Now I know for sure that the apps that are suggested in the iTunes app store are country-specific or how else could I explain the #1 app being www.wort.lu? Too bad that I don’t see a general Top Ten list.
Country-specific recommendations for June 14, 2009
Today is May 1, Labor Day in Europe, and thus a holiday. I used it to see if I could get my WordPress MU installation running and actually create blogs which did not work earlier during the week. I had run into trouble when I used sub-domains, but the sub-directories work fine.
The reason behind the upgrade to WP MU was that I wanted to create a second blog on my server to showcase my daily photograph. Of course, I could always link to my flickr photo set, but I prefered to use a blog. Well, that was not a novel in itself, as others had already done so before me, e.g. D’Arcy Norman and also Alan Levine as I realized very recently. From them I got the idea to use the Monotone theme, which displays the photos with an individual background that matches the dominant color in the photographs. Way cool.
After having solved my blog creation problem and having moved my regular blog (this one here) over to my MU installation, I started to tackle my photo blog. As Alan Levine describes nicely in his post “(Almost) Effortless Photo Blog”, I wanted to connect my blog with flickr as well to be able to post immediately to my photo blog from there. I had no such luck until I found out that I had to activate the XML-RPC publishing protocol in my blog settings under “Writing”. Once the checkmark was placed, I could link my blog to my flickr account.
Now I had the monumental task to add all pictures to the blog. That took about four hours for 119 photos (I had missed to take a photo one day) because my internet connection was uncooperative today and everything was rather slow. However, now that I am done, I really like the result, and I also found the “Page Links To” plugin to allow a tab in the blog menu to open my photo blog immediately.
Update: I changed the archive page to display 31 photos instead of only 24. That is particularly nice when the archive of an entire month is displayed.
Today is April 10 which means that the year 2009 is 100 days old. Today also signifies the 100th photo that I took for each day being inspired by the flickr group 2009/365. I had heard about its predecessor 2008/366 from D’Arcy Norman, Alan Levine and Alec Couros. As I did not find out about this photo project until well into 2008, I did not start last year.
This year I wanted to see if I can accomplish to take and post a picture every day. Thus far, it worked out, but I still have 265 days to go. However, now that I have finished 100, I may post to the photo pool…
There are many “a photo a day” groups on flickr and some have more or less strict themes. I liked the openness of this group as it gives me the freedom to decide on the subjects.
This is a slideshow of my first 100 photos for 2009. I did take more since January and also posted a number of them, but there is only one for each day.
Sarah Perez’ post over at ReadWriteWeb entitled “Technology is Great, but Are We Forgetting to Live?” resonates with me. I don’t like to view everything through a camera lens and thus do not record everything that I see. Seeing fathers film every move of their families on vacation from the moment they wake up until they go to bed always puzzles me and I never want to do that.
If I want to record something, it is done with a still camera to capture that very moment. That is more like a cue for later to recall the event. If I looked at a video, I would not have to think so much myself but have everything played out before my eyes.
When I am behind a video camera lens, which happens primarily only when I record public lectures that are organized by our study programs at the university, I realize that I see the events differently. I cannot not look at the display to follow the lecturer or the participants. Of course, then my field of vision is limited and my attention is not so much focused on what is actually said, but thoughts of “is this shot positioned nicely”, “count till 4 until you pan again”, “don’t zoom in too jaggedly”, “oops, I should have started to move earlier”, “should I switch the light settings now or wait until later”, “will there be a good moment for switching camera tapes”, “great; I’m in the right position to tape the presentation” etc. shoot through my head. Thus, I miss a great many discussion points and can only console myself with the fact that I can watch the recording later on.
Using a still camera is easier for me. I can take it out fast and put it away as quickly. With a video camera, I feel I have to stay “on” longer to capture the conversation / what happens. My still camera gives me more freedom in deciding when, what, and for how long to record something. I carry a camera with me at all times (you gotta love these tiny digital cameras), but I do not take it out to snap away at everything. Sarah Perez put it nicely:
The fine line between what’s worth documenting and what’s not is a hard one to define. We immediately assume that the most important, the biggest, the most incredible moments are those that should be recorded. But it’s these very moments that are best to experience live, with our full focus.
And I surely did not record some of the best moments in my life, but these are the moments that do not require a visual or audiovisual cue to recall.
On November 3, 2008, the 3 billionth picture was uploaded to flickr generating 16,762 views for the photo until now. Had I not subscribed to Bryan Alexander’s blog this memorable moment would have passed unnoticed for me. Now I can pause for a second and contemplate a little bit.
I have many more pictures still sitting on a hard drive waiting to be uploaded, and then there are all those that are not yet digitized… Thus, I will continue to contribute photos to flickr.
almost the 3 billionth photo