blog

Final post to this blog

I've had enough of using typepad. It's good enough as a basic blog, but I want to start doing a little bit more with my blog, and I'm also frustrated by the time it takes to post entries. It's sometimes dreadfully slow; it can take 2-3 minutes to open the site, post a new entry, check that it's formatted right, etc. Painful, and it doesn't really encourage me to post all that I'd like.

From now on all my blogging will be here. Please update links, RSS feeds, etc.

The one thing that the new blog doesn't do is support comments. The software I've selected (which is the fabulous Radio package from UserLand Software) is great in every respect except one -- comments need to be hosted on an external server. For now, I haven't got this hooked up. I want speed, baby, and their free comment server is just too slow for me. I'm going to change this in the future, but right now, you can't comment on stuff I've written. You can always email of course, but no inline comments.

For me, right now, the benefits of using Radio far outweight the minor disadvantage of no immediate support for comments. It's a really slick package.

Edit: I've enabled comments on the new blog, and it doesn't seem to slow it down as much as I initially feared.

Magtrainer action

The very helpful people at Dean Woods Direct told me today that a replacement for my Minoura Magtrainer's busted handlebar clip is on its way, so tomorrow or Thursday I should be able to get back into some stationary trainer goodness!

Not actually where I live

I had a look at feedmap, which supposedly gives you an idea of other blogs around you in a geographic sense. Well, it doesn't seem to quite understand coordinates in the southern hemisphere. I don't really live where it thinks I do.

EDIT 24-May 17:17: It's fixed! The map now shows pretty much the right location; a few kilometres west of the Maryborough CBD. It still lists the location as the Pacific Ocean, but that's no big deal.

CFA

All you ever wanted to know about CFA competitions from the expert.

You go, girl.

Ok, 80's groovers...

Take the test and post your scores here as comments.

Sand sculptures

Excellent sand sculptures here and here.

Cillit Bang Remix

Link: lucky kazoo - lucky links for lucky you.

I have no idea what to say about this at all.

Photo albums followup

I just can't help myself, can I. Had to fiddle. There's now a proper web page introducing you to the photo albums. It's something simple I hacked together in ASP, so it still isn't all that fancy, but it does at least present the albums in a nicer way than the simple directory listing that was there. Oh, and it sorts them by publication date in reverse order, so new albums appear at the top of the list.

And that mention of an RSS feed? Well, I had a look and it turns out that isn't actually all that hard to do. So I did it; you can subscribe from the main album page and you'll get notified when new albums are posted. It took less than 10 minutes to get that working; RSS really is pretty simple.

Photo albums

I'm going to start making a lot more of our photos available online. The link to the new online albums is http://zippy.actapps.com.au/Images.

It's a simple browsable directory of photo albums. I've found that Picasa has a neat little feature where you can select a bunch of photos and then create a web page with those photos on it. It actually creates a little mini website with a thumbnail proof sheet and links to the actual photos. I'm probably not going to go back too far and put older stuff online, but I'll make an effort to get most of our new stuff online. Note that this doesn't replace Photo Of The Day; it's just a way of making more of our stuff available for family & friends to browse.

There's no RSS feed from the new album page yet, but if there's enough demand (leave a comment if you care to) I'll consider adding one.

I'm also going to try a little harder to make better use of EXIF data to help classify photos. Right now we have just over 5000 photos in our collection, and it's getting harder and harder to search for stuff. If anyone has any hints on relatively pain free ways to munge EXIF data without fiddly editing of every single photo let me know. I don't particularly want to get right down to detail and describe every detail of every shot, but I do want to at least have a simple way of noting where the photo was taken, name any people in the shot, and maybe note the event if relevant. I think that when we buy our next camera the ability to enter some basic EXIF data prior to shooting (especially location and/or event) will be something we'll probably consider.

One last thing -- privacy. Because the albums I'm going to put online are pretty much unedited, let me know ASAP if you're the subject of a photo that you really don't want to be available online, and I'll remove it immediately.

A Flintstone moment

Exchange overheard between two middle aged ladies at the Safeway deli counter tonight:

Lady #1, upon seeing Lady #2: Hello, Betty
Lady #2 responding: Hello, Wilma