Barack Obama, NOT politics as usual

While many other candidates have began to release ads containing personal attacks, Barak Obama has released an ad of hope and inspiration for a better and UNITED future.



Transcript of ad:
"We are in a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war, the planet is in peril, the dream that so many generations fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away. And that is why the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do. That's why telling the American people what we think they want to hear, instead of telling the American people what they need to hear, just won't do.

"America our moment is now. I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don't want to pit "Red" America against "Blue" America. I want to be the President of the UNITED States of America."

-- Barack Obama

Forwarding to external lists with My INDY Lists

Many INDY members have been utilizing the My INDY Lists for some time now, mostly for use as wishlists. However, some members were hesitant to use the Lists as they were already comfortable with an existing list tool such as an Amazon.com wishlist or a Remember the Milk To-Do list.

Well, now those members can have their cake and eat it too! By giving a My INDY List an external URL the list will automatically forward to the external list.

So, for example, I could create a list called "Indy's Amazon Wishlist" and enter the URL of my Amazon wishlist. When another INDY member visits my "Indy's Amazon Wishlist", they will automatically be forwarded to my Amazon wishlist on Amazon.com!

(I know one member in particular who is going to love this feature. In fact, I added this feature with him in mind for this specific use!)

While on the subject of external lists, I wanted to take a moment to recommend Remember The Milk to my readers. RTM is a very robust and well designed web-based list tool. I manage ALL my chores using RTM and LK and I share a list which allows us to conveniently access our shopping list anywhere and anytime.

Google Maps with terrain

The Google Maps Team have out done themselves yet again. This time adding Terrain maps ("Explore new terrain" from Google LatLong Blog) to their already robust web service. You remember a few months back when they added customizable routes, not so long after adding StreetView, which came not to long after Traffic. The active imaginations fueling the internet giant seem to have no end to their outstanding ideas!

The new terrain view is beautiful! What was called "Hybrid" is now a labels feature of the Satellite view. Terrain is a graphical view of elevation. I can't wait to program it into the INDY Gallery, it will make the perfect backdrop for the photo mapping.

NY Times misses the point of the Grinch

For over a year now, I've found myself becoming increasingly environmentally concerned and conservative. It began last year with my interest in saving fuel which was spurred by the article I posted about here: OmniNerd - Articles: Fueling a Lifestyle. Things really picked up last month after I took that entertaining ecological footprint quiz I talked about in my post titled "Your impact on the planet". That quiz switched on my "green light" and since then I've continued to do what I can to lighten my load on both the planet and the family finances.

In part, those benefits are what I wanted to talk about today. Not only does green-thinking better our planet, but it has also been improving my family's finances (e.g. saving $50+/month on electricity and natural gas, saving money on fuel due to hypermiling, saving money bringing our own bags to the grocery store, etc.). So why then do I find a post at a blog I frequent which points out an article in the NY Times on How the Green Grinch is Stealing Christmas (TreeHugger)?

As you will find, if you read the TreeHugger blog entry, the NY Times essentially trashes environmentalism because of its avoidance of thoughtless consumption. It's infuriating!

However, there may be a way to turn the NY Times article on its ear. Let's take a look at the original Grinch of Dr. Seuss. In the story of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", a shady green creature steals the Christmas gifts from Whoville to prevent Christmas from coming. In the end, though, Christmas still comes because it is about more than just the decorations and presents. In 2000, Ron Howard's live-action remake of the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (IMDB) even has the Grinch as the catalyst that actually awakens Whoville to the fact that Christmas is about community NOT materialism.

So, I ask this: Is it really bad to be a "Green Grinch"? After all, in the words of Lou Lou Who: "You can't hurt Christmas, Mr. Mayor, because it isn't about the... the gifts or the contest or the fancy lights. That's what Cindy's been trying to tell everyone... and me. I don't need anything more for Christmas than this right here: my family."

And that's right where I'll be spending my holidays this year, in a house full of the Love and thoughtful generosity of my family too! Happy holidays, everyone!

"Please Don't Print this E-mail" Revolution

The Daily Green has a small story today about The "Please Don't Print this E-mail" Revolution.

The "Please Don't Print this E-mail" Revolution can be summed up as the efforts of individuals across the nation adding a simple message to their automatic signatures spurring environmental awareness by asking email recipients not to waste paper by printing emails.

Who knows if this will catch on, but I'll be jumping in on this one by adding the following message to the signatures of my emails: "REDUCE - Print only when necessary. REUSE - Turn unneeded print-outs into scrap paper. RECYCLE - Recycle when you're through."

More new features for the INDY Gallery

In addition to the video capability and the subfolder listings already in place, I have now added to more features to the INDY Gallery: invited-public albums and Google Maps.

Invited-public albums, as I am calling them, refer to any album of the INDY Gallery in which the security level for it has been designated as "public". However, the only way to access said album is through a direct link. Meaning that an individual would have to be given the URL in order to go directly to the specific album. Any attempt to navigate outside that album would result in a authentication prompt (if the destination is secured). The feature exists at least, now it's just a matter of whether or not LK and I feel comfortable making any of the albums with the INDY Gallery public.

This next feature is one of my favorites.... I sometimes use my GPS receiver to sync Latitude and Longitude into photos. In the old gallery, I used a plugin to access that data and display the photos on a Google Map. Well, that plugin stopped working in the old system quite a while back and I've been anxious to regain the ability to view GPS tagged photos on a Google Map.

Yesterday, I tried using a Perl script called Tim's GMapper. Well, it was a great idea, but it was too limited in scope and didn't play well with the SPGM gallery I'm using. So, I decided to expand on his work and design a system myself which could be ported to pretty much any website configuration, but also worked very well with SPGM.

The end results were a reprogrammed Perl script and a set of modifications I'm calling SPGM-Map for use with Simple Picture Gallery Manager. (I'll eventually release the mods for SPGM-Map into the INDY DevDom along with the SPGM-Vid mods.)

If you're surfing around the INDY Gallery and see a link within an album to view a Google Map, click on it and you'll be shown a Google Map of the photos within that album containing GPS tags.

I'm going to take a few days off of programming while I formulate some more ideas and spend time with LK. To those of you who are able, I hope you enjoy the new features and that you are finding the new INDY Gallery setup to your liking!

Internet People! Flash Video

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this entertaining flash video: Internet People! -The Meth Minute 39 | Channel Frederator. It's a humorous run through of many of the more well-known internet fads. If you've ever witnessed or participated in any of these, you should find this video quite fun.

INDY Gallery now with video

I've completed one of the planned improvements to the INDY Gallery: adding audio and video support! I tweaked some code in the SPGM-Vid plugin to get things just the way I wanted. And the best thing is, I've been hiding videos within the albums of the gallery for quite some time. Go back through the years and you might find some hidden treasures. (For those of you interested in my SPGM-Vid tweaks, I'll be releasing them to the public in the INDY DevDom.)

Enjoy! More will be coming soon! Next I'll be working with LK on opening certain albums to the invited public. More on this when the idea is further developed.

Deploying new INDY Gallery today

I mentioned in my previous post, New INDY Gallery on the way, that I would deliver the new INDY Gallery within this next week. Well, that timeline has been moved up. Apparently, the most recent upgrade to the current system did not go so well; and I'd rather not go through the headache of making repairs to a soon-to-be-replaced system. So, I'll be deploying the new INDY Gallery today! Be aware, I'll be making the improvements promised over the next week, so things may "shift" slightly during and after the initial deployment.

New INDY Gallery on the way

I'd like to announce the fact that I'm in the process of developing a "new" INDY Gallery. I place new in quotes because, technically, this is actually a refacing of the old gallery which was called the INDY Albums.

I've decided to re-implement the old system (built on the Simple Picture Gallery Manager)in a new way, by integrating it more cleanly into the INDY interface. As of this posting, the current system used is built on the Gallery2 project. While Gallery2 is an amazing system and very easy to maintain, it is also so feature rich that it agitates my sweet tooth. So, I'm heeding the words of my old Star Trek PBeM RPG buddy and "Keep[ing] It Simple". What's more simple for gallery management than Simple Picture Gallery Manager?

For those of you who are worried about the possible feature loss or concerned that you might have to reset all your bookmarks.... Have no fear! I'll be keeping the same url for the new system, designing it to function much the same way as the old system, and plan on hand-coding any features that are sorely missed by key users. As for a timeline of delivery, you should expect the switch over to occur within the next week.