Author Archives: Peter

Finally, a use for flickr

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As I’ve ***previously mentioned|http://prwdot.org/archives/002299.html***, I’ve found it difficult to find a use for ***flickr|http://prwdot.org/archives/002299.html*** the social, taggable photo sharing site. We already have a well-established ***photo gallery|http://gallery.prwdot.org/***, running on the web hosting space that we’re already paying for. flickr’s free service wouldn’t allow me to upload the amount I currently do to our regular gallery, so I’d have to pay. Also, I don’t want to migrate over all of our photos, nor do I want to publish them to both places. But I have found one thing that flickr is especially good at, and I’ve decided that it fills a nice niche in my digital photo sharing needs: annotated photos. By this, I mean a photo that has a number of features I would like to describe, like people at a party, locations on a map, or peripherals in a computer workstation. flickr lets you add ‘notes’ to a photo, so that when others are viewing the photo, they will see boxes in certain places on the photo indicating notes, and if they hover over the boxes, the note text will pop up.

The best way to understand it is probably to just *** check out the annotated photos|http://flickr.com/photos/peterwood/tags/annotated/*** over on flickr. I’ll post some other blog entries here about some specific photos in the collection.

Help me decide!

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Hello readers! I am going to be going into Boston (and Cambridge, maybe) for a few hours tomorrow and doing some photography. I’d like to do a sort of theme, and I have a number of ideas floating around in my head. Here they are in no particular order. Leave a comment and let me know which one(s) you’d like to see the most!

  • Bridges: Big ones like the Zakim and Tobin, small ones like the Longfellow and Harvard, etc.
  • Numbers: House numbers, prices, license plates, signage, street signs.
  • Food: Restaurants, markets.
  • The Arts: Music shops, theaters, galleries.
  • Transit: The MBTA, cars, bicycles, etc.
  • Statues and Monuments
  • Signs: Street signs, building signs, billboards, traffic signs.
  • Religion: Churches, chapels, cathedrals, crosses.
  • Cemeteries
  • People: Crowds, groups, couples, individuals.
  • Government: City hall, state house, federal buildings, etc.
  • Shopping: Newbury Street, Quincy Market, Prudential, etc.
  • Learning: Schools, colleges, libraries, etc.
  • Ethnic centers: North End (Italian), Southie (Irish), Chinatown, Brookline (Russian), Allston Village (Brazilian), Uphams Corner (Cape Verdean), Watertown (Armenian)
  • Any suggestions?

I’ll be leaving no later than noon on Sunday, so be sure to get in your votes by then!

The end of the world (as they knew it)

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fff|ggg|worlds_end/P1010135|Boston Skyline|ggg|fff

Today, Becky and I drove down to Hingham to visit ***World’s End|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_End_%28Hingham%29***. It is a peninsular park that’s technically part of the ***Boston Harbor Islands|http://www.nps.gov/boha/***. There are some really great views of the surrounding waterways, as well as scenic views of the Boston skyline and the town of Hull. It was a lovely day for an outing and we had a great time. The park is just southeast of Boston and admission is $4.50 per person.

One thing I haven’t been able to figure out, from the articles I’ve read, is why it is called World’s End, or when they started referring to it as World’s End. Anyway, you can see all of our photos ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/worlds_end***.

Update
Thanks to adamg at ***Universal Hub|http://www.universalhub.com/*** for ***the mention|http://www.universalhub.com/node/704***!

Lighting up the night…

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The USB card reader that ***I recently purchased|http://prwdot.org/archives/002437.html*** is on the whole very handy. It’s small, light, portable, and has four slots which collectively handle six different types of cards. There is a LED light to indicate card access in each slot, and an additional light to indicate that it is receiving USB power. However, in my opinion, it has a design flaw.

This is what it looks like operating under normal circumstances:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010010|Normal circumstances|ggg

This is what it looks like when I’ve put the Mac to sleep:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010009|Sleeping|ggg

Yikes! I have to unplug that thing when I put the Mac to sleep before I go to bed. Otherwise, it lights up the whole apartment!

Need a new mouse?

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Anyone who’s in the market for a new mouse, whether for a Mac or a PC, should check out this deal. CompUSA is ***offering the Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer for $14.95|http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=316297&pfp=SEARCH&tabtype=rb***, for this week only (April 3 – 9). This is only for the “Crimson Flame” colored model. The mouse’s retail price is normally $49.99 (at places like Staples, for example), and CompUSA is currently carrying it at a discounted $29.99, but this week only is slashing another 50% off of the price.

I actually purchased this mouse today, not because I was in the market for a new mouse, but because I am in the market for a mouse that is compatible with the ***TrendWare KVM|http://www.trendnet.com/products/TK-206i.htm*** which we ***recently acquired|http://prwdot.org/archives/002459.html***. This mouse has a USB -> PS/2 converter, which in theory would allow it to work with the KVM, which only has PS/2 ports. Well, it did sort of work – but unfortunately there is some issue that causes the KVM to drop every other mouse click. Very annoying. I know it’s not a problem with the mouse itself, because it worked flawlessly when I connected it directly via USB to both our Mac and our PC. So, I took it back to CompUSA, since I already have two working mice, and I don’t really need a third one – just one that works with the KVM. For now, we’ll continue having two separate mice hooked up to each computer… but obviously this defeats the “M” part of “KVM”. I’m going to contact TrendWare to ask about PS/2 adapter compatability. It may simply be that the KVM doesn’t work 100% with PS/2 adapters. Oh well. Update: I’ve confirmed by searching TrendWare’s support database that the TK-206i KVM does not work with USB->PS/2 adapters. So if we want it to work, we’ll have to use a genuine PS/2 mouse. Anybody have one they’d like to donate?

In any case, it is a very nice mouse if you’re hooking it directly up to a Mac or a PC. The wireless feature is not the Bluetooth kind, but rather the old-fashioned 27MHz radio frequency kind… but it still works very well. Highly recommended.

Spring forward? Oops.

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For the first time ever in my memory, I forgot to set the clocks forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time before we went to bed last night.

I woke up early, before the alarm this morning. I went into the computer room, and in the course of my morning blog-readings, I read ***Mike’s blog entry about DST|http://refugeisland.net/archives/2005/04/02/daylight-savings-time/***. Yikes! I hadn’t even noticed that the clock on my computer was an hour ahead of the alarm clock in our bedroom, since I was still in a foggy sleepy state. Well, I immediately went to wake up Becky so that she could get to work on time, and I went to change all of our clocks around. Thankfully, I woke up early enough so that we won’t miss anything.

Yikes!

My Code Archive

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Over the years, I’ve written a bunch of Perl and PHP code for my own personal use. Some of it might be useful to others, some of it might be useless. Some of it doesn’t even work. It might be educational for folks who want to learn Perl or PHP, or need examples of how to code something.

Anyway, I wanted to put it all in one place so that people could find it and use it, if it is of any use. I’ve had fun writing up this archive, because I’ve come across some code that I wrote a long time ago, when I was ignorant of better ways to do things… but interesting code nonetheless. If you do end up using any of this code, take a minute and leave a comment on this entry. I’d love to know what folks are using this stuff for.

I’ll try to keep this entry up-to-date if I add or remove any code from the archive.

Enjoy!
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