Quadsville

The Question of the Day will be posted in the late afternoon Monday through Friday. You can vote until 6 p.m. the next day. You can always come back to the poll to check results. Or you can look for them on page A2 of the Quad-City Times. If you have a suggestion for a poll, drop me a line at mcoulter@qctimes.com or leave me a message here in Quadsville.

Next week is going to be a busy one in the Quad-Cities with the John Deere Classic in full swing. I, however, will be in South Carolina. Once again, Stephanie De Pasquale will take over as Mayor Pro Tem. But I want to let you know about some JDC-related things happening in Quadsville while I'm gone.

Keep an eye on the QCTee Times group for live updates from the John Deere Classic (Heck, if you're a golf fan, you should join the group and bookmark the page!). Craig DeVrieze and our other QCT sports writers will be live blogging during the whole tournament - about 10 hours a day. You can follow along with them and send in your comments and questions.

You can also send your comments about the JDC via Twitter. Just use the hashtag #JDCQC. You can send Twitpics, too, with the same hashtag. And if you hit traffic snarls trying to get to or from the TPC at Deere Run, don't forget to tweet that with the #qctraffic hashtag.

Only one more day in the office for me this week, so let's all vote on the Splish Splash photo contest now so we have a clear winner. There are some cute photos.

If I could take the day off, I would. But I've got a vacation coming up next week, so there's lots to do this week. Any of you playing hooky? If not today, do you have a good story of skipping work or school? I keep thinking of the guy who's wife filed a missing persons report on her husband only to find out he had ditched work to take a day-long bike ride. Today would be a good day for that!

We've got a new photo contest going: Splish Splash! Get your entries in by noon on Wednesday.

We're also starting something new today: A daily poll. We'll have a new question for you every day (at least Monday-Friday). I know how much you all like to share your opinion (tee hee), so I hope you'll take time to check out our poll each day. Have a good one!

JOE’S PICK: This photo of John O’Donnell Stadium taken by Alice Gless of Davenport from the Rock Island Levee, July 4, 2005, won the Joe’s Pick Award.
“This one is well lit and has a mood that brings to mind the flavor of our community, a true vision of American life,” wrote newsroom artist Joe Kelley.

QUADSVILLAGERS’ CHOICE: Jock Aplin received the most online votes in our “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” photo contest with his photo of a baseball game in Stuart, Iowa.

Good question.

This is part of a karma system that was recently launched. You earn 1-10 points for a variety of contributions to our online community. For example, you get a point for uploading a photo or writing a comment on qctimes.com. You get 5 points for writing a comment on Quadsville. You get 10 for writing a blog entry.

The current parameters are:

0-249 points = Newcomer

250-749 = Citizen

750-infinity = Town Crier

When you go to My Stuff, you'll see your badge and a link underneath to view points. Right now, these badges aren't visible to others. But eventually they will be and other activities will be included in the karma system.

Since we are still sort of testing this out, let me know what you think. Are the point values for each level fair? It seems to me people can get up to Town Crier pretty quickly. I have more than 7,000 points for goodness sake. Should we raise the number of points needed to get to each level?

Let me know what you think.

Well, the post did appear in the list, but when clicked upon, there was an error message. I'm guessing this is an unspotted bug from that update we did a month ago. And since nobody else reported it, I'm guessing that not many of you know you can post to your blog when you're away from Quadsville.

If you open up your blog settings (My Stuff, My Blogs, Blog Settings), you'll see an e-mail address for e-mail/mobile posting. If you can e-mail from your phone or PDA, then you can send a long post. Shorter posts can be sent by putting the e-mail address in the To: line of a text message. I haven't tried to send a picture yet.

Has anyone been using this feature?

Most of you have figured out how to embed videos in your blog entries. But for those who haven't, here's a little trick you can learn (that works!).

Copy the embed code for the video. On YouTube, you will see this off to the right of the video. Then open up a new blog entry in Quadsville. After you typed whatever text you want, click on Edit HTML at the bottom of your blog editor window. Then paste the code where you want the video to appear in your blog. Then click back over to Design. When you publish, you'll see the viewer window right there in your blog entry so people can watch the clip without leaving your page.

What other techie tricks do you want to learn? Let me know and I'll keep you posted on when mobile blogging is up and running again.

Check out these photos and videos from the Air Show that Quad-City Images took. Did you know a Harrier jet could fly backward? I didn't.

Got some good reports on Starman's blog about his progress in the Race Across America. Sounds kinda rough out there.

What did you do for Father's Day? I helped clean up broken glass and debris at my dad's cabin on the Mississippi just south of Lock & Dam 18. A tornado came through early Thursday morning, but didn't touch down (my future brother-in-law says in the South they call that a gustnado). It did, however, twist off the top of a tree, smash it into the back of the deck and take the back railing and the grill crashing 30 feet down with it. Sent all the deck furniture (talking heavy glass table top kind) flying. Broke their boat dock in two. They had three holes in the roof that they've already gotten fixed and a few windows blown out. My dad and step-mom were there at the time and are lucky nothing worse happened to them. Not really anyplace to take shelter when your home is 30 feet in the air and there's no storm cellar in sight. The kicker is that this is about the time last year that they lost their other cabin to the flood. This one is built high enough to clear any floodwater. But Mother Nature will get ya one way or another....

We have some good entries so far in this week's photo contest. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is the theme. Enter yours before noon Wednesday.