Several blogger colleagues have raved to me about how they love blogging with Windows Live Writer. Every time I’ve tried (until now) I gave up because my personal blog’s themes use dark backgrounds. When trying to use Live Writer it was impossible to write or edit. Here’s a screen shot of this blog’s default dark background.

I found the answer in a Windows Live Writer Forum thread titled Theme Not Showing Up Properly. Flora MSFT answered with the following advice:

“One of your screenshots is our plain editing surface, which we fall back on if template detection fails. You can choose to edit in this mode by going to View menu and unchecking "Edit using Theme".”

The change to not edit using my theme changed my post background to the default off white (blue-ish) color and has made blogging from Live Writer much mo’ better!

The Falcons are hosting division rivals the Carolina Panthers in the Georgia Dome this week and look to continue their great start to the 2009 season with another victory. If the rival Panthers aren’t enough to get you fired up, the Falcons will be wearing NFL Throwback jerseys that honor the 1966 inaugural Falcon season. There will also be several special events during the game including:

• At the end of the first quarter Atlanta native and US Open quarter finalist Melanie Oudin will be introduced.
• During the first half two minute warning Atlanta rock band Collective Soul will be introduced and honored for their recent introduction to the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame.
• During halftime 20 members of the original 1966 Falcon roster will be introduced.

It will be a game time decision for me, but I’m going to “throwback” either wearing my 1998 Chris Chandler #12 or Chuck Smith #96 (too many margaritas last night .. sorry Chuck!) #90 jersey.

I will be tweeting from my seats like last week. Continue reading past the break to see Game 2’s live tweetgrid.

(more…)

My wife and I were lucky enough to have 2 tickets to the practice round and Par 3 Tournament on Wednesday, April 8, for the 2009 Masters.  After an incredible morning of walking the Augusta National Golf Club, we made our way over to the Par 3 course and settled down on our chairs for the afternoon. We picked a spot where we could watch the Par 3 action on several tee boxes and greens simultaneously. Since golfer pairings and start times were not published we had no idea who we would see. We did not expect to watch anyone we had not already seen on the full course during the morning practice round.

From our spot, we really could not tell who was coming until they reached the tee box of the third hole, and even there I had to zoom in with my camera to recognize players. The third tee box was across a lake and up a hill about 300 yards away from us while the green was about 100 yards closer. When I heard the crowd start to buzz around a corner of trees on Hole 2 I knew somebody special was coming, and when the cheers intensified and the crowd swelled on the green to left of the third tee box I got my camera ready. I must have been grinning from ear to ear as I slowly figured out the threesome that was causing such a stir.

Three icons of Golf. Each a Masters Champion multiple times: Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player.

I’ve been to PGA tournaments before and I’ve watched Phil, Tiger, Vijay and the stars of my generation compete. As special as those experiences have been, they now fall short of seeing these three men having fun and enjoying each other’s company on a Wednesday afternoon. To be in the middle of the Augusta tradition, on day I was allowed to take photos, and see these legends together for me made an incredible memory on an amazing day!

I stumbled across this helpful tip from the official Gmail blog. The post Tip: Sending empty messages explains how you can use Gmail to send SMS –like messages without being prompted about an empty message body. Here’s a cut and paste of the entire tip.

“I often send messages where the subject is the entire message (e.g. “Want to grab lunch at 12:30?”), and Gmail would always prompt me to add in body text.

Now, however, you can add “EOM” or “(EOM)” at the end of the subject line (short for End Of Message), and Gmail will silently send the message without the unnecessary prompt.”

Tribute to Queen from the Freemont Street Experience in Las Vegas NV

treesum

If you are looking for some free first person shooter games check out the 3 summarized in this post. With all three games available for Windows and Linux, these deathmatch open source alternatives offer a lot of characters and weapons with a healthy on-line community playing on numerous Internet servers. If you do not want to battle other players on the Internet, 2 of the 3 games have the option to also play locally against bots. These games also offer mods such as Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch. (more…)

Surfers ride the Bruticus Maximus wave machine during the VMware Partner Exchange 2008 Party.

I already keep pictures of my family on my Backberry 8800. I don’t wear a watch so I rely on the device for telling time. My Blackberry even let’s me leave my iPod at home because I can listen to my mp3s and watch movies on it too, but will I ever be able to save my credit cards, identification, and replace my cash with features on my phone? (more…)

Stolen Mac helps nab burglary suspects is an article on news.com that explains how a stolen Mac’s remote desktop feature helped capture images of the thief while he was using the stolen computer, and how those images helped identify the suspect and lead police to his eventual capture.

While police in White Plains, N.Y., were coming up empty with their
investigation, Duplaga learned that her computer was being used on the
Internet and turned on the Back to My Mac feature installed on her Mac
from another Mac, according to the report.

The feature allowed Duplaga to see immediately how the computer
was being used at the time, as well as operate it remotely. Recalling
that she had a camera installed on the computer, the fast-thinking
Duplaga snapped images of one of the burglary suspects before he
realized what was happening, according to the Times. Duplaga showed the
image to friends who recognized the suspect as someone who attended a
party at the apartment.

The photo lead police to arrest two suspects on Wednesday and recover nearly all the stolen property

“It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy
actually using the stolen property,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy
commissioner of public safety in White Plains, told the newspaper. “It
certainly made our job easier.”