Today I got a new cell phone!  I decided to get the LG Rumor (Sprint) because I wanted the slideout QWERTY keyboard.  Blackberries are nice but I don’t want to pay the ridiculous monthly fees for internet and email.  I mostly will just use the keyboard for texting.  It also has a pretty good camera and mp3 player with really clear sounding ringtones also.  The bad thing with Sprint is that they block bluetooth transfer of ringtones but myxer.com allows you to download free ringtones (it truly is free!) BUT I later realized by downloading I’m paying Sprint per kilobyte since I’m not on an internet plan.  But if you have unlimited internet, that’s the best site to use!  I got insurance on this phone since I have had problems in the past with thieves.  Hopefully this phone will last me two years!

I was getting tired of my old blog layout so I decided to change it up to this one. It isn’t completely done yet though. I’m going to change some of the font colors so everything will match up more. The old theme had a lot of quirks and always shrunk pictures after I posted them. I’m glad this theme seems to be working well. I also downloaded Wordpress 2.3 yesterday and I’m happy to say that everything went well! It’s a nice change from 2.1. Just remember to backup everything before you upgrade just in case. Luckily I didn’t have to restore anything because the upgrade worked perfectly. Now I just have to figure out how to use this “tag cloud” option that came with 2.3.

Update: I spoke too soon. As soon as I posted this blog I got this error:

WordPress database error: [Table ‘databasename.wp_post2cat’ doesn’t exist]
SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID

Luckily the entry was posted okay and readers aren’t seeing any problems. It’s still annoying for me to see that after posting each entry. I’m going to have to see how I can fix this. It looks like it’s a problem with the categories even though they seem to work fine. Anyone else run into this problem after upgrading?

2nd Update: I figured it out. Google Sitemaps does not work with 2.3. At least the version I am using. So I had to deactivate the plugin. Now everything seems to working perfectly.  (crosses fingers)

I use feedburner for my RSS feed and I have noticed that my amount of readers always fluctuates up and down on all of my blogs. Today I noticed a huge drop in my feedburner count. One of my blogs dropped 75% in readership. I googled and googled to try and find out what could have happened but could not find any information. I emailed Darren at Problogger.net and Courtney at CourtneyTuttle.com and got a reply from both of them! They both basically told me that feedburner does not display the amount of people subscribing to your blog, but instead it only shows you the amount of people accessing your feed on a given day. So since I don’t post blog entries everyday my subscriber count goes down when I haven’t blogged in a while and it goes up when I have a recent post. I was scared that most of my readers were unsubscribing so I’m happy to know this isn’t the case. People who post everyday will never notice any big changes like I did. Darren said that he is going to write a post about it on his blog in the next couple of days because he is getting a lot of similar emails asking the same thing. Thanks so much to both of you guys for clarifying this up for me!

Update: Darren just posted his entry about why feedburner subscriber counts fluctuate.

Update #2: My feedburner count went back to normal on my Sarah Silverman site today.  I haven’t even made a post there in a few days.  This is strange indeed.  Yesterday’s count must have just been a glitch on feedburner’s side.

[tags]Feedburner, count, rss feed, readers, subscriptions[/tags]

I’ve used Blogger (blogspot.com) for my Spanish music website, http://spanishsongs.blogspot.com for quite a while now. It’s a unique website for the fact that it mostly concentrates on popular American artists singing in Spanish such as Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Jessica Simpson. But anyways, that’s not the point of this blog. The point is that I didn’t want to buy a custom domain name for the site because then I would have to purchase a hosting package and transfer all my archived entries to the new domain. (I use Wordpress for all my other custom-domain blogs except for the Spanish one.) I found out that Blogger now allows it’s users to choose a custom domain for the blog (which removes the blogspot.com url) and will host it for free! I chose SpanishJamz.com for my new custom domain name. All I had to do was buy the $8.95 domain fee at GoDaddy.com. Usually you have to spend $50 more for hosting but hosting with Blogger is for free!! After a few settings all your old permalinks and archives are automatically forwarded to the new domain name, so you don’t lose any of your old entries and your readers don’t get any 404 error messages if they click on their old bookmarks for your site.

So, if you are a long-time Blogger user but scared to get your own domain name in fear of losing all your archives and readers, you should definitely look into this. Personally, I think having your own domain name makes your blog look more professional and brings more readers to your site. Click here for Blogger instructions about how to get started with your own domain.

[tags]Blogger, blogspot, custom domain, free hosting[/tags]

Well today I got my Macbook. I couldn’t wait any longer. It was so easy to setup and connected to my wireless router right away. I’m trying to become acquainted with the Mac’s operating system and adjust to the size and portability of the 13.3″ notebook. If anyone knows any cool free programs for the Mac feel free to share! Gosh I sound like a nerd.

From now on the people who comment on my blog will be rewarded. Normally people who comment on a blog do not get their website/blog advanced in Google or Technorati rankings. This is because by default most blogs have the [no follow] tag on urls placed in comment fields. Now there is a huge “I Follow” movement in the wordpress blogosphere. Bloggers are adding the do-follow plugin that will add a [do follow] tag after every comment. Which means from now on when you comment on tallfreak.com and enter your site in the form - you will get rewarded because Google and Technorati will see your link on my blog. The more times they see your link on other sites, the better your ranking will be. I’m just trying to show some love to my readers. Plus I love comments!!

Update: Do not make small little comments just so you get rewarded. All spammy comments that do not add to the discussion will be deleted!

On Firefox you can save all your favorite websites on the horizontal toolbar for easy access. I had so many that I ran out of room. Thank goodness for favicons (those little icons next to the URL in the address bar).  You can right-click on the icons in the toolbar and delete the titles under properties which leaves you with just the favicon.  Now my toolbar is only filled with icons instead of text, saving me a bunch more room!

I haven’t written a “technical/instructional” blog post in a while so here goes:

I have been asked how do people put a video segment from TV onto the internet? Well, this is one way to do it. It’s probably not the quickest way, but it is the free way. You don’t have to purchase any special software to do it but you do need to already have a DVD Recorder. I got mine at Best Buy for under a hundred bucks. For you beginners a DVD Recorder is a device that records anything on your cable and puts it on a DVD. Just like a VCR used to do in the 90’s . I highly recommend them for recording your favorite programs! With Tivo or DVR you will eventually delete the program but with DVDs they are forever! Now I’m going to discuss how they can also help you add video files to your computer:

Step One - Record: Insert a DVD-RW or DVD-R into your DVD Recorder (I recommend a rewriteable DVD). Set it to record the TV program that is on your cable/Tivo/DVR. When finished simply eject the DVD (”finish” the DVD beforehand if it’s not a rewriteable disc).

Step Two - Transfer: Insert the DVD into your computer. Browse the files that are on the DVD. Windows users can do this under “My Computer” by right-clicking and selecting “explore” on your DVD drive. DVD’s record videos from your TV into .vob files. Find the VOB file you want to “rip” and transfer/copy it to your computer or desktop. (If you’re not sure which VOB file it is, just double-click on it. Most Windows programs will allow you to watch VOB files on your computer.)

Step Three - Convert: Now you need to convert the .vob file to a normal/compressed movie file such as an .avi, or .mpg. AutoGK is a popular (and free!) program you can download online that will convert .vob files to these file types. I recommend you convert the files to .avi or .mpg if you want to edit them with “Windows Movie Maker” which comes with Windows XP.

Step Four - Edit: If you want to add effects/text/logo to your video file or if it is too large of a file - you need to edit it before uploading to the internet. Windows Movie Maker is what I use because it’s free and it came with my computer. After adding effects the video editor will ask you what bitrate you want. I recommend a 512 kbps bitrate. That’s a good quality bitrate for viewers to stream your video online. If the video is over 5 minutes, then maybe 340 kbps.

Step Four - Publish: YouTube seems to be the most popular way for people to publish their videos. Of course I’m teaching you how to rip stuff from television so if it is copyrighted material you may not want to do that. Viacom is deleting a lot of these copyrighted youtube videos. Dailymotion doesn’t seem to be as strict with copyright but then again it is less popular. There is also always email or uploading to your FTP space if you have a website.

Well there ya go! After these steps you should be able to share and store videos online. I know it’s not the easiest thing to do, but at least this way it’s free!

If you happen to find a copyrighted video on youtube it’s only a number of days before it will be removed by Viacom. Therefore, I’m going to share with you how to download youtube videos to your computer before Viacom takes away all your saved favorites on your youtube account. There are actually three ways that I have been able to do this:

Vixy.net - Just go to the website and copy and paste the youtube url into their search bar. It will download the youtube video and can convert it into various formats. The downfall to this website is that it is very busy and their server is usually down or beyond slow. It might be better just to try the options below.

Greasemonkey - This program is a free plug-in for the FireFox browser. To begin you have to install it on FireFox and then restart your browser. Greasemonkey can do hundreds of neat things you never knew was possible. It’s like videogame cheat codes but instead it works with the internet. You just have to add a “user script” to it’s functions for each “cheat” you want it to perform. Clicking on YouTube to Me after installing Greasemonkey will make downloading youtube videos a cinch by placing a “download” link at the top of every youtube page. Here is a website with detailed instructions and pictures.

VideoDL.org - If Greasemonkey sounds complicated to you or if you don’t have FireFox, you might want to try this. Just go to VideoDL.org and copy and paste the youtube video link you want to download into the search bar. It will then prompt you to save the video to your computer. The only drawback to VideoDL.org is that you have to always go to their website and copy & paste the youtube url everytime you want to download something.

Very Important:

YouTube videos online have all been converted to Flash videos with the .flv extension. You have to have a FLV player to watch them after downloading. (Vixy.net bypasses this step but like I mentioned previously, the server may be down or very slow.) Click here to download a FLV player. When you download and save the video make sure you add .flv to the filename or it may not work. Also, saving .flv as the extension will enable you to convert it later to a .mpg, .mp4 (iPod), .wmv, or any other type of video with the numerous flash video converter programs that are out there right now. Total Video Converter seems to be one of the most popular.

[tags] youtube, download, convert, flash video, flv[/tags]