Photobucket tips

I implemented a new feature of blogger on the sidebar called slideshow. Like most features from Blogger it isn't quite finished, but i figured out how to get it to work, despite that there are no help files or blogger employees answering questions on the support forum.

This will be a convenient way for me to display new photos before I put them into their final album or use them in a post. If you hover over the slide show a back/pause/forward buttons will display. You can also double click on the photo to enlarge it, but it will not show the extra photobucket things like EXIF, Tags, or the other albums. To see that, go directly to the photobucket account using the link in the sidebar. The sidebar slideshow is in the "SS JQsLife" subalbum.

Blogger SlideShow Layout Element

Some photo hosting sites have widget features that generate a bunch of HTML/embed/javascript code, which can easily be botched up. For those using the layout feature of the new blogger, then can simply add the slideshow element to the sidebar. it appears that if you use Picasa from Google it may work, but if you use another photo server their is no place to enter your album information.

I use photobucket and the trick is to use the media rss feature with the Other provider. In photobucket go to the subalbum of your choice and look in the lower left for the rss feed, which is similar to your photobucket URL, but prefixed with "feed" and suffixed with "feed.rss". Copy this link. Select Other in the drop down box, paste this into the feed.

That's it, no fooling with javascript, no redoing your slide show and repasting, its done on blogger. Now simply add or delete photos in the subalbum and your photo slideshow will dynamically be updated via the rss feed.

Photobucket Tags

Usually when we think of tagging we think of tagging the whole entity (photo or post). In photobucket tagging refers to a portion of the image. When you tag a photo, a small square appears in the center of the photo and it can be resized and repositioned to tag a portion of the photo. Multiple tags can define multiple areas in a photo.

You can find the tagged photos by clicking on the tag list on the album page. When you are on a tagged photo you can use it in one of two ways. You can hover over a tag in the tag list under the photo and the rectangle will highlight over the area of the photo. You can also hover over an area of the photo and a bubble will open with the name of the tag.

One very popular use could be to identify people in group photos. Clicking on their tag will highlight them in the photo. Hovering over them will open a bubble with their name.

There is new embed code that will appear for a photo that has been tagged which is supposed to allow it to be shown in a blog. I have not worked with this yet.

Photobucket Descriptions

Now you can add multi-line descriptions to your photos. The best way to take advantage of these new description or tag features is to check the desired photos in the album page and then click TAG SELECTED at the bottom. This will show multiple medium size photos that can be tagged, described, or re-titled. You may want to shorten your title and include the detail in the description.

Posting Photos

Blogger allows using hosted photos by putting in the URL (photobucket Direct Link) of the photo. But when you click on the photo it will show you just the enlarged photo only.

With a little editing of the HTML, you can show the photobucket page which will show you other interesting things like the album, EXIF, Tags, Title and new multi-line description. Photobucket has another form of URL called Email & IM, this points to the Photo page, but if you use it in blogger it won't show the photo unless you edit the HTML.

There are two links in the HTML, one is HREF= that points to where you will be taken if you click on the photo and SRC= that points to where the photo is. So if you use the Email and IM link then you can jump to the page with the photobucket info with the HREF=. But the SRC= has "?action=view&current=" that needs to deleted for the photo to show up properly in the Blogger Post.

Another item you may want to adjust in the HTML is the <img style="width: nnn px;" where nnn is the width of the photo.

Sharing Photobucket Albums

This feature displays the most current photo and then has a link to the photobucket album. This is done by selecting the Share button. The code generated tends to be too wide, so the table width needs to reduced and an additional parm needs to be added to the SRC= for the photo "width=narrower" to allow for margin of the photo. This photobucket feature does not seem worth the trouble.

The same thing could be accomplished by using the Blogger Post Photo feature with the Photobucket Direct Link (rather than the Email & IM Link mentioned above) and then changing the HTML for the HREF= by deleting "xxxxx.jpg" where xxxxx is the name of the photo. Clicking on the photo will then take you to the album page.

Sharing Photobucket SlideShows

A photobucket slideshow can be viewed at the photobucket site or using the Share feature it can be added to a post on Blogger. The first step is to select the Create Slide Show button to the left and then drag photos into it. This is different from the Blogger Layout Feature in that it is statically defined. Changing the slide show means going to Photobucket, generating a new slideshow and its code and making a new post. This slideshow can have custom frames, watch for this option to the left of the slide show window.

Sometimes this slideshow can be too wide for your blogger post. There also should be a way to find the slideshow URL so you can send the reader to Photobucket to see a specific slideshow, where they will also have the option to see your other slide shows.

Photobucket Summary

Photobucket is one of several possible photo hosting sites, others include Picasa, Flickr, and Webshots. Photobucket allows an unlimited number of photos to be stored in public or private albums. The free service limits the size to 1024 x 768 pixels. Ifranview is a great tool to view your photos, crop, or resize them. Picasa incorporates local viewing of photos with an integrated connection to the hosting site. Flickr allows you to post your copyright preference and have other users comment on them but has a limited number of photos on its free service.


Status: Third Draft - Last Updated 12/17/07 3 am
See draft of next set of Photobucket Tips here on my new Popular Technology Blog.

Time Engaged vs Time in Chair

I was at my son's computer class and sure enough a PC was still out of service for two weeks. So after his class, I thought I'd take a closer look... Now my specialty is the gigantic systems, but even though I'm not a PC jockey as we Enterprise Support folk call them, I can hold my own quite well.

Maybe it's starting and spending a good part of my career at a University, but I've always been somewhat of a go getter. I walk fast, talk fast, do stuff fast. I'm always reading (big boring tech stuff), learning and doing new things. Lucky thing, the equipment I started on is in a museum and has less computing ability than a PDA.

So first thing is to isolate the problem, nothing on the monitor, adjust brightness and contrast (even though I couldn't see anything), check connections, reboot PC, looks like the monitor, swap out for the monitor next to it, works fine, OK, its the monitor or the cable. Just ready to swap cables when the next teacher comes in.

First Pet Peeve

OMG you can't do that, our main tech guy is here, oh he'd be mad. The "I'd rather suffer for the process" problem, the artificial barrier of in the box thinking. This is the same teacher that was bitchin she didn't have enough PCs for the class last week. But oh lets not try to do something to fix it, we have a process. Fill out a form and wait...

Now to be fair she probably doesn't realize that I've worked with computers for 30 years and usually have at least one PC being torn apart or rebuilt at any point in time... But technically my resume may not be good enough to get me a job as a PC jockey. It almost didn't get me a job selling them after I was fresh out of selling IBM''s small business computers (in the startup consulting company) that go for $50-500 thousand dollars. That's another post... Well OK, I almost have it, I'll send my son's teacher an email. So I hang out a little longer to check out the new configuration the school installed this year.

Second Pet Peeve

Here comes the PC Guru. Oh boy. What is the etiquette for greeting the exalted one? Any one who calls themselves a guru or a czar and isn't at the top of a mountain or in a Russian grave is full of shit or full of themselves or both. (jqism)

Third Pet Peeve

He moved in slow motion. Have you ever seen that? This guys a little younger than me and moves like an 95 year old man. Ya just want to go over there and get him moving. He looks at his one sheet database list for at least 10 minutes, then he's gonna leave. The frustrated teacher stops him, points to me and says "Ask him". Should a guru have to ask? Would it be so hard to walk around the room to the only PC that wasn't in use and assume that's the one that could be broken?

I don't know how someone with so little logic can leave the house in the morning let alone get a job with computers. So, I can see this is the lowest form of PC Jockey, so I make it easy. "The processor is fine, it's the LCD panel or the cable". He fidgets for the longest time and I see that all he is doing is disconnecting the LCD panel. Thank God I saved him the trouble of shooting the problem, that probably would have been weeks. Then in classic single tasking fashion, he's gonna come back to straighten up the little mess he made on the desk, being unable to watch this snail in action anymore, I told him, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it". He grunted and left with the LCD and cable. I would have done a cable swap right there and have figured it out for sure if that teacher was just a few minutes later. I can hardly wait to see how long it takes the "guru" to fix it.

In Summary

Engaged	In Chair
Watches results	Watches clock
Enjoys solving problems	Enjoys being praised
Works quickly to get to next problem	Works slowly to avoid next problem
Thinks out of the box	Should be put in a box
Life Long Learning	Life Long Lazing
Obsolesce Avoidance	Work Avoidance
Legend among peers	Legend in their own mind
Enterprise Strength	PC Wimp

Feel free to give me suggestions for more Engaged/In chair comparisons in the comment section.

Benefits of being engaged

• Reduces boredom
• Enhances self worth
• Prevents Alzheimer's Disease
  
• Reduces risk of being mistook for dead when you stand still
• Should enhance your employment opportunities, but that's only if management is engaged and that could be rare indeed (another post)
  

On the lighter side

There were some funny moments during my son's computer class.

• My son's friend called me over to show me his bandaged finger and he explained how it was slammed in a door, how it was all black and blue, how his fingernail was kind of slimy and then with excitement on his face he said, "Ya want to see it?", "Oh gosh no, I'll take your word for it, it will heal better if you don't fuss with it". Then several more times he asked, "Are ya sure?".
  


• Apparently his teacher talks with her hands too (and neither of us is Italian), I was standing next to her while she was giving instructions and she unexpectedly pointed at the computer projector output and I (with quick reflexes) leaned backwards to avoid being poked in the face. She said, "Oh gosh [my Son's name] I almost hit your Father".


• The children occasionally raised there hands for permission to go to the bathroom. So while we're walking swiftly around the room to answer questions, the teacher leans towards me and asks politely, just like the students, "Can I go to the restroom?" And I replied as usual "Sure, I'll tell the teacher", with a giggle.

Status: First Draft
Almost done if Blogger would respect my Table HTML... OK, one Blogger Bug Fixed, Back to writing...

...Down the Hill

At age 7, we moved from the city at the lakefront and to a suburb, with a little more land and a better school system. Our house was on a street on the top of a hill. We don't really have mountains in this state, but we have some big hills and changes in elevation.

From the second floor bathroom window you had a nice view of the city toward the lakefront. In the winter when the trees were bare you could see all the lights stretched out ahead. I never compared it side by side, but the view was similar to one I had photographed over looking LA from the Griffin Observatory. No tour of our house was complete without taking the surprised guests into the bathroom, closing the door to see out the window and shutting off the lights. LOL

But the feature that no kids could resist was the hill. After a modest sized backyard of grass was a retaining wall and then the hill covered in trees slopping moderately down to the street. This hill was part of our own private property. Ours was the widest and least overgrown on the street. Everyone on our side of the street lived on top of this hill and had at least 300 feet behind their yards as private property until the end of the street where the metropolitan (public) park started. But some were quite overgrown, hard to get through with fallen trees, eroded banks, and poison ivy.

Well thanks to my Dad, the poison ivy was eradicated on our part of the hill, fallen trees were cut and removed, ground cover planted (Pines, Orange Lilies, Ferns) to prevent erosion. That meant that we had our own private park, our own woods. No making noise in the house or yard. If you were looking for us, we'd be "down the hill". Exploring, making forts, blazing trails. If you wanted to play hide and seek or war, this was the place, lots of places to go. Of course my brother and I could get through the trails the quickest, we lived there, we made the trails. Our friends couldn't run over this terrain as well as us.

Even our neighbors who had their own hills preferred ours, especially as we got older and improved it even more. It got so good it needed to be defended, but I'm getting ahead of myself. And then the neighbors who didn't have their own hills, of course they came to play at ours. Pretty much if you were looking for anybody they were down our hill. Occasionally we'd have multi hill battles, that's where advance scouting and map writing came into play so you could get to the enemy quickly. Can't run down a path and trip over roots or come to a dead end or to where the pond drained out to make you a muddy mess.

No need for video games (there weren't any, I'm from the pinball era) we had real games. And then we started building... Improving the trails, patio, picnic table, and the beginning of the best fort ever. It started as "the platform", 4x4s buried deep by my Dad, on the side of the hill and a wooden floor up off the ground. In the middle of the woods, with a perfect view everywhere. The front was about 3 feet off the ground, the back was over 6 feet off the ground.

Then the improvements - a tarp A-frame roof, a (drawbridge) plank entry, then a wooden roof, then walls, front door, a back screen window. Then electricity, a long line strung through the trees from the garage. Now we could have a radio, fan, lights. So it wasn't just a day time play area, sleep outs, sometimes large ones, involving little sleep.

My parents stretched their budget a bit to afford that house, but they had some foresight on what a fun place it would be for growing up. They liked the woods and the double level patio area we built. A little wildlife so it didn't feel like crowded city living.

Must be why I bought the house on a wooded lot. My house is barely visible from satellite images. It's not as big as my parents, but it's in the best school system in the state, just as theirs was back then. My son has seen where my fort stood, it didn't survive all these years. We walk around my back yard talking of where I might build something for him.

Travels

Traveling and photography are two things I enjoy. The two go together. I haven't done as much traveling recently; post 9/11 certainly put a damper on things. Here are some of the places I've been.

My two biggest trips were to Europe for one month each time. The first trip was with my brother on a bus tour that included Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands. The second trip was with my wife on our fifth wedding anniversary that included Ireland, England, France, Italy. For the second trip it was on our own, rented cars in England and Ireland, Eurrail pass France and Italy. We stayed in B&Bs a lot of the time.

My brother and I went to the Bahamas several times, including for my bachelor party (he was my best man). It was tame by some standards, no strippers, instead we spent time at the casinos, beaches.

My brother is such a fan of the Caribbean that he got married in the US Virgin Islands (USVI). I went down for the wedding with my wife to act as his best man, although I joked that he was taking a vacation with his girlfriend and going to come back pretending to be married. Some joke, his marriage is solid, mine's over. He honeymooned on St. John and my wife and I were on St. Thomas. We went out to dinner and had a few activities together. I came back and put a nice wedding album together and met him at the airport with it.

My wife and I honeymooned in Cancun, Mexico. The resort is beautiful, but the surrounding area is so very poverty stricken.

Travel in the US was often times by myself, sometimes with my brother or sometimes with my wife to the following cities Boston, NYC, Baltimore, Washington DC, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Chicago, Niagara Falls, New Orleans, Virgina Beach, Phoenix, LA, San Francisco. I've been to these cities multiple times, sometimes for more than 2 weeks at a time.

This post is just a summary of places I've been, I'll be posting more details with photos in the future.