My Humble Abode

If you've been here before, then you no doubt have already noticed that I switched the site -- again. I've moved back to the Serendipity blogging software (from Wordpress). Why? Simple. It let me do what I wanted without preventing me or telling me that I need to do things the way it wants. Huh? What's that? LOL Read on...

I've been wanting to create a site for my photography that functioned fully as an integrated web site and contained some static pages for rates and things, a dynamic photo gallery, and my blog. Well. I finally got around to doing just that over the weekend.

What I found out is that Wordpress pretty much will fight you every inch of the way if you're wanting to embed it inside of something else. I managed to get my posts displaying inside my photography site, but the first time you clicked on any of the Wordpress navigational links you left that site to go to the stand-alone Wordpress site. NOT what I wanted.

Serendipity, on the other hand, makes it possible. It's still not easy, but at least there's a configuration setting for telling it that it's now embedded -- which strips out some of the template generated header and footer info. I wound up having to (thru trial-and-error) create a couple of wrapper files that pass things from my site back to Serendipity and I'm still not quite sure why it started working when I copied a file where I did -- you see, that file doesn't appear to be used, but then again I was doing that at like 2 or 3 in the morning -- but it's working! So I'm not going to play with it or fuss with it. It works, and that's all that I really wanted.

I've also been wanting to make putting new photos online easier for a while. I'd tried out the JAlbum program (which allows you to build a photo gallery site on your computer then upload the whole thing -- great if you needed a site on a CD), but got tired of the lengthy uploads with tons of little tiny files. I tried using templates inside of Adobe Lightroom (which gave me the look-and-feel), but didn't like the steps necessary to create things nor the necessity of updating every gallery to adjust the navigation. So I looked for a dynamic gallery software package that allowed me to embed itself into another site.

What I found was Gallery2. I'd looked at it a couple of times in the past, back when my site was on a different hosting company, and when I was needing to pick a gallery software package for the Brentwood Camera Club (when I was their webmaster -- last year). What I found then, and what (surprisingly) doesn't seem to be the problem now, was that it was slow -- as I indicated, now it's as fast as either of the other gallery software packages I looked at (4images and Coppermine).

For the Brentwood Camera Club, I wound up -- OK, so I pretty much left the decision up to the person who'd be maintaining it, but I agreed with his decision -- going with Coppermine. It's admin side of things is not the most user friendly, and it's idea of the relationship between categories and albums still has me scratching my head a bit, but it seemed at the time to be faster. Since I'd used Coppermine for a while with my supporting the BCC site, I naturally looked at it first. Then I remembered that I didn't like it's structure (categories/albums) and decided to take another look at Gallery2.

Gallery2 has one of the easier to understand admin screens that I've seen. Well... that was until I looked at 4images (all I can say with that package is that it looks to be really easy to use and if you're not that big of a computer geek, and want to put your photos online, then take a more indepth look at 4images... you might like it.) Anywho, back to Gallery2... Gallery2 (or G2 for short) has help pages on how to embed it inside of other things, so that told me (and the lack of any such info at all for 4images and only the minimal info for Coppermine) was fairly easily possible. So I went with it. I'm glad too. It's speed has been improved over the course of a year and a half (year and 9-months to be exact). Also I was able to get it embedded in just an hour or so. Without too many problems, I simply copy-and-pasted a sample embedding script, changed a few things, and it started working.

So. I've got what I've been wanting -- finally! A photography site that's got everything embedded in it without the need for iframes or external links -- well, everything except my Google calendar (maybe I'll have to work on that next weekend) -- and a blog and an image gallery that both function in an embedded state as well as stand-alone sites. It's about bloody time! lol

Anywho. I hope you like. Next up is (and I figured out how late last night, so I haven't had time to implement it yet, but that'll be done tonight) is replacing a few of the photos on my photography site with some code that randomly chooses an image from my portfolio. Oh, and after that -- now that I can relax about my site being a mess -- is focusing (no pun intended) on finishing up processing my photo backlog... I really need to find someone that likes post-processing photos (meaning in a photo editor to remove blemishes and such) and will work for friendship... lol. No. Really. Anyone interested? I make a good friend. :-) Sigh... I'm off to my programming job now...

I'm beginning to wonder if I've lost whatever passed for "my touch" when it came to talking to people regarding photoshoots... Did that all go away the very second I sat back down in front of a computer to write code? Could I really loose it that quickly? It's only been a couple weeks since my last shoot, yet I feel as if I haven't done one in months. I mean, it's almost as if I can feel those skills draining out of my body as the programming skills flood back in.

Sigh.

Edit: Oh, and why the heck do I feel like a "creep" after the last couple of times. Am I coming off bad? Did I somehow pick the wrong time? The wrong people? What? I've only had that happen a few times, but I feel bad for hours at a time after each time. Sigh. I know, I know. I shouldn't let things like that get me down. But it's just so dang hard for me to not get depressed by rejection -- speaking a lot more generally here than just looking for a small shoot. Eh... Maybe I'm just to dang tired right now for my own good.

Anywho. Since I've been back to work for a couple weeks now, and since I've been putting it off for a while but now feel like it, I've been working on tweaking my photography site (JonWarrenPhotography.com) to make it easier to add pages and maintain. (Boring background info: I'd built the old site using some web templates for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, but didn't like some of the things about those templates. So I kept the general style, but re-did it in a manner indicative of my own web design standards.) I'm working on reviving a piece of software for dynamically generating creating my portfolio section of that site... but I'm not there yet, so it'll look slightly different for a while. (In a nutshell, my gallery generator that I wrote originally back in 2004 builds a photo gallery based off of the directory structure. You simply build the thumbnails and the images and upload them into specifically named folders and that's it -- it does the rest... well, that's at least what I remember.)

Oh well...

As for photoshoots, and who I'd like to shoot versus who wants me to shoot them... well... let's just say that the two aren't always the same. I'm picky. What can I say. Unless someone is willing to pay me, they'd darn well be someone that I'd want in my portfolio. Otherwise it's a waste of my time. Sorry. That's just how it is. So, if you want me to do a photoshoot with you -- and you're thinking of trading time -- then please don't be offended if I tell you "No". (Need an example? OK. Sorry if I'm about to offend. You must look classy, not trashy.)

Oh, BTW, as part of my weekend tasks for my site, I'm planning on writing up a "Policies" page (or at least something similar) that spells out what I will and will not do. I might say that I'm "wanting to shoot" on MySpace, but that does not in any way shape or form mean that I'm lowering my standards. I will not shoot anyone just for the sake of doing a photoshoot -- unless you're paying me.

My horoscope today says that one of ya feels neglected... Come on. Tell me. Who is it? :-) lol I'll be gentle... um... maybe. lol

Right now, you should try to be even more open about your life than you normally are -- by letting other people know what you're up to, you will make them feel more important. One of your friends has been feeling a little neglected, and although their choice about how to communicate that fact to you isn't very mature, you are getting the message. It's time to open up and let them know why you may have been avoiding them. It's for the health of your relationship.
Scorpio Horoscope: Daily Extended horoscope - Astrology on Shine

Perhaps the "friend" that's feeling a little "neglected" should take a look at what they've done to me lately and think about why I might be "avoiding them" lately. Hmmm? I typically don't purposefully ignore my friends... It happens sometimes because we all live busy lives. It was so much easier back when I was a kid (oh no, here I go again on that "I wanna be a kid again" B.S. that I ranted about a while ago) when I really only had 2 friends in the whole !#$#$!#$#@ world. Now that I've got (what for me is) a "lot" of friends, and since they're spread pretty much all over the place, it's daunting and difficult to stay in close contact with them you all.

So. If it's you that's feeling "neglected", please tell me. I'll do what I can to at least try and make it right. Providing that you try and make it right from your end if you happen to be someone that I'm a bit peeved at right now. (BTW, if I'm peeved at you, you really should know that I am. But, here's a hint: If I used to txt ya a lot, and I've not in a long while... then perhaps you've done something to upset me... orrrrr you've given me the distinct impression that you don't want me around any more.)

Sigh... Why is it that some friendships are so bloody easy to keep, yet others are so much work? Is it the universe telling us that we're not really meant to be friends? Do ya ever wonder when is a friendship worth fighting for? Do you ever wonder why you feel like you keep screwing up friendships? I do occasionally -- even though there's plenty of evidence to indicate that it's either not my fault at all or at least that I'm equally responsible for the problems. I always feel bad when a friendship goes away. I always miss those people that used to be in my life, but aren't now... for whatever reason. (uh oh... maybe this is the beginning of my Aunt's passing this week beginning to sink in and hit home.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If you've not figured it out yet, I've recently had a few problems with a couple friendships. I don't know if it's that those people's "true colors" came out -- finally -- and I didn't like what I saw, or if my "true colors" came out and they didn't like what they saw. Either way, I've been left with a couple holes where there used to be people recently. It's brought back flashbacks to a couple years ago when something very similar happened. Well... OK. So it's not "very similar". Nope. In fact, the only things remotely "similar" is that the all of the referenced individuals are female and that there were two in both cases. This time around, the two aren't close friends tho'. Sigh. Doesn't mean that I don't miss any of them. Nor does it mean that I wouldn't want any of them back as close of friends as we used to be. It's just that sometimes things happen that are hard impossible to forget, and those things forever change friendships.

Edit:

Wouldn't ya know it. As soon as I revisited my site after posting this, this quote (from my favorite quotes collection) was the one displayed... Sigh...

I have been and always shall be your friend. -- "Spock" (Leonard Nimoy) / Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

LOL. I thought I was beyond ever hearing that requirement pop up again. But... nope. Sigh. Oh well. I love a challenge, so let's see what I can do to make this work. :-) It shouldn't be all that hard, right? I mean, it's only someone else's UI design. No big deal. I'll be fine. Really. LOL... I'm getting a big "kick" outta this as it's hilarious to me that a company in this day-and-age is still using IE 5.0... they haven't even upgraded to the highly recommended and strongly suggested security update of IE 5.5 (with windows updates running automatically on boxes nowadays it'd be "required" or "automatic" or "critical", but this was the old days of Windows 95... remember them? I barely do).

Sigh. OK. Time to dust off my ye olde school web developer hat and try get a "cheat sheet" of what functionality has been added to browsers since then. It should be fun.

Daily Extended for July 19, 2008 (Today)

Overreaction could be a factor in your day, and you have to be prepared for someone's unexpected emotional outbursts. And keep in mind, that outburst could come from you! You can't anticipate how things will go today, so don't waste time worrying about it -- you will only end up stressing yourself out. The better strategy is to just carry on as you normally would and deal with stuff as it comes. Being confident that you can put out fires is better than trying to predict them.

Scorpio Horoscope: Daily Extended horoscope - Astrology on Shine

I'm thinking that this sounds vaguely familiar like something that happened a couple days ago between someone that I thought was a friend (not too sure where I our friendship stands at this point) and myself. In the interest of not reliving the bad moments in life, I'm not going to dwell on it and I'm certainly not gonna go into details here. Suffice it to say that I feel as if that other person overreacted and they feel that I overreacted. Perhaps we're both right. Perhaps we're both wrong.

I think it's best if this is the last that I discuss that moment and simply try and move on with my life. Heck, that's what I'd already done when the universe decided to slap this horoscope in my face and remind me of that other incident.

Edit: Am I sorry for what I said? Not really. I don't think I really said anything that was all that bad. Am I sorry for how I said what was said? You bet. I can come off harsh at times, and only those people that truly value my friendship and take the time to recognize and learn my personality traits understands when I'm really upset and when I'm simply being the "drama king" that I guess I can be at times. Sigh. I've always been a passionate and emotional individual. Sometimes that passion and all those emotions come bursting out like Mount Saint Helens... Nice and quiet and thought to be dormant, then one day -- Wham! Spilling out all at once. It's one of the many many demons that I've fought with most of my life.