When I started dating Katherine and showing her some pictures she commented on how awful Flickrs navigation is. Flickr’s strength is when you are using its tagging features and searching for lots of pictures … especially if you want pictures from multiple people. I always browsed my pictures in iPhoto on my local machine, not on flickr. I used flickr to link to pictures and let other people browse them. But for people that are not used to tagging and searching tags, using Flickr really IS very cumbersome.

I recently became re-aware of SmugMug from Lifehacker. A friend of mine used it years ago, but i dismissed it because I was running Gallery on my servers. Then i ignored it because I was already using the free flickr and decided to just stick with it. Having some time to kill this week, i decided to give smugmug another serious look and signed up for their 14 day free trial and used Smugglr to automagically migrate my flickr data over to SmugMug. The import worked well, only 4 images failed to import properly. My only complaint about Smugglr is that it didn’t tell me which images didn’t import, so i need to figure that out by hand.

All in all I’m happy with SmugMug, and paid for the year subscription (50% off with the coupon code “flickr”). It allows much more customization and organization options than Flickr does: Categories, Sub Categories, Themes (global and individual galleries), etc …. I feel like I am in control of my pictures again instead of just having a stream of all my images and some “sets” which always felt like a hack to me. If i know what i’m looking for search the tags in flickr worked well, but sometimes you just want to browse your images. SmugMug excels at just browsing things, if you spend the time to setup categories and sub categories and organizing your galleries.

Here is my new Photo website, enjoy:

http://mbond.smugmug.org

I updated the navigation in the left hand bar as well. I won’t be getting rid of my flickr account but it does expire in January and I won’t be renewing the pro account. Pretty sure that means things will disappear after that.

1. Use the file system, instead of a database, to store content. This is important so that we can use command line tools to work with the files.
2. Revision control
3. Authentication, Permissions, ACLs against local users (unix auth), built in users (to the CMS), Active Directories Users/Groups/OUs, and IP based authentication.
4. Easily integrate external applications, without resorting to having to use rewrite rules in apache
5. simple ’server’ scripts to handle the rendering and display, providing a robust and stable developing platform. That is, once the rendering engine is developed thats it. All the ‘new’ features will be on the ‘back end’
6. back end, the CMS part, is separate from the rendering engine allowing it to be located on a separate server.
7. system is designed in such a way that no one has to have access to the public web server.
8. Individual pages need to be able to have different themes applied to them, instead of the default theme
9. Fallback — if you specify “images/banner.gif” it will search the current directory for a directory “images” and “banner.gif” inside of it. If it doesn’t exist it will work its way back up the directory tree until it does. Same thing for any file, such as “leftNavigation.php”
10. Easy for people with no web development experience to create and maintain pages

There are some other influences as well, but those are the big ones. I’ve been looking at several CMSs over the years. Drupal and Zope/Plone come the closest to providing what I am looking for, but fall short.

Drupal, currently, doesn’t support ACL properly in version 6 and its been out since February. Version 7 is already in development. A lot of the *core* features i want are in modules that lag far behind the main system. This worries me and makes me think that I will get stuck in an old version of drupal.

Drupal also requires all “addons” to be drupal modules. In some cases there are things that we will want to throw up that will be easy to throw together, but not easy as a module. An example would be a temporary application that might be up for 1 semester, and we only have 1 week to develop it.

Drupal’s revision control is also lacking a bit.

Zope/Plone is a great system. I used it for years on my own personal website and I still use it on the Library Intranet website (until this new system is ready at least). Problem is, everything has to be done via the web interface. You can’t use common commandline tools to work with files. If i am out of town on a 56k dial up, i want to be able to use emacs to make an edit instead of having to use a web browser. This is my biggest complaint about Zope, which kills it for me.

Enter EngineCMS

EngineCMS, for lack of a better name, addresses everything above and is very alpha at this point. I’m currently implementing the authentication system. Once the authentication system is done, which i hope to get done by 8/11/2008 (that might be wishful thinking), the Engine/Front-End part will be ‘feature complete’ and I will be able to start working on the back end.

The back end is where all the actual CMS magic happens. It is where web authors will go to do their thing. The front end is merely what will render the pages that are on the server. Once the front end is done I will begin converting the library’s intranet to the new CMS, by hand, so that I have a test bed for the back end CMS stuff. It will also give me a frequently used, but private, area to debug problems with the front end so that it is rock solid by the time we are ready to move it to live-public-production servers.

Development is being done in PHP, which is something i’ve resisted for years … but it is starting to grow on me. It allows for a lot of neat things without having to develop an actual server, like I’ve done in the past (and like zope still does).

On Saturday 2 of us showed up for testing, the third injured her back earlier in the week and was not able to test. I’m still not sure how long we were in the Dojo on saturday, but I know that we held a horse stance for 1 hour. That part is still vividly fresh in my mind (and legs). As always happens when you test, you find areas where you know you can use more work than you thought. Even if you work out in front of mirrors almost every day (so that you can see and fix your movements), during testing those flaws that you didn’t notice during your normal workout jump out at you. “I should have my knee up slightly higher on my side snap kicks,” “My hip is turning over too late on my round house kicks, and not enough on my rising round house kicks,” “i’m turning my hip over too far on my thrust kicks,” just to name a few mistakes that I noticed.

Last night, June 2nd, Sensei used the advanced class to talk about the test. Doug was promoted to the rank of 2 Kyu (2nd Brown) from 3kyu. I was Promoted to the rank of 1 Kyu (1st Brown), and given the title Sihin. This is a title reserved for people that have shown a love and dedication for the school, and is usually given to the highest ranking student that has not yet attainted the rank of Black Belt. 

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this title. Sensei tells me that I should be very proud, but I am not. I don’t FEEL like i deserve this title. When I look at my knowledge and skill compared to Senpai Kennedy, I feel that my skills are lacking. He has been a black belt for almost 3 years now, having tested for black at the same time i tested for my yellow. Obviously he SHOULD be much better than I, but I still choose him as a basis for comparison of my own skills. I wish I could see what his blocks and strikes and sparring looked like 3 years ago.

I also don’t know how I feel about having an actual title. I feel that it might give other students, especially the younger kids, the impression that I am better than the other students. I am not! I still have many flaws in my technique that need corrected, just like every other student. 

I thought a lot about this while I was drifting off to sleep. I can’t give him any more than I already am, and won’t sacrifice everything else in my life to do that. I’ve decided that i’m going to keep doing exactly what i’ve been doing while in the dojo and hope that is what sensei expects of me. 

If you are trying to lose weight though, don’t buy into the hype. Fitness drinks, all of them, have calories. 1 Bottle of gatorade is between 100 and 200 calories. Depending on your weight you need to jog an extra 10 to 20 minutes to burn those calories you just put into your body to quench your thirst (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc). Then, your thirsty again …

Do yourself a favor and just drink water after your 20 to 60 minute workout. It will save you money, it will save you calories (you’ll get all those things back when you eat!). Fitness drinks like gatorade have their place: running a marathon, playing in a sporting event, testing in martial arts, or other activities where you are trying to maintain peak physical performance throughout the activity for hours on end. In those situations you need the calories to continue functioning properly, as well as all those things. But if you are just working out, you’ll find that you get much more out of your workout if you don’t drink fitness drinks.

Truth is, I just learned about portion sizes. I did it the old fashion way, i ate less food and I exercised more. Thats it. Eat less, Move more.

“But i’ve tried that and it doesn’t work” the people say. Well, that’s because people believe all those diets and nutritionists that say you shouldn’t be hungry while you are trying to lose weight, because you’ ll starve yourself and actually gain weight. That’s a load of crap. Yes, if you don’t eat enough you will end up starving yourself, which will in turn make your body store fat. But that is easy to avoid. Here is what i eat monday through friday for those months, approximately 1000 calories a day:

Breakfast: Danon light and fit yogurt. 1 serving @ 60 calories

Lunch: Snickers Marathon Mutrition Bar. 1 serving @ 150 calories

Dinner: Whatever I wanted. Steak, potatoes, BBQ Chicken, Fried Chicken, Nachos, Burger, whatever. The trick is that I read the side of the box, looked at what a portion was and STUCK to that. Did you know that 1 serving of beef is 4oz. That’s right, 4oz of uncooked meat. After the fat is drained you’ll get about 3oz. Did you know that a serving of nacho chips is 12 chips? Yup. those 12 chips is all you get.

Did you know that in the 1980’s a begal was 1/3 to 1/4 the size it is today? People expect bigger portions of food today, which is a huge part of our problem.

Want to lose weight? Learn to eat portion sizes closer to what you should be eating for your level of activity. After you hit your target weight, increase your calorie intake to what it should be (don’t listen to anyone but your own body. add food back in slowly and find the correct amount of food that will maintain your weight. that is what you should be eating!).If you become less active, you have to eat less food. Simple and easy to understand.

Don’t fall into the trap of over eating ‘good for you foods.’ Eating 1 pound of apples may be healthier than eating 1 pound of beef and make you feel full, but that isn’t going to help. You have to learn to eat less food, which is going to make you hungry and uncomfortable for a week or so.Your stomach will make noises and you will be very uncomfortable and hungry. Just fight through the urge to get a snack. After a week or so, you’ll find that you are no longer uncomfortable and eating less will fill you up.

“What about holiday’s and vacations? Can’t i pig out once in a while?” … Absolutely, just once in a while though. I’ve found that even overeating mildly for just one meal makes it more difficult to say no to the second helping of food at the next meal. You need to learn to say NO to more food when you’ve had enough.

And don’t forget the exercise. Diet alone is useless. Yeah, you’ll lose some weight, but if you don’t tone and build some muscle it will just come back. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does, so if you tone some muscle it will help.

I work out at least twice a week at the local dojo (email me for info, its a GREAT workout), usually 3 times a week. Then at home I bike (at least 20 to 30 miles), jog a couple miles, use the Ski Machine, use weights, etc … I try to get in approximately 10 to 20 hours a week of quality workout. Yeah, thats a part time job … but its hard work to lose weight and keep weight off. Once you’ve had that weight you have to remain diligant about keeping it off.

To give you an idea: I love red robin cheese burgers. When Katherine and I visit her sister we usually end up at red robin. I usually get the 5 alarm burger, a shake, and fries. That food there puts 5 solid pounds on me (if i get on the scale before and after the meal i learn that i’ve added 7 pounds, 2~ish must be water weight because it comes off by the next morning) … and it takes me about 2 days to work it back off. Thats 2 days of an hour or more of exercise each day, plus my normal daily activities.

I should also note that over the past couple of years i’ve given up ALL Soda, Tea, and Coffee (i drink mostly water now, with the occassional juice(But remember, juice adds calories ). I no longer use Ketchup or Syrup to flavor foods. I’ve also learned to eat whole grain, wheat, and rye breads instead of white. It takes a while to get used to not reaching for the ketchup to put on a burger or fries, but once you do you learn that those foods actually have flavor of their own and its pretty good.

Hoping that I have enough time left after doing the tail dragger stuff to do some spins. That would be most excellent.

The results can be seen here on the Photo Gallery Page, so far I’m happy with the results. The only thing I’d like to see different is the ability to define a ‘default’ photo set to display when the page is loaded. Maybe if i get board I’ll add that in.

I also updated the theme to be widget aware, and added the slickr widget to the sidebar.

Man, I have a crapton of email. Is it healthy to carry around this much baggage?

and

Consolidating inboxes for a Google Apps for Your Domain migration. My spam folder has 13,000 messages over the last five years!

Twitter has its place, but discussion isn’t one of them. For those didn’t have the misfortune of twitter texting them about this, here is a quick recap:

Michael Bond @kenwalker treat email like postits. Read it, delete it. Move useful information to ical, yojimbo, etc. try to keep email to 50 msgs or less

Ken Walker @mbond I get the GTD angle of keeping the inbox clean, but do you keep messages for up to a specified period of time? I mean deleted and sent items

Michael Bond @kenwalker Email is a communication tool like a phone call. Do you record and archive your phone calls? I delete sent/deleted items daily.

Ken Walker @mbond Fair point. I keep everything indexed and searchable at work, which has saved me from ti… Read more at http://tinyurl.com/yo8lkh

To be more verbose:

Email has its place, but it hasn’t evolved much since the first email message was sent. Its still a simple file that has a series of headers, a body, and possibly a mime attachment. Thats it. You can’t assign meta data to it. Searching and sorting is limited to headers, which may or may not exist depending on where it is from, and the actual content of the email. Some basic meta-data has been hacked on by adding more headers, but different email programs handle them in different ways.

Email, at a quick glance, is a great way to store a lot of information. You can sort it out into folders, based on header information, and you can search for information based on the content of the email. Apple’s Mail.app even takes it a step further and introduces smart folders. All of this is just a brute force effort to keep an aging system in place.

Please for the love of god, stop.

Read the email, if it has information that is worth saving the information is worth moving to another location. If it contains phone numbers, put it in your contact software (Address Book). If it contains dates and appointments, put it into iCal. If it contains action items/todo’s move it to your todo list (Things). If you have documents, put them on your hard drive. If you have receipts, serial numbers, notes, and anything else worth keeping drop it into Yojimbo. Then if you need to search for something later on, use Spotlight searching to find it. You have access too all the Metadata goodness then.

We live in a word where people Twitter all day long, IM each other, Blog, Spend hours cataloging their music, dvd’s, books, and games with metadata off Amazon so its ‘just right’. Their photo’s and home videos get the same treatment of not only tags but geo-tagging and linking to google maps. Yet people are content having their daily lives be completely metadata-less by keeping all of their information in email instead of moving it to specialized databases.

This is just one of my pet-peeves about email. The list goes on, including using email for the wrong reasons. Much like twitter is the wrong place to have a discussion email is the wrong place to send tweats. 2 word “thank you” or “OK” or “I’ll get right on that” emails are a complete waste. PLEASE don’t send them.

Oh, how i long for a true communication solution. 1 Address to send me tweats, emails, instant messages, SMS text messages. A nice XML Format that is easy to parse and use, with lots of future expandability, meta-data out the arse, links out to external applications (think, highlight->right click->send to) and the file system (for attachments). Threaded conversations that involve multiple people. The technology is there, its just that the world is wedded to the aging email and brute forcing new ideas into an old system that was never designed to handle what people want it to do.

Enter smtp_mail.php a php class that works similar to mail() but honors what you have set in php.ini. Not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.