I just noticed that today our blog has hit yet another milestone — 6 year anniversary. I also noticed that I noticed the same very thing a year and two ago. So instead of saying it all over again I’ll just link to the previous blog anniversary posts.0

On April 13, 2006 Alena and I have started this blog. It’s been 5 years and now it contains a lot of articles with great memories for both of us — our wedding, our numerous vacations and of course the birth of our son, Arosha, amonth many other things.

I’m so glad we managed to stay with it and to keep it updated on regular basis. At this point it contains 1,311 posts and 2,276 comments from our friends and readers. For example the post where I shared the news of Arosha’s birth has 28 comments which makes it that much more great — re-reading it all.

I often pick a month and read through to see what we were doing, what we thinking, what we were feeling. All of it is in the archive and we’re planning to keep on going.3

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

AJAX Powered Photography Tab

I’ve been wanting to add some AJAX functionality to the Photography (Photostream) Section of this blog for some time now. The browsing of photos seems like a perfect fit to be done this way to speed up the process and not have to reload the same stylesheets, javascripts and static images over and over again.

I used jQuery (comes bundled with WordPress) to implement the functionality. I created an XML output based on the same very template that is used to display the normal photo page and the generation of the dynamic XML itself is handled natively by WordPress. I’ve ran into some conflicts with Prototype (used to power Lightbox feature), but was able to sort all of them out. Continue Reading

In: Software Tags: AJAX, blog, jQuery, photography tab, WordPress
Time: 13:18 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Friday, May 7, 2010

Linode VPS

After over 10 years of having a dedicated server in one data center or another and paying the bill I decided to put those days behind me. And no, I’m not going to give up having an access to a Linux box on a high speed connection, nor am I planning giving up my root access to such a machine.

We’re simply moving to virtual hosting. Hosting has evolved considerably in the past several years and VPS business has matured to a point where it is a perfect solution for somebody like me. All the same benefits as having a dedicated server without the cost. My monthly bill is going to go down from $130 to $40. And that considering that $130 just came down to that number from $170 only a couple of months ago. Continue Reading

In: Gadgets & Gear, Software Tags: blog, hosting, Linode, Linux, LTS, server, site, Slicehost, Ubuntu, VPS, VPS.NET
Time: 20:20 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

This past Tuesday marked a 4th year anniversary of our blog. So many good memories that could’ve been forgotten — saved. Upon the start of each month we like to go back and check what was happening to us a year, 2, or 3 ago. Priceless.0

Friday, November 6, 2009

Twitter Integration

Here’s a small Twitter integration showcase. The idea behind it is that it’s much easier to leave a simple note or observation through one of the numerous Twitter applications available than to make a blog post. And I tend to leave such simple notes during vacations, when we’re away from any computers, through iPhone.

Single Post

I used a slightly modified¹ version of Alex King’s Twitter Tools. Now this plug-in is actually a bit of an overkill for what I needed it to do, but nobody is forced to use more than needed. I also put together an ugly hack to force this thing to import tweets from both myself and Alena. It runs every 10 minutes and imports all the new stuff it finds.

Multiple Posts

I’ve modified Rubinary template and devised a new way to display this type of posts. One special thing about it is that it groups consecutive tweets into a single post. The time “sticker” on my posts shows up in blue and on Alena’s in green — as all other things on the blog.

Tweet Reply

If you mouse-over over a “sticker” you will see a reply option. By clicking it, you indeed, can reply. But there is a catch — you need to have a Twitter account to do so.

That’s pretty much it. For those who care — I personally use a free version of Twitterrific on the iPhone. And of course no post of this kind would be complete without a mandatory “I hate IE” conclusion.

Modification allowed me to pull and import our older tweets. [↩]

In: Software Tags: blog, design, import, integration, iPhone, template, Twitter, Twitter Tools, Twitterrific, WordPress
Time: 17:57 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Saturday, September 19, 2009

New Look?

How this blog could look, but probably never will.

I’ve spent a good part of day drawing up a new look for the blog in Photoshop. I most certainly do not have plans to actually implement this as it would be way too much work, but I figured I might post to for everyone to see. I think it came out looking damn well.

What do you think?

In: Software Tags: blog, design, template
Time: 17:23 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

Daniel says: Subscribed

September 22, 2009 @ 11:27

Thanks.

It’s way too much work. Besides what is shown on the image I have to convert snippet and movie types of posts, design comment forms and comment sections for each one. Then there is photography section which was a lot of work on its own and stuff like archives.

I keep tweaking the current template since the moment that I released it and I still find minor things that require adjustment.

I just can’t see myself spending so much time on something that I’m pretty happy with anyhow.

But I do like the clean look of my new draft myself.

Tomorrow, early in the morning we’re leaving for our vacation to Cancun for a week. I don’t know how accessible the Internet is going to be, so we might not post any updates until we get back.0

Friday, February 20, 2009

Which Arrow?

There is a bit of dilemma now — too many ideas from Geoff, Alex and myself resulted in a humongous number of “Photo Post” arrows. Seven to be exact.

Question is — which one do I pick? Click on the image to see a full list and leave your vote in the comment. Please do it before reading what I like myself in the last paragraph. Your input is much appreciated.

I myself seem to be leaning towards number 4 the most. And maybe 5 and 6 after that.

In: Software Tags: arrow, blog, design, poll
Time: 17:26 Comments: 10 Comments Post a Comment

Friday, February 20, 2009

Photo Library

Photo library is a feature that I have been meaning to add to the blog for quite some time now. It required a bit of a format change the would be labor intensive, so I never got around to doing it. Until now that is.

The purpose of this is for me to have a way to publish some of my best (in my opinion) photographs. Majority of them have already been posted on this blog, but there will be new ones as well.

I’ll start with 2 previously seen HDRs of mine. Move your mouse over the image itself once you’re on the photo page to navigate the library.

In: Photography, Software Tags: blog, design, library, photo
Time: 15:25 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Blog Header

The header that our blog sported during the election season.

Now that the election is over the header of our blog is going back to its original form. I changed it on January 10th, 2008.

In: Software Tags: blog, election, header, Obama
Time: 14:31 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Monday, July 21, 2008

iPhone Theme

I installed an iPhone specific theme for the blog. Developers at Content Robot provided a good starting point. I made several modification to it to work better with our particular blog. Now everyone opening the blog with an iPhone will automatically get this theme. It’s much more lightweight compared to our regular one, so that should make for faster loading times.

I guess it’s basically for Alena, Maruk and myself at the moment.

In: Software Tags: blog, iPhone, theme
Time: 19:11 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

I updated the header image. Bye-bye Treo. Hello iPhone!2

I want to apologize for the lack of posts during the past week, but there just was no time. Today, however, is the last day of our vacation, so we should get back to normal schedule next week. And we’ll have a lot of posts and even more pictures.4

I have finally added gravatar support to the blog. It’s getting pretty popular lately, so if you don’t have one go and set it up. If you leave a comment it should show up next to your name on any gravatar enabled blog or forum.4