Hatchomatic

This post is intended for a small audience: a class I’m teaching at AU. However, it might be useful to other people, too. Essentially, it describes one way to embed multimedia into Blogger posts, with some help from Dropbox, my favorite Web tool EVER.

Here goes:

1. Sign up for a Blogger blog and a Dropbox account. (Here’s a link for the latter.)
2. Copy your multimedia files (.mp3, .swf, etc.) to the Dropbox public folder.
3. Go to the Dropbox Web interface and click into your Public folder.
4. Use the arrow to get the public URL for the file in question.
5. If you’re trying to embed audio, copy this text into your Blogger entry:
   <embed src= “http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf” quality=”high” width=”300″ height=”52″ allowScriptAccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” flashvars= “valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=[MP3 URL HERE]” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”> </embed>
6. Replace [MP3 URL HERE] with the URL  you copied from Dropbox.
7. Publish.
8. For SWFs, do the same as above, but use this embed code:
   <embed src=”[SWF URL HERE]” quality=”high” allowscriptaccess=”always” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” align=”middle” height=”[###]” width=”[###]“></embed>
9. In this instance, replace [SWF URL HERE] with the Dropbox public URL and [###] with the appropriate SWF sizes.
10. Publish.

That’s it.

You know why I’m so bad about posting? Because I don’t get to it until this time at night… 11 p.m…. by which point I’m already tired and sick of being on computers.

But, I’ve been feeling bad about not posting. It’s like I jilted a lover. So, here are three quick stories. They all involve going to the bathroom — a sure-fire hit among any gang of readers.

As I’ve said before, I have a young daughter — she’s 4 now. She’s been potty trained for a good year or so, but is still discovering her body, her words, and her understanding of how the two collide.

The other day she was sitting on the pot, groaning. “It won’t come out!” she said in exasperation.

“What?”

“My poo-poo!” She sighed. “My poo-poo is sleeping.”

Ah yes, that nefariously restful poo.

Later, we were eating. I asked her what happens to her food when she eats.

“It goes into my tummy. If it’s wet, it comes out as pee. If it’s hard, it comes out as poo.” She looked at me like I was an idiot. I guess in some ways I am.

Finally, the other day I biked her to the zoo. It’s about 9 miles away. I loaded her into this great (though worn) bike trailer, hitched it up to my mountain bike, and took off. Going through the city, winding through bike paths and the Mall, pulling 50 pounds (her 35 plus the trailer) and fighting the wind, it took me about an hour to get there. And I was beat.

No matter, we walked around the zoo, looked at animals, had lunch, and enjoyed the morning. After a while she announced, “I have to pee!” She was doing the pee-pee dance big time and there wasn’t a bathroom in sight.

I loaded her onto my shoulders and looked everywhere for a bathroom. The reptile house? No. The great ape house? No. The souvenir shop? No.

Worried, I asked Sam how she was holding up. “I really need to go!” she said with some serious warning behind it.

“Ok,” I answered. “I’m looking!” Remember, she was on my shoulders. “No, you’re not going to pee on me, are you?”

“No,” she answered. “I’ve got my vagina closed.” Then she opened her knees and said, “Now it’s open!”

I’m not sure who’s going to need more therapy, me or her.

Anyway, we made it to the bathroom in time, though she did feel the need to comment on her being a “girl,” and us using the “boy’s” bathroom, as she stared in awe at the urinals. She also made me wipe her bottom. The joys of fatherhood.

On the ride back home, she napped while I exhausted myself. Luckily, I have quite the good girl. Back the house, I fell asleep while she played quietly on the floor with her puzzles.

Anyway, I’ll endeavor to do better with more postings.

Oh man, I’m really sad. In my last few posts I promised to be better about posting blog entries. Then what do I do? I let the blog wither on the vine for a month. Exactly one month.

Sorry…

Ok, so here’s a posting. Once again, it’s about my daughter.

Several months ago I started playing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “20 Greatest Hits” album when I take Sammy to school. It’s on my iPod and she fell in love with “Susie Q.” Within a few days, she memorized the names and order of most of the songs. “Daddy, I don’t want to hear ‘I Put a Spell On You.’ Can you play ‘Proud Mary’ instead?”

She renamed “Green River” to “Green Frog River.” No matter how hard I tried to correct the record, she would furrow her brow and say, “No, it’s ‘Green FROG River.’”

Anyway, after several months of “Susie Q,” I started yearning for something else. I tried Tom Petty and the Police, both of which Sammy liked, but neither really stuck. Then yesterday I went back to the future.

“Sammy,” I told her, “here are some songs by a group called ‘The Beatles,’” as “Help!” played on the iPod.

“The Beatles?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She listened for a few minutes and then “Help!” ended. Before the next song played, she said, “I want to hear more of ‘The Ladybugs!’”

“‘The Ladybugs’?” I asked, confused for a moment. “Oh, you mean ‘The Beatles’!”

Move over “Susie Q.”

MY daughter got violently ill recently… diarreah, vomiting, the works. We kept her quiet so she could rest. She watched TV, played with stuffed animals, read books, etc. We gave popsicles, pretzels, and such. Except for being sick, it must have been pretty sweet for her. Attention, hours of TV and junk food!

She’s much better now. The junk food is put away and the TV is back to it’s normal “off” state.

This morning, as I was brushing my teeth, she says, “Daddy, I want to watch TV.”

“No, honey. We have to get ready for school.”

She paused for a moment. “I’m not feeling good. I might throw up. I need to watch TV.”

Nice try.

One of my secrets is that I am a regular, no, religious reader of the Sunday Parade magazine that comes with our paper.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Parade magazine. I think it’s crap. But I’m addicted to it. I must read it. I feel uncentered, unbalanced when I don’t.

First, there’s the inside cover page of celebrity gossip, usually mixed with a dose of political nonsense. (Did you know David Hasselhoff is starring in “The Producers”? You do now!)

Then there’s Howard Huge, Born Loser and other completely unfunny comics. In Step with James Brady is a great way to get the most superficial and irrelevant information on the latest teen heartthrob. And the cherry on top is Marilyn vos Savant’s “Ask Marilyn” column.

She’s a “brilliant” woman with the highest IQ ever reported, or so she says. Apparently she was once listed in the Guiness Book of World Records and plenty of articles have been written about her. [Wikipedia entry]

Anyway, her column this week has the most idiotic question and answer I’ve ever seen. Basically, imagine a plastic tube that is six inches long and six inches in interior diameter. It is laying horizontal from left to right. Then stick a three-inch-diameter ball in one end and another in the other end. The question asks if one could get the ball on the left to come out the right and vice versa.

Her answer? Yes, you can do that! Just remove the ball on the left and pull through the ball on the right. Then put the removed ball back in and pull it through the right.

Oh, that’s brilliant! Just take the balls out! It’s like going to the doctor and saying, “Hey doc., it hurts when I do this.” And the doctor says, “No problem! Just stop doing that.”

Please, people, stop asking Marilyn.