Category: Site-Related

  • January pics are up and A LOT of site-related stuff

    ok then, it’s what, the eighteenth of february?

    ah well…

    couple new things again this month…
    like last month, i have a folder of panoramic pics made with AutoStitch…
    this month, there is a new folder called “WebCam” and it has a very few notable moments caught on my cam… this will continue from here on out, assuming there are things worth posting and i actually hit that little ‘archive’ button on my cam when those moments happen…
    i have also done something that was much-needed and actually made thumbnails for the vids this time around…

    i think that is all there is to tell, right this way to the January 2006 pics…

    oh, btw, i am playing with the settings in JAlbum to figure out how complicated it would be to start posting my pics semi-live… see, it can generate an album and then, you can add more pics to it and it re-generates all the pages and such… then, i could just continually post pics throughout the month, rather than doing one huge batch every month… just not sure if that’s what i want to do or not…
    we’ll see…

    anyway, site news…

    first, briefly, i’ve changed the way the photos directories display and you can now read the full descriptions of all the folders… that’s awesome, take my word for it… sooner or later all the people who have complained in the past will see it and will no longer complain…

    secondly, since no one else is around to do it, i spend a lot of time cleaning up people’s computers, installing new software and such, and, on my usb swiss army knife i carry my “Christopher Pack” (if google and lifehacker can have one, so can i), so, this all inspired me to add a list of links to info about apps i cant live without… you’ll find said list on the sidebar, under Links, the list is called “Apps I Can’t Live Without”… now everyone can be as 1337 as me 😛
    ok, next, no, i never officially announced it in a post, but, yup, i gotta’ cheapy webcam here in my living room earlier this week… it’s on 24 hours a day, except when it’s not, refreshing every 10 seconds, unless i have it set for every 30 seconds 😛 😛 😛
    needless to say, there’s not much in the way of alwayses and nevers with it, but, it’s already been fun…
    it sits atop my monitor (erm, the primary monitor, the one on the coffee table) and shows me and everything behind me… of course, it’s often too dark to see much… some day i may just point it out the window for the cool view… in the webcam folder of this month’s pics, you can see an example of the view i have in mind… for now, i’ve been having too much fun waving to people and putting little “hello!” messages on it… it has a quick access dynamic caption feature, plus i have it set up to show my foreground window as well as what’s playing on winamp… man, from decade-long recluse to webcammer…
    anyway, over on the sidebar, under “My Stuff”, you’ll see a thumbnail image from it and you can click on it to get to the full webcam image view page thingy… also, i have inserted the chatterbox into it so people can leave comments and, boy have they… never had so many chatterbox comments in the three years or so i’ve had one…

    (btw, as of feb14, i have been back on the internet five years, here’s a little post from a couple years ago about it…)

    oh, almost forgot… huge thing here… i upgraded to WordPress 2.0 here a little while back and it has an import wizard… so, i thought and thought and thought and finally decided to do it, i imported ALL my posts from my old website… that caused me to jump to 170 posts, dating back to april ’03… you can see a month-by-month list on the sidebar under “Archives”, which is right under my webcam thumbnail image… i still need to add category tags to all of them and that is a big job… (my “uncategorized” category grew immensely when i did the import…)
    i wasn’t going to import the old posts and just leave the old site as sort of an old abandoned building to be explored by the venturous… i may still undo the import (if i can figure out how) and stick with that plan… BIIIIIIG difference between the christophercornelius.com website/life and the insidiousplots.com website/life and i have never thought it was a good idea to mix the two…

    ok, anyway, one last thing, as you will catch hints of in the pics, i now have a new computer… the old one died a horrible death… i have a bunch of new pics of it in the upcoming february batch, it is integrated into the home theater system, with dvd, optical digital audio, and everything… i’m lovin’ it, it is so much better than my last one… you can check out more info about it than you could ever care about, i have uploaded the main page of my belarc advisor profile of it, it is the big bold link under “My Stuff”, the very first link, it says “Truman”… you see, i named the computer “Truman”… that’s my dad’s middle name and my dad is the one who got me started in computers when i was 10… he also gave me most of the parts to build this computer and much technical support… THANKS, DAD!

    anyway, whew, what a long post, but, i think i’m done…

  • november pics posted (and site fixed!)

    ok, i finally posted the rest of the photographic miscellany from november…
    this month, i have finally begun something i have thought about doing for awhile… pretty much every month i post pics of hot air balloons i see from my balcony, but, this month i now have the pic with the name of that balloon, the home city, and pilot… there is no website i can find that is a visual guide to balloons and that’s a shame because they are all unique vessels with their own story, etc., so, i intend to start posting the name and other info about every balloon i get a pic of… i would love for enthusiasts who know something i don’t to post what they know… thanks to this album maker, every pic has a comments form, so, anyone who wants can post info… there are many balloons that are not in the book i am using for reference, so, every month there will be unknown balloons, if you know who it is, just leave a comment on the pic and let me know… i also know some balloons have a website, so, i also want to start adding links with the pics…
    this could be fun and, if this collection grows large enough, i will make a dedicated section for it…

    i know, scott… i’m a sick man 😛

    ok, that aside, there are less than 40 of the “various” pics this month, mostly from a night at paulette’s…
    click here to view the november pics

    (and, if you didn’t see them previously, november also had a hundred or so pics, most of them amazing, from my flight to L.A. and 62 pics from the church thanksgiving hootenanny…)
    .

    in other news, come to find out my site has been seriously screwed up in internet explorer this whole time and no one told me about it until a couple days ago… my sidebar was loading on the right where it’s supposed to, but all the way at the bottom of the rest of the content… this has now been fixed, thanks to Doug… if i had asked him first, i would not have had to spend half the day pulling my hair out, beating my head on the table, etc…. thanks a bunch, dude!

  • MAN!! is streaming THAT difficult???!!

    i am already tired of every time i post pics and they have vids with them, i have to tell people to right click, save as, etc…. but, to stream with this host, i have to upload the vids into a different subdomain, i can’t just throw them in with the pics…

    someone tell me, am i looking at this wrong? it really is this complicated, right? i just want them all in the same directory, pics and vids together, and all people should have to do is click on them to view them, whether they are pics or vids shouldn’t matter… is there something really simple i am overlooking? i am new to a lot of this, but, everything i read gives only one option: upload them to the streaming subdomain… which means i’d have to upload pics one place, vids another, try to cross link them or something, and the only alternative is keep telling people to right click, save as, etc…. firstly, many of my visitors aren’t particularly saavy on how to do all that, secondly, many of them are on dial-up, and thirdly, that’s just a pain…

    and, btw, did i just get a bad host? or is this typical?

    someone tell me some stuff here, please…

  • september pics now online

    well, since i am about to have quite possibly hundreds of balloon pics, i figured i’d better knock out the september pics early (on time)…
    i used jalbum again, but, this time i used the Experience skin… it lacks a few things, but, i keep having java errors with ExhibitPlus, the one i really love (i used it last month and for all the 2002 collections)…
    leave me some feedback on this album skin, there are so many to choose from, but, i only like a few and would like to keep trying different ones…
    this one is ok… has a nice overall layout… exhibitplus has many cool features (like a slideshow), but, i keep having errors when i try to use it, and it runs very slow…
    keep in mind that you will see the albums and the thumbnails, click on the thumbnails for a screensize of the pic, then, click on the screensize for the original… i even added comments to a few of them this time…
    i notice this skin labels vids as folders for some reason, btw…

    this month includes some balloon pics (some things never change), a few from the chaos at the gas station across from the santa ana casino, helping jeff and justin move into their new place, the geeky fun had with justin’s new computer, a couple of the weather balloon, a few of my new van, and a few of a night hanging out in paulette’s kitchen…
    and of special note to some are Nathan Sampson’s 4th Birthday Party and The Church Barbeque – you know who you are…

    annnyway, with no further ado, you may now proceed to the September 2005 photos…

    and coming soon will be all the AIBF 2005 pics and i expect to spend a lot of time there, not just viewing from my apt this time…
    last year, i was one of several bloggers who covered it, you can re-live the posts back on the old website by browsing through my posts from september 2004, where i also posted plenty of links to great stuff about the AIBF in general and october 2004 where my actual coverage is posted, of course, none of my pics are there anymore… still, some decent writing, if i do say so myself 😛

    also soon btw, i have pics from andy shrek, one of the brave souls from my church who went to help out in lousiana… he snapped a few while there and i will have those up eventually and hopefully a guest post by him…

  • aol doesn’t like my email address?

    now twice this week an AOL’er has told me that they tried to email me at my usual email address (him at christophercornelius.com) and aol didn’t allow it, saying the address was too long…
    anyone know anything about this?
    a VERY quick, superficial search turned up no references to anyone else complaining about it, but, i was in a big hurry…

    my card has that address on it, my site, it is in many places and i have zero intention of changing all that for aol’ers or having multiple addresses listed, so, if this is common and not just something they are doing wrong, that’s a bit of a bummer…

    if any aol’er happens to read this in the future, you can also email me at either of my other domain names, so, him at insidiousplots.com and/or him at jesusfreakgeek.com…
    or just send me an instant message, i am on aim as well as icq, yim, msn, and skype…

  • oh man, where’d my sidebar go?!

    uh, i made a minor change or two and now, instead of my sidebar, i am getting “Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘}’ in”…

    it’s not even a complete error message!

    and i am supposed to be asleep right now, no time to look into it in any detail…

    i hate it when stuff like this happens…

  • finally got change detection again

    ok, i set up monitoring with ChangeDetection.com for this site…
    look over there to the right, all the way at the top, right below the search box, and you will see a link that says “click here to be notified by email when this site is updated”…
    pretty self-explanatory…
    click that, it will take you to a page where you can put in your email address and then, every time i make a new post, you will get an email and you won’t have to remember to check in to the site…

    ok, two things about it…

    firstly, as it says, it is “spam free”, i have been using this service for quite some time with a unique email address and have never gotten an uninvited email from them…

    secondly, if i set it up right, i have blocked monitoring of everything on the sidebar… so, like, if i add a new link or change my contact info you WILL NOT get an email about it… that is a good thing, since little things change over there and you don’t want to know about every “chatterbox” post or new link that gets added to the “looking at” section.. it is only set up to notify about new posts on the main page…
    on that note, it will not notify about any other part of the site changing, such as new pics uploaded… but, i always make a post when i do something like that, so really, post notification is all you really need…
    and, i might add, you can use changedetection.com to monitor ANY page on my site or any other site, once you get the hang of using their service…

    anyway, this is something that i am mainly adding for people i know “IRL” that hear me refer to this or that that has been posted to my site, usually followed by me asking when the last time you went to my site was (and you know who you are)… so, click on that link and you’ll always be the first to know when i post something…

  • august pics now online, with a twist

    i doubt anyone had noticed, but, the first few directories in the photos collection are photo albums… from time to time in the last month or two, i have been toying with JAlbum, this groovy photo album maker… it is very simple, but, a little slow, at least on my leaves-much-to-be-desired machine…

    anyway, so, this month’s pics have gotten the JAlbum treatment as well… i think i need to do more tinkering to get it to come out exactly the way i want it, but, it will do for now and is easier to browse than a directory of numbered pics…
    btw, fernando and renee’s wedding pics are not included in the album, i forgot about that when i made the album and uploaded it… maybe i will re-do it or at least make an album for those by themselves…

    we’ll see…

    anyway, here are the photos i took this month, not as many as usual, but, some interesting ones…
    there are many settings and templates for these albums, i will experiment each month as i hopefully continue to “albumize” every monthly upload of pics, so, leave me feedback about what works, what doesn’t, and/or if you liked it better being just directories of numbered pics…

  • jesusfreakgeek.com

    yup, i finally bought it…
    jesusfreakgeek.com

    i just couldn’t stand it anymore, it was too catchy, i’ve thought about it long enough, and domain names are cheap…
    it will point here and all email sent to it will forward to my regular account…

    it will be a couple days until that link works, btw – these things take time…

    and people will no doubt rejoice that i finally have a website address that EVERYONE can actually spell 😛

  • Fernando and Renee’s second wedding photos

    ok, so, i wanted to sort through them more thoroughly and prepare them in nice albums and such, but, here it is nearly 1am and even at this hour i have at least five people calling me, wanting to see them, so, i am just uploading the batch as is…
    click on photos over there on the right and look for the folder… you probably won’t be able to view the vids unless you right click and save them to your computer, btw…

    anyway, enjoy…

    and, to ALL who read this (this means YOU and YOU know who YOU are!), my chatterbox is working again, so, let me know you stopped by… it is on the right, scroll down, below the webcams, just scribble in your name and a comment, you can skip the url box, hit the post button, and, poof, you did as i asked and are immortalized on my homepage 😛