Author Archives: Peter

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.
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Lecturology at the MoS

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Boston’s [Museum of Science](http://www.mos.org/) has been running a series of free, public lectures called “Lecturology”. These are sort of popular science lectures, designed to be accessible to a wide variety of individuals. I have attended two such lectures this week; one was good, the other, not so good.
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Boston at Night

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fff|ppp|
Zakim at Night|ppp|fff

On Tuesday night I attended a lecture at the [Museum of Science](http://www.mos.org/). The lecture itself is a topic for another post, but before the lecture started, I went up to the top of the MoS parking garage and took some night-time photos of Boston. Some of them came out really well, others not so good. You can check them all out [here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/travels/2005/boston_at_night/).

The Wonderful Interweb

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You may remember that a while ago, I believed I had photographed U2’s Bono as he rode through Boston in a limo. I later [discovered](http://prwdot.org/archives/2005/10/bamboozled.html) that it was actually a look-alike who had been hired to promote their upcoming concerts. Well, I later posted that [photo](http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterwood/48993813/) on [flickr](http://www.flickr.com/), and wouldn’t you know it, just a couple days ago, the Bono look-alike himself [left a comment](http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterwood/48993813/#comment18760866)!

Isn’t the Interweb a wonderful thing?

Assorted Photos

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Becky used a plastic bag clip to do up my hair, then I had her take [a photo](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/etcetera/grab_bag/P1060003.JPG.html). This is all practice for the inevitable hair-play that will come with having children. Apart from being extremely attractive, the hair clip also serves to keep my forehead clear of my rather oily mane.

There was also this one crazy night a while ago, when we were making grape juice, that I decided to try a few new hair styles. Thankfully, none of them really worked for me. The album is appropriately named [Grape Juice and Hair Styling](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/craftiness/grape_juice_and_hair_styling/).

Enjoy!

Front Row

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[Apple](http://www.apple.com/)’s latest [iMac G5](http://www.apple.com/imac/) comes with a piece of software called [Front Row](http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html). This software is a pretty interface to the various types of media on your computer – movies, music, photos, and DVDs. The iMac G5 comes with the software pre-installed, and also includes a wireless remote so that you can control your Mac from the couch. But those of us who don’t have the new iMac can’t take advantage of this feature. Or can we?

Enter [Front Row Enabler](http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/19947), a bit of software hackery that will allow users of Macs other than the latest iMac G5 to use Front Row. I downloaded it and installed it today on my Sawtooth PowerMac G4/450 (quite an old machine), and it actually works really well! Of course, I don’t have a remote, so I have to be sitting at the computer to use it. But it’s still pretty cool. Who says you can’t teach an old Mac new tricks?

Guest Map

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I have set up a [Frappr!](http://www.frappr.com/) guestmap for World Wide Wood. Frappr uses [Google Maps](http://local.google.com/) to let our site visitors show us where in the world they are! So head on over to the [guest map](http://www.frappr.com/worldwidewood) and make your mark! The guestmap link can always be found on the left side of our pages under ‘Quick Links’.

Go to it!

Running on Gallery 2

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I haven’t formally announced it until now, but for about a month now we have been running our photo gallery on [Gallery 2](http://gallery.menalto.com/). Our old gallery [still exists](http://gallery.prwdot.org/), but we won’t be adding anything new to it. We will just be keeping it around so that links to the old gallery still work.

The new gallery is linked from our sidebar, or you can simply reach it from [http://prwdot.org/gallery2/](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/). To the user, it will look more or less the same as the old gallery, though we have restructured and reorganized many of the albums. Rather than simply migrating the old gallery, I went back to my source photos and re-uploading everything, making some improvements and fixes to photos along the way.

For our family members, your accounts from the old gallery should still work with the new gallery. The biggest difference is that we don’t have a separate gallery for family photo albums. The family albums are now sprinkled in with the rest of the albums, but they are invisible until you log in to your account. So if you’re a family member, and you can’t log in, can’t find some photos you’re looking for, or don’t already have an account, please let us know!

The biggest shortcoming of Gallery 2, so far, is that it doesn’t have any RSS functionality built in. There was a module developed as part of [Google Summer of Code](http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html), but it hasn’t made it into an official release of Gallery 2. From what I’ve heard, it isn’t even built on the latest Gallery 2 code, so I probably won’t be using it for a while. Of course, according to [Feedburner](http://feedburner.com/), only six people are subscribed to our old gallery’s RSS feed, so maybe it’s not worth it anyway. Would anyone miss it if our gallery’s RSS feed went away? ( Did you even know it was there? Did you know about our [other feeds](http://prwdot.org/feeds.html)? )

The other disappointment is that Gallery 2 doesn’t have automatic notification of new comments to the gallery. So I have to go through manually and check to see if anyone has commented (so far it’s two comments from [Michelle](http://mikao.blogspot.com/) – thanks!).

Other than that, the software is great from an administration and customization standpoint. And it still works with [iPhotoToGallery](http://zwily.com/iphoto/) – a must!

I hope everyone enjoys our [new gallery](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Becky and I are out in Townsend at her parents’ house. There is a lot of cooking going on in the Lowe family kitchen… [Corey](http://corey.prwdot.org/) brought a 30 POUND TURKEY that he got at [work](http://www.solidworks.com/)! Yikes! There are only going to be eight of us, so… there are sure to be plenty of leftovers. There is lovely snow falling outside, the house is starting to warm up inside, delightful smells are filling up the kitchen, and we’re enjoying a nice relaxing day with the family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Update
I’ve put up photos from [the past couple of days](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/events/2005/thanksgiving/). Enjoy!

Like a Freight Train

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Today was Becky’s second prenatal exam, and I was able to go with her! The coolest part was getting to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Using a [Doppler device](http://www.drspock.com/article/0,1510,9851,00.html) which plays the sound on a speaker, we were able to listen in. The sound was like a tiny freight-train, chuggin’ away at a healthy 160 beats per minute. Awesome! Mom and baby are both doing fine, though Becky is still suffering from a cold that has been dragging on for about two months. The doctor says that it’s quite normal to have long colds during pregnancy, and that other than taking medicine to treat the symptoms, there’s not much we can do.

Becky has an ultrasound scheduled in about a month, which is very exciting!

p.s. Thanks to [Universal Hub](http://www.universalhub.com/) for the [mention](http://www.universalhub.com/node/2556)! I guess they’re not doing trackback pings any more…