I just found out that there is a way to calculate the ‘nth’ digit of pi (and various other constants) without calculating the intervening digits…see here on Wikipedia for the details. Cool stuff.
Monthly Archives: June 2016
June 30, 2016
The craziness continues. I’ve done a few, mostly cosmetic updates to my career (technical stuff) blog.
Backups seem to be working properly but I have not had a chance to try setting up a free standing wordpress and restoring the results to verify that they round-trip cleanly.
I really need to send email to the folks we met on the cruise to let them know that at least one batch of shots has been posted here from Guernsey.
I still owe Jen the balance of the ‘how this blog got set up’ articles. I’m going to aim to get those written and published by the end of the coming long weekend.
Getting to the next day’s worth of cruise photos is going to be challenging. I’ve got a number of technical issues to get straightened out, I need to get Lorna more shots from April 2015 for her longer scrapbooking camp. There are other issues hovering around as well. I’ll do what I can as I really do want to share these. Stay tuned.
I want to write up my thoughts on the various craziness going on in the world out there. Seems like the events go by much faster than I can comment so we’ll have to see.
Crazy last few days…
Last week I dug through the backlog from being away for an extended stretch (I think this cruise was the longest vacation I’ve had since I started working).
I expedited the post processing of the shots from our last excursion at Guernsey to get them up on the site.
At this point I’ve got some post-processing to do on last April’s Disney trip shots for Lorna’s scrap-booking over the next few weeks so the next block of shots may be a little bit delayed (I can drop some nice shots from the Disney parks in Orlando in the interim).
This Blog and How We Got Here
At the end of last week, a friend looked at this blog and asked how it was set up.
Origins
This all started in 2011 and it started with email. I had maintained a long term stable email address with MV communications. MV had been a major ISP in southern New Hampshire and by 2010 that business was nearly gone. When they finally went under I looked at my options for keeping a stable identity on the internet.
In the end I realized that buying a domain name and getting a web hosting was likely the best way to ensure that I had a permanent address on the internet and open up options beyond that. I don’t remember doing a huge amount of research on hosting companies, but I ended up using GoDaddy and so far have been happy with their service.
Enabled ‘JetPack’ for Gallery Support
I enabled the WordPress ‘JetPack’ plug-in that comes with the software (but is disabled by default) and it appears that fixes the issues I had with the built in image galleries. Unless someone finds issues with what is currently up here, I’ll stick with that.
I would like to be able to control the size and shape of the featured images at the top of each post better. I may try some other themes over the next couple of weeks to see if I can get a layout I like better.
I’m also toying with splitting off the picture galleries from the main blog as a separate wordpress instance that only hosts pictures. Feedback is welcome…there will probably be a number of adjustments here over the next bit of time as I try to make the site more friendly and useful to me.
I just created a ‘landing page’ wordpress instance. I expect to use the web server’s rewrite capability to point the main page (http://ninecrows.com) to this landing page instance and then set up the landing page as a static WordPress instance with the main page pointing to career and blog instances (and any others I may create).
I’m still considering whether I should spawn off any other instances…for the moment I’ll hold off as I’d rather not wind up with too much clutter.
Guernsey Osprey
While stopped at an overlook of the beach and sea (with cannons) we saw an osprey fly up and hover looking for prey. Amazing shots of it hanging there. It took me a little while to get my long lens swapped in (I have a set of not very good shots from the landscape lens I had been using) but I got more than enough frames.
Guernsey Bike Riding
A wonderful bicycle ride around Guernsey. Beautiful scenery, narrow roads, very pastoral with occasional bunkers.
Our guides were great and it was very nice to be out in the air riding bikes and not in a tour bus sitting. I carried my big camera slung on my side/back. It was a bit of a nuisance, but the pictures were worth the hassle.
We stopped at a little tea house and grabbed a snack, a very tasty slice of apple pie in my case.
Guernsey Town
Coming into the harbor and on the short bus ride to the other side of the island I grabbed some shots of the areas we passed through. Beautiful old houses and interesting building (and lots of walls).
Looking for a good image gallery plug-in
The default gallery and light-box support in wordpress seems a bit broken. It doesn’t sequence through images very well (grabs things in the light box view that aren’t in the selected gallery) and provides few options for layout.
So far the choices I’ve seen for plug-ins are better, but every one I’ve seen has issues that I either can’t see how to resolve or might be resolved by the paid version. I’m reluctant to start buying gallery plug-ins until I find one that meets my needs. I have one that I bought (relatively inexpensive so I’m not concerned) that is close. I’m beginning so suspect I’ll need to write my own after looking at hos the other ones out there work to get an idea of what is needed.
Around the Ship
Shots from around the ship during the day and at night. The lighting on the Disney ships at night is wonderful.
I think this gallery software may suffice. Open the article to see the thumbnail images and click on the images to see the full size version.