Recently, George updated his site. I think it looks pretty good. His previous version of the site wasn't too bad at all but it had a few small display issues.

Also related to George's update, I released version 2.4 of ReedGal. This version brings a few nice additions including making it easier to integrate the gallery into a pre-existing layout. George's gallery and Mike Aubin's gallery are good examples of how it looks when integrated. I will say that Mike's gallery reminds me that I need to add a pagination style setup for the gallery so all images aren't on one page.

The gallery still has some ways to go, adding some sort of authentication for the "admin" page, etc, but I'm pretty happy with how it is currently working right now.

Check out the ReedGal page or go directly to the SourceForge page.

Some New Year's Resolutions (that are bound to be ignored like everyone else)

• Stop procrastinating and earn my CCNA
• Actually continue working out every week instead of stopping and starting 20 times a year
• Possibly look into new job opportunities more toward the south (I'm not a cold weather kind of guy and wouldn't mind changing things up a bit)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head but I'm sure I'll add a few on by the end of tonight.

Teek mentioned his granparents would likely allow a few of us to stay at their place in the city for free, which would be awesome. So now we're planning a trip to out to Amsterdam for sometime in late March, early April. I know it is going to be a tad pricey but I really think it'll be well worth it and an awesome experience.

So yeah, that's the plan. Should be fun if we follow through with it. Updates to come in the near future.

Note: The Gallery is back up. Yay...

I am a tad disappointed in the bird picture. The shot could have been a lot better but the lighting was pretty crappy, I wasn't really ready for it, and I didn't really mess with the settings enough on the camera. Next time I'm in Knoxville, I hope to grab a better shot.

This was also the first design that I modified on my home server first so that I knew exactly what was going to happen when I implemented it. It was a lot easier then the previous design where I was editing in notepad, uploading, and refreshing to see if the desired effect took hold.

If you notice any issues, definitely email me. I've been trying to check everything but you just never know.

Note: I am aware that the site doesn't display perfectly in Inter Explorer 6. The sidebar shows itself below the body. I think I know why but I don't care enough to fix it. IE7+, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are currently supported

Before I left for TN, I decided that the best place for my car was the parking lot at work. It would be pretty safe from vandals as the place has security almost 24/7. But I did recognize that it could snow and I was not there to move the car for the plows. I decided that I would leave the key in my locker at work and ask a friend, Jason Lomba, to move the car if needed. This may have been a mistake.

When I got back from TN, Brian Roy had offered to pick me up. Pretty cool as otherwise I would have just grabbed a taxi. When we got to the parking lot, I noticed my car was in a different spot and the plows had packed me in pretty good. I chalked up the new parking space to having to move the car for the plowing, nothing weird.

I end up grabbing a shovel from work and starting to shovel out the front of my car. Brian suggested starting the car up just to get it warm. Not a bad idea, I thought. I hop over to the driver's side and notice 4 of my friends, Joe Webster, Jason Lomba, Chris Lomba, and Jim Stergiou, hiding behind the car. I immediately knew something was up. I looked in the car and saw that my car had been completely filled with packing peanuts.

Now when I say "filled with packing peanuts," maybe you're thinking "must have filled up the seats and floor." Not sir/madam, that is not really what I meant. The peanuts filled up the entire car and were put in place through the sunroof of the vehicle.

A couple things to note:

1. Joe spent $120+ on biodegradable packing peanuts.
2. My boss, boss's boss, and boss's boss's boss were all aware of the prank. They were concerned I'd be upset. I definitely was not.
3. The name Operation Blockhead came from George Simon's son. I went to a BBQ at George's and his son asked him "why does he have such a block head," referring to me. Yup...
4. The peanuts start to biodegrade as soon as water is introduced. This causes them to get really slick and stick to the bottom of shoes. They were really annoying to get off.
5. I had to drive around for a while, looking for a gas station with the large nose vacuum hoses and not the narrow, easy to clog noses.

I must say, it was an interesting experience. Check out the pictures after the break. (Higher quality pictures will be uploaded later this week)

The car prior to peanuting

Truckload of peanuts

Teek filling up balloons for to fill in spaces in the car

Teek and Dan filling up ballons

Teek and Dan filling up the car

The car filled with peanuts

Grace can't believe it

This prank is Jim Approved

George, Joe, Dan, and Teek

The GLI waiting for its owner

Brian Stewart sacrificing himself for video of the event

Me realizing what's going on

It was pretty funny

That's a lot of packing peanuts

More peanuts

In front of my car

Ready to drive?

Ryan Approved

Passenger side airbags?

I thought donuts with all windows down would clear them out...
It didn't work

So, what's so great about the script? Well, I'm actually proud of making it myself. The script has a few key features:

• Just upload a new directory to a defined image_gallery directory and it'll automatically be displayed on the gallery page
• The icon for each album is automatic. It uses the icon.png file that is placed in the directory with the new images
• The "rebuild script" will create the thumbnails for each album
• The "rebuild script" will also extract the exif data from the images (currently, only date, title, description, camera type (not displayed), and apeture (not displayed)
• If no exif data, the filename is used as the title of the image

Unfortunately, there are some minor "limitations" to how I'm doing things but I don't think they're a problem

• Limited to jpg files. This is more by design and wouldn't be too tough to fix
• Using the GD library to create the thumbnails takes a bit of time. It took about a minute to complete the thumbnail/exif-file creation. Unfortunately, php by default will stop a script from running after 30 seconds. An easy fix if you have access to the php configuration file but not all hosts will allow modification of it
• The album icon is not created automatically. I'm considering a way to do this but it would probably be the toughest part of the script
• The sorting of the images and albums is done by filename. I could probably find a different way to sort but I like the current method. I leave my images with their default names (DSC_0001.jpg, DSC_0002.jpg, etc) and the album folder names always start with the date (20091021 - Something).

Who knows if I'll put the script online for others to use? It was mostly just created from boredom. I'll have to think about it.

Check Out The Gallery

More updates to come in the near future, I would hope. Been pretty busy with a few projects at work and home so sorry for the lack of updates.

Anyway, I will be attempting to update a bit more in the coming weeks. For now, here's a nice little picture from the phone of the view