Would you use a Daddy Daze bulletin board?

Lately I’ve been thinking about you, my dear readers. Specifically, I’d like to have more interaction with you all. It’s nice to get a little back-and-forth going in the comments, but sometimes I think it’d be nice to go beyond that. So, I thought of a bulletin board.

If I set one up, would you all make use of it? There’d be an open thread, as well as others that expand on posts here, parenting issues, fatherhood concerns, news and so on. Is anyone interested? We could form a nice little community here, I believe. Let me know what you think.

Oh, how I love YouTube

I love YouTube. I think it’s the greatest invention ever. If there’s anything I want to see, and I mean anything, chances are very good I’ll find it on YouTube in a matter of seconds. Things I thought I’d never see again, and things I’ve never seen before.

Let’s start with the former. Above is a clip of The Magic Garden, a kids’ show that was popular in the 1970’s. When I was a kid I absolutely LOVED that show. I can still remember Carol and Paula sitting on the swings, playing that guitar, talking with the Squirrel Sherlock and the Chuckle Patch. They’d open this chest they had (I’m fairly certain it was called "The Story Box") and take out props that they’d used to act out little stories. I loved every minute of it.

Earlier tonight I was poking around YouTube to see what I could find. For some reason, the show popped into my head and literally five or six seconds after I initially had the thought I was watching a clip of the original show. I think that’s absolutely fantastic. I never, ever thought I’d see it again, and now I have.

I had an equally easy time finding and reliving some of my other favorite television moments, like:

Neil Young and Pearl Jam playing Rockin’ In The Free World on MTV. If you saw this live, it was just before Pearl Jam released their 2nd album. They debuted the single Animal and then Young walked on stage from out of no where, plugged in and the lot of them burned through Rockin’ in the Free World. I was blown away and still get chills when I see him stroll onto the stage with that black Les Paul.

Roddy Piper smashing a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head. When I first saw this as a 13 year old, I was completely shocked. My friends and I spent weeks talking about it in disbelief and horror at school. It was my first taste of a blatant injustice and it effected me so much that I still remember it, and it was the 3rd thing I looked for on my little YouTube Hunt.

The Immaculate Reception. Those three words inspire a look of reverence to come across the face of every football fan in America. Probably the most spectacular play in the history of the sport, The Immaculate Reception is the pinnacle of our mythology, and deservedly so.

Tom sings Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t (My Baby). Actually entitled Solid Serenade, it’s my favorite episode of my all-time favorite cartoon.

Now, a few of the things I didn’t see the first time around

Artie Lange breaks down on the Stern show after admitting his heroin problem. A brutally honest and truly heartbreaking episode of the show. It’s especially touching as Howard goes over to hug his friend while they’re in commercial.

David Ortiz hits that game winning homer in game 5 of the 2004 ALCS agains the Yankees. Thus ended the
longest playoff game (14 innings at 5 hours and 49 minutes) in the
history of professional baseball, and began the greatest comeback.

I guess I can’t have a discussion about YouTube without touching on the legality of watching copyrighted material for free on the internet. So many people in "the biz" get very uptight about their content appearing on sites like YouTube and Google Video. I think they ought to encourage this sort of distribution and even take part in it. The fact is, watching an old Tom and Jerry cartoon, for example, makes me more likely to buy a DVD from the store. Seeing the crappy video of Papi’s homer urges me to find a better version at Barnes and Noble and Artie’s heartfelt admission makes me want to order Howard TV on InDemand. YouTube isn’t ripping off these content providers, it’s offering free promotion. When someone says to me, "Oh, man, you gotta check out the clip from this TV show on YouTube," I’ll watch it, and if I like it, I’ll tune in to the show when it airs on TV.

YouTube is my favorite part of the internet, hands down. I love it. Here’s hoping that Hollywood big wigs and the like don’t screw it up.

On Rapidweaver and WYSIWYG editors

I can’t complain, really. I’ve been using Realmac Software’s Rapidweaver to maintain DaddyDaze since the site’s inception. There are many things I like about it, like the cheap price and ease of use. There are several things I don’t like as well. Alas, as a person with no formal training in web design (and an even worse EYE for web design) I’m forced (like many others) to use one of these inexpensive, WYSIWYG apps. Where is this going? Ok, I’ll just say it.

The Rapidweaver themes are butt-ass ugly.

They seem to target one group and one group only with their designs, and that’s Mac-toting teenage boys. Most of the default themes have aquafied, aqua-licious aqua goodness built right in! If you want glistening pill buttons, shiny tabs and lots and lots of blue, Rapidweaver is for you. Since I’m not blogging about Apple Computer, I don’t want a site that looks like it was designed by Apple Computer (and circa 2001 Apple Computer at that). There are legions of third-party theme developers out there, but it’s more of the same. The designs have a very tech-heavy slant. I’m writing about my two kids. How about something that says, “kids?”

The folks at Karelia software are hard at work on Sandvox, which is another of these inexpensive, consumer level editors. It’s still in beta (and has been for a long time) and I download each new build. They do have a couple of kids’ themes, but Karelia has gone in the opposite direction – it’s like a romper room explosion (see above). I mean, it breaks the Cute-O-Meter. No, thanks.

Next is Apple’s iWeb, part of the new iLife suite of applications. It’s got a long list of pros, most notably the seamless integration with iPhoto and iTunes. There are some cons, too, like no permalinks, no comments, the weird blog layout and the major annoyance of only allowing you to update your site from one machine, the one used to originally create it (actually all three apps do this). Plus, the templates just don’t to it for me. One thing I’ll say: Apple makes the most gorgeous “travel” templates. If you ever go on a trip, you’ll have the most stunning website/movies/photo galleries/DVDs as a result. I don’t know who Apple thinks I am, jetting off to European destinations at the drop of a hat, but I have two little kids, which makes that thing sort of difficult completely impossible.

What’s a nerd to do? As you can see, I’ve updated Daddy Daze to yet another theme that I don’t like. Please, developers of the world, make a theme for us end level users that isn’t butt-ugly. Or better yet: Include a theme editor with your applications! I mean, an honest-to-goodness, drag-and-drop theme builder for people like me who want to do this. I’ll happily use Rapidweaver/Sandvox/iWeb if I can easily make my own themes that look and do exactly what I want via an official editor. I’d say you all have the “publishing” part down. Now let us “design.”

Pet Peeve

Here’s a little something that makes me crazy. If you have a site “launch,” but five out of your seven pages have nothing more than a dumb “Under construction! Come back soon!” message, you have not launched your site. Please, people, if you aren’t ready to publish a certain page, don’t. Clicking a link only to find a “Coming Soon!” message is extremely annoying. Don’t do it.