Holiday slump

Sorry the updates have been so few and far between. Holidays...

I'm working on all of the late-October California pictures right now. Some are posted, more will follow this week.

Scan day

Today I'm scanning in pictures and uploading. Many thanks to cousin Barbara and cousin Patty for some of these pictures.

I posted our daughter's first school pictures into her gallery today. The 3 images can be found here. Isn't she just the cutest little girl you've ever seen? Daddy's wrapped.

I also am very pleased to have been asked to scan everyone's friend Mikie's "Fireman Collection." See if you can find out what picture doesn't belong with the others.

As I mentioned above, the images that my cousins contributed can be found here (Barbara / Patty, I have the originals and will return them to you... thanks again). I love antique photos!

Half-Pint Prints Holiday '08 update - December 12, 2008.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Time to change the password for Half-Pint. I sent it out in a bulk email earlier today. If you didn't receive it, please send me an email and I'll get it to you. The email link is at the top of each Half-Pint page.

The photographic additions to Half-Pint since the last email are:

• Daniel's Birthday (link)
  
• Aaron's Birthday (link)
  
• a trip to New Jersey (I actually hung out with Giants fans...link)
• Marla and Joshua's wedding (link)
• Michael's Baptism (link)
  
• a few pictures from Disneyland (these are not my images... they were taken by the Disneyland Staff Pros.)
• and of course, pictures of our adorable little kids - here, here, and our expected third here
  

I am still way behind, and will be adding pictures from Legoland, Disneyland, Grandpa's 70th, Halloween, Zack's Birthday, Andrew's Birthday, Six Flags, and Addison's Christening. Subscribe if you want to know when things get added (see below for details)
The technical changes for Half-Pint are:

• The Blog. Though mentioned last time, bugs are now ironed out and I'm posting as frequently as necessary. It is a good place to get updates about new gallery additions. It is at blog.halfpintprints.com
• Google Earth. I have a small number of photos up now on Google Earth. If you are interested, follow this link: http://www.panoramio.com/kml/?user=1847300. It will ask you what to do with the file:
  
  Select "Open with," click "Browse" and select Google Earth from the list. Google Earth will launch and you will see "sskoutas photos" in your "places" window on the left of the Google Earth Screen. 5 images should be available. More to come. Don't have Google Earth? Shame on you. It is very cool. Get it here.
• Google Friend Connect. This is an experimental addition to Half-Pint that may or may not last. Try it out. Let me know what you think. It is on the right hand side of the blog pages.
  
• RSS / Atom subscriptions. At the bottom of the homepage, you will find an icon for available feeds. Click on it if you wish to subscribe to the gallery update feed. The downside is it will not give you updates for password-protected images. A better option may be to subscribe to the blog. Click here if you would like to do that, or find the ATOM link at the bottom of the blog page.

As always:

• If you don’t want to be on this distribution list, email me and you will be removed.
• If you have pictures up here that you don’t want up here, tell me and they will be removed.
• If you have any password concerns with your images, let me know.
• If you want a gallery password protected that isn’t, let me know.
• If you know someone would want to be added, tell them to email me.
• Feel free to share gallery access with others that might be interested.
• Contributions for “The Old Shoebox” and “Photographs and Memories” nostalgia galleries always welcome.

Be happy and be well, and please enjoy your holidays!

Facebook Connect

I'm trying hard to intergrate Facebook (via Facebook connect) with this website so you all can join, log in, communicate with me, the site, and your Facebook Friends, and hopefully, be updated directly as you wish.

Working on the bulk-email

I'm drafting the bulk-email password change right now, and hope to have the full update out to everyone by this Sunday. Happy Friday!

Marla and Josh Gallery is underway

The first images from Marla an Josh's wedding are up tonight. Lots and lots more to come. Go here. The password has not changed (but will once I complete this project). If you need the password, please email me. Good night!

Progress... slow but sure

I made good progress on Josh and Marla's wedding tonight. No, nothing is posted yet, but for those of you familiar with Lightroom workflow, I'm out of the Library module and tomorrow I intend to start developing the selected photos. First posts may even be tomorrow night, but no promises.

Marla and Josh's Wedding

I've hopped out of sequence on my photography projects, and I'm currently working on the "pre" post-processing on Marla and Josh's wedding (tagging, rating, etc.). I'm going to guess it will take most of this week to finish these images. From there, I'm off to work on Grandpa's 70th Birthday Party, and then I'm going back to July to work on images in sequence again.

Disneyland '08

I took a bunch of pictures at Legoland and Disneyland, but it is going to be quite a while until I get to them. In the interim, I have posted the images that the Disneyland Pro Photographers took of us while we were there. You can find them here.

I've also added a few new Emily and Zack pictures from this summer.
1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Michael's Baptism

I'm trying to get rolling again. I'm slow to learn a new OS, a new Photoshop, and an all-new intermediary step (Lightroom 2 instead of Bridge). That said, I've completed post-processing and upoad of my first project with the new workflow. Here is Michael's Baptism.

To put things in perspective, this is my last project from the month of June. I've got a lot of catching up to do, and will most likely start jumping out of chronological sequence to get some of my larger and perhaps more important projects out of the way and uploaded.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

your cheating heart

is it wrong that I'm sitting here at work using my PC, but missing my Mac at home?

breaking the silence

It has been a few days since my last post. The delay is primarily because I am switching equipment that I use to maintain Half Pint, this blog, and my actual images. I'm waiting for software from Adobe that should get me operating on the photo development side of things shortly, and should have new posts and image updates rolling out again smoothly by the end of the week.

The nature of the changes are that we've switched from a Photoshop CS3 / Windows environment to a Photoshop CS4 supported by Lightroom 2.0 in Mac / OS X environment. I am looking at Aperture 2.0 as a possible alternative to Lightroom 2.0 as well, but I don't see that as being my likely route. At the same time, I'm trying to develop a reasonable and safe data storage and management policy, and I'm trying to best understand how to create a workflow that safely stores and backs up our images, plus our video, music, personal data, etc.

I'm considering a workflow that mirrors The DAM book (a must read for anyone with lots of "Digital Assets" that they want protected, be that images, movies, whatever.) We are likely to go with Drobo as our data-storage solution (it is automatically redundant and self monitoring), and Mozy as our online backup provider.

eStarling WiFi Photoframe

OK, mini product review... 5 stars for the eStarling WiFi photo frame. Open the box, let it detect your existing wireless network (your own wireless network is required), register the frame online, receive a custom email address specifically for that frame, and BINGO, you've got a nice digital photo frame that you can email photos to from anywhere you can access email.

It works, it's nice, and it's simple. Obviously it does wonders when family lives on one coast and you live on the other... all of a sudden it is easy for them to get the latest pictures of the grandkids.

Another project completed

I've completed and posted everything from our summer visit to New Jersey last night. Enjoy.

I'm looking at the first pictures from Disneyland tonight. These are not my pictures, they are taken by the Disney Staff Pro Photographers, and will be duly noted as such when posted. I suggest checking back tomorrow night, as I doubt I'll have much of this posted tonight.

I've also worked on a few miscellaneous shots of the kids, which can be found here and here.

Today's news

I'm starting to seriously price shop a Mac Pro as my photography machine. My poor PC is brought to its knees by Photoshop CS3, and I want to make the upgrade to CS4. I guess it will be a cross-grade instead.

I have officially given up on the T-Mobile G1. I'm switching back to a BlackBerry Curve until T-Mobile gets a newer BlackBerry (hopefully the Bold - I'm more interested in that than I am the Storm). I can not fault HTC for my disappointment. They built a physically impressive and enjoyable phone. The Android Operating System, to me, seems buggy, and when combined with the comperably weak T-Mobile network, well... you get the picture.

I'm plugging away at the New Jersey images. I'd say I'm making good progress with about 20 more uploaded tonight.

Working on Photography Projects again

I'm back at my desk now and working on photography projects again. Right now I'm processing photos from our summer visit to New Jersey. I'd say I am about 30% complete. I also downloaded and backed up all of the images from our trip to California last week (11 CF cards / 26GB of images).

Although I do have a few priority images that I want to work on right away, I intend to keep on processing in chronological order.

Disneyland's studio images taken by their staff pros should be arriving today or tomorrow on CD, and I'll post them when I receive them.

initial disappointment with the T-Mobile G1

I'm starting to dislike the G1. It is not nearly as strong as the BlackBerry line for email and contacts, and it is not nearly as fun as the iPhone 3G for everything else. I'm hoping for OTA (Over The Air) software updates to resolve many buggy issues. Here's a copy of an email I sent off to my representative at T-Mobile about my experiences so far:

So what are you getting for feedback on the G1, Brian? I’ve got to tell you, I want to love this phone, but so far I don’t like it at all.

Problems:
• Doesn’t open a lot of attachment file types (Excel being a big one).
• No Outlook Sync / requires Google “cloud” contacts / calendar (we knew that before you sent it).
• Spotty Wi-Fi connectivity, and I’ve yet to get it to automatically connect to a remembered network.
• Email attachment handling is odd [...and inconsistent].
• POP3 email needs to be [...manually retrieved]. Although I’ve got it set to [automatically] check every 5 minutes, but it doesn’t seem to do that. I have to go into “email” and select "load."
• I read an email, and when I return to the list of emails, it’s still tagged “unread” (sometimes).
• I delete an email, and then when I go back into email later and “reload” new messages, it comes in again?
• Battery life is poor.
• Right now I am connected to my office Wi-Fi, and I’m still getting a “connection error – retry loading more messages” when I try to retrieve my POP3 email… again, this should happen automatically every 5 minutes anyway.
• Here’s a real odd one… I received an email from my sister-in-law last night (obviously personal). I hit “reply” and it created an outgoing email to her with a bunch of work colleagues CCed, and the body of the quoted text was a completely different email. I had similar experiences twice, and I’m no novice… this isn’t a “computer illiterate user” error.
• There are more issues, but at this point, I can’t remember them. If you’re interested, I will continue to update you. I intend to use this phone through next week to see if any updates change things

Brian, I’m not asking you to fix any of this or even research any of this. If you’ve heard of any of these problems before and know of a solution, let me know. If you know of any major OTA updates from T-Mobile or Google, please let me know.

Otherwise, please just consider this customer feedback.

G1 in hand

I returned to the office to find a T-Mobile G1 waiting for me. I like the build quality. So far I'm too busy to really do anything with it... just charging for now. More to come.

Back home!

It feels good to be back home.

We spent the last week having an absolute blast in beautiful southern California. We spent 2 days at Lego Land, 4 days at Disneyland, and a couple of days in Los Angeles to catch up with family, share a ton of laughs and good times, and to celebrate a special birthday for Mike.

Our kids absolutely adored their west coast cousins and we did too. It's going to be a while before the pictures are ready to post, but I will let you all know when they are.

Happy Birthday, Gampa!

Mike, we had a fantastic time sharing in your Birthday celebration. Great crowd, great party, and a great reason to celebrate. I wish you many, many more very Happy Birthdays.

My G1 delayed

No T-Mobile G1 for the weekend. Oh well. We'll see what happens next week.

As for Half-Pint and photography related issues, I've stalled. I'm midway through processing images from a great June Road trip to NJ to see Caroline and Scott, and I'd like to get going on processing / posting the rest. However I got sidetracked by the technical and hosting changes to the blog. I'm now publishing only one blog, and that is this one hosted and powered by blogger.

There are a couple of javascript based errors that need to be resolved, and for right now the "email" link (at the top of this blog page) and the "recent additions" link (same place) do not function. If you want those links, click "home" (which will exit the blog and return you to half-pint prints) and then those two buttons will work.

Lots and lots of photography shooting planned for next week. I'm looking forward to it greatly.

Done deal

I've opted to abandon the WordPress blog and go with Blogger instead. Though I find WordPress more powerful, I find Blogger extremely hackable and I've had great success blending it into the main half-pint prints website.

I'll make changes to the URLs soon. In the long run, the primary blog will be at blog.halfpintprints.com (right now that's WordPress).

Android G1

It is fully possible that I may have an Android G1 phone in my hands to test by as soon as this Friday.  I'm really looking forward to comparing this new smart-phone against the others that I use regularly (the BlackBerry Curve and the iPhone 3G).  As far as I can tell, all of them have shortcomings, so it will be interesting to see who has the least compromises and the most gold stars.

More to come.

A Tale of Two Blogs

the Wordpress blog is located here.

the Blogger blog is located here.

If you have any opinion on which you like better, please share it with me.  Thanks.

Blogger vs. WordPress

I am looking into Blogger instead of WordPress as a potential home for the Half-Pint Blog. The WordPress version is at www.blog.halfpintprints.com, and the Blogger version is (at least temporarily) located at www.halfpintprints.blogspot.com.

Initially, I think WordPress has a cleaner look, whereas Blogger is more customizable to fit the look of www.halfpintprints.com.

I'll need a few weeks to work with each and decide on the final content engine.

New Jersey

I just started working on a large batch of images from a very enjoyable visit to New Jersey. Right now I’m working on June 21st. There are some pretty images in here that I can’t wait to really spice up in post processing.

First images may start showing up as early as tomorrow.

I’ve put up a couple of “new” pictures of the kids from early summer over the past day or so. They can be located in each of their respective galleries.

Big Al!

Hey Big Al! Happy Birthday! We miss you up here. Let us know when you’re coming back up for a visit.

Great Blue Heron vs. Bull Frog (doesn’t end well for the Frog)

I’m in the process of uploading a few images from an extensive series of a Great Blue Heron hunting, capturing, and eventually consuming a bull frog. Not everyone’s taste, to be sure, but an interesting series none the less. If you’ve ever seen how truly large a Great Blue Heron is, you can use that to scale and figure out how big this bull frog was. He was a big one. The images are in the Wildlife Gallery.

Skooter-Twoter updates

Yeah, he’s a handsome little man, and one very fast crawler now too. It’s getting pretty tough to keep an eye on him these days, but if you want to find him, I suggest you find his big sister. He’s usually right there by her side, loving every second spent with her. He’s standing easily now, and definitely threatening to walk very, very soon as well. There are 4 new pictures of him posted here. Enjoy.

One of the Wheel Horse Trio Turns 4

I posted a dozen images from Aaron’s 4th Birthday today… I know I have a lot more images but I’ve been unsuccessful in locating them so far. Workflow, workflow, workflow… this ship needs to be tightened up a bit. I’ll post the others when I find them. Until then, here’s the small sample that I can offer… (link)

Happy Birthday, Aaron!

Gallery completed

I’ve finished uploading the images from Auntie Michele to the Peanut’s TWO! gallery. Thanks again, Michele!

Changes for Wednesday, October 15

The first mission for today (about 50% completed) is to get the balance of the pictures that Auntie Michele took for us at Peanut’s second birthday party up. That is underway now, and the results are in the gallery. I expect they all should be uploaded in an hour or so.

Secondly, I’m trying to make changes to the home page on halfpintprints.com, and the primary change (and ergo culprit) is the new, groovy, flash-based slide show. I certainly need to do some rearranging and housekeeping, so please pardon the appearance as I renovate. Should be nice when completed, though. I hope.

Last, and not only not least, but perhaps most importantly, I wish a very Happy Birthday to Maeyee today as well. It was great to get to see you and hubby this weekend. I look forward to doing that with more and more frequency in the future.

techie mumbo-jumbo

I’m trying to accomplish something. When it eventually works, it will be right here. For now, it’s not.

Monday, Monday

It’s a slow-moving Monday after a wonderful weekend with Family and Friends. Jody and I enjoyed a rare and wonderful date to attend Marla and Josh’s Wedding. We had a fantastic time and even got to share a dance. Good friends are a wonderful thing.

We came home to two sleeping children. That’s a good day. Pictures will follow as soon as I can, but there’s a lot to go through.

Just before sunset

I didn’t have any errands to run tonight after work, so I had the great pleasure of getting home with a little daylight still left. Emmie and I took the dogs out into the field and took full advantage of the opportunity. I used the 100mm Macro lens and a flash for most of the images, a couple of which I will be posting soon. It was a very nice ending to this week, and I think we both enjoyed ourselves greatly.

Gator-day!

I think today (October 8th) is a great day to ask you all to join me in wishing the Gator a Happy Birthday.

Have a good one, Tom.

Daniel's Birthday Gallery is complete

The pictures from Daniel's 3rd Birthday are all finished and posted now. Here's the link. The password was just changed, so if you didn't get an email from me, send me a message for the new password.

Beesh and Ree, feel free to share the link and password with anyone that you think might want to see these. Be well!

Photography Projects

I'm making good progress on Daniel's birthday party. With a little luck, I should finish it this week. Next on deck, Aaron's Birthday!

Go Sox!

a Wee-Shee turns Three

I'm just beginning to work on images from Daniel's third.

Half-Pint Prints Autumn '08 update

If you're here because you received an email-change password from me, read on. If you need the password, email me (the link can be found at the top of my home page)

If you're on facebook or twitter, let me know if you would be so kind. Thank you.

The last email was June 12, 2008, so the updates for Autumn '08 include:

• Mason's 1st Birthday
• Jay's 30th Birthday
• Our Daughter's 2nd Birthday (with still more images to come from Auntie Michele)
• wee Jake shows off his good looks
• Peanut showing off her ABC's in the video section
• several additions in Landscapes & Wildlife
• don't forget to check out my Father's Day gift. Mommy wrote on the bottom. The kids did everything else.

Technical changes to the site include the addition of this blog, which is still in its infancy, and improvements to video (I've got a bunch of footage to process and post, hopefully soon). Feel free to leave comments here or in the guestbook.

I am obviously falling behind on photo processing and will do the best I can to catch up soon. Next on deck is Daniel's birthday, then Aaron's, a visit to New Jersey, lil' Jake's Baptism, Six Flags, Davis Farm, Small Town Fairs, Andrew's Birthday, Addison's Christening, Zack's Birthday, and so much more.

If you've got nothing to do, see if you can find a few of my pictures on Google Earth. Cool Beans, I say.

Yes, it was a busy and fantastic summer. Hope yours was too.

As always:

• If you don’t want to be on this distribution list, email me and you will be removed.
• If you have pictures up here that you don’t want up here, tell me and they will be removed.
• If you have any password concerns with your images, let me know.
• If you want a gallery password protected that isn’t, let me know.
• If you know someone would want to be added, tell them to email me.
• Feel free to share gallery access with others that might be interested.
• Contributions for “The Old Shoebox” and “Photographs and Memories” nostalgia galleries always welcome.

URL Change for the blog

the URL for this blog has changed. It can now be accessed as part of the Half Pint domain at blog.halfpintprints.com

miscellaneous changes

One of the small projects I'm working on right now is changing all of the thumbnails to black and white to better compliment the theme of half-pint prints. Let me know if you like the look or not.

I won't be done for a little while yet, but here's an example.

Almost finished

I am pretty happy with the progress made on Mason's Birthday Gallery tonight. It should be completed tomorrow evening.

iPhone

OK, so I am trying out the iPhone's WordPress application from the App Store. While it looks like an interesting method for providing short updates, the touch-screen keyboard and the lack of cut and paste may prove limiting in the long run.

Mason's Birthday images

I'm in the process of completing Mason's Birthday Party images. Since today is October 1st and the party was in late May, it's fairly easy to conclude that I currently have at least 4 full months worth of images to process. I need a few sunny weekends to catch up on yard-work, but I just as badly need a few rainy weekends to catch up on Photography.

The gallery can be located here. You'll need the password. It hasn't changed since the last mailing (edit: password changed October 3rd). If you're not on the email list, email me using the link at the top of the home page.

Happy Birthday, Ray!

It’s noteworthy that today is RJ’s Birthday. Hope it’s a good one, buddy!