Paul Mayne blogs here since 2003.

I’ve had a some requests for the code that I use to populate my sidebar with my Twitter status in HTML. Twitter’s default badge offerings are mostly worthless and at this point very ugly. I basically stripped out some JavaScript to parse and display your Twitter JSON file using JavaScript.

If you view source on this page (twitter.html), you can copy and paste the needed parts into your own page.

1. CSS Style (could be in an external CSS file or in the html head), customize to your liking.
2. Two JavaScript functions (in the html head).
3. HTML code – using span id’s to place the parsed data into.
4. JavaScript command to initiate the functions – I recommend putting this as the last thing on your page before the </body> tag. Sometimes it may take a few seconds to get the data back from Twitter and you don’t want your page waiting on Twitter to finish loading.

Now you need to customize it for your own Twitter account:

1. Change the “via Twitter” link to point to your Twitter page.
2. Change the “51373.json” in the last javaScript call to your Twitter ID. To find your Twitter ID, clicking on the RSS link on your Twitter page and look at the number in the URL.

Use and customize as you wish, Enjoy.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Tuamo for pointing out a solution to a JavaScript bug in Internet Explorer. I have updated the sample code linked above. Cheers!

— December 3rd, 2008

Last week I spent I spent a relaxing week in the Caribbean with my family. My mom treated us to a family cruise vacation we’ve been meaning to do for a few years then delayed after my dad got sick.

We rode on the Liberty of the Seas by Royal Caribbean on a 7 day cruise. We stopped in Philipsburg, St. Maarten; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Labadee, Haiti. Even though we were avoiding the many hurricanes present down there last week, the weather was mostly sunny, my sunburn can attest as can my wife who now looks Latino.

I will point out that the casinos are rigged. Don’t ever gamble on a cruise ship unless you want to donate your money.

It was a blast and I recommend it to anyone wanting to escape in luxury for a week. It was especially fun to be with my sweet wife, my mom and my sis and bro-in-law for a week. By the end, I think they were all tired of my jokes and antics, but I’m pretty sure they still love me.

I took a bunch of snapshots and posted them on flickr.

Update: Jana’s cruise post. / Sister Jamie’s post.

— September 10th, 2008

If you don’t know what Twitter is, it’s a micro blogging site where you are prompted to answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. Like:

whoa – a bird just pooed on my keyboard whilst sitting in a cafe

Mario Klingemann 06:02 PM June 05, 2007

Updates can be made via text message, the website, or one of the many Twitter desktop and iPhone apps. I currently like Twirl, Twitterific and TweetDeck, but mostly just use the website and text messages.

Twitter used to have IM functionality with Google Talk. It has since been shut off due to the popularity of the site and the hardware demands. Twitter is known for being down often, but hopefuly these issues will be resolved soon. Twitter, PLEASE fix notification for @replies ASAP!

I’ve been using my Twitter account daily since December 2006 with over 2000 tweets. I average two posts per day, some days a lot more and some days not so much. I find it fun and informative as a tool that is so simple, yet opens up to so much opportunity for other uses. I check my friends status updates often, but not to the point that I must read everything that gets posted. That’s what I love about Twitter, it’s like an ongoing conversation (or lots of them) that I can casually check into when I feel like it. Contribute a comment or make a status update, just check in and see what’s going on.

I follow APNews, nprpolitics and Woot to be notified of breaking news and crappy gadget sales. In addition to Following someone on Twitter, you have the option to turn on “Device Updates” for a person you follow. Then you will receive updates via SMS whenever that person posts. This can get annoying if you follow someone like Robert Scoble.

Wired Magazine asked a few of Twitter’s top talents “How to Twitter” in 140 characters or less, here are a couple of my favs:

“Every single Twitter post you write should be something that could get you laid, ruin a marriage, or bring a tear to a fat little kid’s eye.” — Joshua Allen

“Don’t try to impress — just be yourself. But go a little beyond your comfort zone; share something you’re hesitant about sharing.” — Evan Williams

There’s a countless amount or great people worth following on Twitter (Gawker actually posted a list of their top 12), here are a few that keep me entertained:

• http://twitter.com/gruber John Gruber, the mac blog king delivers daily rants and news to what’s going in his tech world and things that make you go hmm.
• http://twitter.com/dooce Dooce, the famous Mommy blogger and fellow Utahn continues to write witty posts even in 140 char format.
• http://twitter.com/Brilliantcrank Greg Storey, maker of Airbag Industries Twitters gems like: “Does Santa know that all his female elves are masquerading as gymnasts in China? I bet he’s going to be pissed.”
• http://twitter.com/kbestor Kurt Bestor is as good at writing witty status as he is writing Mormon loved music.

If you feel like following my Twitter posts, I am paulm. I’ll try to keep the potty humor to a minimum.

— August 13th, 2008

My sweet wife, Jana is involved with a ‘Young Womens’ program and is attending a week long camp out this week and left me alone with the boys. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but it’s also a blast. Completely different from my typical routine, which I’m in favor of. These little guys are so amazing and fun they never cease to make me smile.

We got a call yesterday from another girl going up to the camp, she asked if we could write a letter to Jana that she would deliver to her when she arrived later this week. So I wrote a bit about our first day on the back of a recent original painting from Jackson. (zoomed, readable version here)

— July 22nd, 2008

For the past 6 months or so, we’ve been keeping score of the winner and losers in our daily foosball breaks. The way it works is, we play 2 on 2 games, so 4 players in full set. A set consists of 3 games, so each player plays a game with every other player. A game is won by the first team to 10 points and the team switches position (front / back) after they have 5 points scored against them.

After 3 games, mathematically, there is always someone that either won all 3 games or lost all 3 games. This person is crowned with the title of “King” or “Joker” and thus, must put a king or joker sticker by their name on the scoreboard.

As you can see, some of us have so many Kings, we’re off the chart! I also have my share of Joker stickers, which I like to say were due to thrown games by those that don’t like me to win.

We have a coined a couple new foosball terms:

• foosed, as in “You just got FOOSED!”. This occurs when a player hits the ball away from thier own goal (typically a goalie or guard) and the defender (which is an offensive player) slams the ball right back at them and into the goal.
• toshed, as in “toshed it!” or “don’t tosh yourself”. This occurs when a player hits the ball so hard, it bounces off the far wall and back into their own goal. Named after our very own, hard hitting Tosh M.

— July 16th, 2008