Use the source Luke…
I was able to find a plug in that resolved the mall inconvenience that we had with my long posts…so now the posts are cut on the RSS feeds where ever I add the more link and as an added bonus we have a copyright and tags being displayed at the bottom of the RSS feed.
Google Reader appears to not have any issues with this change so if your RSS agregator is having issues please let me know.
-LM
Well…if there is one thing I hate currently is the power outages. This morning, at around 6am, there was a power outage in my area and it lasted for a couple of hours.
After I came back home from work I powered on the file server, currently running ArchLinux, and found out that it’s not booting cleanly as it appears that the file system of the root hard drive has gotten corrupted something which is not fun at all.
This file server has two optical units but neither of them are connected so I can’t use them at this moment. Right now I have two options and them being to either attempt to fix the issue by booting from an USB thumb drive, which I’ll have to make, and attempting to resolve the issue with the file system or reinstall the box. Since the first option would involve for me to basically move all the data out of my TruCrypt encrypted thumb drive and then format it to make the server boot from it I’m going to go with the second option and reinstall the box.
This gives me a chance of testing the FreeNAS distro on that machine. I’ve been reading the userguide and I see that it’s based off of FreeBSD and that it’s highly recommended that the hard drives be formated using the UFS file system which means that I must backup my data first. Now we are not talking about 200MB of data I have nearly 400GB of data stored on that server and I don’t have a hard drive big enough to store that amount of data which means that I’ll have to wait till Sunday to go to the computer store and get a big 500GB hard drive…so ok this is being used as an excuse to get a bigger hard drive as well…hopefully the computer store opens on Sunday and I don’t have to wait till Monday to get that HD and more than opening on Sunday I hope they have a 500GB HD.
Since I basically I’m going to try all of this I might as well create a backup solution at this time so I’ll be looking into buying the big HD with a SATA to USB adaptor and using that as my backup solution 
As of right now I’ll be reading that user guide and updating this tomorrow.
-LM
Natalie posted on Digital Photography School or DPS the last post on the three part series to get the DPS community or anyone else that’s interested blogging to show off their photography work. On this last post she asked a couple of the professional photographers about their blogs and where they host them, I guess her e-mail asking me about it got lost in all the spam…no I’m just kidding 
You can find her article on the Digital Photography School website and you can go to her blog as well and link from there.
As far as what I do is pretty simple…well at least for me…I bought a hosting plan with DreamHost which is pretty cheap compared to other options I’ve seen out there and has really nice specs as far as the package they offer. I installed Wordpress using their one click install system and upgrade the blog through there as well. The theme I use on Wordpress is K2 which I love and have done a couple of modifications to it so that it does what I need.
For my photos I actually upload them to Flickr, I got the pro account after I hit the 200 photo limit that they have established, and then I installed a plugin called FAlbum on Wordpress so that the visitors to my site can see my photos directly from my blog and not have to go to Flickr, though they can still go to Flickr and comment on the photos there and also download bigger versions of the photos if they wanted to.
My e-mail is actually administered by Google. I got an account on their Google Apps service and they provide the e-mail system which is the same one they use for gmail so I can even chat with my friends who use google talk. I love this option though the free version allows me to have up to 25 e-mail addresses but it’s ok since I really have my girlfriend and myself using it 
I will often just blog directly from Flickr, what I like about this is that it will organize the photo on the top right hand corner and wrap the text around the photo, or sometimes I will blog from Wordpress and add the medium sized photo to the post and clicking on it will take you to the Flickr page though I might change it in the future so that it stays on my blog and doesn’t go directly to Flickr.
The monitor calibration can turn out to be a problem and I’ve noticed this since I’ve seen the photos from my desktop at home, which I’ve attempted to calibrate my monitor as best as possible, from my work computer, which has not been calibrated at all, and from my mom’s computer which I had to play a little with the color correction on the nVidia control panel in order to get the images to look like they should though I’m still not completely happy with that.
I guess the biggest issue for digital photography is the monitor calibration and this is a big factor that affects the way others see our photos. As of right now I’m really happy with the setup I have and find it quite affordable for my budget. I have even done a similar setup for my sister, she’s no photographer, but she likes to draw and would like to show off her work as well so I’ve set it up and you can check it out on her blog that I made…I still have to teach her to upload to Flickr.
What would I change? Well so far not much really…though I’d like to add a drop shadow to the photos on the FAlbum that works well with the current theme I have set and that would be pretty much about it right now.
Pascal Wowak said that he believes that watermarks on the images ruin the images and I have to agree with him up to certain level. There are people who simply don’t want anyone else to use their work so they put this huge watermark across the photo which it sure protects it and also ruins the photo a lot. Then there are people who make a very good looking watermark, like Melissa Jill, which looks so artistic. The watermark I use is a simple small black line on the bottom of my photos and the idea I took from my friend ocnarfid
I also like the idea of having a border added to the image which basically has the signature like the one from Jasmine Star since it’s non-intrusive on the photo but I find it that, at least for myself, it would add a lot of work.
I also just post the finished work and not some raw photo which I haven’t even taken a look at. I like to do little to no retouch to the photo unless I consider that it would really come out great with certain effects applied. Most of the time I’ll just make the photo into a black and white photo or just leave it in color.
-LM
I read Kees’ post on the whole traveling and I must agree with him because it’s quite a hassle to travel through the US airports nowadays and even worst if what I heard over at Digg is true. I heard that FBI is copying some hard drives of passengers who carry laptops.
Before you go and beat me about believing everything I see on Digg, whether this is true or not, I’m sure going to keep this in mind next time I’m traveling to the US. I’ve traveled into the US a couple of times with my laptop and having to take out the laptop on every security check is enough of a hassle for me and even worst if they want to copy the contents of my hard drive.
I agree on the traveling light…but that’s too light for me…besides all of this trouble one has to go through in the airports I’d still carry my laptop. I want to get one of those Asus eeePCs to just have access to the Internet and to my home network and I’m all set no need to carry anything else besides that…well with the exception of my clothing of course
-LM
There is one thing that some people think and that is that the more expensive the camera the better the photos that person takes and this is not the case since the camera is only a tool that, like every other tool, needs to be used correctly to achieve the desired results. I must agree that the better the tool the better the result and taking photos with a camera phone, for example, is not something you would compare with those photos taken with a Nikon D3.
There is one phrase that I’ve heard and and probably have mentioned it here a couple of times and that is that the camera doesn’t make the photographer. Given the right usage of the tool you can actually achieve great photos or snapshots and many professional photographers as well as hobbyist and enthusiasts have shown this to be true in numerous blogs and contests that have been carried out.
One of these photographers is Jeff Ascough where he takes a Sony Ericsson K800i and goes out to take some photos then takes them into the Digital Darkroom and touches them up to make them look better, you can see them on his post Camera Phones.
I’ve agreed with this phrase and these photographers since most of my great shots have been taken with my point-and-shoot camera.
-LM
Recent Posts Google Reader Shared
My phone reaching it’s last moments…and some great news…
Well…as it turns out I’m really excited to see that my post of Photos from the roof that was submitted to Digital Photography School as what I considered to be my best shot has received more than one thousand views…in one day and that just makes me really happy. I just hope that at least some of those people that came by for that look at that photo stay a little longer to follow my blog
In other news I’m moving to a new position within the company and it’s a change from what I’m doing right now…which is still great…but that’s pretty much all I’m telling about that…
I’m trying to get objective number 11 from my 101 to-do list completed so I’m actually submitting photos to contests to get some exposure and hopefully a change to win a prize on that…or something
Some of you might remember me talking previously about my cellphone being dropped in a puddle on the side walk well the phone hasn’t been at it’s best since then and though it’s still working apparently the keypad got damaged in a way that it causes it to sometimes light up the 4, 5 and 6 keys for prolonged periods of time at different intensities…even when powered off which is a bummer. Apparently the phone loves the ground a lot or gravity enjoys playing with it that recently it once again fell from my hand, bounced on the table and hit the floor…luckily this time there wasn’t any puddles around and it was at the office though the sad part was that it caused for four keys to stop functioning so I attempted to reflash the firmware of the phone as this often resolves it but to no avail so I had a coworker that is known to be quite handy with cellphones to open it up and see what could be done.
The good news is that there’s no water damage internaly and no visible sign of damage so the phone was put back together and something fixed the issue with the four keys that stopped working but not with the strange lighting issue. Well the phone aquired a new issue which it causes for it to apparently loose the SIM and display the message “Insert SIM” or even cause it to reboot all by itself. Rebooting it usually resolves the issue though sometimes taking out the battery and SIM are needed.
Well this hasn’t been the best phone I’ve had and has been by far the most delicate one I’ve had. Sure people would say that if I didn’t drop the phone it wouldn’t have those issues…but seriously…who can honestly say that they haven’t dropped their celly at least once?………………Ok you can lower your hands now
My previous phones were subject to this or even worst treatment…that last Nokia phone is still working and it was even neglected…lots of missed calls…yet it’s still working. My Z610i phone had been dropped and went across the living room of a friend’s house once…and it’s still working. So needless to say the SE T650i has been the worst phone I’ve had so far and even the supposedly scratch proof screen got scratched…wait…what? yes…there is a scratch on it…though you need to have the phone under certain light or at an angle to be able to see it.
I want a smartphone next but I still haven’t decided…though the Z610i was pretty good and must be quite cheap now. It’s sad to see that the Japanese phones made by SE can’t really be used anywhere outside of Japan because those are really cool and sexy but lack GSM in some, if not all, cases…sigh. We’ll see where this takes me…as for now the T650i will have to survive until I’m able to buy another phone that will work…
Finally…last friday night I went out with some friends to go partying and woke up the next day with a headache…and yes I remember the night quite well. I didn’t have my Nikon D60 with me but did manage to get some shots of the night…so I’ll post those tomorrow and talk a bit more about it…
-LM