Technorati is being a little bitch.
it refuses to put my posts in the “The-Diet” group despite my tagging of my posts in the appropriate manner.
The Elitist bastard of an application is determined to keep my OUT of the social support group.
I hope you like my latest tag Technorati.
So as you probably know… per my last post that I have started a new cigar related blog.
I have some geeky news on that front.
Since it’s not really cigar related… I thought I’d post it here.
I put Stogiecast.com on the “2000 bloggers” list.
Which, if you can believe it, is a list of 2000 bloggers.
And it’s in there.
They have a cool little app that shows a picture for each of the 2000 sites.. but that takes to damn long to load so here’s a text version. 
REMOVED… turns out this cool little project is a pretty bad idea from an SEO standpoint.
Well hello there everyone.
Sorry for the long delay.
The good news is that I am finally getting the photos updated.
I’ve decided to use a service called “Flikr” to host our photos.
So far I am very impressed with the service.
I don’t have a lot added yet - and there is some clean up work yet to be done - but at long last there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve also started the process of integrating the flikr service into my site here so that the experience is seamless for you, my beloved visitors.
Here’s the link to what will eventually be the DougMeade.com photo section.
Please keep in mind that at the time of this writing there is MUCH left to do.
The actual look & feel of the photo section isn’t at all close to done yet.
Also there aren’t a great many photos available.
But in due time we’ll get everything moved over.
Until then I will at least do my best to keep the most recent photos updated in a timely fashion.
Ok everyone check this out….
It’s a little web flash game. Basically you have to use your mouse to help a drunk stumble home without falling over.
HILLARIOUS! 
My personal best is 88 meters.
Though I know a guy who has made it 141.
Enjoy…
Wow what a ridiculous week this has been.
I was sure I’d been at work for ten days straight by Tuesday at 10:15 am.
I have been crashing pretty early every night so I apologize for the delay in Blogging.
What time I DID have in front of the computer was spent tweaking the display of the video.
Speaking of which… to answer the question posed in the previous posting’s comments…
Why July 4th?
Well three reasons really.
1) I need some time to get the hardware and software I need to do this well. Also I’ll need to spend some time with it all in order to get familiar with the procedure.
2) Hype time. Just like the Sony PSP we’re building the anticipation to a fevered pitch before the release. Hopefully Both Dave and I coordinating this will get the attention of E! or Hollywood Minute.
3) I’m ALMOST ready to be on camera. About 5-10 more pounds to lose. 
In other news…
My co-worker here heads up our Digital Audio products. (MP3 / Personal Video)
He just bought the new Sony PSP. Well actually the lucky dog gets to buy such things on the company dollar as competitive shopping.
It’s pretty damn cool.
And I REALLY didn’t want it to be.
There’s another $249 product I’ll be drooling over.
Why are all my toys so expensive?
Seriously the screen and it’s picture quality are AMAZING.
We watched a bit of Spider Man 2 on it… WOW!
And the game graphics are incredible.
I’ve heard them compared to both the PS1 and the PS2 in quality.
But what ever they are I can you that when you shrink it down to that screen size…
the pixels per inch make the graphics look as good as any I’ve seen. ANYWHERE.
Truly a cool product.
Once it hits $199 I’ll consider it.
Well the site made some steps last night.
The two mini-banners (geoURL and XML feeds) are starting to come around.
The geoURL data is hindered as the geoURL.org site is down.
There is another service starting up (geoURL.info) that is hoping to pick up the slack, but they aren’t as large yet.
Hopefully both will be viable soon, as it’s a neat feature.
The XML data is finally making an appearance.
(Big thanks to “iamtgo3″ from ipdg3.com for helping me figure out a syntax problem.)
I’ve got several RSS 2.0 feeds at the moment.
More feature rich XML feeds will follow… someday. But I’ve not taken the time to plan out what to put in them and how to layout the files.
For now please feel free to use the RSS feeds, and let me know if you need any help.
Well happy Friday Gang!
(Gosh I’d make a swell third grade teacher!)
Anyway I wanted to make a REAL quick Blog to show two neat pieces of web gadgetry.
The first is … for lack of a better description… a zip code navigator.
It’s pretty neat, this guy has mapped the US zip codes and graphically narrows down the location on a map as you type it in.
If you click “zoom” before you start it’s pretty cool too!
The second is a name navigator.
It’s true name is the name voyager and it graphically maps the popularity of names over time.
Very cool in it’s own right.
Well those should give you some quality goof off time today.
Enjoy your weekend! 
Well Wiba (my pet web development project) has taken a drastic turn.
For the better I think.
Originally I thought Wiba would be a complete content management system.
Something like a .NET for php. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was both over kill, and redundant.
There are many great applications out there that do a good percentage of what I need.
Any good developer will tell you that if it’s been written once, doing so again is pretty stupid.
So now Wiba will we re-worked to be something more like a templating system.
Basically I want a system that will enable me to create sites for people that know nothing about web development, HTML, php, CSS, or any of the other acronyms out there. Many good applications exist for doing 70% of that.
Wiba 2.0 will focus on making use of those third party applications and still allow the site owner to point and click their way through site layout, design, and style decisions.
When its time to update the content.. that’ll be easy too.
This will of course take some time.
It is a complete re-work after all, but you’re seeing the first steps of that process here today!
DougMeade.com is now running on the first steps of this re-work.
You’ve probably noticed the new theme the site has taken, but that’s a tiny fraction of the changes that have been made.
(You can learn more about the new theme in the following Blog)
You’ll notice some subtile things at first:
3) The return of Eaton Web rankings, and web ring info.
But going forward there will be host of changes:
3) RSS / XML feeds
4) The long anticipated return of the photo album.
That’s not to say we didn’t sacrifice anything…
But rest assured, those things are being addressed, and the end product will be a stronger, more robust web application.
(Believe me it already is)
Stay tuned for more.
Well obviously I launched a new Theme today.
(for those of you who are reading this at some point further in the future… trust me today there was a change in the site design)
If you want a big long explanation of how and why I did this, and the cool techno-geek work behind it please read this news story.
But in the meantime I wanted to get all of your opinions on the new design.
I can change themes on the fly so if this one royally sucks we can roll back to the previous one.
Personally I think it’s a nice change.
I was ready for a little something different.
As I get more and more themes created I’ll probably switch them out pretty often. (gotta keep things fresh here)
Fear not though just because we changed themes doesn’t mean we won’t see the other again.
It’s in the theme library and can be called upon at any time.
Let me know what you think seriously.
Is it easy enough to read the font colors?
What do you think about the logo, images, and color distribution?
Better or worse than the last one?
Today I launched the first “New” theme since the site was rebuilt using my Wiba application.
I hope you all enjoy it.
The real news here though is that the Wiba platform makes it ridiculously easy to change the site’s theme (look and feel) so you can expect more theme changes in the future.
Best of all launching a new theme doesn’t get rid of the old one at all.
I can activate any of the themes I have created at any time.
So hopefully I’ll soon have a number of “standard” themes I can cycle through, as well as themes specific to certain Holidays or events.
The theme functionality also allows me to change the layout of the site along with the Style, logos, and backgrounds. So at the push of a button the site can be completely different.
Cool huh?!
Well that’s all I have for you at the moment.
Hope you enjoy the new theme.