Our web diary

Straight Eye for the Queer Guy

Marlene made a great joke tonight after I made a comment about an article on Entertainment Tonight. There were some people complaining about a girl wearing flats with her dress. Now I think that makes sense because she will be standing most of the night. Let's face it, most real guys don't see shoes. Marlene made the comment that there should be a show 'Straight eye for the queer guy" I died laughing. Can you imagine one of those guys from the show, kicking back in a plaid recliner, downing cheap beer, eating 2 for a dollar tortilla chips, with a Redskins jersey, in puppy dog pajamas, watching WWE wrestling....

Redesigning

I have made some changes to the weblog. First. I ditched the icon link to the other rivinus.com. I added it to the links set. I also added links to some other sites. Some for me and a few for Marlene.

I then moved on to getting the categories section working. It was a good lesson in learning how Movabletype handles template tags.

Then I edited the picture of Marlene and I from the main website. I shrunk and combined both images in PhotoShop Elements. Then changed the links so it goes back to the "about us". I added the XML image to the syndication link. I rearranged the different modules so search is further down the page.

Lastly, I went into the style sheet and moved things around to get around the spanning problem. Previously,the entries would extend to 1024 pixels. It was ok, but meant that you had to scroll right to read anything. I have it running at 720 pixels which should fit most screens without resizing. There is still a problem with having to refresh if you resize your screen. I will probably end up changing the main index template to a more tabular format. Movabletype uses floating tables in their CSS and it's a bit of a chore. I am thinking that maybe we will use this as the front end for the other website data.

Weather

We had some ice storms last night and today. I ended up closing the office and spending the day working from home. Working at home does not really mean much when all of my drivers are off. I did cheat a little bit and got the links worked out on the website. I created some buttons in Fireworks that somewhat match the ones that Front Page generates for navigation. I have changed the title at the top of this blog into the link back to the main website. It works ok for now.

We, well ok Marlene made, bread today with our breadmaker. I had gotten the breadmaker before I went to live in Denmark. It stayed at my parents house unused for most of the 20 months I was overseas. It makes nice 2 lb long loaves of bread vs. the little mini-loaves of other bread makers. Marlene also made a pie.

The following picture was made with a program called XnView. This program is an easy program for reading Canon Raw files if you don't want to do any exposure changes. It has a feature to make a contact sheet with file descriptions. This way I can display one picture instead of uploading 8 or 10.

Movable Type

I have decided to move the weblog into the 21st century and have subsequently upgraded to Movable Type This was not without some pain.

I am currently hosting with Canaca. They have hosting plans starting at $3.95 per month with 5GIG, yes that is GIG, of space. Throw in with that is the ability to have 5 subdomains. I already have one in my Photography Website. The subdomains support CGI scripts, so I decided to install MT into a new subdomain. I figured this would allow me to test getting it working before deleting the Greymatter weblog.

The installation had some hiccups. I had some initial problems getting the pathing correct. Then I had to figure out how they had strung together the templates. I finally got it running. Jason at Jclark helped with a few bugs. The navigation is still kind of funky. I may end up changing our site around to accommodate the changes.

Lastly here is a picture of the snow in Charlotte. This will be a pain for me with the trucking business.

Sales

Well I made a sale yesterday to a company out of New York called BookBuilders LLC. The purchased a copy of a picture of Sweet Potato Pie" for a run in a 4th grade textbook called "Uniquely Carollina.


I got the lead for this sale from http://www.photoconnect.net. I have two galleries posted on their website. They had a request from a a reaserch assistant for pictures of North Carolina. Photoconnect is in the UK, so they forwarded the request to me on Sunday morning. They were looking for several pictures of things native to North Carolina. The pie was the only one I could do very quickly. I was able to shoot the pictures on Sunday morning and post them on my photography website http://www.photography.rivinus.com/gallery/bookbinder.htm. They reviewed them Sunday/Monday and I got a request for the limited rights to the picture on Tuesday. They ended up ordering 2632 for $100.


The only thing I don't like is that I have to invoice them in New York. I am interested to see if they actually pay it.

Go Carolina

CONGRATULATIONS CAROLINA PANTHERS

CAR 14


PHL 3

Sunday Night

The Eagles/Panther's game is on and I am online updating the website. I guess you get a little out of football after living away from it for a few years. The 3rd project is updated on the website. You can follow this URL http://www.rivinus.com/camerastuff/project_3.htm


I also worked this weekend on some rose macro photography http://www.photography.rivinus.com/gallery/things.htm


Lastly, I may have made a sale today. More on that latter this week.

Sunday comics

I have a couple of things to rant about today.


The first is about the Sunday Comics. As Marlene said earlier, I go out every Sunday and pick up the Charlotte Observer. For the most part I dislike the Observer as it is a useless paper, but I do love the Sunday comics. Someone at the Observer seems to have figured out that quite a few of us just read the comics and has started to invade my comic reading with advertisements! These adverts are on the front and back pages of the comics. They half-fold over each section so I can only read part of the front page comics while enjoying a sabatical in my porcelain office. For months now I have been noting the adverts and cutting them out of the paper. I want to make sure that I NEVER buy products from any of these companies.


The second thing is the terror threat-level system. We have those wonderful color codes to tell us the different terrorist threat-levels to the country. That brought into my head that the guys (or girls?) from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" should visit the Homeland Security department. Then we could have colors like Mocha, Salmon, and Champange. Now as I guy, I know those are foods, but we we do want our country color co-ordinated and perhaps a little less initimidating.


On another note, I did some updates to the website. I posted some new portrait shots of Marlene and myself on the front of the website. There is a a new Photography Blog that can be found here This will contain more photography related stuff. I have also completed the second of the Photography Project series. That can be found at http://www.rivinus.com/camerastuff/Project_2.htm or click here

Sundays

The year on the calendar has changed but some things remain the same. I have mastered Sunday mornings and I like them just the way they are. As with every other morning of the week they start with coffee but that's where similarities end. Bacon is a sunday breakfast staple. Do not worry if you are counting calorie bacon on Sundays does not count. To the bacon add a complementary food group. Perhaps eggs (made into a nice omelette with mushrooms and cheese), pancakes, or french toast. Add plenty of maple syrup, orange juice if it's on hand and a fresh pot of coffee and breakfast soon becomes brunch.


Then open the Sunday paper. This part of the ritual has been greatly improved by acquiring a husband whose weekly chore it is to go fetch said paper. Linger over coffee with newspaper in hand. Read critiques of movies you never get around to seeing, plan trips outlined in the travel section for "one day" clip a few coupons, and attempt to find at least one slightly comical comic. If you are fairly ambitious you can choose to puzzle out the Sunday crossword not my idea of fun, I prefer to puzzle over the fashion in the "Style" section. Then sometime around noon when you are completely mellow,and the coffee pot is empty get on with the rest of the day doing nothing in particular.


Ah I do love Sundays.

Pictures

Both the pictures section and the camera sections have been updated. The site has been slightly redesigned with a 2003/2004 area for photographs.