Off The Rekkerd

Earlier today, a video surfaced on YouTube showing a candid President Bush declaring “Wall Street Got Drunk”. The original story was posted on the Huffington Post and can be found here.

The story is transcribed below:

“Wall Street Got Drunk”:’Banned’ Video Surfaces

Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week — capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: “There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk —that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras — it got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.”

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: “And then we got a housing issue… not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura’s over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker.

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I don’t know about you but the funniest thing he says is “Wall Street got drunk. They got drunk and not it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and try to do all these fancy financial instruments.” To be honest, he doesn’t make an ounce of sense and this is another great reason why I’m glad that his term is almost over.

I’ve attached a copy of the video in case another copy gets axed. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment.

*Cheers*

The debate between which Content Management System(CMS) reigns supreme is nothing that hasn’t been discussed before. There are thousands of website on the Internet that will break down, sometimes annoyingly, every little detail of which CMS is better, blah blah and so on. But I am not going to sit here and drill into your heads the quantum mechanics of the CMS but instead I am going to introduce each CMS with it strengths and weakness and tell you which one, I believe, will best suit the everyday Joe Blow or Plain Jane.

Building a website should not be an extremely tedious task but something to look forward to. Yes, there will be the time at the beginning when you have to initially do the set-up the CMS on your website. When it comes to building a website you should have a very basic, and I mean basic, knowledge of HTML, CSS, and maybe some PHP ,if you’re feeling adventurous, but not only should you know some codex but you should also understand how to work within your databases on your website, e.g.: adding, moving, deleting files, as well as know how to use an FTP Client. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking this way over my head, then head on over to Google and you’ll be able to find tons of articles that can help you get more comfortable with the web.

Joomla

What does Joomla have going for them?

• Joomla is easier to learn vs. Drupal or Mambo
• Themes are readily available for the users who don’t want to spend hours designing their own site
• The ability to customize a site is virtually limitless
• A Php back-end makes it easy to maintain your site.

Below are some example web pages that use Joomla to power their sites:

Farlow Studios

Samuel L. Jackson

The Panama Report

With that said, Joomla wasn’t what I was looking. It lacked several features that I need for my website that unfortunately Joomla couldn’t do well enough.

What does Joomla lack?

• Isn’t SEF (Search Engine Friendly) Although that have SEO packs, they just don’t seem to work well. And I don’t want to spend my time fighting with my site.
• The usability was okay for me but if you a low learning curve then it will difficult to manage.
• Documentation on Joomla was difficult to find and the community isn’t always helpful.
• Some of the customizations for Joomla are too difficult to figure out or just don’t work at all.
• Setting up your site with Joomla takes hours to get to where you want it to be and frankly I don’t have that kind of time to spare.

Wordpress

For me, Joomla didn’t cut it. I tried it and it didn’t work for me. So that why I went to Wordpress and since the switch, I’ve had very little trouble.

What Wordpress has going for them?

• The customization ability is far greater then Joomla because the plugins are easy to install and manage.
• The PHP back-end or aka the Dashboard makes it easy to manage pages, posts or in short all of your content easily.
• There are hundreds of wordpress themes allow to customize the look and of your site. I’m sure there is a theme for you.
• The community at Wordpress.org is friendly and you can usually find the answer to any question by simply reading the documentation.
• Wordpress is SEF. You can set-up your site to produce Search Engine Friendly URLS which is better for the traffic on your site.
• The best thing about Wordpress is it’s easy to use.

Websites Powered by Wordpress

CNN Politics

Smashing Magazine

Ensellitis:A Personal Blog

With Wordpress the possibilites are endless . The only thing that I don’t like and this could be a deal breaker for some, but I hate having to up load all my plugins and themes using and FTP client. With Joomla I could upload my stuff using the back-end it would place it in the correct folder for me. Other then that, Wordpress has my vote.

So if you’re looking, to create an ituitive website or just a personal blog Wordpress has got you covered from top to bottom. But don’t take my word for, try for yourself, why because its free to use so never have to pay for anything except for maybe an awesome them that you find some place.

I am a big fan of Smashing Magazine they a few posts that list some of the best templates for wordpress on the web. You can go here to check them out.

*Cheers*

I can’t believe that summer flew by so quickly. I feel like just a few weeks ago I was sitting my English class for the first time and reading over the syllabus. And now, next week Monday is the beginning of the last week of school. I’m amazed that I made it through the class.

I’ve kept a steady schedule of waking up early reading the material that was to be discussed in class, getting ready to leave my apartment and then finally making it to school by 11am. I really like my English class that I’m taking at City College of San Francisco because the student dynamic is amazing. My classmates are very intelligent people that reveal an intersting perspective of the topics we discuss. My instructor, Mr. Isles, was magnificent at picking topics for us to discuss because they were thought provoking and allowed to envelop ourselves in subject. Thanks Mr. Isles, you rock!

As for the rest of what’s left of my summer, I will be spending a week Napa, beautiful wine country, with my family who lives there. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to spend much time with them. So I’m uber stoked. After that, I will be painting and cleaning the Journalism bungalow with my fellow editors so it’s beautiful for the up coming term.

Next semester I will be really busy and this time I have to stay on top of my studies because I’ll be taking English, Statistics, History and one Journalism course.  Oi, do I have my work cut out for me. Oh well, wish me luck…

*Cheers*

You’ve heard everything, once you’ve heard ninjas in Napa.

For those, of you, who don’t know where Napa is, I shall enlighten you, it’s a city up in Northern California famous for its wine. Thus the reason it’s called wine country. One thing to remember about this city is that it predominantly upper middle class white people or like a modern suburbia. Not to mention it’s load with tourists.

Anyway back to the ninjas. The Napa Valley Register published the following story (which can be found here):

In last couple of months, I decided that I was going to reinvent my blog. Why you ask? Honestly, I wanted a blog that reflected me but I also wanted it to function like an actually website. So I started doing some research about CMSs (Content Management Systems) to see which one would work best for me. I tried Drupal, Mambo, and Joomla.

When I tried Joomla I was excited about what I could do with it. With a PHP front and back end, I was excited to be able to build a site that would function like a site but also like a blog. But a big problem arose. Joomla is not SEO (Search Engine Optimized). That’s a big problem for any site that is trying to be listed on top search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Then I came across WordPress. I already knew that WordPress was a powerful blogging platform but I what I didn’t know is that I could I use it as a CMS. This pleasant surprise allowed me to also complete another task on my to-do list. While building my site was a primary concern of mine, I was also doing research for our school newspaper’s site.

Our current newspaper’s site lacks many things. I mean it works for the most part but it’s not visually appealing and not mention you can’t add multimedia objects to it. I got a little ahead of myself and starting experimenting with WordPress and was able to get a site that would work much better then what we have now. You can check it out here. (It’s hosted on my site as a prototype until we have the approval to implement it).

That’s the reason why I’m here now. Be on the look out for more posts.

*Cheers*

Many of us love comic books and the unique characters that lie within the story. Hollywood has done it again with it’s movie adaptation of beloved comic Iron Man. When it comes to making comics into movies, I become a little leery about how well they can pull it off.

With other remakes like Spiderman, Superman and Batman, Hollywood seems to be a little lite in the idea area. But I have not lost heart yet. I am not a big fan of the Superman Returns film or the Ghost Rider flick they didn’t leave any but criticism.

Now with Iron Man, I was a skeptical that this would be another comic to movie flop ending a waste of $10. But to my surprise, Robert Downey Jr. was actually impressive. I actually enjoyed watching him on screen for the first time in a long time. Downey is funny and made the role of Tony Stark what it was. I don’t think they could have picked any one who would have done half the job of Downey.

Now don’t get me wrong this isn’t a hooray for the comic to movie but a happy grin for something gone right.

Friday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck with superstitions like step on crack you’ll break your back. On an international level, mainly in western countries such as Norway, United States and England. It’s primarily seen as a truly unlucky day for anyone. But is Friday the 13th really a day of rotten luck or is there another side to this supposedly bad day?

In some cultures, mainly eastern like Japan and China, the number 13 is considered a very lucky number. It’s considerably indestructible number because it can’t be divided by anything but itself which in turns makes it a much more powerful number.

Would you laugh if some people considered Tuesday the 13th unlucky or Friday the 17th unlucky days instead of the most common Friday the 13th? Believe it or not, in Greece, Romania and Spanish-speaking cultures Tuesday the 13th is considered the bad luck day.

Whatever your culture or beliefs ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether or not Friday the 13th is truly is day of bad luck or the luckiest day of your week. I know for me it’s just a normal day without any mishaps. To be honest, any day can have hiccups or a series of unfortunate events but I know that I try to find the silver lining in each “bad” situation.

*Cheers*

Mozilla did many people proud with it’s creation of Firefox, the dependable browser that is safe fast and customizable with it’s add-ons, extensions and themes. Firefox hasn’t always been the browser of choice because I was unaware of the potential dangers that lurk in Internet Explorer.

I am definitely an avid web surfer with frequent visits to my favorites like YouTube, Gaiaonline, HubPages, Facebook, MySpace, and of course Yelp. (You can find me on these sites and others by click on the menu My Links.) With Firefox, I can block ads, scripts and potential annoying things that are all over the web.

Now to the point! Mozilla is trying to set the Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in a 24-hour period. I am totally excited about two things: 1) Downloading Firefox 3 because I just love, love, love Firefox and 2) I am a part of setting a record.

Join me and thousands all over the world and Spread Firefox with Download Day 2008. There is no better time to give Internet Explorer and Netscape the boot and try-out Firefox for yourself. I can tell you that it’s easy to use and much safer then most browser.

Update: Firefox set a record for the most downloads in one day. Check it out!

Can you imagine getting the beat down by Jessica Alba?  Seriously, the hottest mommy in Hollywood right now. You’re probably wondering the beat down by Jessica Alba where do I sign up? IBeatYou.com

IBY is a site that has user generated videos by people all over the world. It’s the YouTube for competitions. People can compete in competitions from staring contest to the best dub video.

So check it out compete against miss Jessica Alba aka jay_eh or Baron Davis aka boomdizzle. IBeatYou.com just giving you another reason to waste your time on the web. Enjoy!

It’s funny to imagine that I got my start in Journalism as an Advertising Manager for the school newspaper. I thought that I’d just be another warm body that didn’t have to worry about writing stories, photographing, or designing. Boy was I wrong!

I went from being the Ad Manger to being a editor in the matter of four issues. It’s crazy how that works. It started out when they found out I was graphic designer, thanks hubby and it just kind of fell into place from there.

Now in my second semester, I play a much bigger role on the paper. I do things like running production, taking photos, writing stories and doing reviews. I have to say that I love Journalism.

In September, I will be putting out my first magazine with the help of journalist who interests lay in magazines and a friend’s publishing company. The magazine’s focus will be comics, music and video games or things I love. I will be collaborating people who has a passion for each category. I hope that this endeavor works out because this could be my foot in the door to doing great things.

Whatever I decided to do, wish me luck!