We took in a matinee of Pirates of the Caribbean this afternoon, and I’d say we both enjoyed it. Lots of fun, action, and humor in the classic Hollywood style. A pleasantly diverting 2.5 hour summer flick, no more, no less.
Handling “overlapped extent allocation” errors reported by Disk Utility. One file overwrites another and the whole thing goes boom. Basically, if you’re not on 10.4.2 or better, you’re hosed, buddy.
Oh, yeah. Pixelpost is very nice. Between projects this morning, and with a few slight hiccups here and there (mainly MySQL-related admin stuff) I got the app up and running smoothly. Within about two minutes I had two images uploaded, commented, and working. The admin interface is a little rudimentary (I’m spoiled by Movable Type) but fully functional and robust. It supports RSS 2.0, and it’s valid XHTML. There’s some spam blocking built in, email notification of new comments and comment authorization, and the application supports both .JPG and .GIF formats. I’m digging around the templates now to see how much I can customize the page layout, but this looks promising. And, there’s a pretty robust community out there.
Addendum: I think I may go back to Movable Type anyway, just because I’m going to be extending the basic layout to have a sideblog with illustration-related content as well as portfolio work. As much as I’m not wanting to wrangle with the complexities of MT again, it’s going to be for the best. Now, I just need to get paid so I can order a new domain and get the ball rolling…
Oh, man, the third season of Project Runway started last night. You know where I’ll be on Wednesdays for the next couple of months. I thought for sure tattoo-neck-guy was going down, or maybe basket-head-tweaker-guy, but they sent the chick who couldn’t use a sewing machine packing—probably a good thing for her, in the long run.
Online replacement title ordering via the MVA (sorry, Maryland only.) I can’t find the title to the Scout anywhere, and if I’m going to sell it, I’ll need one.
Fun with forms (and CSS). Some nice hints and tips, for what is one of the more annoying parts of web design.
The story behind the RAZR. The one thing they never mention in these articles is that the successful team has the buy-in of one top executive, who has enough juice (and cojones) to shelter them enough to get their job done.
I’m doing the legwork to build a new website for my illustration portfolio, in the hopes that I can make it more of a weekly (or even daily) endeavor. My dream is to have a site where I post sketches and finals of my work as well as other articles and sites I’m looking at, and have a place for comments and an RSS feed. Because I’d like to make it as easy as possible, I’ve been looking at a lot of photoblog software, which is a more specialized version of traditional weblog software—the emphasis is on ease of uploading and immediate posting, as opposed to the hassle of adding a photo to one’s Flickr account, hunting down the URL, and pasting it into a Movable Type window, repeat, repeat. In essence with a lot of these apps, the photo is the central unit, and the title/caption becomes secondary, almost metadata.
I started with some of the lighter applications, and looked at Folderblog, which has ease of installation and lightweight footprint as two of its key features. Instead of a true content management system, it acts as a PHP script running in the background, processing photos as they are added to a central folder and tying them to text files with metadata. Some of its drawbacks are that it has no allowance for .GIF files (which are central to the work I do), it has a gloopy UI, it has questionable support, and it has a very small community. I was able to modify the templates to get a layout that was more in line with what I wanted, but it’s not perfect. I’m shelving this one for the time being.
The next application I’m looking at is PixelPost, which (shudder) requires a MySQL database backend. Having navigated the myriad websites to find the information I need and the link to the required file (a binary installer, thank CHRIST) I got it installed and running under OS X last night. I then found a handy utility called Navicat to administer the database, something I’ve only been able to do previously with arcane command-line jujitsu found buried in pages of lousy open source documentation. And speaking of lousy documentation, how about providing a screenshot, people? Or simply a better website, that, um, lists some of the features of the application? I’m going on reviews here, and looking at other websites for an approximation of what I might get, and that’s just not enough. I do like the database backend, and there seems to be a healthy community building helpful tools (captcha, clean URL, and ratings, for example).
As I continue with the experiment, I’ll keep writing about it here. I’m hopeful I’ll find a robust enough application that I can use for a real-world website, and finally get the site I want running.
Let’s all wish my sister Renie a warm, wonderful 29th birthday today! Renie, we hope it’s a great day for you.
There’s not much to discuss here in C-Ville, other than the fact that we’re A. totally finished with picnic food for a while (them nitrates will clean you out, and not in a good way) and B. embarking on a Campaign To Eat Healthier, all in the wake of the 4th of July Parade. Being left with 24 hamburger patties on the 5th means we gave the FoodSaver a workout, stocking our freezer for the next year’s worth of grilling. One of the benefits of post-party cleanup is that we still have a sizeable cache of beer in the basement, something that’s been in pretty short supply around here lately.
Also, I finished the V entry for the Alphabet Project this morning, bringing order back from chaos. I’ll make a slight detour to work on an obituary piece to commemorate Ken Lay’s passing, and then return to X later in the week.
This is the first in a series of illustrated teardown posts of a BMW R90 motorcycle. Being keenly interested in airheads and DIY projects, I’m keeping an eye on this until it’s done.