Scratchings

A good percentage of my blog entries seem to be excuses for going large periods without blogging. This one is no exception... but it is also an announcement.

I've been busy.

Let me introduce my new baby girl, Lily Grace Taylor.

It's been a while since I updated my site. The primary reason for that has been the major upheaval my computers and my home working environment have been through.

I've been without my CVS. A developer who goes without any kind of source control for a significant period of time is like a junkie who can't get a hit.

Google have released Picasa for Linux.

Picasa is a program that helps you find, edit and share pictures. It automatically locates your pictures and sorts them into albums. You can arrange the albums and use labels to create groups. Picasa also makes it easy to share pictures, by e-mail, print, or even posting them to your blog.

Check out Picasa's feature list at Google for further details.

Picasa is notably missing integration with Flickr and Tabblo. I really think Google are missing a golden opportunity here. They could leverage the existing Flickr customer base by providing them with tools that mesh well with their existing photo service.

That said, the talented folks at Tabblo have done the hard work themselves and have produced their own Tabblo plugin for Picasa. Unfortunately, the plugin only seems to be available for Windows. I like to do as much as possible in Linux. I only resort to Windows for games or if it's simply convenient because my wife has been using it recently or intends to use it. So it looks like the plugin is a no-go for me at the moment.

I'm impressed with Picasa. I'd be more impressed if it provided integration to online photo services. Regardless, I currently have a dual-boot system and I intend to use Picasa to manage my photo albums in both Linux and Windows.

Music: The Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Women

I also have a Flickr account now to complement my Tabblo account. I mentioned in an earlier post that Tabblo integrates with Flickr. Flickr currently has quite a few features that Tabblo does not, mainly to do with organising and sharing the photos, and it already has a much larger user base.

I have some photos in Flickr already. Check them out.

Music: Jeff Buckley - Opened Once

What is spurl.net?

Well, to quote their site:

Spurl.net is a free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It allows you to store and quickly access again all the interesting pages you find on the web from any Internet connected computer.

I've always had to fiddle to manage my bookmarks. It's a nightmare to try to keep my laptop, desktop, and workstation bookmarks synchronised, especially between jobs and upgrades and backups and restores. However, spurl.net provides a central, online location to store my bookmarks, access them, and search through them. Also, it will integrate with del.icio.us sharing tags and URLs alike. It is trivial to setup, taking only three quick steps, and once you're done it integrates well into Mozilla Firefox, providing a handy sidebar. A personal web page of your spurls is also created.

I have a spurl.net account. I managed to get my preferred account name knet for an online service again. Careful, I could get used to this. Usually I have to craft some contrived variant on my nickname because some other knob has already taken it.

Music: Meat Beat Manifesto - Suicide

Tabblo is an online application for putting together photos and words with styled templates that can be customised by the author for the purpose of telling a story. This story is referred to as a tabblo. Tabblo is not simply a blog or an online photo album or a photo-sharing site, but it borrows a little from each of those applications. It is yet another form available to allow people to express themselves using online media. Think of it as another brick in building your online identity, alongside your blog, your Flickr account, and your del.icio.us account.

Tabblo lets you:

• have full control of who can view, comment, and share your tabblos
• pool your photos together with other Tabblo members for collaborative tabblo creation
• participate in the Tabblo community with your tabblos, photos, and commentary
• integrate open photo services such as Flickr to avoid having to upload to multiple sites
• publish tabblos to blogs, social networking sites, and other places online
• order printed versions of your creations in a variety of shapes and sizes

Tabblo is currently in public beta. I have an account (I actually got my preferred username knet for a change) and have already created a couple of tabblos. It is a great idea for an online community application, it's easy to use, and it's just plain fun.

Don't take my word for how good Tabblo is; there's a review of Tabblo in Walt Mossberg's column.

Do yourself a favour: check it out, try it out. You'll be hooked.

Music: Jeff Buckley - Everybody Here Wants You

I've survived my ankle reconstruction. I had some difficulties waking up and so I had to stay in hospital slightly longer than expected.

My leg is in a cast. I'm on crutches. I have to take 8 tablets each day, painkillers and antibiotics. Mmm, crunchy.

Music: Massive Attack - Teardrop

Here's a book I'd love to get my hands on.

The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky

It's introduced and compiled by Joel Spolsky the almost-famous writer of Joel On Software, a site that covers the ins and outs of his software development company and software development in general.

If you're interested in software development, check out the site... and maybe buy me a copy of his book for pointing you in the right direction.

Music: Rammstein - Asche Zu Asche (Live Version)

Well, upgrading bzero has afforded me a few additional features for the blog. There's now a contents page. The page is summarised by month and by topic. Also, my topics are submitted to the Internet Topic Exchange.

Music: Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol