Site5 Frustrations

I’m glad that Becky has been blogging quite a bit recently, because even though there are a lot of things I have to blog about, I haven’t been able to get any of them worked into an actual post. So here’s an attempt at covering just one of those things: some of my frustrations with Site5, the web hosting provider for prwdot.org.

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Video Killed The Photography Star?

PV-GS150

Thanks to some closeout pricing, funding from various sources, and a hefty amount of research, we have purchased our first camcorder. We decided on the Panasonic PV-GS150, a compact MiniDV-format camcorder. It uses 3CCD technology to capture excellent video, and it fits in the palm of your hand. We have yet to take it out for any serious testing, but I think that you can expect to see some new movies on our site within the next few months, and definitely plenty of them after the baby is born. (I know, not everybody on the web wants to see every delightful moment of our baby’s life. We will do our best not to go crazy with it.)

The only trick for me now is going to be trying to balance my existing interest in photography with my new interest in videography. The PV-GS150 does have the capability to take still photos, but it’s not anywhere near as capable as its cousin, Panasonic’s DMC-FZ20. We’ll probably end up carting both of them around, and maybe Becky and I will do a bit of cross-training to split up the photo and video tasks. Hopefully the quantity and quality of my photography won’t suffer.

Tech Envy

I’ve been dealing with the problem of Tech Envy for a while now. Last night, I discussed the issue with Becky, and came up with some interesting observations and some new ways of handling the situation.

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Computer Science!

Last night, Becky and I got together with some other Gordon computer science folks for dinner at Acapulcos. I had planned this little shindig with my friend and fellow computer science grad Lesley Anderson. Since she is in the area for a week, we thought it would be fun to get together with some folks in the area who we hadn’t seen for a while.

I had reserved Acapulcos’ private room, so we were able to eat and chat for three solid hours. In attendance were Lesley, Becky and I, Chuck and Hannah Bartholomew, Lucas and Christi Berger, Derek and Becky Day, and Professor Levy and his wife Kathy. We had a great time catching up with each other on life since Gordon, as well as chatting about topics from computers to stalking Sheryl Crow.

After the get-together, a few of us headed over to Sarah Joy (Ameden) Salagala’s home to throw a surprise birthday party for Lesley. Lesley received a call just as she was leaving the restaurant, asking her to run “an errand”, which allowed the rest of us to get over to the party before she arrived. It was pretty funny to see her reaction, after having just come from having dinner with us, to seeing us again at her surprise party.

Altogether, those two events made for one of the latest nights Becky and I had experienced in quite some time. But the friends we got to see and the fun we had was well worth the late hour.

We also have some photos from the CompSci Get-Together and the Surprise Party. Enjoy!

The Even Biggser Picture

On Saturday morning, I drove up to Claremont, NH to visit Jeremy and Angela. Part of the reason for the trip was to watch the first few episodes of this season of The Shield with Jeremy. We have carried on our tradition of watching the show since the first season… and it’s hard to believe that it is now in its fifth season! It’s certainly not a show for everybody… its “TV MA LSV” rating is certainly well-deserved. But the continuing intrigue of the plot and the development of the characters keeps us watching.

The other reason for my visit was to help them out with some of their website woes. They’d been having a lot of trouble with Blogger, so I moved their blog over to WordPress. I’ve been working on prepping for the transition for the past week or so, and it’s been quite an enjoyable experience. I created a WordPress theme for the Biggses that replicates the overall look and feel of their old website, with a few XHTML and CSS improvements here and there, and some extra additions that come with the WordPress package.

WordPress is a really wonderful blogging system, and this is the first time I’ve really spent a considerable amount of time digging in to it and learning about how it works. I even rewrote one of my Movable Type plugins as a WordPress plugin, just as an exercise. It was actually pretty easy. Will you see World Wide Wood switch over to WordPress soon? I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

Anyway, I got them switched over to WordPress, and I also installed a Windows plugin that should make it very easy for them to upload photos to their gallery. I didn’t quite get through all of the items I wanted to cover, but I think I took care of the most important stuff. Overall, they seem to be very happy with the results. You can read Jeremy’s take on it in his latest post.

Here’s to the return of frequent posting on The Biggs Picture!

Update
Corrected the link to Jeremy’s post.

On Digital Photo Storage and Sharing

Some people are content to choose one way to do a thing. I’m not like that. I am constantly re-evaluating the way I do things, trying to find the most efficient methods. Perhaps it’s a mental disorder. Maybe I should get help. I don’t find that it has much impact on my life, but it does generate a lot of thinking cycles in my head that might otherwise be used on more useful or profound thoughts.

Anyway, one of the things I constantly re-evaluate is the way that I store, catalog, and share my digital photos. Lately, I’ve been thinking about my next advances in this area, and after a little bit of research, I’m made some interesting discoveries. Continue reading…

Best Catalog Ever

If you’re a geek like me, then you’ll love CyberGuys. They sell all sorts of special-purpose, hard-to-find, and custom computer equipment. Looking through their 180-page catalog, you’ll find all sorts of interesting things, like a hand-cranked universal remote control (never needs batteries!), a portable power center that can jumpstart your car or power your laptop on the road, or even an external USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure that also accepts CompactFlash cards AND has a built-in fingerprint reader! This catalog is great for hours of fun, reading and dreaming of all of the great junk you’d love to buy (even if you never buy it). The website is okay, but you really need to order the catalog. While you’re at it, also order the catalog from their sister company, X-Treme Geek. X-Treme geek is more oriented towards entertaining toys than actual useful computer gear, but I think you’ll find both of them equally wonderful in their own ways.

Two thumbs up for two catalogs I actually like to read!

P.S. If you’re not as much into geeky stuff, but you are into the outdoors, then you owe it to yourself to order the Campmor catalog. It is to outdoorsy folk what the CyberGuys catalog is to geeks… tons of cool and useful stuff for camping, canoeing, hiking, etc…

iPod Hookups

Thanks to some birthday gift fundage from my parents (Thanks Mom and Dad!), I’ve been able to purchase a few useful gadgets for hooking up our iPod in various locations.

The first one is a device manufactured by USA Spec, and sold at retailers such as Circuit City. The DF-TOY hooks up to the CD Changer input on our new Corolla’s factory stereo, and provides two sets of RCA auxiliary inputs. This allows us to output sound directly from the iPod into the car stereo, without the need for a radio transmitter (which provides mediocre quality at best) or a cassette adapter (which wouldn’t work in our car, since it doesn’t have a cassette deck).

Installation was a lot easier than I expected:

1. Remove the bezel from around the stereo. This is easily done by working a flathead screwdriver around the edges and popping it out.
2. Remove the four phillips screws holding the stereo in.
3. Plug in the adapter to the cd changer port.
4. Run the cable out from the back of the stereo, down to the opening just above the gas pedal.
5. Connect the cable to the input box.
6. Connect RCA cables from the device of your choice.

Voila! I have crystal clear sound, and I also have an extra set of RCA inputs should I ever want to have TWO auxiliary devices hooked up. Yikes! The only thing I ought to do is find a nice place to mount the input box, and clean up the cables. Right now it’s all sitting on the floor behind the gas pedal. I’ll take and post some photos if I have a chance.

The other gadget that I bought was an Apple iPod Dock. The iPod model I bought did not come with a dock, and I’ve gotten by just fine with the basic FireWire cable for a while. But at the Apple Store they had a bunch of “refreshed” docks on sale for 50% off the regular price, so I grabbed one of those, and it’s working great. Now our iPod has a nice little home to live in when it’s on the desk.

Update

Here’s some photos of the Dock and the aux input connectors.

Google Reader

This is almost week-old news now, but Google recently released their Google Reader software into beta. It is a direct competitor to web-based news aggregators such as Bloglines. As it is still in beta, there are a number of kinks being worked out. You’ll sometimes get error messages when trying to read the news, and their servers are frequently slow or unresponsive. But as time goes by, bugs get fixed, and they have a chance to scale up to their demand, I think lot of the issues will be smoothed out. There are a lot of things you can do with Bloglines that you can’t do in Google Reader, and I have emailed all of my notes on those matters to the Google Labs folks.

In order to make my testing more effective and directed, I’ve imported all of my Bloglines subscriptions into Google Reader. I’ve also removed all of my links to Bloglines so that I’m forced to use Google Reader to get my news. Overall, I’m quite impressed. As usual, they have given the application those little touches that make an application oh-so-Google-y. Boxes that slide open and closed, search-enabled-everything, colorful icons and labels, etc. And so far I haven’t needed to go back to Bloglines for anything. I’m still getting used to Google Reader’s organizational methods. Reading the news from a specific source in Google Reader takes a bit more effort than it does in Bloglines. As I go along I’m sure I’ll learn some tricks to help make things better.

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. If you’re looking for a way to organize all of the news and blogs you read, check out Google Reader today!