I wish I blogged more often but it’s hard to find the time to do it. The bottleneck for me was creating and editing posts via WordPress’ backend. Loading, refreshing, uploading pictures, and double-checking the blog post to make sure everything was lined up correctly, etc. The time I would spend writing a post was compounded by the back and forth between the front and backend until I found MarsEdit.

MarsEdit to the Rescue

Simply put MarsEdit is an OSX application that interfaces with the WordPress backend of the blog via XML-RPC. MarsEdit allows me to edit/post/upload images with ease. If I wrote for multiple blogs (I don’t yet), then I could do it all from within MarsEdit and life would be that much easier. Now I can post/edit/upload much faster. The next step to making things REALLY fly is my use of Markdown.

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). daringfireball

Essentially Markdown is shorthand HTML that makes it faster bang out blog posts.

If you’re blogging or thinking about blogging I highly recommend adding these tools to your repertoire.

You’ll notice since I implemented these tools back in the beginning of March there has been a serious uptick in the frequency of posting here at somedirection. A large part of that is leveraging MarsEdit+Markdown in this blog. There’s also another factor and I’ll be writing about it shortly.

Resources

• MarsEdit
• I use the WordPress Markdown Plugin to format the pseudo markup.
• Markdown CheatSheet PDF

This post was written in Markdown, you can view the syntax here.

Recently I’ve been using Twitter more and more. What was initially an annoyance of a service (first time I saw a tweet about having to take a deuce I checked out) has become my office water cooler from my virtual home office where I spend my days toiling away working on the pipes of the interwebs.

Initially when I signed up for Twitter back in March of 2007 I chose a different moniker “ky“ because the big thing about Twitter was that you could use it on your cell with SMS. I figured if people were going to txt me via twitter that “ky” would be a hell of a lot easier to type than “somedirection” so I went with it.

I think Twitter as a service is starting to catch on – even Obama has 2 channels: BarackObama and ObamaNews. Seeing that use of twitter was probably the first time I thought – hey Twitter is mainstream. Obama is using technology in his campaign exceptionally well I might add. But I digress..

I realized recently that I don’t want to be boxed into the “ky” username. It’s nice to have and people recognize me (once they see my avatar) but it’s not me, it’s not my brand. So I went about changing this and stumbled upon the realization that Twitter actually handles for multiple Twitter personas quite nicely.

The Primary User Method on Twitter

1. You need a unique email address for each name
2. Choose 1 handle as your master account from which you’ll send all updates. For me I’m going to stick with ky because it’s what I started with and I have a handful of followers.
3. Create your other usernames. For my purposes I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose somedirection, nor did I want one of my clones to snatch KyleBradsaw from my grasp.
4. Now here’s how you can funnel people into your primary username. For myself I have just 1 tweet for both users somedirection and KyleBradshaw “DBA @ky”. This will give the surfer a link directly to my primary account while also letting them know that the account they’re looking at isn’t where I update.
5. Now ONLY follow your primary account from your alternate(s). Every time you twitter under your primary account and some one visits one of your alternate handles, when they look under the “With Others” tab they will see all of your primary holders’ tweets!

Each user can have it’s own style. I like having a couple of different looks across all of my users.

Initially I was thinking I’d have to kill off ky goodnesss for somedirection to keep my brand in tact, but this is a suitable workaround and I can have the best of both worlds. While I was at it I also grabbed KyleBradshaw for good measure. If Twitter becomes popular like myspace or gmail I’ll be glad I did.

Most of my interaction with my development/designer colleagues has been face to face when I attend SXSW, but that interaction quickly dies off shortly after my visit to Austin every year. The problem is entirely my own fault – I’m just bad at keeping in touch – something I need to work on. But I’m not attending SXSW in ’08 for the first time in 3 years, my only option is to put myself “out there”.

I’ve been lurking my whole career and I need a change. I want to increase the readership of somedirection and the only way to do that is to crawl out of this little cave I’ve built for myself on the Internet. One of the first places I’m starting this “coming out party” is in the successful 9rules community run by a pair of my SXSW friends Mike Rundle and Paul Scrivens. There’s a lot of things I’m excited about in 2008 and the wheels are in motion for this to be a great year.

So I welcome my readers, speak up! Quit hiding! Become involved. Let’s get a salad of comments going here!

• abuse xxx
• analysis of halloween retail sales
• customer service blog
• chelsea girl frat
• classytits
• tim ferriss girlfriend
• kaiser chiefs vending machine

Thanks for stopping by, hope you found what you were looking for!

With Facebook allowing anyone to search (non-account holders) I of course searched for myself for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. To date 32 Kyle Bradshaw’s have found a home on Facebook.

What can I say it’s a great name, pretty tease proof, easy to say, spell and otherwise hard to screw up. I like my name, but it doesn’t have the uniqueness I once attached to it, especially when I see the next Kyle Bradshaw under me with a Rush ATO icon. I was a member of the same fraternity when I attended college at WPI, hell I built the Gamma Sigma chapter’s website back in 2002 (same one that resides there now ironically).

I’m just glad I snatched KyleBradshaw.com before any of my counterparts. A web developer that doesn’t own his own domain name² missed the boat in a big way.

Update 10/2/07

I had a great conversation with a girl named Sheena from Dallas, TX this morning. I’m not sure how she found me (I should have asked), but thanks to Kyle Bradshaw of Houston, TX – it was pretty humorous exchange.

» View The Conversation

Update 3/2/08

A High School girl from Canton, MA contacted me on Facebook accusing me of being 17 not 26, a perv (I’m not), and a GEEK (I am). Apparently she called NBC’s “To Catch A Predator” on me (empty threat). All in all pretty funny (yet kinda scary). Obviously she had the wrong guy. I just hope the “Kyle Bradshaw” she speaks of is indeed 17 and not 40. <br/> TIP: DON’T LOOK FOR LOVE ON THE INTERNET WITH STRANGERS LITTLE GIRL

» View The Conversation

I did some sleuthing and found that the character ? is common and stands by itself in most spams. English translation according to Google и == AND. I did a couple test searches and this seem to work well – so here’s what I came up with.

1. Create a new filter in Gmail (Settings > Filters)
2. Has The Words: и (Next Step)
3. x Delete (Create)

Spam free (for the most part) again!

UPDATE

I still got some Russian Spam THIS morning! Time for another filter.

1. Create a new filter in Gmail (Settings > Filters)
2. Has The Words: до (Next Step)
3. x Delete (Create)

I’d like to give a quick see you soon to Cindy, Tom, Pat, Ian, Jeremy, Richard, The Brit Pack, Veerle and everyone (my hands are cramping up) I’ve met and has influenced me in some way at past South By South West conferences.

Below is a list of panels I’m planning to attend on Saturday, March 10th:

• Web App Autopsy – As much as I like building, I like ripping it down.
• Ten Ways to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan – Particle Tree guys, much respect.
• Writing, Better – For my fans
• The Influence of Art in Design – Good friends
• Turning Projects Into Revenue Generating Businesses – I can build it, now what? Show me the $$$.

<li><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&id=IAP060214">Ruining the User Experience: When JavaScript and Ajax Go Bad</a> - Something to watch out for.</li>

<li><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&id=IAP060166">Grids Are Good and How to Design with Them</a> - I need to incorporate more grids in my designs.</li>
    <li><a href="http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&id=IAP060250">Unleashing CSS: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Internet Explorer 7</a> - Death to IE6!</li>

And that’s just the first day!

Stay tuned for updates throughout. And if you can make it, be sure to let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to checkout and I’ll do my best to report!

To my readers: Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like to translate my blog posts into Chinese for print (and hopefully someday transport across the Mongolian border).

Courtesy of: Great Firewall of China