Photo Explosion!
2 comments (closed), posted on october 31, 2004, tags: photos
Right, so I've put up an additional 496 photos in the last 24 hours. Including—wait for it—the photos I took in London and Dublin! That's right, 365 shots from my first trip to Europe are now available online.
Of course, the bad thing about putting all these other pictures online after those taken in Italy is the fact that they look cruddy since the Canon S30 is no match for the greatness of the new D70. But, that aside, there are all sorts of new photos for you to look at in addition to those taken in London and Dublin, including some taken at the Bronx Zoo, Prospect Park and some fun Light Experiments.
Check out the photos page for a full list of sets. Note that most of the new stuff I added actually appears below the Italy sets. I'm trying to keep it accurate somewhat to when I took them all.
Photos From Italy
5 comments (closed), posted on october 27, 2004, tags: photos
The hard part of taking nearly 500 photos isn't narrowing them down to the 315 or so that you really like, it's giving those 315 titles and, if possible, descriptions. It took a great deal of time. It took far less time to hook into the Flickr API and update my photos section to get the sets from Flickr and display thumbnails and details.
I'll be uploading all my future photos to Flickr. It's great, and it so much easier to use than making my own photosets. Not to mention that it allows for comments and for more people to see my photos.
And so, all 315 photos are now available for your viewing pleasure. I've grouped them by city. Since the photos page shows newest to oldest, you might want to start with the last set (Taormina) and work backwards to the newest (Cefalu) if you want to see them in the order they were taken. Feel free to leave comments at Flickr or general comments here.
Also: There seems to be an issue with RSS/Atom feeds not getting updated. I've fixed it temporarily, I'll get to the bottom of the issue tomorrow.
Alternate Reality
1 comment (closed), posted on october 24, 2004, tags: vacation
Okay... I left for Italy with the Red Sox three games down to the Yankees in the ALCS and I came back to them one game up in the World Series? What the fuck? It's as if we ventured into an alternate reality. I'm really upset I wasn't here to witness it, especially since I'm sure Shawn was in the highest spirits of his entire life (NB: The Glory). I probably could have punched him in the fact the night of game seven and he would have thanked me. I regret missing that opportunity.
Italy was wonderful. I have a tan, which is nice (even though it is only on my arms and face—thank god they require me to wear a shirt at work). It was warm, it was beautiful, it was too short. I have about 450 great pictures, nearly all of which will be posted online in a day or two (unlike my London/Dublin photos, I am not lying this time). I have more to say, but I have a lot of work to do at work this week so I am going to make it short for now. More later.
Italy, Here We Come
4 comments (closed), posted on october 15, 2004, tags: vacation
Later tonight we head to Italy. A last-minute vacation opportunity presented itself and we jumped at the chance. We're going to meet Katia's parents in Sicily. They've been in Italy for a week already and we're going to meet up and drive around Sicily and enjoy the warm Italian breeze for a week before coming back to a cold NYC winter. The plan is to arrive (after several layovers) in Catania, meet up with Katia's parents and then drive in a clockwise motion around the island, eventually ending up in Palermo. We'll be back on October 23.
Between planning the vacation and working on upcoming film scripts, there hasn't been much time for this site. Such is life. The time I have had has been spent getting the Codebase ready for its first release (which will happen a short while after I get back). I've finalized pricing details and I am looking forward to getting it out there and seeing what happens.
I also finally bought a new digital camera after 8 months of going back and forth and saving money: The Nikon D70. There were a lot of considerations involved and I think I made the right choice. The camera is amazing, and I can't wait to run it through its paces on this trip. It's really great to be back on an SLR system and to feel like I'm actually using a camera. With luck, I'll be able to print some of the photos I take in Italy, which is something I could not have done with my last camera but have been yearning to do for a long time.
I'll see you in 7 days.
Car Talk
2 comments (closed), posted on october 9, 2004, tags: entertainment
For the past few months, Katia and I have been waking up on Saturdays to NPR's Car Talk. The show, hosted by Tom and Ray Magliozzi ("Click and Clack"), runs from 11am to 12pm (EST) and is one of the most entertaining hours you'll spend listening to the radio. Tom and Ray are hilarious and terrifyingly smart about cars. Even if you're not a car person (I'm not), you're doing yourself a disservice by not listening. Especially since NPR can be heard nearly everywhere in the US as well as all over the world. If that's not good enough, you can listen to the show online or buy episodes from the iTunes Music Store. Check it out.
Codebase Version 2.0.0
17 comments (closed), posted on october 1, 2004, tags: site
Update: All feeds should work again now. I've temporarily removed the smart HTTP status checking for feeds, so they will be downloaded no matter what each time. This is so people get new versions of feeds that have changed but of which the content has not. I will turn on status checking again in a few days.
It's been a long time since I've updated this site, but for good reason. The past three weeks I've spent the time I would be updating working on the major rewrite of this site's codebase. This evening I made the new code live, and this site is now being served by version 2.0.0 of my codebase.
What's changed? Everything. At least behind the scenes. I rewrote the code completely. I started from scratch, and now I've got a much smarter, much faster, much smaller codebase. I cut the amount of code at least in half, and this new version is about 6-10 times faster than the last. It's also written to take advantage of PHP5's smarter class functionality and is all OOP.
From your perspective, a few important things have changed. The most noticeable is that you must now be registered with TypeKey to post a comment to this site. Recent problems with people commenting rude or obnoxious things finally pushed me to require registration. There are several reasons I chose TypeKey:
- It's free.
- It's popular—because Moveable Type now includes support for TypeKey, you'll most likely already have an account and if you don't, you'll probably want one in the future anyway.
- It was a challenge to hook into the TK API, and I like a challenge.
Starting today, you'll only be able to post a comment with a TypeKey registration. I honestly don't think this is too much to ask for. Sign-up takes a few seconds, and it's simple as pie. The first time you want to comment you'll be asked to log in, which will take you to the TypeKey site, then you'll be sent back here to comment and you'll be remembered in the future until you log out. Hopefully this will make the recent issues with jerky comments go away.
A bonus to requiring registration is that I can add new comment features. The first one is the ability to delete your comments. Since now I know who you are, I can give you the option to delete your comments if you wish. I still retain a copy of them for archival purposes, but they will disappear from the site (you'll see a note that the author deleted the comment). I shameless took this idea from Blogger because I liked it.
Another new feature I've added is a Recent Comments section. This area shows the last ten comments posted to the site and you can subscribe to its feed in your newsreader to be updated whenever a new comment is posted. This feature is primarily for people like Ellie who apparently can't get live without seeing recent comments. I'll admit it, though—I like it.
There have been some changes to RSS and Atom feeds, mostly in an effort to make them smarter and slimmer. You may notice all of my feeds appearing as new in your newsreader because of it. Sorry about that. It should only happen once, if at all.
I plan on releasing the source of my site in the near future. I haven't set specifics yet, but it is going to happen. After I make sure all the bugs are worked out and finish commenting all the classes and such, I plan to release the whole source for a small fee (still undecided). There seem to be enough people interested in this, so I'm going to do it.
Many people deserve thanks in helping me finish this new version. First and foremost is Courtney Tompos, who literally taught me PHP years ago, and who wrote nearly all the regex functions in action on the site. He also helped a lot with class structure and generally gave me smart ideas. Andre Torrez was essential in helping me get TypeKey implementation working. I begged him for help and, like a true gentlemen, he gave it to me. Also helpful: Anil Dash, for taking my bug reports and being excited that I was using TypeKey and Mathew Hoy for being a nice guy and giving me feedback.