Your eyes are not playing tricks on you. After many requests by various* people I have returned Beuk.tv to its original format. Apparently, the bright colors, happy pictures, red, white, blue motif was just too much for some people to stand. Maybe it made them too joyful inside. Maybe they were embarrassed to be reading a “standard” blog. What ever the reason I have returned to my roots with a few exceptions.

Pipes. Yahoo Pipes. If you have not played with this then you definitely need to check it out. For all my IT-capable friends (*cough*, Andrews, Spacko, Jason, PD, Shane, *cough*) you will love it. It is basically Google Reader for grown-ups. You choose feeds then you can use regular expressions and various operators to filter and manipulate the content. The catch? You need to understand that last sentence. If you do, then you have UNLIMITED POWER! Ok, not unlimited, but it is still cool. I changed my two Twitter feeds (@cbeukenk and @mywines, no I am not @beuk) into a pipe so that regardless of which one I update, the data gets fed to my site in date order. Simple, but effective. It also serves to drastically reduce the code needed to add the feeds to my site. See the Twitter example at the left and let me know how you like it (*cough* Jack *cough*). The alternative, with much more HTML, limited flexibility, and just boring, is the Videos and Picture feeds also at the left.

The other addition is Dopplr. I just think this service is cool. You can setup an email address, and save it in your contacts. Then every time you have a calendar entry requiring travel, invite Dopplr. Dopplr will post and maintain your travel for sharing with your friends. The only trouble is: 1. Having friends that travel enough to give a crap (What up ATL!) and B. getting them to ALSO use Dopplr over, say a LinkedIn version.

So, I have a question for you: In preparation for this post I was trying to find a reference to a comedian who used to have an act featuring the line, “…and I’m back.” He/she would get all worked up in a tizzy, go off on a rant, then all of a sudden snap back and say, “and I’m back.” As funny as it would have been to reference it here (and a YouTube spot), I can’t remember who it was.? My guesses were:

  • Denis Leary
  • Bill Cosby
  • Paula Poundstone

Free Whopper to the first person who helps me remember. That’s it for now. You can get back to pretending to work while you watch the inauguration.

* various being a grand total of 3, but hey my readership is not the same as MissGioia so what can you do.