• Update:

    I am in the process of migrating, redesigning and relaunching the site. Please enjoy what is here and excuse any changes or disruptions. They should be painless.

Del.icio.us and WordPress

By Kit | Published: September 20, 2006

Okay, I have already hit a snag with the posting via del.icio.us. I keep receiving the error ‘no transport protocol’. That coupled with my abyssmal attempt to move the site from kitkemper.com/mt to simply kitkemper.com has me thinking that I may want to move to WordPress. I have been a supporter of MovableType since I first encountered it, but I have also played with WordPress on other sites and found it to be much easier to install and use. What I will likely due is create a test site at kitkemper.com/links and see where that gets me. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Updating the Site

By Kit | Published: September 14, 2006

So I have to admit the I took great pleasure in my ability to “bring the ugly” with my previous site design. However, in light of the fact that I designed it while on a train from Portland to Seattle two years ago and it was a bit unpolished and hard to read, I decided it was time for an update. Hence what you see here now. It isn’t a total redesign as the layout is pretty much the same. What you will note is…

  • A new color scheme thanks to Daily Color Scheme. I will likely play with this a bit and make changes periodically.
  • Along with the ugly colors go the the old moniker, “Dubious Party Tricks and The Benefits of Complicated Belts”. There isn’t much mystery behind the name, and let’s just agree that it needed to be updated. Don’t try and make to much sense of the new name, “Dromedary Apothecary”, as there is not a whole lot of meaning to be read into it.
  • Finally, I am going to be adding a few new “features”; nothing too groundbreaking, just a chance for me to try out some cool tools and expedite content delivery so this sucker doesn’t get too stale. One of these new features is a del.icio.us Daily Blog Post, that should appear today although I haven’t tested it, so fingers crossed…

Let me know if anything is too distracting, painful or just ugly and I’ll do my best to fix it.

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OSCON – Underpants Gnomes

By Kit | Published: July 27, 2006

A lot of people would name a session “The Underpants Gnomes Strategy Guide: An eCards Case Study” to employ a bit of shock value and pique interest in their talk, leaving the attendee no choice but to walk away disappointed. Terry Chay, however used it as an understated description of his presentation. In what was easily the most entertaining session of the show, Terry broke down how he implemented an eCards program at Plaxo. It is best represented here by saying that the statement “Don’t worry about dancing bunnies and shit like that, because you’ll get your ass handed to you by people that are good at dancing bunnies…” made complete sense within the context of his talk and was one of the more family friendly moments (you know with the bunnies and all…). Terry promised to post the video of the talk on his blog (which apparently only runs when he is there), so visit often to see if it is live.

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OSCON – When Interface Design Attacks

By Kit | Published: July 27, 2006

I have never really given much thought to web design and usability. Not that I don’t think that it is important, I just always thought it was someone else’s job and that if I mimicked what other people had done, it should be right or pretty close to right. I have the feeling that is pretty much the attitude of most programmers (not that I claim to be one of those either). That being said, I had the opportunity to attend Amy Hoy’s session at OSCON entitled ‘When Interface Design Attacks’. I did so because I have known Amy for some time via the PHP Community Project, but have never had the opportunity to meet her in person. I have also thought that she would make an excellent author as she ably combines the skills of a designer and developer.

Surprisingly, this design centric session at a “coder show” drew a standing room only crowd. And Amy, for whom this was her first time attending let alone presenting at OSCON, handled the crowd perfectly. The content was dead-on eliciting numerous follow-up questions and ample note taking. It was a nice mix of Jakob Nielsen-esque by the book usability advice and street smart web design. I could bastardize the presentation by summarizing it here, but you’d be better off visiting the her site and downloading the slides for yourself.

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OSCON Nauseum

By Kit | Published: July 27, 2006

I whole-heartedly endorse anyone who wants to string up the “carpet-selector” for the Oregon Convention Center by the body part deemed most painful. The repetitive pattern that seems to trail off infinitely gives me a severe case of motion (or sedentary-sickness) of some kind every time I look at anything other than the carpet itself. Since OSCON contains its fair share of hung-over, computer-gawking nerds, surely this has caused multiple instances of ralphitude.

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“Valadating” My Feelings

By Kit | Published: April 27, 2005

Speaking of misspelling, I frequently use Y! Messenger on my cell phone to harrass and harangue my friends. It has however provided one of the biggest pet peeves in my daily existence. The developer types have successfully failed (patent pending) to spell “validating” correctly. Whenever I login to said Y! Messenger, it splashes “valadating license”. That gets my goat.

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Occasional Misspeller

By Kit | Published: April 27, 2005

So I have a tendency to misspell the word “occasional” and its many manifestations. In fact, I had to look it up for this post. It is embarrassing, I know. I know that I do it, but I cannot avoid the temptation to throw in an extra “i” or “s” or something just to make it look fancier and more hifalutin (had to look that up too. It’s definition is “variation of “highfalutin” which makes me wonder if that is a variation of “highfaluting” which spirals to thoughts on the various degrees of “faluting”. I am really too lazy to explore this further). The point of this post really has nothing to do with all this. It is actually to thank Kim who sits next to me. She has a sign on her door while she is at the NAPO Conference (which is a can of worms in itself) that reads “on email + voicemail occasionally”. The sign has “occasionally” spelled correctly. Ergo I have no excuse to misspell it for the duration of her absence (which according to the sign is “4/27 to 5/2″). Spelllchecker, thou shall mock me no more!!! If you catch me misspelling it, please bring it to my attention and perhaps refer me to the sign.

Oh, and the answering machine messages on Homestar Runner this week are hilarious (variation of “highlarious”).

I wonder if I’ll get any work done today.

Note: In the original posting of this, I successfully failed to close all of my parenthetical statements. Please make note of how nicely they are now closed and if you see me, congratulate me on this attention to detail.

(Sub-Note: “successfully failed” is now my favorite oxymoron. I will be using it frequently in converstation and may explore patenting it).

(the parentheses in the Sub-Note are merely window dressing.) (These and the previous are not).

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MySQL Users Conference

By Kit | Published: April 19, 2005

I am currently at the MySQL Users Conference. I will try and get some posts up here during the week, but all the folks from MySQL Press have set-up an impromptu MySQL Press @ MySQL UserCon blog that is being updated frequently. Be sure to check it out.

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Joyce Park

By Kit | Published: August 31, 2004

I briefly met Joyce Park at VQ at OSCON this year. Not only did she strike me as brilliant, but was a lot of fun as well. She gets ringing endorsements from all the folks in the PHP community too.

Unfortunately, it looks like Joyce was let go from Frienster on Monday for blogging. Both Joyce and Jeremy Zawodney validly discuss the irony of the situation. I am very sorry for Joyce and hope that Friendster sees the error in their ways. I am sure she is always welcome to come write books for us.

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AirPort Expresss Distress

By Kit | Published: August 18, 2004

Okay, I said that I was going to try and post two times a day so I am going to stick with it for the moment…

I got my AirPort Express today and was very excited. I figured I would just play for the time being and try and run it as a client to play iTunes over remote speakers. Little did I expect, it has been a nightmare. I can configure it, see it, but the damn thing won’t connect to the netowrk. I have posted to the Apple discussion board and expect to get a solution (I am always impressed by the support the community provides), but if anyone has any suggestions off the top of their head, please let me know. In speaking with a fellow Apple geek today it seemed that my router wasn’t connecting to the AirPort Express or vice versa.

Oh well, that’s two for today.

As a sub-post, I must remind myself to thank Amy Sorokas for showing me a great time in Seattle a couple weeks ago. There is some great video from the Seattle International Beer Fest that I need to edit and get to her.

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  • Dromedary Apothecary

    This is the weblog of Kit Kemper. It is generally about marketing. Marketing in the sense that pretty much everything you do as a company and more often as a person these days devolves into marketing of some sort or another. It is also about tech in much the same way as it is about marketing, technology touches more of our lives every day and where people, marketing, and technology converge there are some pretty interesting things happening.