Scott Loftesness

A New Header Graphic Image

Once or twice a year, I change the header graphic image on my blog - to something new that I find fresher than the old image! Over the last couple of days, I've been playing with some new Photoshop plug-ins and learning how to use them on some older photos in my library.

Earlier this afternoon, I picked a shot of the Blue Angels over the Golden Gate Bridge from last November to play around with - and was pleased with the result. The original photo was shot with my Canon 5D Mark II shooting in RAW. The photo was tweaked using PhotoMatix Pro and then adjusted in PhotoShop CS4.

Hope you also enjoy it! You can see the complete history of my earlier header graphic images here. To view more of my photography, see my Flickr photostream here.

Some Musings on 2009

Looking back at my late December 2008 blog posts, I made a wish about simple and beautiful HDR photography becoming super simple - unfortunately, it hasn't yet. I'll restate what I said last year: "But it still feels like we're living in a 1995 world when it comes to HDR photography."

On the other hand, on this day last year I wrote about Walking with Chris - Chris Gulker to be precise. In mid-2008, Chris, Lily and I began a twice weekly 1.5 mile walking regimen every Tuesday and Thursday morning when our mutual schedules permitted.

We had a great time continuing our twice-weekly walks throughout 2009 - solving the world's primary technology and political problems along the way - and very much look forward to resuming them next week - on the first Tuesday in 2010!

Over Ten Years of Blogging

I was recently reading one of Anil Dash's blog posts and noticed he was about to celebrate ten years of blogging.

That caused me to go back to the Internet Archive and see if I could find any history of when I first started blogging. It looks like I put up a basic home page sometime in late 1998 and then started a basic blog in June of 1999 - just over 10 years ago. It looks like we started our Scott's Kitchen blog in November 2005 - just about four years ago.

Hard to believe it's been that long. Time sure flies when you're having fun!

WordCampSF 2009 - The WordPress Community

I attended WordCampSF 2009, the WordPress community gathering, in San Francisco today - and had a great time (pictures)! Held at the Rutter Conference Center at the new UCSF Mission Bay campus, this was a most impressive turnout of the Wordpress community for an all-day session of talks about blogging, having fun and, yes, about all things WordPress. Eventually, the videos from today's talks are to be available on WordPress.tv.

I've been a long-time TypePad blogger and fan. This blog, my personal website, started out originally in FrontPage back in the 1998 timeframe then moved through Manila and Radio Userland to Typepad when it launched in 2003. Recently, at work, we launched a new blog - PaymentsViews.com - and decided to try using WordPress for the first time. Bringing up PaymentsViews was a great experience - thus my newfound interest in all things WordPress and in wanting to attend today's conference! The $25 all-in conference price made it a no brainer to attend!

I was particularly interested in learning more about the new BuddyPress release - and Andy Peatling did a great job covering it in the first session. While he was talking, I was able to download and install a) Wordpress MU (the multiuser version) and b) the BuddyPress plug-in onto our Grid-Server on Media Temple.

Next up was Matt Cutts from Google who did a great job and had a lot of fun talking about the do's and don'ts with respect to dealing with the search engines. (See Matt's slides online).

Wrapping up the morning was Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word presentation. This being my first experience with either WordCamp or Matt, I was impressed with how he approached the whole presentation, sharing a humble perspective while being appropriately proud of the community's accomplishments. A great presentation - and, for me, also a re-acquaintance with the beauty and simplicity of the Georgia font!

Lunch was a great BBQ feast outside - great food, fun conversation with other attendees at the table, etc. One guy I met at lunch had just retired from Cisco and has started two blogs - one focused on senior dating (!) and the other on learning ballroom dancing. Isn't the web - and blogging - amazing! ;-)

After lunch, XPLANE's Dave Gray did a great job putting the web into perspective (long tails, land of the giants, etc.) Unfortunately, he ran out of time way too quickly - but what he was able to present was great stuff.

The last presentation I stayed for (I was steadily fading all day due to an increasingly stuffy head) was Philip Greenspun's - it was the only minor disappointment of the day for me. He reviewed a few of his articles, why the weblog was a cool innovation over conventional print media, etc. - but there wasn't much new or provocative insight in his presentation. For years, I have had a high regard for his contributions to the web, photography and computer science education - but still came away somewhat disappointed. Probably just an off-day for him?

I came away impressed with the breadth and scope of the WordPress community - how it's grown, it's commitment to open source (during Matt's State of the Word presentation I almost felt guilty for having purchased a premium theme for PaymentsViews!), and its plans for the future. Wish I could have hung in there for the last three sessions. Meanwhile, here are the #wordcamp tweets from today on Twitter.

Added Slimbox2 to This Blog for Better Image Presentation

While sitting out on the back deck this gloriously beautiful Spring afternoon, I started looking at a new Mac backup utility named Persistance.  I noticed that its screen images had that nice feature where when you clicked on them a new window would open showing a larger image against a black background.  This effect has been around for some time - but seeing it again motivated me to add it to this blog - so I did.

I chose Slimbox2 by Christophe Beyls - the latest optimized version of the original Lightbox2 Javascript package by Lokesh Dhakar.<p>Installation consists of creating two new directories (css and js) and uploading a total of six files.  You then need to modify the head portion of your templates to include the Javascript and CSS files along with Jquery.  

Once those additions have been made to your templates, you can then start using Slimbox2 on your images - by including rel="lightbox" in the reference tag.  You can see the effect in action by clicking on any of the three images included in this post from my photo/painting outing with Don Neff.

Here's another example - using a thumbnail of Don which, when clicked on, opens up to the larger image. Pretty cool!

There - now I've documented the change so when I try to remember how to use it again I can find this post easily!

Creating an iPhone-friendly Home Page for a TypePad Blog

Over on our Payments News blog, I've created an iPhone (and iPod touch) friendly version of our home page. The URL to view the iPhone version is http://paymentsnews.com/m. Here's more about how I did it.

Basically, the process involved building on a basic template that the Six Apart folks have provided in one of their support items titled Tip: Creating a Mobile Friendly Weblog. We use TypePad's Advanced Templates for Payments News so the process involved creating a new index template just for the iPhone page. The article contains the basic version of the index template that I started with.

Here's what I ended up with:

<html> <head> <meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True"> <meta id="viewport" name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" /> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://www.paymentsnews.com/images/apple-touch-icon.png" /> <title>Payments News - Mobile Version</title> <style type="text/css"> body { margin: 0; margin-left:5px;margin-right:5px; font-family: "lucida grande", "lucida sans unicode", "lucida sans", lucida, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: small; } h3 { margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em; } p { margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom: .5em; } .entry-content { font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; } * { margin: 0; } <p></style><br /> <script type="application/x-javascript"></p> <p>if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') != -1) {<br /> addEventListener("load", function() {<br /> setTimeout(hideURLbar, 0);<br /> }, false);<br /> }</p> <p>function hideURLbar() {<br /> window.scrollTo(0, 1);<br /> }</p> <p></script><br /> </head></p> <p><body><br /> <div align="center" style="border-bottom:1px solid #d0d0d0;"><br /> <img src="http://www.paymentsnews.com/images/PN-300x48-v1.jpg" width="300" height="48"><br /> <p style="margin-top:-3px;">iPhone edition from <a href="http://www.glenbrook.com">Glenbrook Partners</a></p><br /> </div><br /> <MTEntries><br /> <MTWeblogPostIfShow field="date_header"><br /> <MTDateHeader><h3 style="font-size:small;"><$MTEntryDate format_weblog_date="1"$></h3></MTDateHeader><br /> </MTWeblogPostIfShow><br /> <div class="entry" id="entry-<$MTEntryID$>"><br /> <MTWeblogPostIfShow field="post_title"><br /> <h3 class="entry-header" style="font-size:small;"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></h3><br /> </MTWeblogPostIfShow><br /> <div class="entry-content"><br /> <div class="entry-body"><br /> <$MTEntryBody$><br /> </div><br /> <MTEntryIfExtended><br /> <p class="entry-more-link"><br /> <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#more"><$MTTrans phrase="More"$> »</a><br /> </p><br /> </MTEntryIfExtended><br /> </div><br /> </div><br /> </MTEntries><br /> <!-- Start of Google Analytics Code --><br /> Add your Google Analytics code here...<br /> <!-- End of Google Analytics Code --><br /> </body><br /> </html><br />

To use the template, in the Design tab of TypePad you select "Create new index template", give it a description name (I used "PN iPhone" and an output filename (I just used "m" for the filename). Then paste the code in and hit save. Next, go to the URL of your blog and add "/m" (or whatever you used for the filename) to the URL and hit enter. You should see the new page. If it's there, give it a go on your iPhone!

Note that if you use this template, be sure to add your own Google Analytics code near the end of the template.

I did this in a hurry this morning - so it's not pretty in terms of using a separate stylesheet, etc. I've also got some font settings embedded in the code that I need to clean up when time permits.

The Javascript that's included is a little trick I saw elsewhere that scrolls the Safari window up such that the URL bar is hidden when the page first opens. That helps put the most content onto the small screen of the iPhone.

Yours Truly Cranking Away at My MacBook Pro

Carol Coye Benson, one of my partners who manages our Glenbrook Payments Boot Camp program, hired a local professional photographer (Damon Tarver) to come into our session two weeks ago in Santa Clara. Tonight, she sent along the photos - wow, Damon did a wonderful job!

One of his pictures captured me in a very typical pose - cranking away on my MacBook Pro, probably updating either Payments News or this blog in real-time! This particular photo came from his EOS-1D Mark II shot at f/2.8, 165mm focal length at 1/100 shutter speed.

As an aside, he was a Canon shooter like me - with Canon EOS 1's - both an EOS-1D Mark II and an EOS-1D Mark III. I had fun talking to him at our wine and cheese reception (we do this at the end of the first day of the Boot Camp to unwind and let everyone get to know each other).

The Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens that he used to shoot me is truly an amazing lens - see my Rick Steves' Iran photos for more examples.

Turns out we are both sort of lusting after the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Zoom to round out our lens kits!

Learning about Startups

Here in the heart of Silicon Valley, startups are part of the day to day evolution of business. In my consulting practice, we're fortunate to meet with entrepreneurs regularly as they test out their ideas on grey beards like me (beware of my "tyranny of the experts" rant!)

Two good friends of mine are in the midst of pursuing new startups - one (Paul Rosenfeld) as an entrepreneur building a mobile marketing company called FanMinder. The other (Marty Zwilling) is building a consultancy called Startup Professionals that works with entrepreneurs and helps them move more quickly to success.

I first met Paul several years ago while he was at Intuit. Marty and I worked together many years ago at IBM and, more recently, at First Data. Both Paul and Marty are now actively blogging about their startup experiences - and it's been fun for me to read and learn from their writings.

The Morning Constitutional Walk

As I mentioned over the holidays, Chris Gulker, Lily and I have been walking a 1.5 mile loop (Chris G'mapped it) around west Menlo Park every Tuesday and Thursday morning - before we sit down for a good cup of Peet's coffee and discuss the solutions to the world's problems. It's sort of like The Capital Gang minus 1. Too bad more folks don't agree with our solutions!

Seriously, though, it does seem like we always do learn something in the process!

Walking with Chris

At this time of year, even minor milestones seem especially relevant.

For the last six months or so when work schedules cooperate, Chris Gulker and I (and Lily too!) have been doing a twice a week, early morning, 1.5 mile walk (Tuesday and Thursday mornings) around Menlo Park - and really enjoying ourselves!

Before we started walking, I had been following Chris' blog for the last couple of years - and we finally met for breakfast (at a local favorite - Ann's Cafe in downtown Menlo Park) over a year ago. For years, Chris and his wife Linda were both active early morning joggers - and Linda continues her blogging about her daily jogs!

Chris is the pro photographer of our early morning walking trio - and he's the active blogger too! He almost always brings one of his cameras along and gets some great shots! I've very much enjoyed our morning chats about photography, politics, and technology. And, Lily enjoys both getting her exercise at the start of the day as well as our post-walk chats (and snuggles!) over coffee!

This late December morning, we took our time getting started on our regular Tuesday morning walk - and we had some great fun chatting about things afterwards. 2009 should be a great year! It can't get here soon enough!