So last week, in the middle of Spring (yes, that IS a tree with Spring Blossoms on it, above), New Jersey gets a freak snowstorm. A perfect event to try out a fresh-out-of-the-box Canon 30D. 🙂

Gallery: April “Showers”

Name: “Tickle Yore Innards”

Subject: Old style Advertisement
Medium: Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ30
– Exposure program: Normal
– f/3.2
– Filter: Circular Polarizer
– Flash: Off

Date: March 16, 2006

As you’ve probably noticed, updates have been a bit lacking as of late.  That’s because lately I’ve been working more on tinkering the infrastructure and seeing what can be done to integrate a gallery solution to the already-existing blog based foundation I have here.  The idea is to allow a series of photographs or artwork to be displayed in an organized and automatic fashion, rather than use a kludged-together solution of just linking to files manually within a post.
So far, the solutions haven’t been easy ones.  A number of plug-ins are advertised for WordPress that claim to allow gallery integration. Most of them haven’t reached “version 1.0” stage, and with good reason: they just aren’t ready for prime time.  Attempts to integrate each led me to dead ends, either because of poor documentation, serious bugs, or a combination of both.

Ultimately, I’ve given up on a fully-integrated solution for now.  Instead, I’ll have to resort to running a separate phpWebgallery module, and then linking to the galleries as they are created.  phpWebgallery seems to be pretty thorough, however, I’m not 100% familiar with it yet.  So, some bugs still need to be worked out.

In the meantime, I do have a test gallery ready to go, and the subject is scaredpoet.com’s perennial mascot, Loki.  Have a look!

Gallery: Loki the Cat
Upload Date: March 13, 2006

Adobe Labs is uncovering the wraps on its latest workflow piece: Project Lightroom. Releasing the program as a public beta through June 2006, the program is first available as a Mac version, with a Windows Beta release soon to follow. What does Lightroom do?

Adobe® Lightroom™ Beta is the efficient new way for professional photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. So you can spend less time sorting and refining photographs, and more time actually shooting them. Its clean, elegant interface literally steps out of the way and lets you quickly view and work with the images you shot today, as well as the thousands of images that you will shoot over the course of your career. Because no two photographers work alike, Adobe Lightroom adapts to your workflow, not the other way around.

In a nutshell, this appears to be a far more powerful, professional and soon-to-be less secular version of Apple’s Aperture software. I feel though that both packages are aiming for the high-end, hard core digital photography afficionados, while most of the tools provided by each package will probably go over the heads of the average end user. For basic needs, Picasa might even do the job.

I’m mapping out my ending,
It’s never gonna happen now
These things are condescending
With everybody backing down.

You pray to angels that they can help you get by,
And all at once you forget to try…

I’d go there if you let me;
They’re never gonna find me now.
My life is always empty,
and in and out of doubt.

But you’re not coming back for me, these things they will never be,
I’m so used to being wrong, so put me where I belong.

I get back to you,
God knows I try,
But I still lose
And I get back to you;
These days run by,
But I still lose.

Angels say they can make you suffer,
They give and take like a vicious lover.

When all this loses meaning,
You’ll never want it back somehow.
Awake but still I’m dreaming;
And never waking up
Alone…Where I’m not alone.

Your not coming back for me, these things they will never be,
I’m so used to being wrong, so put me where I belong.

I get back to you,
God knows I try,
But I still lose
And I get back to you,
These days run by,
But I still lose…