A Bit Eclectic » Site News

Follow This Blog on Twitter

Shawn — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:14:30 +0000

A Bit Eclectic has its own Twitter account. Follow A Bit Eclectic to get updated when a new post goes up.

Less About You and More About Me

Shawn — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:00:03 +0000

I have been in a bit of a rut as of late. You may have noticed by the lack of posts going up. The good news is that I have pinpointed the problem. The blog has become less about me and more about what I believe others want. I stopped writing about things I cared about and started to try and figure out what my readers (all 4.68 of them) would like. After awhile I realized the problem.

If I write purely for my readers, you will get half assed and mediocre articles. There will be no emotion or personal interest driving the article. Unless I am interested in it, I will see no point in writing it. I may force one out just to get something up, but that doesn’t do anyone any good.

Writing for others also made it hard to find topics to cover. There aren’t many topics that will be right for everyone and the result is no post at all or they are all over the place to try and cover the entire audiance. There is no formula to follow that will guarantee good results.

From here on out I will get back to my roots. I started blogging for me. I wrote articles so that others can see my interests and opinions. I want to put my energy back into something that I care about and hopefully the result will be higher quality and more frequent articles. The posts will be about whatever I choose and can be anywhere from two lines to a 1000 word essay.

If you find yourself in the same situation as me then start writting for yourself. Write articles you would want to see and that you want others to know about. Put your opinion in there and take ownership for every word you place on your site, even if you end up being completely wrong. This is my site and I want to be proud of it.

Rebranding

Shawn — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:30:49 +0000

Welcome to A Bit Eclectic. As you may have noticed, I have changed the name and URL of this blog. As part of the transition away from wordpress.com I wanted to get a new matching URL and name for the blog. Although I liked Eclettico I couldn’t obtain the URL.

Please update your links, bookmarks, and feeds. As far as I know this will be the last change to the URL. All of the old URLs should work for the forseeable future but I recommend moving to http://abiteclectic.net.

Too Little, Too Late

Google Maps: Street View Added to Driving Directions

Shawn — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:26:04 +0000

Here is a new feature I stumbled upon last night. Google Maps has added the street view feature to driving directions. Now you can get a glance at the route before you even get in the car. When you look up driving directions on Google Maps, a little camera icon will appear next to the streets. If you click on the icon the street view will pop up on the map. From here you can zoom in and pan around to get a good look at the surrounding area. If you don’t see the camera icon, street view may not be supported in your city.

Overall it is a great addition. However, I only see one real good use for it. Sometimes when you are driving, street signs can be hard to see. This can be especially true late at night in a poorly lit area. With this feature, you can get a look at the houses and landmarks surrounding the intersection. This will make it easier to recognize your turn on those easy to miss streets.

Google has provided some other great uses in this video. Some of them seem a little far fetched to me, but your millage may vary.

Flickr: Share This

Shawn — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:17:36 +0000

Flickr rolled out a new feature to help us share our photos and videos. It is a little Share This button in the upper right hand corner of a photo page, sets page, or group. After clicking it you get a drop down menu where you can: email it, grab the link, grab the embed code, or post it to your blog (which requires some setup.)

This simple little feature will help us share more of the interesting stuff that we find on flickr.

Winter Portrait

Welcome

Shawn — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:25:13 +0000

Welcome to Eclettico. Eclettico is italian for eclectic, which means

deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources

I believe that is fitting for my diverse interests and wide range of post topics. Here you can find things covering movies, music, video games, books, blogs, websites/webservices, my opinion, news, technology, and just life in general. If you aren’t necessarily interested in all of these topics, feel free to use the keywords and tags to hone in on what interests you.

I have also imported the posts from all my other blogs so that you don’t have to hunt all over the internet for other stuff I have written.

Enjoy

Getting Things Done Explained for Students – Lifehacker