I decided to take a scan through some photos from earlier this year. This one from our summer vacation stuck with me as one that I could play with.

And I did. Using Lightroom again. A bit of Sepia. A bit of dodging and burning, and I’m rather pleased with the result.

There’s an easter egg in this shot, though I didn’t notice it until I was finished editing! See if you can find it

Related posts:

1. Guilty vacation pleasures — here’s my top 10 list Being on vacation is not really conducive to creating a...
2. The mountains are wet. Awesome long weekend! Just a brief post to fill the void. I’ve been...
3. The things you see outside a Mens club I caught this shot as we were driving by Diamond’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

After a great Friday evening with our good friends, we returned home to find this incredible ice fog over the city.

The fog caught the uber-bright lights from a local RV dealership, creating this rather nifty lighting effect.

Related posts:

1. Two resources for planning your lunar photography evening A friend pointed me to this BBC article about...
2. Live election night coverage online (Canadian Election) Another Canadian election has come and gone. Programmed mainstream media...
3. Cool. Friday’s foundlings: More than you ever wanted to know about...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My biggest hurdle has been consistency in user experience. I’ve had to run iTunes on the Mac, Winamp, FooBar2000 or VLC on my XP/Vista boxes, and VLC on the Linux machines.

But today, I discovered Songbird, a Mozilla based media browser, with versions for all my boxen (Mac, Linux and PC).

The experience is quite similar to Winamp. Simply point songbird at your music directory and let it build a catalogue.

Bonus feature, Songbird also talks to my iPods perfectly. Transfer music, build playlists…everything works.

From the developers:

We’re working on creating a non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible tool that will help enable new ways to playback, manage, and discover music.

Songbird is currently just out of beta; current version is 1.0. But it’s a pretty slick piece of work for being so new. I’m already a fan of the FireFox-like AddOn features — LiveTweeter (a Twitter plugin), ShoutCast Radio (streaming audio), and a whole host of visual customization addons.

If you’re looking for a nice, clean, Open Source media player, give Songbird a try.

*** UPDATE*** [Dec.25.08]

One major annoyance for many Songbird users is the lack of a Watched Folder. Simply put, this lets you point Songbird at a particular media folder and import any changes into the Songbird library automagically.

Developers are aware of this, and appear to be considering adding this functionality in future. I certainly hope so, as now it’s a cumbersum process to remember to update my Songbird library on every computer.

Related posts:

1. 5 reasons my library ‘gets’ me. I was recently reminded why I happily support my local...
2. Did you Get Things Done? Measuring productivity with RescueTime. Last time I mentioned this great little Two Minute timer...
3. A fast and fun way to mockup almost anything Online Mockups…easy! Part of the regular web development cycle...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We went to the Alberta Legislature last Thursday to listen to A Joyful Noise choir — Tess sings in it.

The night was warm and we parked at the other end of the Leg. The Christmas lights were in all the trees, and in the centre fountain was this very neat (and colourfully lit) ice sculpture.

Related posts:

1. Light streaks in heavy ice fog on a very cold winter night After a great Friday evening with our good friends,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A friend pointed me to this BBC article about tonight’s full moon. It seems that tonight’s full moon event will occur when the Moon is the closest it’s been to the earth (during a full moon) in 15 years.

Well, methinks. A perfect time to get out the photography and telescopy equipment and capture this event.

But wait. This is Winter. In Canada. In Edmonton. Before we head out to the great white north, let’s do a bit of research to make the most of the event.

When will the full moon occur?

According to the helpful chart at Edmonton’s Telus World of Science, the Moon will rise at 3:53 pm and set at 9:12 am the next day. Since the Sun will be setting about the same time, great twilight illumination of any surrounding clouds or landscape will occur. Similar resources can be found at Skymaps.com, Astronomy.com and SkyAndTelescope.com.

What about the clouds?

Of course, to actually see this full moon, cloud cover should be at a minimum.  Unfortunately, according to the Clear Sky Chart for Edmonton, overcast conditions are predicted. Charts for your region may be found at ClearDarkSky.com

Click the image for the full size version

So. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be doing something other than taking pictures of the moon this evening. Hmmm, Rock Band 2 anyone?

Related posts:

1. Lunar eclipse rekindles my interest in social astronomy Photo Credit: Lance Taylor The February 20th event where...
2. Light streaks in heavy ice fog on a very cold winter night After a great Friday evening with our good friends,...
3. Got Joost? I do, and I hope to be writing about it soon… Like so many other pop-tech folk, I immediately jumped on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Usually Google Apps for Business is the last of Googles free online application suites to receive new features, but ever since Google enabled Google Labs within Apps for Business, new features are rolled at the same time.

Today Gmail received a simple Task List manager:

Like many of Google’s enhancements, it’s a very simple implementation — but it works quite well, and means that I can remove another plugin from my poor oversized Firefox browser.

To enable Tasks, go to Settings, click the Labs tab (or just click here if you’re signed in). Select “Enable” next to “Tasks” and then click “Save Changes” at the bottom. Then, after Gmail refreshes, on the left under the “Contacts” link, you’ll see a “Tasks” link. Just click it to get started.

More at the Gmail Blog.

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome: a quick look and how to block ads with Privoxy photo credit: Randy Zhang Google Chrome is no Firefox (yet)....
2. Free Gmail Invites Looks like Google has freed up some more Gmail invites...
3. Lesson learned: Relying on one of anything is bad (Gmail Down) The online world was in a tizzy this afternoon as...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

CD Case Calendar (Dec. 2008)
Originally uploaded by bgrier

After exploring fd’s Flickr Toys a bit I rediscovered the cool CD Case Calendar application.

• Take one month
• Add one photo (Selena and Heloise at Christmas)
• Stir gently

Viola!

Related posts:

1. Google Calendar is finally here…. It’s finally arrived…Google Calendar promises to be the Holy Grail...
2. Who’s a bad dog Selena and Heloise NOT enjoying this particular camping experience....
3. Get back to where you want to be P1030481 Originally uploaded by bgrier Today I picked up...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today I picked up one tool that my photography kitbag has been missing for a while, a flash slave trigger.

And this one of the first shots taken using it. Beer, of course

Slave was a Vivitar 283 sitting about 60 degrees to the right of the glass, triggered by an on-camera Vivitar 285 bouncing off the ceiling.

I can tell I’m going to have fun with this puppy

(posted via Flickr)

Related posts:

1. Experiments with an old flash Recently I had the opportunity to acquire an older Vivatar...
2. Two resources for planning your lunar photography evening A friend pointed me to this BBC article about...
3. Occasionally, everyone needs one… I was Stumbling this evening and the FreeHugsCampaign.org site appeared....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Your web hosting account for bradgrier.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for
up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.

After a quick call to the ever-helpful customer service line, I’d learned that I’d exceed my allocated CPU or SQL cycles. With my simple little Wordpress blog.

It seems that a plugin (or two) had taken too many resources too many times for them. They are a very large (perhaps the largest) webhost offering unlimited everything…except CPU and SQL cycles.

At the time, I did my research and they seemed like a very good choice. Great customer services, few complaints, and always rated highly in the reviews.

Perhaps a little more research would have been in order. It seems the ‘unlimited’ web hosts build their business model on overselling resources, hence the jealous guarding of those two resources — should one customer (me) take too many, then it impacts others. I’m now a liability and expendable.

So much for unlimited.

Then they asked me to leave.  Jilted. Expended.

I wasn’t given the opportunity to fix the issue, they just wanted me gone and I had 15 days to transition. I was not a happy camper.

Luckily I’d setup an automated backup system for my blog. Posts and comments were safe. I’d just be experiencing downtime on the blog, lost time in my search to find a new host, and lost time as I set up the new account.

To make a long and tedious story short and snappy, here’s a few things I’d learned as I rebuilt this blog.

Backup
Again, I can’t stress this enough. Backup’s are essential. Without it, you lose every bit of value you’d built. You lose your long tail. Automated backups are easy to set up. There’s no excuse for not having a current backup of your blog.

Why are you here?
What niche does your blog fill? Now’s the perfect opportunity to reflect. Are your personal rewards enough to justify the move and rebuild process? Should you change your blog focus, design, layout, niche, whatever? As long as you’re going to be changing hosts, look at what else you can change while your site is in transition (I changed the theme and invested in Thesis. More on that later )

Ask for help.
Enlist your friends and members of your social media network. I put out a call on Twitter and received a bunch of favourable recommendations to follow up. Your friends are usually a great resource.

Know what you’re looking for, and what you’ll settle for.
I thought I’d done a lot of research before selecting my past one. I had, but I’d been searching for the wrong things. I was dazzled by unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited unlimitedness! I didn’t understand that in order to offer unlimited (almost)everything, they’d  severely limit CPU and SQL cycles.

In my case, I’ve changed my needs. I shopped for a specific package that LIMITED bandwidth, storage, etc. By doing this, a provider and customer know their bounds and expectations are managed.

It also helps to open a dialogue with your prospective ‘business partners’, rather than simply signing up. In my case, I asked about resource usage, suspensions, and the ability to fix issues, rather than simply ‘being expelled’.

The end is the beginning.
So here I am, on a new web host, a leaner and meaner blog. You’ll see it develop over the next few weeks as I continue refining, and learning about the Thesis theme.

Stay tuned, and feel free to leave your thoughts!

Image courtesy Locator

Related posts:

1. When’s the last time you backed up your data? We spend countless hours working with our computer, creating value...
2. 3 things I learned when my Wordpress blog crashed. This week my blog crashed. It could have been a...
3. In Transition — as the page says Due to a monumental FUBAR between my website host, server...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

All is not lost:

• I have a backup of the site, content, posts, comments etc
• I retain my domain names etc
• I have a boat-load of work ahead of me as I research and rebuild

Lessons learned:

1. Backups are essential
2. You get what you pay for
3. Sometimes you get burned

Things to do:

• point existing domain names to this wordpress-hosted blog
• Reasearch robust hosts (I prefer a hosted solution as I do use some 3rd party plugins)
• Take a deep breath

So, what have I missed. Any advice for me as I make this rather unscheduled transition? Comments are welcome!

Related posts:

1. 3 things I learned when my Wordpress blog crashed. This week my blog crashed. It could have been a...
2. Five essential tools make blogging fun and easy Time is short and there’s lots of interesting things to...
3. Things I learned moving my blog to a new hosting service (it’s easy!) Over the last few weeks you’ll may have noticed that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.