TIME.com’s Coolest Blogs of 2005
Time.com has posted its list of the 50 Coolest Blogs of 2005. I haven’t checked all of them out yet myself — and probably won’t check out some of them — but some look, well, cool.
Bloggers on the Chronicles of Narnia
Clive Davis has rounded up and commented on several different posts in anticipation of tomorrow’s release of The Chronicles of Narnia. As you’d expect, opinions run the gamut.
My previous posts on the movie:
- Chuck Colson on the Harry Potter Question
- Will People See Jesus in Aslan?
- Hollywood Gets a Clue
- On Lions, Witches, Wardrobes, and Demoninational Differences
Freaktoe and I will see it Saturday and report back.
Awesome Christmas Light Display Set to Music
Possibly the coolest Christmas light display of all time, by Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio.
I was as skeptical as you will surely be, but Snopes.com has confirmed that it is real, not a computer-assisted animation.
According to Snopes:
This display was the work of Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio, who spent about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama channels that control the 16,000 Christmas lights in his 2004 holiday lighting spectacular. The musical accompaniment is broadcast over a low-power radio station so that it is only audible to visitors tuned in to the correct frquency and doesn’t disturb the neighbors.
Apparently, the whole thing is done using something called Light-o-Rama. (UPDATE: I just realized I had already said that through the above block-quote. D’uh.) You can re-create Carson’s display yourself using instructions from Carson himself.
Another of Carson’s displays is here.
Podcast of an interview with Carson here.
Hat tip to my niece, mother, and father.
What to Get Your Blogger for Christmas
So that certain someone in your life has become obsessed. Several months ago, he (or she) started using a word you’d never heard before. Blog this, blog that. You ignored it, thinking it would go away, but now, it’s a full-on obsession, and as much as you’d like to, you can’t escape it.
Yet you still like this crazed person and you want to get them something he’d appreciate for Christmas.
So what do bloggers want for Christmas? Here’s a few ideas:
Some bloggers blog using free platforms (think of them as software programs like Microsoft Word, but for blogging, and they reside on the web instead of on your computer). More serious bloggers, though, use a more serious platform like Movable Type or WordPress. Your blogger’s site will usually indicate which one they’re using, somewhere toward the bottom of the page or one of the sidebars. For example, you can tell from the very bottom of my site that I blog using WordPress.
Like most technology, most users only understand and use a small percentage of the technology’s capacity (brains fall into this category as well), so there’s always more to learn. Here are a couple of books you can get your blogger that will interest him or her:
- Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress
- Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition
- Sams Teach Yourself Movable Type in 24 Hours
Key to both Movable Type and WordPress is a basic understanding of the PHP programming language. Here are a few ideas on that subject:
One of the coolest things you can do to make your blog snazzy is to learn and use Macromedia Flash. It’s part of a larger product suite called Macromedia Studio 8 Win/Mac
But there are always gift certificates, and you could always get them a book that they could use along with a free trial to see if it would be worth the investment:
- Macromedia Studio 8 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
- Macromedia Flash 8 : A Tutorial Guide
- Macromedia Studio 8 : Training from the Source
Any other bloggers out there have suggestions for a blogger’s wish list?
