New Theme

Upon receiving some constructive criticism of my blog theme from Kathy (it was too boring), I decided to mix it up a little and go with a little flashier theme. Also, I noticed that I had not allowed commenting, so I modified that as well. Let me know what you think.

Fabulous Holiday Weekend

What a wonderfully relaxing weekend. With all the activity leading up to the holiday weekend, it was really nice to just relax and enjoy the holiday and the time with the kids. I’ve discovered that I’m not too bad at Guitar Hero and that Matt and Emily really like Dance Dance Revolution and Spore. Andrew got Spore for Christmas and installed it on our main computer in the dining room. I must say that it was an even bigger hit with Matt and Emily. Matt wants to get it for DS with his Christmas money.

The most fun was competing at Guitar Hero with Kathy. She was surprisingly good at it, but couldn’t match my focus and determination. It may also help that I already know the songs a little bit better. Andrew got the Aerosmith edition and I love the fact that it has all the best Aerosmith classics (including my personal favorite “Uncle Salty”).

It will be some time; however, before I can compete against Andrew. He has an uncanny Guitar Hero ability… I’d like to think that it’s because he actually can play guitar – but more than likely it comes from hours of video game play.

Mary Mary – James Patterson

Another Richard Cross novel. Interesting in that Patterson is able to tie everything together by the end. A pretty easy and straight-forward read that is interesting in the ties to Hollywood. Probably a little too much time spent on Cross’ life and times, but overall a pretty good read, fits in well with all of the Cross series of thrillers.

Could an AS Diagnosis Affect Promotion Opportunities?

I’ve recently put bids in on what would be promotional opportunities and I started thinking about possible ramifications of an official diagnosis. Would a diagnosis of AS be a determining factor for a promotional opportunity that involves the direct management of people?

I’ve been a manager in some capacity for at least 10 years professionally going all the way back to my publishing days and I have been successful in these positions. Many factors are taken into consideration when you are bidding on a promotional position and how much would a known diagnosis weigh compared to past experience?

I have no answers… I just would personally hope that past performance would take precedent. There are things that one would have to work harder at and be more aware of; however, if one can show that the job can be performed then any diagnoses are not things that should considered. There are actually many aspects of AS that can be considered as advantageous to managerial success – especially in environments that are heavily regulated and controlled (order and rule-driven).

Is ZenPhoto The Right Choice?

We are using ZenPhoto for our photo library and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the best choice. I really like the option of being able to upload via FTP and the pictures/albums are automatically added to the database. That is a really nice feature for managing large albums and libraries. The only real issue that I’m having is with the sorting and general navigation of the site.

With the technical issues that we were having, I had to recreate the ZenPhoto installation for our personal photos. Our new installation is located on a subdomain and that seems to be working fine. I tried to have the albums sorted manually to ensure that the newest pictures were shown first. That was fine when there were only two years worth of albums; however, once I got all of the albums uploaded, this was impossible to do through the drag-and-drop admin interface on the backend.

With this number of albums, the page normally stops loading due to timeouts, so we are never able to display all of the albums, let alone organize them through drag-and-drop. So, what I then did was have it sorted by album name (in descending order) – so as long as I keep the album names as they are (Year_Month), all sorts will be fine and the newest albums will be displayed first.

The only problem with that is that it looks rather clunky. I could keep the initial portion of the album name that and change the label following it, or I can just update the descriptions to be more precise.

Overall, I have not had any problems with this installation displaying any of the pictures and working with any of our Flash Video out of the box. This is probably the biggest plus to the software in that we haven’t had to do anything unusual to get everything to display out of the box.

The one option I would love is to be able to rotate the pictures up on the site. Kathy has a habit of taking pictures with the camera at different angles. Up to this point, I have had to ensure that the picture was rotated prior to uploading. Again, this isn’t a big deal, but it would be nice if I could just upload them all and take care of that on the server when I’m adding my labels and text.

Another step that I have to perform is making the pictures smaller prior to uploading. I’m using ImgaRes software to batch-reduce the pictures and make them manageable prior to uploading. This ensures that the server doesn’t get over-burdened of trying to thumbnail all of these huge pictures.

Here is my current process:

We save all of our pictures to monthly folders on any machine in the house.
At the end of each month, I synch (contributory synch) each photo directory with the server.
I convert all camera video from AVI to FLV using the Flash encoder and place the Flash video in the “To Upload” folder.
I convert all monthly pictures using ImgaRes to 25% and have them stored in the “To Upload” folder tree.
I upload all converted video and images to the ZenPhoto albums folder via FTP.
After an hour or so, I log into ZenPhoto to add text and labels to the images.

It would be really nice if many of these steps were automated by software (as they probably could be). I think Picasa does something like this with PicasaWeb (although not the video part). That would be something that I could look to developing for myself. Even if it were just scripted, that would be helpful.

I guess ZenPhoto is the right choice, since it seems to work and I’m not willing to commit the time to try to find an alternative.

Voices by Arnaldur Indridason

The third book in the Reykavik series is as good as the first two. I’ve spent three days reading books by Indridason and I’ve completed the first three in this series. The protagonist (Erlandur) is an entertaining character in his flaws and limitations. Indridason does a good job of integrating the back stories with the overall story. Believable and sincere, the tie-ins are what help make this another winner.

The story is of a child star (adolescent soprano) who loses his voice and loses his family in the process. Forty years after his success (two recordings), the child star turns up dead in the basement of a 4-star hotel dressed in a Santa suit. As unusual as it sounds, it is all made believable – especially in Iceland.

Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason

This was my second book by Indridason and I must say that I loved it as much as the first. This is the second in the Reykavik thriller series and the same detectives are at work again. I must say that the back stories and how they intermingle with the characters is the strength of Indridason’s writing.

You get a complete understanding as to the environment of Iceland and it’s place in the world. He is able to tie in stories from the war eras and how they relate to modern day. Every family presented in Indridason’s books have quite a few failings and this book is no exception.

The protagonist (Erlandur) is a meaty character as well with enough baggage to have a series of stories on his own. His failings as a father and husband continue to haunt him even as his success as a detective soars.

There is something that I connect to with these novels… this was another single-seating read which has been rare for me.

Windows Live Writer Posting to Drupal

Since I’m reestablishing our sites – see my previous posts on having the site hacked last week – I had to reinstall my PitmanGeek.com site which was a Drupal site. I had never really gotten off the ground with the site, so it was no big deal to get it reinstalled. I didn’t lose any content.

I have the Drupal site running and setup the BlogAPI to allow for remote posting. I found out quickly; however, that Windows Live Writer was not operating correctly with the standard Drupal BlogAPI. After looking around on the Internet a little I found Windows Live Writer BlogAPI Module for Drupal. I installed this and it seems to work for Blog entries only. Not a problem since that is how I will be using it.

So I now have our WordPress Blogs setup, our Photos site setup (although not fully repopulated) and the PitmanGeek site reestablished. Not too much more to do, but I want to do it slowly so that everything is completely documented and done cleanly. I’m also keeping local copies of all the code to ensure that it can be quickly recovered to the correct versions.

Windows Live Essentials Beta

I decided to try loading Windows Live Essentials Beta at home. I’ve been using the Beta of Windows Live Writer (since yesterday) and now that I saw they released the beta of the whole Essentials package I figured I would give it a shot. I don’t think I’ll use the mail since I have Outlook with the Outlook connector for Office Live and Workspaces. I’m not sure what Live Mail will buy me (other than maybe an additional desktop client for other accounts – which I don’t need).

My calendars are synched with my new BlackBerry 8700c using Outlook and the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Outlook is synched with my Google Calendar using Google’s Calendar Synch tool (for my primary) and the secondary calendars are loaded through iCal.

Tasks and Contacts are synched with my BlackBerry using Outlook and BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Outlook is synched with OfficeLive Workspaces (by connecting the task and contact lists through Workspaces).

So as long as I have either my BlackBerry or Outlook and Internet access, I have access to all my information.

Jar City

Arnaldur Indriðason

A very quick and easy read. I started this book on a Sunday morning and completed it before 5:00 in the afternoon. A very well written crime novel which utilizes the unique environment of Iceland as a key component. A murder quickly turns into a thriller which makes a social statement – what do you do when a genetic database has names and lives attached?

I picked up two more of Indridason’s novels and I’ll be reviewing them shortly – I completed each one in one sitting. I love the crispness of his writing, the story moved with a rapid pace, but covered a lot of ground – thorough but not boring.