Author Archives: Peter

Walk Around Boston

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I drove in to Boston after church today, and walked around Boston for several hours while Becky was at work (thanks for the free parking!). I didn’t have any particular destination, I just let my camera lens lead me. You can see the results of my trip here.

ppp|  |ppp

My journey started at the Otis House Museum, and I ended up walking along a good stretch of the Charles River Esplanade and the Back Bay. I also took a really excessive number of shots from the demolition of the Green Line right next to North Station. But it was really cool to watch. It’s really amazing to see all of that open space and sunlight (!?) at the Fleet Center.

All in all, it was a really fantastic day for photography, and I think I ended up with a few very nice shots. I hope you enjoy the gallery!

Update: I neglected to mention that I stopped by to see Jackie at her new place in Boston! It just so happens that she was having a problem with her apartment’s wireless network when I stopped by, but unfortunately I was not able to fix it. Someone with more of a clue was able to get it fixed for her later, though!

91600

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I would like to wish a happy 091600 to my wife!

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For those who do not know, 091600 represents September 16, 2000. That’s the day on which Becky and I started dating, and a very happy occasion indeed. For a while after we graduated from Gordon, Becky and I each had Motorola T900 two-way pagers, the kind with little keyboards on them. We used 091600 as a short sort of message to send to each other just to say “hi”, and it’s perpetuated itself into a code that we use from time to time.

So that’s four years that we have been together now, and just under two of those years have been in marriage (102602 is coming up next month… though we don’t typically refer to it in code, we just call it our Anniversary).

These years have been the best in my life, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything!

091600

Lord of the Exhibits

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We’ve been waiting a long time for this – and finally we’ve got the extra cash we need to go and see The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy — The Exhibition at the Museum of Science in Boston! We are going to see it on Friday night. It should be pretty exciting. We’ll get to see scores of original props from the movies, including the One Ring, Aragorn’s sword Andruil, and Gandalf’s robes. There will be exhibits on the special effects techniques used in the films. There will be examples of the “bigatures” used in filming, such as the tower of Orthanc. And there will be interactive experiences where we can see what we would look like as Hobbit-sized folk, or have our motions captured and mapped on screen to digital models.

In the confirmation for our ticket purchase, there was one unfortunate reminder:

qqq|Because of the exclusive nature of ‘The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy — The Exhibition’, no cameras, strollers, bags of any kind, or mobile phones are permitted. And for the safety and comfort of all visitors, no weaponry associated with the films’ characters will be allowed in the exhibition.|qqq

This means that not only will I not be allowed to take photos inside the exhibit, I will also not be allowed to carry in my full-length Uruk-hai sword.*

We will be sure to let you know what we think once we’ve been through the exhibit, but from all indications I’ve read around the ‘net, it’s supposed to be superb. Boston is the first city in the US to have the exhibit, and I’m not sure where it’s headed next… but keep an eye on your local museums for your chance to watch!

* note: I do not have an Uruk-hai sword. I do, however, have a replica of the One Ring which came with my Gandalf bookmark, and a cardboard-cutout Gandalf the White, festively adorned with lai.

Examining The Gallery

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One of the most popular features on our site, besides our blog, is the photo gallery:

World Wide Photography

Our gallery contains 4,894 images in 8 main albums that are publicly accessible, with an additional 1,142 images in two albums that are restricted to certain groups of registered users. That’s a total of 6,036 images!

Our images cover a time span from the fall of 2001 to the present day. There are photographs related to any number of subjects, from family gatherings to parties, holidays to sporting events, travel overseas to travel down the street. You can journey from San Francisco to Spain, fly from Massachusetts to Kentucky, enjoy a sunset on Cape Cod, or a sunrise in Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Currently, the bulk of our images are organized into a ‘Year-by-Year’ album, which is then broken down by year, and within each year the photo albums are in reverse-chronological order. My question for all of our site viewers is, do you find the organization of our photo gallery useful, and if not, what changes would you suggest to make it easier to use? For Becky and I, the year-by-year organization works well since we know generally what year certain events occurred. But for folks who don’t know us as well, I’m not sure that is the best way to browse. I feel that our gallery has a lot to offer even for people who may not know us well, and so I’d like it to be as useful as possible.

Please take a look at our gallery, and then let us know by way of a blog comment what you think about the way it’s organized, the content of the gallery, or any other feedback that may be useful. Thanks!

Cookies Fixed

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My apologies – when I first implemented the new cookies feature, I had not set up the expiration dates properly, so your cookies were probably lost when you closed your browsers. This would have made it look like there were 440+ new entries every time you visited the site. I have fixed the problem, and now your cookie should be stored properly even after you quit your browser. Phew.

To those reading this via RSS feed, this will have no impact on you. Only people visiting the site directly in a web browser will see this.

Also to you folks reading this via RSS feed, you might also be interested in subscribing to the RSS feed for blog comments. Stay up to date on not just new entries to our blog, but also any new comments on our blog entries!

Arr, Shipwreck!

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On Saturday, Becky and I had Jeremy and Angela over for dinner. We haven’t seen too much of them recently, since Jeremy has been working crazy hours for Back-to-School season at Staples, so it was good to hang out, talk, and catch up.

Since Becky was at work for most of the day, I was in charge of preparing a meal for dinner. I’ll freely admit that Becky has a much greater knack for cooking than I, so she is usually the one to prepare our meals. But, I was determined to cook something yummy, so I turned to the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook. Crock pot recipes are great, of course, since you just prepare the ingredients, put them in, set the timer, and “Forget it”. Yep.

The recipe I selected was called “Shipwreck”. To be quite honest, I selected it mostly because the name sounded interesting. 🙂 We had most of the ingredients, and I went out and got the others that we didn’t have. I put it all together as directed, and when I served it later that night, the consensus was “Yum!” I have to say that it didn’t look so appealing, but after we tasted it, it was quickly consumed.

Anyway, here is the recipe, along with some notes from me:

qqq|Shipwreck

Makes 8 servings We got 6, but probably because I used fewer potatoes

Ingredients:
1 lb. ground beef, browned
4-5 potatoes, cut in French-fry-like strips I only used three potatoes here, 4-5 just seemed like too much. But you could probably use more. Some sort of potato-slicing device would probably make this easier.
1-2 onions, chopped
16-oz. can light red kidney beans, drained
1/4 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed Next time I’ll probably use more cheese.
10 3/4-oz. can tomato soup
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
butter

1. Layer in slow cooker in this order: ground beef, potatoes, onions, kidney beans, and cheese.
2. Pour soup over top.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Dot with butter.
5. Cover.
6. Cook on Low 6-8 hours.
7. Serve to hungry and delighted guests!|qqq

All in all, it was a successful first attempt at crock pot cookery for yours truly!

Slightly Smarter

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I am currently toying with some new features on our website. We are now sending and requesting a client-side cookie. This is a little bit of information that is stored on your computer, and it allows us to remember who you are. In our case, we’re using it to display a greeting message on the blog, and to keep track of the most recent blog entry you have read. On each subsequent visit to our site, you will see a notice informing you of whether or not there are any new blog entries since your last visit, and if so, how many there are.

Since this is brand-new, you are initially going to see that there have been, well, a plethora of new blog entries. Next time you visit, though, everything will be set up, and you’ll see the proper information.

You may have heard bad things about some cookies, especially those that keep track of your information for advertising purposes. I can assure you that the cookies we serve here at World Wide Wood are quite safe, and I hope that you will find them delicious! So if your browser is set to block cookies, be sure to enable cookies from the prwdot.org domain. If you have cookies turned off entirely, then there’s not much I can do for you. In that case, you will see the same first-time greeting message every time you come to our site. Sorry!

In the future, this feature could be expanded to keep track of other things, like your name, or maybe even your choice of color schemes!

For the technologically inclined, I did this using PHP’s setcookie() function, the $_COOKIE array, and some SQL queries directly to the Movable Type mt_entries table in MySQL.

On an unrelated note, I have made a few tweaks to our site’s left hand navigation bar – hopefully more people will see and take advantage of our RSS feeds. These can be used in news readers like Bloglines to keep track of our recent posts. Just another way we make it easier to get all the World Wide Wood goodness you need.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this new feature!