.

Grill the eggplant, potato, zucchini until tender. Heat the grill to high heat before laying on the vegetables. As grill comes up to temperature, rub the grate with half an onion that has some olive oil on the cut surface. The vegetables won’t stick to the grill grate, and they’ll have great grill marks. In the baking dishes, layer potato, then eggplant, then zucchini. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

Melt butter in pan, mix in flour, and toast mixture for 5 minutes. Mix in milk, nutmeg and salt. Simmer for 10 minutes. Slowly whisk together the egg yolk and 1/4 cup of the milk mixture in a bowl. Quickly combine this mixture with the remaining milk mixture. Set aside.

Brown the ground meat and drain the grease. Add onion, oregano, parsley, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Cover and heat on medium-low for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Spread the meat mixture over the vegetables, sprinkle feta cheese on top, then spread milk mixture on top of that. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. It should be golden brown on top when it’s done.