Posted on December 26th, 2009 by Ryan Reed
So, out of boredom, I've been working on this new design. I am definitely liking this design a tad more. It's cleaner then the old design and much easier to modify. There are a few things I need to update a tad but so far, it's looking good. I did also upgrade from WordPress 2.7 to the newest version 2.9 while I was at it.
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
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Posted on December 21st, 2009 by Ryan Reed
So, I recently took a trip to Tennessee to visit the family, but that's really a story for another post. This story is about what happened when I returned to that non-island of a state, Rhode Island.
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:
- Joe spent $120+ on biodegradable packing peanuts.
- 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.
- 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...
- 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.
- 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)
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Ryan Reed
I got around to working more on the gallery that I've been putting together. Currently, it's hosted on my home server, mostly for ease of modifications but also because the thumbnail creation requires php to not timeout in the default amount of time (I believe 30 seconds).
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
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Posted on September 25th, 2009 by Ryan Reed
I just passed my certification exam for my Security+ cert. Honestly, the only reason I took it was my boss had extra money that was going to disappear at the end of this week and I knew I could pass it in a couple days. It was definitely pretty easy so I can't complain. Mostly logic question anyway.
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.
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Posted on August 23rd, 2009 by Ryan Reed
So, I guess I should apologize for the lack of updates although I doubt there is anyone really reading this anyway. I've been basically preoccupied with a move to my new apartment in North Providence. It has been taking up a decent amount of my time.
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
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Posted on August 10th, 2009 by Ryan Reed
Been kind of busy lately working on packing things up. I'm moving to a much nice area. I'm moving from East Providence to North Providence. I think I've earned a nicer area. :-D
More updates to follow.
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Posted on July 31st, 2009 by Ryan Reed
Recently, I've been working on changing up my gallery. Currently, the gallery uses Flickr as the host which is definitely nice for reliability for hosting but it does pose the problem of not being very dynamic. What do I mean by that? Well, for every new Flickr album, I have to create a new page. I'm sure I could work out a way to get around that but I'd rather host all the images myself.
So, what advantages does my script propose over my previous method?
- Dynamically updates - Everytime a new folder of images is uploaded, a new album page is created for the album. No coding required by me
- The script automatically creates thumbnails for the images as needed using sizes specified by the user
- Exif data is pulled from the original image during the thumbnail creation process. This allows me to display time taken, ISO, camera, image description as image title, etc.
- The display of the pages are easily customizable with css.
- The gallery requires only 2 files, the main page (for displaying the albums and pictures) and the thumbnail builder
I will admit that this has taken me about a month to get the scripts to the point they are now but it's honestly because I've been learning as I go. Image manipulation is something new, and thankfully, I had a buddy of mine help me out along the way. Thanks Joe.
The new gallery has not been uploaded yet as there's still a few things I want to make sure are completely polished. I may release it for download for anyone to use but I haven't quite decided yet.
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Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by Ryan Reed
Today was an interesting day. The MSS portion of VeriSign (which I am a part of) was recently acquired by SecureWorks. My Team Lead recently, without my knowledge, nominated me to become the Employee of the Month for SecureWorks. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had won the honor.
I would definitely consider this an honor as it's not like a fast food style "Employee of the Month" deal (which, coincidentally, I have won before). I was recognized for the work I was doing company wide. It wasn't for just showing up on time, flipping burgers, and such, it was recognizing my performance and skills which I believe to be something I should definitely proud of.
If you are interested, you can check out the "censored" letter that was written by my Team Lead that lead to the award. Check it out
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Posted on July 13th, 2009 by Ryan Reed
Just got around to updating the 'ol resume and Monster.com profile. I need to update the resume a tiny bit more to include the new company, SecureWorks as the sale has been completed.
I also need to export the new resume to pdf. Ah, no rush, I suppose.
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Posted on July 10th, 2009 by Ryan Reed
I'd like to welcome George Simons of geosimons.NET to the modern web development world. George currently works with me at SecureWorks and has finally got past the initial "under construction" page. I never thought the day would come. I'm so proud.
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