Photoblog

OK... I am trying another path for the Photoblog. I upgraded the version of DasBlog
on the server last night and created another instance to host the blog. I am still
working out some of the details with the new version of DasBlog around the themes
and caching.




The work in progress photoblog is at: /photoblog/

There is a link to it at our base URL and in the navigation links in the main text
blog.



I hope to post a new image everyday. (Some of them will be images that are already
in the can... but I will also try to take more photos throughout the week as well.)

Great Morning Pictures

Last night was crystal clear when I was getting ready for bed. I decided to set my
alarm for 5:30am (my normal wake up time during the work week) so that I could get
up before sunrise. Sunday morning (Easter) the alarm when off and I looked out the
window and it was a cloudless morning. I put on some clothes and then jumped into
the car (the car always have one or two cameras ready to go.)




I drove about 20 minutes east of my house heading towards the sunrise. During my daily
commute into the big city (I work in the office 3 days per week) I drive
past a small country church. I have been thinking about this church for a few
weeks as a potential photo subject for a possible sunrise, sunset, or maybe even
a lightning photo. As it turns out the sunrise at point in the season is
not exactly where I want it to be for this photo. I decided to punt and shoot
a pre-sunrise picture. I tried a couple of long exposures with and without filters.



I will export the images from the CF cards later today and burn them to CD before
I look at them. (My standard practice is burn them to CD or DVD before viewing
or editing.) I would like to make it one of my first images on the new photo
blog if I can get the new photo blog uploaded today. (I also captured a few images
yesterday so that I can some photos in the can for the blog.)



I am thinking that the photo blog will help me shoot on a daily (or near daily) basis
because I need to feed the site. Over the past few years I have been shooting less
(it happens with a full time+ job and a family) but focusing on producing higher quality
images. I am not a very good snapshot kind of photographer and tend to have a focus
or mission behind many of my photos. (Probably the photojournalist in me coming out
again from my previous career.)

Over all it was a great start to an Easter Sunday. (Sunrise, good photos, listening
to podcasts in the car, and put a few miles on the car and cameras... good for the
mind.)



-I will try to post a picture or two later.

Here is a link
to one possible way to photoblog that I am considering.

Linux Firefox vs. DasBlog (W2K3)

I just found an interesting issue. I am playing with Ubuntu on
my laptop and decided to post some notes to my blog. From Linux Firefox I can't control
the format of the content that I posting to my blog. I am unable to add carriage returns
or things like bold or italics because DasBlog is
using XP/Win32/IE centric controls. .......Argghhhhh (I normally post my notes from
my Blogjet client on XP)

I figured it out... I need to post the HTML code for breaks and such to make the formating
work.

Argghhh.... this sucks. I need to find a better way to post to my blog from Ubuntu
Firefox. I wonder if there is a DasBlog or Blogger based
Api tool for Linux?

Simple Victories (Linux Laptop Wireless)

After quite a bit of work (more like battle) I finally have my Laptop running Ubuntu 6.10
working with my wireless network. I have two Cisco PCMCIA cards and it turns out that
one of them worked perfect as soon as I set it up and one of them does not want to
play nice. --Guess which one I tried first.

As much as I might like to bash (no pun) Linux driver support... the configuration
and setup is very similar to Windows XP. Once I got a good working card it pretty
much “just worked.”

When time permits I will pull out both cards and try to post the information in the
blog for other folks that might be battling through their wireless woes.








-Follow-up:

• 
  The card that I battled with is a AIR-CB21AG-A-K9 which is a Cisco card with
  the Atheros chip site.
  
  
  (I can't make it work in XP either because I can't download the drivers
  from the Cisco site because it requires a Cisco userID and my ID expired a few years
  ago.)
  
  
  
  
  


• 
  The card that works is a AIR-PCM350 which is also a Cisco card. I can add/remove it
  hot and it works as planned.
  
  
  

Photo Blog

I think that I going to add a photo blog to my website.



I am trying to figure out the best method to add the new blog. I think that I am going
to create a new DasBlog Instance so that I can move to the current version of
DasBlog. I want to keep my current blog separate from the new photo blog.



Lots of potential... so little time.  URL coming soon.

Best Online Documentaries

http://best.online.docus.googlepages.com/

Interesting looking site for find good online documentaries... I will have to take
a look at some see how food they really are.

Cub Scouts

Cub Scout meeting with a member of the Wright Co. Sheriff's dept speaking.




Crummy camera phone picture + photoshop.

Ice Cream

Ben eating ice cream at Culvers after running some errands with dad.




Crummy camera phone picture + photoshop.

Java for Treo

Are the JVMs located here?

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/wireless/weme_eval_runtimes.html

Nice article about Gmail/Java/Treo 700

http://sbreck.blogspot.com/2006/11/google-mobile-gmail-mobile-on-treo.html

FYI... I ran out of time and gave up on the Java exercise. I used Pocket Outlook to
connect to GMAIL and setup a dedicate account for my phone.

Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft - WMV Video

I have Ubuntu 6.10 running a
spare laptop. I am testing out this Linux distribution to see if I am comfortable
moving my daily activities to Linux. (Ultimately our XP machines through out our
home are going to be be replaced with Macs or Linux workstations.)

I have a XP session running in a VM on my VWMare server.
This particular XP session downloads and manages the various podcasts that I follow
on a regular basis. (I time shift a lot of content to my car via MP3 CD and to my
MP3 player at work in addition to playing the on my home network.)

I have been able to update Ubuntu 6.10 to play all of the audio podcasts but not the
video podcasts. I stumbled across this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=384897 
which pointed me in the right direction.

The solution turned out to be installing the VLC
Media Player. (I had previously tried the gstreamer codecs and various codecs.)
The only complaint that I have about the VLC Media Player is that it will not let
me open the files from a SMB point
on my network. I ended up having to copy the files to local machine. (I will need
to look at using the mount command to make it look like local disk and see if that
solves with problem.)