The strongest woman I know

My grandma.

∞

I really like Mint

A couple of months ago I finally decided to bite the bullet and pay for Mint, a statistics package for websites. What? Yah, I couldn’t believe it either, but you know I loves the numbers. $30, to be sure, is a lot to pay for what amounts to nothing more than a somewhat simplified stats program, but I love it. I love everything about it.

I’m not going to go into detail about the product, lord knows the blogosphere had its way with it when it was first released (mostly with regard to its admittedly high price), but I will say that I’m more than pleased, even if a bit miffed that I actually paid for it. It actually reminds me a lot of the old Reinvigorate system (which was *cough* free).

It’s not Analog or Urchin (now available for free from Google Analytics), but it shows me the information that I want to see, and beautifully I might add.

I think my absolute favorite feature is the RSS feed for new referrers. No need to follow anything else; Technorati, PubSub, and all the other ways I used to track incoming links have been obviated. Shaun gets around the referral spam problem by “validating” every hit with JavaScript, which really seems to do the trick.

One other really nice feature regarding referrers is that it can usually deduce that different URIs are the same site (e.g., www.foo.com, foo.com, foo.com/foo.html) and record/present them as such.

Pepper

The “Pepper” plugin interface is fantastic and as soon as I think of something I need that hasn’t already been created, I’ll be sure to release my own addition to Mint.

I currently use the following Peppers:

• FeedBurner Stats
• Fresh View
• Trends

Mild complaints

There is no way to filter the RSS feed. In other words, there is no way to remove from it things that come up often, but in slightly different contexts (e.g., I get a ton of referrals from Google Images which I couldn’t care less about). Yes, I know of the Referrer Filter Pepper, but it only filters the page view pane, not the RSS feed.

Another thing I would like to see is the ability to switch between various color schemes. Sure, I could whip up a custom CSS file, but, well, I’m a busy man, and for $30 I would expect at least one alternative color combination.

All in all though, it’s a great piece of software and something I see myself using for years to come.

∞

Busch Gardens

Yesterday I went to Busch Gardens with a bunch of friends for the first time in ~10 years. It was an absolute blast and everything I remembered. I think it’s always been my favorite theme park and yesterday just helped to solidify its position at the top. The new big ride, SheiKra, is completely insane, and were it not for the ridiculous wait times, we probably would have rode it all day.

∞

Eric, a good friend of mine

∞

WordPress 2.0

WordPress 2.0 was released yesterday (from v1.5.x) — I upgraded my installation last night and had no issues. Great job guys.

Also, both of the plugins I maintain for WP work fine under 2.0 (I’ve updated the list of working plugins to reflect this). On a related note, I’ll be releasing Smart Archives v1.1 sometime in the next few days and am working on two new plugins.

As you were.

∞

I just can’t keep up

Too many friends to see. Too many voicemails to respond to. Too many conversations to have. I’m afraid that there just isn’t going to be enough time to fit it all in this break. If you haven’t received a response from me (other than through SMS/e-mail), trust that you are in the queue.

Uhh, at some point I should probably do some patent bar studying.

I ended up getting the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens I spoke of in an earlier post, but haven’t had a chance to shoot with it yet; hopefully tomorrow I can find some time. I’m currently sitting on about 10 pictures I think are good enough to post here — expect them to trickle in over the next few weeks.

∞

Florida sunset

Today was the first day since I’ve been home that I’ve been able to take any pictures (my previous efforts had been thwarted by rain and lack of transportation), but even today I was only able to go out for about 45 minutes before it got dark.

You can find another, similar sunset picture below this one in my Flickr photostream (I took a ton of pictures because the sky kept changing colors) along with a B&W picture of a parked train that I took before I got to the water.

Expect many more photos, weather and transportation permitting.

∞

I am a workaholic

That’s the first step, right? Now what? It’s no doubt getting worse with age, and, well, it kind of scares me.

∞

What’s a GSM fanboy to do?

UPDATE: I actually ordered the i-mate SP5 again. Should be here tomorrow.

Am I going to be ‘forced’ to move to Verizon? Of all the phones I’ve owned and services I’ve used, the only major carrier I’ve never gone with is Verizon (for various reasons). However, that might have to change given that they seem to have both the Palm Treo 700w and the Motorola Q locked for the foreseeable future. Not sure if we’ll see unlocked GSM versions of these phones until well after the Verizon launch-hype has worn off.

This puts me in a very contentious position. Perhaps I’ll have to try and get the i-mate SP5 again(!) (obviously not from Expansys) or just wait for the Nokia E61, which I think might be a huge hit next year, assuming of course that Nokia doesn’t follow their usual practice of pricing “high-end” phones completely out of the market.

Still reluctant to move to Verizon

My love for GSM really has nothing to do with the underlying technology. That used to be the case, but as this industry progresses we’re starting to see that the big three (Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon) are converging toward similar ceilings. I think the biggest reason I’ve never gone with Verizon (or Sprint since about 2001) is because the [CDMA] phones they use are locked to the carrier, and so phones without the carrier’s “seal of approval” simply will not work. What does that mean exactly? It means that the latest and greatest devices (read: those available anywhere but America) can’t be used on these networks. If you flip mobile devices like I do, you not only want access to the newest gadgets, you also want to be able to sell them easily, which becomes a bit more difficult if your ad is limited to a specific carrier. When locked in with either Verizon or Sprint, you’re at the mercy of the respective provider as to which phone you’ll be using next — unless they decide to pick up the phone you want (and the manufacturer decides to let them have it), you’re shit out of luck. This has never sat well with me and I’m not sure the Q or the 700w can change that. Couple this inability to control your device with the fact that Verizon’s unlimited data plan for devices is $45/mo., where Cingular’s is $20, and the possible switch quickly becomes a non-decision.

I actually purchased a RIM Blackberry 8700c after the whole SP5 fiasco, but returned it the same day after realizing that there was no way for me (err, Cingular wouldn’t allow me) to use my all-I-can-eat data plan with the RIM device even though I didn’t need/want any “push” functionality; I simply wanted web and POP/IMAP access, but this required a separate $50/mo. “BlackBerry” plan. Just one more way to get your money. I’m so sick of the providers here I can’t see straight and could talk at unbelievable length about the inequities and ineptitude of the entire mobile phone industry, but I’ll save everyone the bore (for now!).

∞

On the lack of new pictures here

Yes, I know I’ve been a little lax with pictures here lately — I’ve been busy. Truth be told, I haven’t taken a single shot in about two months — I’m itching to get back into the swing of it and plan to shoot a ton while here in Florida.

While on the topic, I should mention that I might be adding the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM to my arsenal fairly soon.

∞

On having luggage lost

Well, as usual, the black cloud of luck that hangs over my head decided to rain on me again today — American Airlines lost my luggage, which included both my patent bar study materials and some rather expensive clothes. Hopefully they’ll find it and rectify the situation. This is just what I needed after the last month and a 7:00AM-midnight transit from California to Florida. Same shit, different day.

∞

What a month

I had my last law school final of the semester last night and am completely burnt-out. Not sure why, but finals really took their toll on me this semester. They always do, but this semester seemed a bit more intense for some reason. I’ve essentially been a machine the last few weeks and am now devoid of energy. All that’s really left to do is wait for my grades to start trickling in and ruining my day(s). Luckily, I’ll be able to drown my sorrows in good company, Chik-fil-A sandwiches, and fried okra from Sonny’s (see below).

Unfortunately, there’s really no downtime — today is the girlfriend’s birthday and tomorrow morning I head back to Florida for about three weeks. On top of the fact that there are 2342353 people I need to see and hang out with in Florida, this break is likely going to be a lot less fun than years past because I’m going to have to spend the majority of it studying for the patent bar, which is not the most exciting thing in the world. In fact, I dare say it’s the most boring, god-awful thing I’ve ever been made to do.

Notwithstanding the fact that I’ve got all of this stuff going on and that the next few weeks will arguably be as busy as the last few, you should expect a ton of posts from me over the next month or so — there’s a whole lot I’ve been wanting to say, but just haven’t had the time to say it.

We’re now off to find Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for my PSP. This cartridge comes with the original Mortal Kombat trilogy (I’m an MK god; it’s been a while, but…) and ~20 other games. I can’t wait!

We also plan on seeing King Kong this afternoon, and from what I’ve heard, it’s nothing short of brilliant.

As you were.

∞

Del.icio.us alternatives redux

I received quite a bit of e-mail regarding the Del.icio.us alternatives post I put up a few weeks ago. As is always the case when I write something like that, much of the feedback comes from similarly situated people looking for the same solution and asking me to let them know if and when I come across it.

However, not all of the e-mail was from end-users — I also got feedback from various del.icio.us competitors hawking their wares. In fact, the CTO of Furl, the service I commented on in the earlier post, e-mailed me to get a better understanding of what I was talking about regarding the URI-forwarding and has since told me that a “furl”-free referrer is now on the to-do list. I really hope this actually comes to fruition.

For what it’s worth, I did try out quite a few other social-bookmarking services, but all of them suffered from the same no-HTML-in-comments shortcoming.

Something tells me that at the end of the day I’m going to have to migrate the entire thing back to my own CMS to get this very simple feature. I explained how to create a “linkblog” with Movable Type a while back, though I’d likely use WordPress this time around if it comes down to that.

Out of curiosity, has anyone come across a del.icio.us importer for either WordPress or Movable Type (either would work — importing/exporting between those systems isn’t too terribly difficult)? When I say “importer,” I’m referring to moving the actual bookmarks (+descriptions) to the CMS (i.e., each bookmark ends up being a separate post); I’m not looking for a way to present del.icio.us bookmarks on a site powered by either of those CMSs.

∞

Gmail and Lynx

Not sure why I’m writing about this here, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Gmail works, and works well, in Lynx, the text-only web browser for *nix terminals.

A few days ago there were some network problems on campus (surprise, surprise) and about half of the sites I was going to were not coming up. I desperately needed to check my e-mail and my phone’s battery was dead so I couldn’t do it from there. I didn’t know of any proxies off the top of my head and so I ended up SSH’ing into my webhost and using Lynx to get to Gmail.

Now, I fully realize that Gmail has an HTML-only version that is triggered when JavaScript is disabled (or missing), but for whatever reason I just assumed that the site would somehow break under Lynx. Lucky for me it didn’t break, and honestly, the navigation isn’t that bad in a pinch.

∞

Note to self

It’s probably not a good idea to do this again. Finals are killing you this semester.

∞

Hacking Gmail

It appears that Wiley has put up a few excerpts from Hacking Gmail, a book for which I was the technical editor (also see Google Hacks).

Keep in mind that the selections Wiley offers don’t touch at all upon the real crux of the book, namely, the API and other code-related things that were Ben’s focus.

If you’re a Gmail “power user” and really want some neat, practical insight into the web service’s innards, I suggest you check out the book, which I’m told should be in stores before Christmas.

As an experiment, I started using Gmail exclusively about a month ago and have a lot to say about the experience (not the least of which is the fact that I’m still using it). Because I fear the post will be relatively long, I’ll likely wait until law school finals are over before writing something up.

∞

Colored bubbles

Mike Haney’s got an excellent article up on Popular Science titled, The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles. It’s one of those inspiring feel-good stories that really makes you want to keep pressing on and producing, knowing that there are still problems yet to be solved and things yet to be created, and hoping to one day claim your well-deserved jackpot for figuring it all out. My favorite passages:

I started with Jell-O, because I thought, “Well, it’s got pretty intense color. So I mixed Jell-O and Ivory soap. I got nothing.” Undeterred, he went back to the store and tried food coloring. Then hair dye. Then ink. Within weeks, he was taking Sherri on dates to the grocery store, where he would buy as many colored products as he could afford. Back in his kitchen, he’d dump the Fruit Roll-Ups or Juicy Juice into a pan, heat it on the stove until he figured the color was loosened up, and pour in the dish soap. Only clear bubbles emerged.

[...]

Color remained elusive, but his try-anything approach kept plenty of other strange bubbles floating across his kitchen. One exploded with a loud bang. Another gave him chemical burns when it popped. The best one bounced, just like a Super Ball. He thought he could have sold that one, but he couldn’t re-create it. He could rarely re-create any of his experiments. “I never wrote anything down,” he says. “I’d get too excited as I was doing it. But once I lost that bouncing bubble, I was crushed. I started videotaping myself so that next time I’d know more than ‘It was something on that side of the kitchen.’ “

[...]

Ask Kehoe now to describe the day the first colored bubble appeared, and the details are fuzzy. He remembers dipping his wand into a pot of blue solution (although they produced clear bubbles, most of his solutions were colored by then) and looking at the quivering film, thinking that this one seemed different. He blew, and a bubble floated across the room. It was blue. He tried again. The next bubbles were blue too. He called Sherri in to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. No, she agreed, it was a blue bubble. As far as they knew, the world’s first blue bubble. In his kitchen.

What the hell is up with PopSci’s pagination? That entire story should have been on three pages max, not 11! I get that they want to hike up page views and ad impressions, but their scheme is a bit overkill — I can promise you that if I haven’t clicked on an ad by page two, I probably won’t on page 11. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on ad period, but that’s beside the point, or is it?

∞

Use CSS to place Firefox tabs where you want them

I actually hacked this up for myself a couple of months ago and the explanation of how I did it was sitting in the “queue” waiting to be posted here (like 30+ other things at the moment), but it seems that I’ve been preempted by mozillaZine, which I was just informed, has some instructions on the process.

I like everything on my computer to be on the right (tabs, system dock, application drawers, etc); for me, it makes perfect sense both from an efficiency standpoint (i.e., it’s usually the case that my mouse pointer “sits” on the right side of my screen) and a screen real-estate standpoint (i.e., my monitor, like most, is wider than it is tall).

∞

Del.icio.us alternatives

Can anyone point me to a “social” bookmarking service that has everything del.icio.us has plus the ability to use markup in the comments you add? If there’s no relatively easy¹ way to import my del.icio.us links into whatever you’re recommending, then forget it, but if you think you know of something that might fit the bill, pray tell.

Of course all of this would be moot if del.icio.us would simply allow HTML in the comments. You listening Joshua? Come on man, make it happen; I don’t want to leave del.icio.us.  :)

I’m well aware of Furl and if I switch that’s likely what I’ll switch to, but there’s one thing about that service that really bothers me, namely, the fact that when you use it to put links on your site, those links are routed through their servers each time someone clicks on them (i.e., sites won’t see that I’m linking to them because the referrer will show Furl; not only does this perturb me personally, it frustrates the means and ends of search engines).

∞

Cribcandy

I got turned on to Cribcandy, “bookmarkable stuff for your home,” a few months ago and can’t get enough of it. Every day its RSS feed alerts me to neat products that I can add to my “wist” (wish + list) with a single click. Nevermind the fact that I can’t afford 99% of the stuff I add — it’s there waiting for me when I can.

∞

Perfect Blue Buildings

Just down the street from your hotel, baby
I stay at home with my disease
And ain’t this position familiar, darling
Well, all monkeys do what they see
Help me stay awake, I’m falling…

Down on Virginia and La Loma
Where I got friends who’ll care for me
You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted
I got an attitude of need
Help me stay awake, I’m falling…

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion
Try to keep myself away from me

It’s 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn’t get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I’m falling…

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion
Try to keep myself away from myself and me

I got bones beneath my skin and mister…
There’s a skeleton in every man’s house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody
There’s a dead man trying to get out
Please help me stay awake, I’m falling…

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me

From Counting Crows’ Perfect Blue Buildings

∞

Chaos theory

I recently received the following e-mail from a good undergrad friend:

This link in your bits feed made it into lecture today after I sent it to Dr. Wu.

This is his reply:

“It is easy to explain why we see green dot. Since the pink dot moves fast, what we see is actually the complement color of pink, which is green. When the pink changes to grey (the background color), you will see green. If a monitor show R and G at different location, you will not see R and G, but yellow, as long as the lighting moves fast from R to G (faster than 30 Hz or so).”

He showed it in class and said he would ask how it works on the final exam.

Is this an example of chaos theory? The effect of including a link in your page alters the final grade of Dr. Wu’s students.

Hopefully no one in that class reads my site.  :)

∞

32-inch LCD HDTV recommendations

UPDATE: I think I’ve settled on the Sony BRAVIA XBR.

Though I already have a few well-informed friends on the case, I thought I might as well ask the question here too: what’s the best 32-inch LCD HDTV for less than $2500?

It’s very likely that I’ll still do my usual over-the-top, leave-no-webpage-unread research on the subject, but I wouldn’t mind hearing from a few people who might be a bit more knowledgeable than I when it comes to this sort of thing.

∞

Expansys and delayed shipping

UPDATE: Well, I’m fairly certain that I’m going to be going with the 8700c I mention below — currently Expansys is claiming that my order will not ship until Nov. 30th Dec. 11th Dec. 23rd!!! If it ships on that day (and it won’t), it will have taken more than three months to arrive at my doorstep. No thank you.

As I mentioned previously, I recently purchased an i-mate SP5. It still has not shipped. When I ordered it I was told that it would ship in six days. It’s been 30. Every time the “estimated shipping” ticker drops down a couple of days, it always seems to jump back up by four or five. Currently, it says four days, so assuming it actually ships this go around (unlikely), it will have shipped 34 days after I ordered it.

I’ve used Expansys multiple times without incident, but this is really starting to rub me the wrong way. I understand that the holdup is likely on i-mate’s end, but not once in the past month have I received an e-mail explanation from Expansys regarding the delay. Nothing.

I’ve been looking very seriously at the Blackberry 8700c and if it ends up coming out on the 21st as expected, I may very well cancel the SP5 order if it hasn’t yet shipped. Hell, I may just cancel the order out of principle — this is getting ridiculous.

∞

Disabling auto-paragraphs in WordPress

If WordPress feels that a tag you are using needs to be wrapped in a paragraph tag, it will just go ahead and do that for you no questions asked. No thank you.

I first ran into this problem when checking the site for XHTML validation after coming up with a method for producing weblog footnotes using Textpander. The XHTML would not validate: there was a closing paragraph tag without a matching opening paragraph tag. Poring over my code again and again, I knew that I wasn’t doing it — WordPress was adding the rogue paragraph tag sometime subsequent to the calling of the_content(). After taking the issue up on the support forums (and finding agreement that it was indeed a bug), I noticed the problem again when I did the latest redesign, however in this instance it was adding an opening paragraph tag and not closing it, which compelled me to re-examine the issue.

After sifting through more code than I’d like to admit, I figured out a very quick and easy fix that doesn’t seem to break anything else (on my site anyway). All you need to do is open the /wp-includes/default-filters.php file and comment out the following line:

addfilter('the_content', 'wpautop');

Logic would suggest that if you don’t currently roll your own XHTML, then this little hack probably isn’t for you, because, I’m assuming, that without this filter, posts that are typed up through the WordPress web interface are never wrapped in paragraph tags. In other words, don’t comment out the above line unless you know what you’re doing.

∞

Keep the change

I hate change. Hell, I hate cash period. I’m very used to the surprised looks I get from friends when, for whatever reason, I actually whip out some cash to pay for something. One of the biggest reasons I hate cash is that you have to keep replenishing it, which means taking trips to the bank (or selling things on Craigslist), which means you’re being inefficient (unless of course you walk around with thousands of dollars in your pocket or you work at a bank).

That said, most of the people I know don’t seem to agree with me about this. They almost always use cash and make frequent trips to the bank to get more of it. My argument is simple: it’s 2000-fucking-5, the world is electronic, why aren’t you? I don’t get it. With a debit/cash card you never have to worry about not having money (if you actually have money in the bank), there is an electronic record kept of whatever you purchase, and best of all there is no change to deal with.

Perhaps Bank of America has finally realized that a significant number of people still prefer cash, because they’ve just come out with a pretty ingenious program, Keep the Change, that would seem to prod people into using their debit cards more. Basically, the program rounds up any purchases you make using your debit card to the nearest dollar and puts the difference between the rounded amount and the actual amount into your savings account — automatically and with every purchase.

What I don’t quite understand though is that the name “Keep the Change” seems to be a bit of a misnomer. I mean, if you are using your debit card, there is no “change” anyway, right? Right. Notwithstanding the confusing name, I still think it’s a neat idea, especially for those spendthrifts who don’t normally “save.”

Sadly though, the program can’t really compete with some of the other cash-back credit card programs out there because those give you something on top of what you’ve already put in (assuming that you pay off your balance each month) rather than skimming the top off of what was already there and repackaging it . That said, I do think that this aspect of the program is pretty cool:

For the first three months, we’ll match your Keep the Change? savings at 100%. That means for every Keep the Change transfer, we’ll contribute the same amount to your Bank of America savings account. And when the three months are over, to make it even easier to save, we’ll continue matching 5% a year, every year.

While on the topic of Bank of America, I have to say that their website can be pretty goddamn annoying sometimes. For those not in the know, BoA has two completely separate computer systems, east and west, that cannot talk to each other; apparently, like those that still use cash exclusively, no one there got the memo that it’s 2000-fucking-5 and that this sort of interoperability should be a non-issue — it’s the same company for christ’s sake!

I have accounts in both California and Florida and if I want to deposit a check into my Florida account while in California I actually have to go into the bank, fill out some paperwork and then wait in line so that I can talk to a teller (even though I can withdraw “Florida” money from any BoA ATM). What is more is that the deposit is not instantaneous and usually takes a couple of days to show up in my account. It’s much easier to just deposit it into the California account and then move it over electronically.

While this isn’t that big of a deal (I mean, how often do you use checks anyway?), there is another aspect of this divide that is incredibly annoying, namely, the fact that you can’t consolidate multi-state accounts (if they exist on opposite systems) into a single online “account.” I have to use separate logins to get into my accounts even though they are through the same damn bank. This wouldn’t be such a chore if you weren’t required to choose the state in which the account is held (the different login name isn’t enough), but you are and the song-and-dance requires multiple steps.

If anyone can explain away this chasm, pray tell.

∞

From iPhoto to iView MediaPro

ADDENDUM: A few days ago, Apple announed Aperture, a professional-grade photo editing and management tool, which, after watching the demo videos, I’m incredibly impressed with; something tells me I’m going to be doing this whole “migrating” thing all over again with Aperture pretty soon. It’s obvious that Aperture is currently meant to complement Photoshop, not obviate it, but I’m sure Apple isn’t ruling out the possibility years down the road.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I was going to stop using iPhoto and move to something, umm, what’s the word, oh yah, USABLE. iPhoto had been giving me all kinds of trouble, much more than I want to get into here (and that you likely want to hear about), but the problems are by no means specific to me and I’m sure most of the people reading this post know exactly what I’m talking about. Indeed, in the last month I’ve seen a considerable spike of I’m-sick-of-iPhoto rants across the blogosphere.

The biggest problem for me was always speed — use iPhoto to organize a substantial amount of photos and you’ll quickly realize that it’s incredibly slow, to the point that for all intents and purposes it’s quite unusable. This annoyance quickly became unbearable when I started using iPhoto with the larger files produced by my Canon 20D and I knew that something was going to have to change.

Let the OS do the work?

There really aren’t too many alternatives on the Mac when it comes to image organization. Given the lack of options, I, at one point, thought that I would just use hierarchical folders (year/month, etc) and navigate the pictures using a combination of the Finder, Spotlight, and smart folders. As ever, I thought long and hard about the possible long-term implications of such a move and ultimately decided that that was probably not the best approach right now (though I might very well decide otherwise in the future).

After dismissing the “filesystem” option, it didn’t take me long to stumble upon iView MediaPro. I’d heard of it before and even read some reviews, but never really considered it until now. I knew that a lot of “serious” photographers swore by it and so I decided to give it a shot.

Post-move Details

I knew the transition was not going to be easy and I put it off as long as I could. I was aware of the iPhoto import feature (truth be told, I doubt I would have attempted the move without it), but I was scared that the amount of pictures I had would make the importer shit on itself (especially in light of the fact that all of the pictures were tagged with at least one descriptor, if not many). Imagine my delight when the move was completely error-free. That’s not to say that there wasn’t some post-move work to be done, but the catalog and thumbnails built themselves without a hitch; this included both the albums I created (called “Catalog Sets” in MediaPro) and keywords.

The only real hang-up regarding the transition was manually moving the image files to another directory. iPhoto stores its photos in a particular year/month/day structure located in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library and when you “import” these pictures into MediaPro the disk location is maintained. Obviously, I didn’t want my pictures to reside in the iPhoto directory anymore and I also didn’t want the directory structure to be so granular (i.e., I wanted just year/month).

Surprisingly, this wasn’t too hard to do in MediaPro.¹ I first created a directory off my home directory called “images” and then created subfolders for the years and months. I added the images folder to the “Catalog Folders” pane in MediaPro, which already contained the iPhoto directories because of the initial import. Finally, using the Catalog Folders pane I selected each of the “day” subfolders within the iPhoto directory, highlighted all of the resulting thumbnails, and dragged them to the corresponding year/month folder under the images directory. Using this method, MediaPro physically moved the files to the new directories and kept all of the meta information (keywords, sets, etc) intact.

Likes / Dislikes

A few things I really like about the program:

• Very, very, very fast. I’m running it on a 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 with 1GB of RAM and am loving it; it’s such a departure from the spinning beach-ball that was iPhoto.
• Good configuration options (not great, but certainly very powerful).
• Very nice interface. There’s no real clutter and everything feels like it has a purpose — the entire application is very navigable.
• Excellent metadata options.

A few things I don’t like:

• When browsing through thumbnails you can’t select multiple pictures using the mouse (i.e., you can’t click and drag over multiple pictures) — if you want to pick more than one picture you have to CMD-click each of them.
• Can’t select multiple keywords at once (i.e., there’s no way to see pictures tagged with both “justin” and “friends”).
• Can’t change the size of the thumbnails — they’re stuck at 128 pixels wide.

Backing it all up

I’m a huge fan of rsync and have been using it for years to backup various important documents and so it was the logical choice for backing up my photos remotely now that my webhost gives me enough space for this sort of thing.² The following is the rsync call that I use to backup my photos (once a day using cron). The first instance of this obviously required all of the pictures to be moved to the webserver, which took forever given my upload cap.³

cd /Users/justin;rsync -e ssh -rtR --delete --stats --progress
images/ jblanton@justinblanton.com:/home/jblanton/

Keep in mind that to run this particular command you will need to have setup passwordless SSH access on your webserver. Also, you might want to delete the “delete” argument, lest you run the risk of deleting all of your remote files if syncing from an empty disk.

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i-mate SP5

I recently sold my Sony Ericsson K750i and purchased an i-mate SP5, which probably won’t arrive for at least another week — consider this a pre[re]view. As some of you may recall, I had an i-mate SP3i a few months back and loved it — there was literally nothing wrong with it. Now, take everything I liked about that phone and square it. Seriously. Pretty much nothing comes close to the specs on the SP5. A brief list of notable features:

• Tiny, candy-bar form factor (107x46x17mm; 106g)
• QVGA screen (320×240 pixels shoved into 2.2 inches)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b)
• EDGE (class 10)
• MiniSD
• Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900)
• 1.3 MP camera (yes, a step down from the K750i’s 2MPs, but I could not care less)
• First Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition phone
• Bluetooth¹

If the construction of this phone is as solid as that of the SP3i, I have a feeling I’ll be keeping it for a while. In fact, I’m pretty sure that even the Motorola Q won’t be able to pry me away from it, if only because the Q will not have Wi-Fi (and possibly not even EDGE), nor will the Treo 700w, which was also on my radar. However, the Nokia E61, which was announced subsequent to my ordering of the SP5, has really got my attention. It will have everything the SP5 does, save Windows Mobile (Symbian OS v9.1 will be the platform), plus, if past support is any indication, it will sync with Macs.²

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flickrRSS

UPDATE: Dave Kellam, the author of flickrRSS, sent me an e-mail shortly after I put this post up to let me know that he reads my site and to thank me for the plugin plug (well deserved Dave). He also expounded on his future plans for the plugin and his intention to take care of its inability to display Flickr’s “medium”-size images (500 pixels wide), my only complaint. Then, not two hours after that first e-mail, he sent me an updated PHP file that addressed the “issue” (you can now see the larger pictures on my photos page). I’m told that he’ll release this version to the public in the next week or so.

Ever since the latest site re-design (and even before), I’ve been a little less than pleased with my photos page, which basically contained just two links, one to my Flickr photostream and one to my PHP Slideshow script. I have a couple of ideas to help fill in this space, but haven’t had time to implement them. I was either going to use the Flickr API to populate the page with the most recent photos or run the Flickr RSS feed through an XSLT transform to accomplish the same.

However, while doing some very cursory research I stumbled across flickrRSS, a WordPress plugin. To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for it and never expected to actually use it, but after setting it up it was hard to convince myself that it wasn’t exactly what I needed. The available customization options, image caching, and integration with the WordPress panel have really sold me. The only thing I will probably hack it to do is to pull medium-size images (500 pixels wide) instead of the smaller sizes it currently supports.

Truth be told, I’m a little bummed that I found this because building it myself now would likely be re-inventing the wheel.

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iPod nano + Brasso + invisibleShield

As you have no doubt heard, the Apple iPod nano gets scratches when looked at, much less used. Even my nano, which, if you know me personally, is transported on a cloud and handled with velvet gloves (read: I’m anal), has succumb to noticeable scratches.

After reading about the guy who removed nano scratches with Brasso (a mild abrasive), I was intrigued and knew that I had to try it out. As per Todd’s example, I used a micro-fiber cloth and concentrated mostly on the screen, which I rubbed for ~15 minutes. Surprisingly, all of the scratches that were there had disappeared — I was amazed. Granted, my screen was in pretty good shape to begin with, but after applying the Brasso it genuinely looked new. The same treatment was given to the metal portion of the nano with the same spectacular results.

After letting the Brasso dry and wiping the nano clean, it was time to put on the invisibleShield, which is basically a military-grade, nearly impervious, nano condom (watch the demo videos); the end result looks as if the nano has been vacuum-sealed.

Getting the shield on is a bit tricky and requires you to dip the film into soapy water to allow for it to slide about the nano so that perfect alignment may be achieved (the film is cut to fit the nano precisely). I was a bit reluctant to soak my nano with water, but knew that others had done it without incident and so I went against every anal-retentive bone in my body and “dove in.” I decided to apply the front film first, and surprisingly, I had it bubbleless and perfectly aligned in less than five minutes. I found that the best way to get the film on the nano is to completely soak it, shake the water off, and then lay it perpendicular to the top or bottom of the nano and kind of let it ‘fall’ until all of the nano is covered. This method completely obviates the bubble issue and all that’s left to do is align it (be careful though as this can produce bubbles if done incorrectly).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and ended up trying to get out a piece of dust near the bottom, which caused a seemingly endless cycle of pulling the film off, soaking it, and re-applying it. While the “stickiness” of the film never seemed to dissipate, its clarity did, and after more than a few “tries” it became apparent that some of the marks were going to be permanent. So, the lesson to be learned here is that you should roll with your first effort if you think you can live with it, because it’s probably only going to get worse.

Applying the back layer was nearly as easy as the front, but because the back piece also covers the sides I had to tackle its application in two steps. I found that trying to align the sides (and get them to stick) before the back was completely dry was damn near impossible. What I ended up doing was aligning the back and letting it dry for about 45 minutes before working on the sides (I just let them hang over the edge). After setting the sides and letting the whole thing dry for a few hours I have to say that I’m really happy with the results.

[It's amazing how some posts that you envision to be three lines end up being six paragraphs.]

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