A URL shortener from Flickr

These days I’m using an offline blog editor called MarsEdit to compose my posts. It has a nice little Flickr account browser built in that inserts photos into the posts quite nicely.

When I’m not using MarsEdit, I try to use the url the Flickr suggests for the photo, but I keep having trouble with the code not linking back to Flickr properly from my website. Hmmm, what to do.

I was browsing around and found a great little tip on a blog called adidap for grabbing Flickr links. They suggest heading over to the photo on Flickr and selecting it, then right clicking for View Source. In the code for the photo placement there is a flic.kr short link code right there. Neat trick for tweeting, but what about blogging?

Here’s one result from my collection on Flickr: http://flic.kr/p/dpLMY2

The main problem here, I guess, is that just inserting the link in the SquareSpace editor doesn’t result in the photo showing up on this blog. If I use the insert image function, all I get is a question mark in a blue box. I guess it’s not resolving the short url for some reason, even though the short link works fine directly in the browser.

Guess this will take a bit more work to figure that out.

Yay for MarsEdit. It certainly makes life easier.

The new ride

In an effort to get some cardio exercise this summer, I picked up a new bike. I suggested to the sales folks that buying a bike would probably be like buying a boat – a deep hole to keep throwing money into, and I was right. The bike, helmet, racks, packs, clothes, etc. starts to add up, and it’s a challenge to say Enough! some times.

By the middle of October, I’d managed to build up to 30 km per week. I know that’s nothing for most riders. I hear numbers out there like 50, 60, or even 100km per day! But for me that 30 km was quite an accomplishment.

However, when the monsoons came soon after, the distance fell to 0 km per week. That lead to another expense – a trainer for the bike, so I can ride a bit inside.

I’m optimistic, we’ll see how it goes.

Ebook craziness – How to hose your customer

I just have to comment on this, so <rant on>

While some books just *deserve* paper and wouldn’t be the same without it, I do like ebooks for most of my reading. Compared to hard cover books, they don’t take up a ton of room, they’re light and generally a little cheaper, and I suspect they are better for the environment too.

That said, I do have an issue with the way some publishers are pricing them.

This graphic is the pricing on 2 books I recently bought from Amazon. For both, Amazon notes that the ebook pricing is set by the publisher; $13.49 is by Penguin and $16.12 is by Random House Digital. Both ebook prices include taxes, where the price for the physical versions don’t.

What gets me is that they want the same price or more for an ebook as they do for a physical copy. An ebook is just electrons packaged in DRM, has no real reproduction or delivery costs, and is really just licensed to me. They can take it back in a heartbeat too, as we’ve seen back in 2009 when a publisher made Amazon pull purchased George Orwell books from thousands of Kindles.

A physical version has all of it’s associated costs for paper, shipping, storage, etc., and I can share it with friends or make some extra cash back by selling it used.

It makes no sense that the physical hard cover book costs the same as an ebook. None. And I understand that the US Dept of Justice has questions about that too.

I think that me and other folks that read ebooks are being used.

Publishers are not doing themselves or their authors any favours either. Sure, I bought the books this time, but you know what? My respect for these two publishers has disappeared. I feel like they are gouging their readers and that I’m helping prolong their misery in a dying industry. From now on, I’ll stick with independents publishers, or at least those publishers that respect their readers.

The authors in question supposedly represent a new, progressive version of online entrepreneur – but they’re stooping to using old media companies and hosing their fans at the same time. Interesting contrast between word and action, eh?

Author Joe Konrath discusses how these media companies treat their writers shabbily too. A different, but interesting viewpoint is here by Mark Coker of Smashwords.

I expect that if the old guard publishers keep treating their writers and readers they way they are, the push back will only increase, and publishers will end up like the dinosaurs. Er, well, more like dinosaurs than they already do.

Movin’ on to Spring Next Week

Hard to believe, but the spring equinox is March 20 – that’s Tuesday next week. I love the rush of life that happens in the spring.

In Bear Creek Park in Surrey, during one of our brief sunny breaks this week, I caught these crocuses coming up among the dead leaves from last year. It’s a busy photo, but it a way, it makes a statement about the seasons we know and love: all things rest and then begin anew.

Here’s one more to herald the coming spring.

Escape from Skyrim and back to work

RPG Xbox games are not usually my cup of tea. I much prefer first person shooters to role playing games. However, on recommendation from a ‘friend’, I updated to the new Xbox and picked up a copy of the Skyrim game in early February.

Hmmmm…from the (lack of) posts over the last month or so, we can see what happened after that! Quests and bandits and dragons can be quite addicting….thank you ‘friend’ 😉

But in the end, all’s good. Along with some business networking in February, I popped out to the local parks when the sun poked out. More walkabouts and playing with the camera than any serious photography.

Early this month, I got out to Delta and to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary to see if I could see their Sandhill Cranes. Lots of ducks, coots, geese and pintails, but no cranes for me this time.

On the way back home, I stopped on the dike near the Delta Airport and got some photos of a couple of Snowy Owls nestled amongst the logs on the beach. To find them, all I had to do is look along the dike and spot the bevy of other photographers with their half-meter lenses looking seaward. Heh, it does get to be quite a show.

Over all it was an interesting day, and I learned how much more I need to learn about long lens photography. This Snowy Owl shot was done with my Sigma 120-400 lens on the Nikon D300. I used a Manfrotto ball head and tripod under the lens, but should have used a remote shutter release as well. The exif data should be accessible from the photo on Flickr, along with some other shots from the day.

Starting to Network Again

I’m trying to get out more to socialize with the local business community. After close to a year of being layed up and out of the loop, I’m finding it harder to catch up and keep up with what’s going on.

At an Surrey Board of Trade (SBoT) Business to Business networking event on Thursday night, some people I met suggested I come to their morning networking breakfast at the Kalmar Restaurant on King George Boulevard in Surrey. There was no commitment expected, other that to see how it went.

About 20 people made it out to that event on Friday morning, some of whom I’ve known from SBoT and others from different times, or from other events around town. It was good to catch up over a nice breakfast and learn more about what all those people are, and have been up to.

According to the Meetup page for the group, the Surrey Langley Business Support Network, there are a lot more than 20 members, so I guess, like with other organizations, the number that attends individual events can vary a lot.

That’s good. More people means more stories over time, and that keeps things interesting. Also, if too many people show up, the organization might have to move from the intimacy of a restaurant to some bigger venue at a lot more cost.

It was nice to get out and socialize on a Friday morning. It was also a good excuse to pack up some camera gear and get out to take some pictures after the event.

Going to have to do more of that.

The Eagles Have Landed in Delta

I caught this bad boy in a tree over near Boundary Bay Airport. A buddy of mine has been making the trek from North Delta over to the Delta Hospital in South Delta for the last couple of weeks and mentioned that the eagles were back on the flats.

I was out late last year and earlier this year, looking to see if they were around, but I guess I was too early. The big birds are sure out there now.

In one area around the airport, there were at least 5 trees with a minimum of 5 eagles sitting on their branches. Some of the farmer’s fields are full of gulls and the eagles are joining them to feed on something. Not sure what it could be, other than some rodents, or perhaps older gulls.

Anyway, the eagles are all over the place and seem quite tolerant to people right now. Usually they are pretty skittish, but this fellow was in the middle of a off-leash dog park, so he’s probably use to people and dogs running around under his tree.

Fighting That ‘Mushroom’ Feeling

In a sense, I’ve been feeling like a bit of a mushroom lately. In the dark, getting fed nothing but…. Well, you know the story. This time of year is like that on the wet coast. The days largely are short, dark and wet.

However, a bit of respite today. In a fit of energy and patience, I spent several hours going through the many storage discs where I’ve squirrelled away photos over the last 6 years or more. Some of it was before I had any idea about the number of images I’d be managing, so it was pretty random in terms of file type, folder names, location, etc.

It was just time to get to it and pull it all together.

Now, most of the photos are managed by year and folder, the folder having a date and a name that tells me a where the photos were taken. An example would be “12-01-23 Green Timbers” for photos taken today at Green Timbers Park. Well, it would be if I had taken any photos today 😉 But you get the idea.

The one problem I haven’t solved is the overlapping file names. With multiple cameras all using the same naming system, I’m bound to get into a situation where I try to bring two of them together with the same name, like _DWS2952. But, we’ll deal with that when we come to it. So far, so good.

After all the work today, my photos are organized and stored both on my iMac and on a Drobo external drive. I also have an Apple Time Machine backup to a Time Capsule and another overnight copy of the iMac made to an iOmega drive. I just have to arrange one more thing, and that’s an offsite storage drive for the whole thing.

Bottom line: I have 4 copies of my photos at home, and those are in danger of being all taken out at once by fire. That last copy offsite is critical, but I’m loath to spend a fortune for cloud storage right now. A physical arrangement will have to do – perhaps rotating drives to a safe deposit box or something.

Ah, the joys of digital data. At least it’s cheap to make copies.

Boundary Bay Regional Park

After reading on Miss 604’s blog about Snowy Owls being seen around Boundary Bay, I headed out to Boundary Bay Regional Park to see what I could see.

No Snowy Owls for me, but I did spot a Great Blue Heron that seemed somewhat ok with me taking a few shots. I took a couple of photos right away with my D700 and s/he didn’t seem too concerned about me stopping along the trail.

After that, I pulled off my pack and got out the D300 with a Sigma 120-400 lens a knocked off a few more shots. By then, the heron had scrunched it’s neck down and kind of looked like s/he was saying – “what are you going to do next. Should I take off or not”.

As it turned out, I was the one that took off and the heron went back to doing what herons do in the middle of a regional park.

There were a few eagles around the farms near the Delta airport, but they were too far out to catch a good shot. I’ll try another day. I’ve sussed out a few places to get back to now.

On another note, when I was looking up the link for the Snowy Owl post on Miss 604, I ran across a photo I took out at White Rock a while ago. It was in a post about ‘Bite of White Rock’, an annual restaurant event aimed at getting people out to sample the local scene in January and early February. That’s neat to get a photo credit on a popular blog like Miss 604. Thanks Rebecca!

Please Stop

Media sites have really jumped the shark.

This morning, I followed a tweet to an article on Inc. Magazine’s website. What do you think met me when I got there?

1. A popup came up asking me to join/like/subscribe to their FaceBook, Twitter and other pages. I had to figure out how to close that off. Then, below that,

2. an ad sat there that said it would disappear after 4 more seconds.

So, we had a popup invitation appearing over an ad, before I even got to the site.

Despite the recommendation via the tweet, the article turned out to be another generic article about I can’t remember what. So I closed the tab I had open and…

A popup survey questionnaire appeared on my desktop, wondering if I would comment on how much I liked the site.

Really! Do we need all that sh*t?

I have fond memories of Inc magazine from its print version, so I thought I’d click through and see how the web version was. That will be my last visit to Inc, I’m afraid.

What a horrible experience.