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• 8:36 pm on August 24, 2009 Permalink  

  Yourls 

  

  URL shorteners are something that was a hot topic last week, with the almost shutting down of tr.im and what not, as well as the launching of vb.ly. Inspired by this good work, as well as a few rants on the subject I decided to go ahead and launch my own shortener xmtr.us using the same yourls script that powers vb.ly.  I have to say, it was really really easy to set up and it works great.  I highly recommend Yourls it to anyone that has need or want of a URL shortener, and would like a little more control than can be provided by a third party.

  I did have a little trouble with the WordPress plugin, which auto-generates short urls for each post, and can then link up to your twitter account.  It just didn’t work for me out of the box, but today there was an update to the plugin that fixed it, and now all works as promised. Sweet!

   

• 12:40 pm on August 13, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: travel (2)   

  End of the Trail 

  

  Crazy, I live in Portland now! We arrived safely and the truck with all our stuff got here without too many losses. We’re now a good almost two weeks into the unpacking process and I still have no idea how we’re going to fit everything in this apartment. It’s coming along, though.

  I love our neighborhood. A few blocks away is a bakery and a farmers market. There’s coffee and theaters and all kinds of restaurants and street food vendors that are within a short walking distance. I’m really looking forward to getting out and seeing out more of the city.

  One thing that’s kind of weird though is that working at home doesn’t really give us much opportunity to meet new people. It seems like there are a lot of really cool people living close by, but it can be pretty hard to just strike up a conversation with total strangers. Especially for me, being all introverted and what not.   Guess I’m just going to have to work on that.

   

• 8:20 am on August 4, 2009 Permalink  

  Oregon Trail day four: Oregon! 

  

  Well we made it safely to oregon without breaking any axles or bones, or contracting any illnesses more serious than a nosebleed and some crankiness.

  We’re still about 4 hours or so away from Portland, and the drive has been shockingly beautiful through the mountains. I really am looking forward to the rest of the drive through the columbia river gorge, past Mt Hood and Mt St Helen. And of course I’m also looking forward to having a permanant dwelling place again.

  This has definitely been quite an experience and I’m glad we did it. I’ll have many more pictures up soon, once we get real internets installed at the new place.

  Maura is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Maura 11:18 am on August 4, 2009 Permalink

    Welcome to Oregon! Glad the trip so far has been fairly calm. Enjoy the rest of your drive today!

• 10:53 am on August 3, 2009 Permalink  

  Oregon Trail day three: Utah and Idaho 

  

  So wow, Wyoming is beautiful. It’s a drastic change from the flatness of nebraska. We saw pronghorn deer all over the place and a couple of elk, lots of cows and birds of prey.

  Our goal for today is to do about 700 miles. That should put us just inside oregon if we haul some butt.

   

• 7:05 am on August 2, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: travel (2)   

  Oregon Trail Day Two: Nebraska 

  

  We made it to Omaha in one day, despite an alarm clock malfunction which delayed us a couple hours. Had a little bit of heavy rain outside of Chicago but beautiful weather other than that.

  So far the most exciting thing that happened was at a toll booth in Illinois when the guy inside was pulling on a yellow reflector vest as we were pulling up and he said, “Excuse me for a minute, I’m trying to stay out of trouble” We wondered what kind of trouble you could get into in a toll booth, and came up with a couple of pretty good ideas. Hah.

  Other than that, Illinois and Iowa were pretty much as you’d expect. Lots of corn and cows. In Illinois we saw about 3 or 4 deer swimming in a little lake. Crossed the Mississippi, which I had been expecting to be much more impressive. I guess it’s probably a lot bigger further south than I-80. The drive through Nebraska will be much the same as yesterday was I think, only longer and flatter. We’re shooting to try and make it to Salt Lake City by the end of the day. Not sure if that will happen or not, but we can try. After Nebraska the terrain should be much more interesting, at least.

   

• 5:52 am on August 1, 2009 Permalink  

  Oregon trail day one 

  

  An alarm malfunction delayed our departure bu a couple of hours, but I think the extra sleep will do us some good. There were some tears and hard goodbyes, as expected. Anyway we’re packed in pretty tight and well on our way now. It’s a little weird to be officially nomads for a couple days.

  The picture here is the outline of the russel industrial complex in Detroit as we passed it. At least it’s supposed to be. Might be messed up. [edit: fixed image]

  cobweb, and animamea are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • animamea 2:25 pm on August 1, 2009 Permalink

    Your picture is broken ^_^

    • cobweb 9:28 pm on August 1, 2009 Permalink

      fixed now! Although the broken one looked kinda neat.