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/2007/11/10/happy-birthday-2007/ http://hernandezlife.com/2007/11/10/happy-birthday-2007/#comments Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:36:44 +0000 Rick http://www.hernandezlife.com/archive/2007/11/10/happy-birthday-2007/

I hate getting older. These iPhone pictures are actually from the office yesterday showing my present from the Welfare Fund. Unfortunately I had to skip our celebration plans for today because I have a very bad cold (Phaedra has been a tender Nurse Nightingale). Hopefully I’ll be better tomorrow so I can celebrate with my brother-in-law Anthony as Nov 11th is his birthday. So… Happy Birthday to Us. I’ll post another entry tomorrow night with those pictures.

Click either of the pictures for larger versions

Today my Indian coworkers brought in homemade delicacies to celebrate Diwali. We had various starters, Puri (fried, puffed, unleavened whole grain bread), 2 different biryanis (basmati rice dishes), vegetable curry, stuffed chili peppers, and lots of homemade deserts. It was a great success, everyone wanted it to become a tradition. Unfortunately I did not have regular camera with me but you can see a bunch of poorly taken photos here.

Diwali is perhaps the best known of the Indian festivals; it is celebrated throughout India, and in Indian communities throughout the world. It is also known as the “festival of lights”, for the common practice is to light small oil lamps (called diyas) and place them around the home, courtyards, verandahs, and gardens, as well as on roof-tops and outer walls. In urban areas, candles are substituted for diya. The celebration of the festival is invariably accompanied by the exchange of sweets and the explosion of fireworks. As with other Indian festivals, Diwali signifies many different things to the people across the country. In north India, Diwali celebrates Rama’s homecoming, after the defeat of Ravana and his coronation as king; in Gujarat, the festival honors Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth; and in Bengal, it is associated with the goddess Kali. Everywhere, it signifies the renewal of life, and accordingly it is common to wear new clothes on the day of the festival; similarly, it heralds the approach of winter and the beginning of the sowing season.

This quarter alone Apple shipped over 10.5 million iPods, along with 1.5 million Macs and 1.1 million iPhones. When I first heard of the iPod I thought, who needs to carry 1,000 songs with them, now my iTunes library holds well over 5000 songs, not to mention a bunch of movies, TV shows, music videos and podcasts. The iPod has truly changed my personal daily entertainment. In the morning I listen to environmental sounds on the bus ride in to work so I can drown out other noises and sleep. All day long I’m perusing my music library, and on the ride home from work I usually either listen to an audio book, or watch a video podcast or 2.

Happy Birthday iPod. Here’s to another 10 glorious years. Hopefully by then you will have reached three quarters of a billion sales.

Click picture to enlarge

UPDATE: Sorry, seems I can’t count. The iPod is 6 years old today, not 5. To make it up, here’s a video of that day, six years ago.

(Warning: Non-techies just skip this blog entry altogether.)

Here is version, oh let’s say… 2.1, of my website. Basically I’ve moved from hosting my website on .mac (Apple’s servers) to running it on a shared server at HostMonster. Besides going from 10 gigabytes disk storage to 300 gigs, this gives me much more control server side like, perl, PHP, mySQL, Linux Shell Access, CRON jobs and more. All that let’s me put together a slicker website.

The other big change is that my blog (what your reading right now) is now a WordPress blog. Again this gives me greater control over things. Among other thing you can register so you will receive email notices of new blog entries (posts), archives are now segregated by month, and posts can have categories. Another nice feature, for me anyway, is that I can submit these postings from anywhere. In fact, I’m writing this right now, on my iPhone, while traveling on an express bus (x4) somewhere in Brooklyn on my way to work in Manhattan.