There are some downsides. iWeb was a wonderful tool for creating web sites. The integration of iPhoto, iWeb, and .mac, made it real easy to put a sophisticated and complex gallery of photo albums up on the web. I will also miss the nifty mini-slideshow widgets iPhoto could produce (I have kept a couple cause I like them so much).

However it was really really slow. If you were using Internet Explorer as your browser (you really should get Safari or FireFox), or were connecting through DSL or (God forbid) dial-up, well then, you probably gave up on my family site. I apologize for that. That’s what, after a bit of research, led be to SmugMug. You have to pay for the service, but it is a very small yearly amount for the ‘standard’ level service. Sure there are free sites like Flickr out there, but your viewers have to put up with advertisements, and a not as nice interface. Plus SmugMug is really fast. If you are ever interested in using their service, I can get you five dollars off by using coupon code zUHZEirkZ6UDQ in the ‘Referred by’ field on the signup form.

SmugMug gives me unlimited photo storage, so besides now having private backups of all my pics, the public galleries contain many more pictures than before. Also if you see a photo of mine you truly like, besides downloading it for free, you can pay to have it professionally printed ($0.19 for a 4×6), you can even have it made into a mug, an apron, a ceramic tile, keychain, or a slew of other choices. Just so you know, the prices are reasonable because I’ve chosen not to recieve any proceeds from these sales.

So in closing, there have been allot of behind the scene changes on our web sites, plus I had to notch up security in response to a hacking attempt. If you find anything broken, a link not going were it is suppose to, a missing picture symbol, an out right error message, please email me and let me know so I can fix it. Thanks for reading hernandezlife.com

P.S. For the family-only galleries, the password is the same and you no longer need a userid.

Click photos to go to gallery.

Ten Of My Very Favorite Photographs

]]> http://hernandezlife.com/2008/01/31/5-bucks-off-smugmug/feed/ 3 http://hernandezlife.com/2008/01/20/jessica-birthday-and-babies/ http://hernandezlife.com/2008/01/20/jessica-birthday-and-babies/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 02:32:46 +0000 Rick http://www.hernandezlife.com/archive/2008/01/20/jessica-birthday-and-babies/

Thursday was Jessica’s 11th Birthday, and on Saturday a group of 20, including 11 of Jessie’s best friends, went out to dinner at Fridays. Afterwards we all trooped back to the LaPreta Residence for presents and merriment. A few of her friends stayed for a sleepover.

Remember, to reach the photos, you need the userid & password. If you’ve forgotten or lost it just call or send me an email and I’ll send them to you.

To see all the photos of the festivities, please go to our private family website family.hernandezlife.com, or just click here to get to the photo gallery directly.

Baby Blogs

In case you missed the emails, the Coopers, both Ashly & Adam, and, Josephine & Joshua, have created Baby Blogs. You can find them at:

And then there were three… by A2 (A Squared)

Baby J by J2 (J Squared, soon to be J Cubed?)

Josephine, Ashly, Josh, Adam, from Phaedra & I, congrats and best wishes!

Click any of the pictures above for larger versions

As a holiday bonus, at the end of this post, you’ll find some Calvin & Hobbs’ snowman comics, written and illustrated by Bill Watterson.

To see photos of our New Year’s Eve, please go to our private family website family.hernandezlife.com, or, to save time, just click here.

At least it should be. Yes we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo, but these are not American holidays. Repeal Day commemorates the anniversary of Congress repealing the Eighteenth Amendment and giving us the government’s approval to consume alcohol in all it’s glorious variations. Repeal day is a great excuse occasion to get together with friends and pay tribute to our constitutional rights.

Here’s a quick history:

On January 16th, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, outlawing alcohol mostly due to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who believed alcohol was the root of all evils. Predictably, our thirst for alcohol increased during Prohibition, and organized crime rose up to replace formerly legal methods of production and distribution. America was not happy, and in the thirteen years that followed, even many of the original proponents of Prohibition came to their senses. In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for President on a platform that included the repeal of Prohibition.

On Decenber 5th, 1933, Congress ratified the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition and restoring the American right to a celebratory drink.

Click HERE for a great video showing what life would be like if the Volstead Act had never been repealed. Also click HERE for a very good Bartender’s blog on the same subject.

So to wrap it up, On December 5th, make sure to get together with friends and family, have a few drinks (but don’t drive), and start a yearly celebration of “Repeal Day”.

]]> http://hernandezlife.com/2007/11/23/repeal-day/feed/ 1 http://hernandezlife.com/2007/11/19/hernandez-visit-lapretta/ http://hernandezlife.com/2007/11/19/hernandez-visit-lapretta/#comments Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:46:23 +0000 Rick http://www.hernandezlife.com/archive/2007/11/19/hernandez-visit-lapretta/

My parents (Elsa & Pete), and my sister (also Elsa) are up from Miami to visit us, my grandmother, and to spend Thanksgiving with some old friends. On Sunday we all got together with the Eva, Anthony, the kids, and Mattie. We all had a good time eating (anti-pasta, gravy w/ meatballs and hot & sweet sausages), drinking, and telling stories. Various deserts and coffee followed of course.

You can see more photos at my family-only photo blog here. If you’ve forgotten the user-id or password, just send me an email.

Click any of the 3 pictures for larger versions

On a fast 7Mbps broadband connection, Joost was running well this morning. Its interface is easy to learn, and the video plays back full screen and streams smoothly. The quality leaves something to be desired, though—it’s not even at the level of standard definition, and certainly not high definition. There’s also not quite enough content on hand, with offerings from a couple of big names such as CBS and CNN, but mostly second- and third-tier content sources.

Even though this beta 1.0 is still a bit rough around the edges, we could still see the tremendous potential of this format. It actually feels like television, but everything is streaming. If this network and others like it are completely built out to where they can actually stream near-HD quality video, we might be seeing people abandoning cable for it. But not yet. [Joost, via Ars Technica]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Photos can be found here.