Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

For those of you in the Missoula, Montana area, the monthly Missoula Web Discussion Group meets tonight. The meeting is held the second Tuesday of every month at 6PM at Sean Kelly’s Pub.

The other day I moved my Windows Media Center onto my second monitor (a projector), and forgot about it. After closing Media Center, removing the projector to bring it to my new apartment, I found I couldn’t find Media Center again. It was lost off screen, with no way to get it back (or so I thought).

Thanks to some creative search terms and a resulting forum thread, I found out the solution. In Windows, you can right click an item in your task bar and choose move… the catch is that you have to hit an arrow, then you can drag it around. Problem solved.

Sigh.

When I went into my local print shop to ask them if they could do a letterpress project for me, they asked me what it was. I wish I had this great news segment about letterpress printing to show them a month ago. Anyone who is interested in classic design will enjoy this video, and perhaps be able to relate to it.

My old home of Minneapolis just had a disaster. The major interstate bridge I 35-W just crashed into the water. The Star Tribune has much more info than CNN or the New York Times.

Just a reminder for those in Missoula, MT. The Missoula Web Discussion Group meets tonight at 6:00 at Sean Kelly’s. Just look for the group of geeks.

I came across an utterly inspiring article about what skills make up a good teacher. Dan takes the methods of calculus to break apart essential skills, helping us to learn about what aspects affect our teaching, and that we can systematically improve them to create a greater whole.

Just last Friday I gave a presentation to the admissions staff at my university about search engine optimization, and of course I outlined the ever popular Miserable Failure Google Bomb, only to read this weekend that Google announced that it changed its algorithm to remove the common ones. I had to send out an email of retraction of that information, but I am glad Google has improved its search once more.

As far as I can tell, the extent of the algorithm change is minimal, and only affects true Google Bomb search queries. Linked text keywords are still an important aspect of setting up your site for proper placement in search engines.

I highly recomend going over to Google’s webmaster, Matt Cutts’ website. He has a post on the subject of the algorithm change. Most useful are the comments of the post, specifically Matt’s reply to requests on feedback of rank changes.

• Great Free Programs
  A list of the best freeware programs available.
• Cadbury BBQ Egg
  Some holiday fun.
  (tags: humour funny cadbury)
• Physical Anthropology Tutorials Menu
  An amazing collection of college level information… a guided course in aspects of anthropology.
  (tags: evolution science anthropology)

While reading the Straight Dope, I ran across this neat little tidbit:

“..of the 161,000 people who wrote to the DMA (The service that keeps a do not mail list) last year, 116,000 wanted more junk mail. They were sent a booklet entitled “How To Get More Interesting Mail” (as God is my witness, I am not making this up), which tells you various key catalogs that you can send for to guarantee you’ll be deluged with stuff.”

Interesting. Who are these people?