It’s been a few days since I posted anything, but we’ve been out of town. We took a long weekend down in Big Sur, with friends. It was great!
I should have some new posts coming up sometime today.
Personal
Our new doggie…
As mentioned in a previous post, we’ve been in the process of looking for a dog. It’s been a little difficult, but today that search came to an end. :)
This little girl is the newest member of our family. She’s a one and a half year old Australian Shepherd / hound mix. At least, that’s what the nice folks down at the San Francisco SPCA think.
She doesn’t have a name yet, so if anyone has any suggestions…
UPDATE: There’s another image of her on my photoblog. I’m sure more will be coming.
UPDATE #2 (7.05.06): We finaly picked a name, it’s Maggie Moo. I personally voted for Itchy McMoo, but Anne Marie didn’t go for it. So far she’s turmed out to be a really wonderful dog.
Introducing… ‘Highly Subjective’
If you come here regularly, you may recall a post from a couple of weeks ago, stating I was going to start a photoblog, and I was looking for suggestions on software.
It came down to 2 packages… WordPress, and Pixel Post. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I really wanted to use WordPress, because I’m pretty familiar with it, and I just like it, a lot. Pixel Post has the initial advantage of being specifically made for photoblogs, so there is less configuration needed to start.
After much debate, and playing around with each… I’ve gone with Pixel Post. My thanks go out to everyone for your suggestions.
I’ll be the first to say that WordPress is actually far superior as far as blogging software goes. It’s infinitely more flexible, scalable, and manageable… but I came to the conclusion that it is way overkill for what I wanted to do. My plans are much more modest.
If you’re interested in setting up a basic photoblog, you may want to give Pixel Post a serious look. It’s easy to set up and get going quickly. The only time you’ll spend is in tweaking the template, if you choose to go that route. My only real complaint about Pixel Post is some of the documentation seems a bit out of date. The developer community for Pixel Post is much smaller than WordPress, so I think things tend to fall through the cracks a little more.
So, by this point you’re probably saying, just give me the link to your new site already. Ok, ok… the site is called Highly Subjective. It isn’t completely finished yet. I still have some tweaks to do. I hope to be finalizing it this week.
The name comes for the old notion that “pictures don’t lie”… you’ve heard that saying, right? Well, I couldn’t disagree more. Pictures do lie… because they are open to interpretation. All photos should be treated as ‘highly subjective’. I’ll be getting more into that when I get around to writing the ‘about’ section of the new site.
My goal is to post a picture a day. Ideally, that would mean shooting a picture a day, but I’m not sure how realistic that’s going to be with my schedule. This weekend was beautiful, so I took the opportunity to go out and dust off my photography skills. I was definitely a little rusty.
The last time I was really into photography, I lived in a much more rural area, in Arizona. Now that I live in the city (San Francisco), I am somewhat fascinated by random happenings on the street. I don’t have a lot of experience shooting people, especially out in the wild, so I thought this was a good way to get back on the horse. I kind of wanted to push myself into new directions.
It felt a little odd starting the site with just one image, so I went ahead and populated it with several of the images I shot this weekend. I’ll hopefully be starting the one-a-day posting, tomorrow.
Weekend Dissapointment
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may remember me talking about our dog, Emmitt. We lost Emmitt last year to cancer. We’ve always known that we would get another dog at some point, but it wasn’t until recently that we felt ready.
This past weekend we took the plunge and started looking. Things have changed a bit since the last time I adopted a dog (17 years ago). Everything is online now. We went down to our local SPCA knowing exactly what dogs they had, and which ones we wanted to look at.
We had picked out nine dogs that we wanted to meet. For a while it seemed like we were going to have trouble coming home with just one. But, in the end, we came home empty handed.
For one reason or another, we decided eight of the dogs were just not a good fit for us… but there was one that we instantly fell in love with. Her name was Honey. We so wanted to take Honey home with us, but the SPCA wouldn’t let us have her because we live in The City. Apparently Honey came from a more rural area, and she has some sensitivities to noise. They say she doesn’t do well on busy streets.
On one hand, I try to look at it like this is best for Honey. If she really would have problems with where we live, an not be happy, than that’s a bad thing. It wouldn’t be good for her, or us. On the other hand, I’m very disappointed. Honey is only 1.5 years old, and I think she would adapt.
I’m trying to be positive, and say that things worked out for the best. A dog is a lifetime commitment, and it’s no good for anyone if your dog isn’t a good match for you, or your lifestyle. We’re continuing our search.
I’m starting a Photoblog
Many years ago I was really into photography. Of course, this was long before digital… it was back in the day of film and smelly chemicals. Over the years I lost interest enough to sell off most of my “real” camera equipment, but I’ve always kept a point-and-shoot handy for those times when I want to snap a few pics.
Recently, I’ve thought about getting back into it… especially now that I wouldn’t need to go back into the darkroom. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really loved to spend time in the darkroom back in the day, but these days I would much rather just sit at my computer to process my images.
Up until the other day, the only camera I had was my little Canon SD300 digital elph. I love it because it fits in my pocket, and I can always carry it with me… but, it does have some serious limitations if you want to have any measure of control over your shots. If I were to get back into photography, I would definitely want something with a little more control.
Well, guess what… I’m the proud new owner of a Canon 10D. My good friends Todd n Steph gave it to me as a belated birthday present (thanks guys!). Todd is a serious photographer, and the camera use to be his. Since then, he has upgraded a couple of times, and this camera has been handed down to Steph, and now to me. Woohoo!
So, now that I don’t have any more excuses, I feel compelled to do something again. Since I’m so into blogging, I thought what better way to keep myself motivated than to start a photoblog… which actually leads me to the point of this post… I’m looking for suggestions on photoblogging software.
I’m a big fan of WordPress, but I’m not sure if it’s the best solution for what I am looking for. The main reason is how the archives are structured. For photoblogs, the archives should be a grid of thumbnails, and I’m not exactly sure how to do that within WordPress.
I’m also looking at Movable Type, Folder Blog, and Pixel Post. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Basically, I’m looking for something that is quick to set up, easy to maintain, and has a good template right out of the box. I don’t really want this to be a big project at this point. I just want to start photoblogging.
I’m a big fan of Chromasia, and that site represents the basic functionality and flow of what I’m looking to do. I emailed David Nightingale, the photographer, and he said he uses Movable Type, and he designed his own template. He did say it has a fairly steep learning curve at the beginning. He’s also the one who suggested I look into Pixel Post.
So, I’m looking for suggestions. If you’re a photoblogger, and you’ve used any of these systems, or have others to suggest… let me know your thoughts. I’ll let everyone know as soon as the new photoblog is up and running.
Update(6.23.06): I did it. I started my photoblog. You can see it at highlysubjective.com. More info can be found here.
Aloha
Aloha from Maui. I haven’t had much time to get online, or write about the trip so far, but I did throw some images together that I was going to publish. But, I seem to be having some technical difficulty uploading them. The internet connection here is a bit flakey, so that may be it. I’ll try again later… right now the beach is calling my name.
We’re going to Hawaii!
We are gone on vacation… in Maui! In fact, at the moment this gets posted we’ll be on a plane. How did I post this from the plane, you may ask. Well, I didn’t. I actually wrote it last night, and date-stamped it not to show up until 8:40am Saturday.
WooHoo! I’m so excited to go to Hawaii! Neither of us have ever been. We’ll have a whole week there. We’ll be staying on the west (beach) side for 5 nights, and the east (rain forest) side for 2 nights. We are meeting some friends there, and have all kinds of fun things planned.
Luckily, this was all booked and paid for back in January, before I had my tax trouble in April. Otherwise, we would probably be spending this week here at home.
We’ll have internet access for at least the first 5 days, so I’ll probably be logging in from time to time, but if no new posts appear… that means I’m having a beer or three at the beach, and I can’t make it back to my computer.
Now you know why I’ve been looking at new earphones and waterproof iPod cases ;)
Happy Birthday to Me…
It’s my birthday! Yay! I wish I could say I was taking the day off, but I have too much work to do. Oh, well.
There was another birthday recently that I totally missed. On May 1st, this blog turned 2. I started it on May 1st, 2004. Check out my first post. I had no idea what this site would become, or if it would last long. I was just curious about blogging.
On a related note, I had an alternate image for this post, but it seemed a little cheesy, or spooky, or somethin…
UPDATE: Oh my god, I was totally wrong. I didn’t start this blog on May 1st, I started it on May 28th. I guess I’m early for once.
Do what you love… Don’t settle
“…Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle…”
That was an excerpt from Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford, June, 2005. I’ve been thinking a lot about those words lately. The entire speech is available through iTunes (FREE).
Link (Steve Job’s Commencement Address – iTunes): Audio | Video
Found via Daring Fireball
Walk across the Golden Gate
It’s been raining here for about six weeks, and it’s getting really old. Fortunately, we had a few hours of nice weather on Saturday. I was working on-site for a project, but luckily I was able to sneak away for a bit and get outside… I needed it.
Anne Marie and I decided to do something we’ve never done… walk across the Golden Gate bridge. I’ve been here for 2 years, and she’s been here for 12 years, but for some reason we’ve just never gotten around to doing this. It was great! It was so nice to actually be outside in the sun. Now, if we could just get some more days like that.