Month: June 2006

I’m starting a Photoblog

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Canon 10D

Many years ago I was really into photography. Of course, this was long before digital… it was back in the day of film and smelly chemicals. Over the years I lost interest enough to sell off most of my “real” camera equipment, but I’ve always kept a point-and-shoot handy for those times when I want to snap a few pics.

Recently, I’ve thought about getting back into it… especially now that I wouldn’t need to go back into the darkroom. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really loved to spend time in the darkroom back in the day, but these days I would much rather just sit at my computer to process my images.

Up until the other day, the only camera I had was my little Canon SD300 digital elph. I love it because it fits in my pocket, and I can always carry it with me… but, it does have some serious limitations if you want to have any measure of control over your shots. If I were to get back into photography, I would definitely want something with a little more control.

Well, guess what… I’m the proud new owner of a Canon 10D. My good friends Todd n Steph gave it to me as a belated birthday present (thanks guys!). Todd is a serious photographer, and the camera use to be his. Since then, he has upgraded a couple of times, and this camera has been handed down to Steph, and now to me. Woohoo!

So, now that I don’t have any more excuses, I feel compelled to do something again. Since I’m so into blogging, I thought what better way to keep myself motivated than to start a photoblog… which actually leads me to the point of this post… I’m looking for suggestions on photoblogging software.

I’m a big fan of WordPress, but I’m not sure if it’s the best solution for what I am looking for. The main reason is how the archives are structured. For photoblogs, the archives should be a grid of thumbnails, and I’m not exactly sure how to do that within WordPress.

I’m also looking at Movable Type, Folder Blog, and Pixel Post. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Basically, I’m looking for something that is quick to set up, easy to maintain, and has a good template right out of the box. I don’t really want this to be a big project at this point. I just want to start photoblogging.

I’m a big fan of Chromasia, and that site represents the basic functionality and flow of what I’m looking to do. I emailed David Nightingale, the photographer, and he said he uses Movable Type, and he designed his own template. He did say it has a fairly steep learning curve at the beginning. He’s also the one who suggested I look into Pixel Post.

So, I’m looking for suggestions. If you’re a photoblogger, and you’ve used any of these systems, or have others to suggest… let me know your thoughts. I’ll let everyone know as soon as the new photoblog is up and running.

Update(6.23.06): I did it. I started my photoblog. You can see it at highlysubjective.com. More info can be found here.

What makes people click?

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iWeb Maui

As mentioned in the last post, I recently published a site for our trip to Maui. The site consists of 7 pages. When looking at how many times each page has been visited, the numbers are kind of surprising to me. These are the numbers (visits) for each page (at the time of writing this):

Home: 211
Napili Bay: 65
Bike Haleakala: 63
Old Lahaina Luau: 62
The Road to Hana: 52
Photos: 173
Movie: 92

The links to the individual pages are clearly laid out at the top of the pages, yet it’s clear that all but the home page, and the photos page are being passed over by most people. Why is that? Do people not see them? Are people not interested?

As a web designer this is especially interesting to me. What makes people click? Given that this site has not (as of yet) been picked up by any search engines… and the only people visiting it are people that I have referred (either directly, or through my blog posts), you would think that most of the pages would be visited at a somewhat equal rate. But, that’s not the case… some people don’t even make it past the home page. I find that a little odd.

Links: The Maui ’06 Site

Hit Counter Bug in iWeb

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I recently used iWeb (v1.1.1) to put together a site for our trip to Maui, and I’ve discovered what I consider to be a bug.

iWeb gives you an option to add a “hit counter” to each of the pages, so you can see how many times it has been visited. I had a small goof on one of my Maui pages, so I edited it, and republished it. When I did that, the counter was reset to zero. I would call that a bug, because it’s not a new page. The change was very minor, and the counter should have retained the number it had before the change.

Are these sandals?

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Shoe

I’m taking a little poll. Anne Marie and I are having a little debate on whether or not these shoes would be called sandals. I won’t say which side I’m on just yet, but I’m curious what you think… are these sandals, or not?

UPDATE: OK, Now that many people have chimed in, including Anne Marie, I can give my opinion, without being accused of trying to skew the results. These are NOT sandals. I Win! Oh, and for all who inquired… they came from Macy’s.

Save all mail attachments via drag and drop

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Apple's Mail

I think everyone knows about the save button in Apple’s Mail.app for saving attachments. I’m also willing to bet that everyone knows that you can turn down the little attachment triangle to reveal the attachments in the email, and then drag and drop them to a folder on your drive. But, did you know that you can easily save all the attachments on an email by just dragging that single little paperclip icon? I didn’t. It works just like dragging the attachments, but it’s a little faster when saving multiple files.

Found via Mac OS X Hints

Al Gore uses a Mac

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Al Gore uses a Mac

That’s right, Al Gore uses a Mac, and Keynote, to deliver all his presentations on the environment. I knew I liked that guy. Oh what a different country we may be living in, if only… well, you know.

There is also a new film out called “An Inconvenient Truth”, which documents Al’s traveling show on the environment. Apparently, the film makers also used a Mac, and Keynote, as an integral part of making the film. Check out the links below for more information.

Links: Key to “An Inconvenient Truth.” | Trailer

X-Men III: The Last Stand

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X-Men III: The Last Stand

2.5 Stars

The other movie we saw over the weekend was X-Men III: The Last Stand. If you haven’t seen the movie, skip to the last sentence now, I’m going to give a lot away in this review.

I must say I was pretty disappointed. Although I will give them credit for one thing… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where so many main characters are eliminated so quickly. That was unexpected. Although, I didn’t really care for the way they did it.

I’ll start at the beginning… In the first half hour of the movie, Cyclops and Xavier are killed, and Mystique is eliminated by being changed into a human. I don’t really care one way or another about Cyclops, but Mystique and Xavier are two of my favorite characters. I thought the way they were eliminated was kind of crappy. Xavier’s death, like Cyclops’s, was utterly meaningless. His last words were “Don’t let the power control you”, spoken to Jean. Well, as we saw, the power did control her, and the only way to stop her was to kill her. I thought the fact that she never turned back to the good side, diminished Xavier’s death. His last words fell on deaf ears. As for Mystique, I just like watching her run around killing people in her bluey hotness. I was quite surprised that she was eliminated so quickly in the story. She didn’t even get a grand exit… one dart and she’s out.

I was also disappointed that the much feared mutant menace boiled down to about 50-60 mutants. That’s all the Magneto could get to join his “army”. I though us normals viewed the mutants as a world wide threat. Is there really only 50-60 bad mutants in the whole world? What were we so afraid of?

Finally… the “Last Stand” seemed like not much more than a bar fight. You have all these mutants with all these cool powers, but in the end, they basically just beat each other up. Why weren’t most of them using their powers. Again… why were we afraid of these people? And, if there intent all along was to just kill the boy (the cure), why did they even bother going over to Alcatraz? They could have just used there powers to destroy Alcatraz from a distance. As long as I’m ranting… what was up with Jean during that battle? She just stood around doing nothing. She could have destroyed Alcatraz all by herself. Instead, she just stood there while they were defeated, and didn’t get pissed until the end. Why did they even bring her along?

To recap… poorly developed story, unnecessary character elimination, and wimpy finale. But, all that being said, it was still a half way entertaining action movie. I give it 2.5 stars.

The DaVinci Code

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The DaVinci Code: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou

2.5 Stars

Over the weekend we saw a couple of movies. The first was The DaVinci Code. I was very much looking forward to this movie, and unfortunately, that usually means disappointment. This case was no exception.

The DaVinci Code stars three very talented actors… Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, and Ian McKellen. The story seemed like it had a lot of potential, but I would have to say that in the end, this movie was only mildly entertaining. It moves fairly slow, and the story was a little different than I had thought. I was under the impression that the movie revolved around ‘clues’ left in famous artwork, and codes hidden in plain sight. To some degree this was true, but it was far less than I thought. Also, for a movie called The DaVinci Code… DaVinci wasn’t talked about all that much… only a couple of scenes.

Overall, I wouldn’t steer someone away from this film, but don’t go in expecting too much, and don’t go in tired, or you may fall asleep.

Star Wars, The Animated TV Show?

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Star Wars: Clone Wars

I like Star Wars as much as the next sci-fi geek, but I have to admit, I had no idea there was an animated TV series. I guess I don’t watch enough Cartoon Network.

I’m not sure if this is new, or I just didn’t notice it before, but iTunes has added the show to it’s roster. The pricing seems a little weird on this one. The show is broken down into 20 short, individual “chapters” for $1.99 each ($39.80), or you can buy them all for $10.99.

Link: Star Wars: Clone Wars on iTunes