Day: March 28, 2005

Categories
Burningbird Photography

The shop

The Shop: Update.

I installed both Coppermine and Gallery photo management software, and after playing around, I decided to stay with Gallery. Coppermine is nice, and a very clean interface. However, Gallery, with it’s themes and pages of configuration allows me to have more control over the interface.

I uploaded just a few test photos, but they won’t necessarily be in the collection when I’m finished. I have to also go through all the photos and decide which to display. Let me know if you want to help me go through several hundred photos.

My business model for the Shop is based on seeking revenue from many different avenues. I’m going to LuLu for a calendar–the Water Mills of Missouri. I may also do one on my recent Florida trip, and call it One Ticket Please (just like the book that is now making its way around from place to place).

For goods, I have a store at Café Press. It’s a hacked mess now, and the images haven’t been refined for their use — but it was fun to play today. That’s when I got the idea for the limited edition of Burningbird refrigerator magnets. Other goodies too. Not a thong, though.

I’m focusing on my Missouri photos, as I can’t help thinking a regional collection could be the best avenue for revenue. We’ll see.

Finally, at Tinfoil Project itself, in the gallery, I’m following a model that Bill Grant is using (yes, pretty Alley Spring photos); except rather than using email, I’m either going to connect in a Paypal shopping cart, or I may interface directly to OsCommerce. I think the PayPal solution is better, at least right now. OsCommerce is a big, complex app.

What I’m doing different from Mr. Grant is that I am providing a web page image for no charge — free for personal web sites to use as long as they provide a link back. The reason for this is to hopefully start generating interest in the work. A larger, high resolution image is then available for sale, for royalty free use by the buyer.

I’m providing prints through my local development studio, though I won’t be charging as much. I’ll also provide an option of a ‘photographer’ print: hand printed by me and signed. I know–aren’t I special?

I’m banking that my photos–not all, but some–are good enough. Or, at a minimum, you’ll all want one each of my limited edition magnets.

Suggestions, as always, welcome.

(And now I return to regularly scheduled writing…)

The link to the old Tinfoil Project photo weblog can still be accessed for now; but the weblog is going away. I’m replacing the photo weblog with a photographer’s How-To weblog, covering digital photography and tools. And in this site, I will be putting the Google ads back up, since the topic is so focused on photography.

The photos will be in the Gallery software, and once I redesign the new weblog, it and the gallery and the stores will all be linked from a main page.

I thought you all might find the progress–how the software evolves– to be interesting, which is why I’m pointing all these sites out now, even hacked as they are.

Categories
Critters

Girl Doves are from Venus Boy Doves are from Brooklyn

The weather has warmed enormously and all of the birds are out busy making new birds, including the mourning doves. In fact, my window is open and I hear one right next to my window, with that sad, soft, mournful cry.

This afternoon I opened the curtain out on to the deck, just in time to see two doves finishing their reproductive duties. The male dove flew down next to the female on the deck guardrail, and they both started preening their feathers.

Then an odd thing happened. The female started gently pecking at the male’s neck, rubbing her head underneath his beak. The male started to rub back, but then stopped and fluffed it’s feathers out and moved away from the female a step.

The female started again in a rather touching, intimate display of postcoital grooming. The male just looked at her, and again moved away.

The female moved towards the male and again started grooming him. This time the male ruffled its feathers a last time and took off, leaving the female alone on the guard rail.

I am not going to anthropomorphize this behavior. I am not going to anthropomorphize this behavior. I am biting my tongue, hard, with what I’m not going to say. I am not going to anthropomorphize this behavior.

Categories
Burningbird

Compromise

Most people liked the change to the serif fonts, but not all. So I took the Delacour route and have implemented a style switcher.

Hopefully you’ll see the default of this weblog when you load the page the first time. If you don’t let me know, or move to the bottom of the page and click one of the style buttons: serif or sans.

The style switcher does cause a very small lag in load times, which is why I didn’t want use it. But if some of you are having a hard time reading the serif fonts, the lag will just have to be something we live with. Some tweaking of the common bits out into a third stylesheet that is loaded automatically should take care of most of this.

update

Looks like everything is working nicely now and for those who want the sans-serif they now have that option.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Telling a story

Loren Webster has taken his new addictionfascination with PhotoShop and combined it with philosophical reminisces of cars he’s owned into a set of really lovely posts, beginning with this one about a boy and his Studebaker.

I like every form of writing I find in weblogs, being more interested in the person and/or work rather any specific type, but there’s a special place in my heart for writings such as this: works that add art or photographs or poetry or music, sometimes with asides from history or linguistics or philosophy; all mixed in, subtly, with personal views and a little personal history. It’s the type of writing I love to do most, and enjoy reading whenever the whimsy strikes any of you. Even within the technology writings, I like those that sprinkle humor and humanity among all the angle brackets and arguments of which is better: Part A or Part B.

But as Anil Dash wrote recently, someone somewhere will say this isn’t weblogging. And though I think we can safely say that not everyone loves Anil (”Just joking Anil! Truce!”), he’s hit it dead on when he writes:

One good sign that a community is maturing is that some of the earlier or more influential members start trying to dictate how it should be done. Use more bold letters! Don’t use comments! Insert more pictures! Whatever the rule, it’s generally being used to assert authority over the nascent community, or to defend some arbitrary choices that have been made and are now being questioned.

This came up this weekend in another context, circumstances and participants withheld to protect me, because the lord knows if I don’t watch my butt no one else will; and as usual it grates on me and saddens me because we put a great deal of our creative effort into works that shouldn’t even exist according to these people. Worse, to some of these arbiters of great weblogging, doing so demeans the seriousness of this medium, yada yada yada.

Every year there is a new crop of people going out into the world armed with formal concepts and rules about how this all works; and every year we then have to follow along behind, tagging the clean, careful concepts with the purple and red graffiti of revolt and trashing the rules like the anarchists we are.

I have contributed to a book on weblogging in the past, but if I were asked to write a “Weblogging for Dummies” book now, it would look as follows:

Chapter One:

Page one:

“Begin.”

Now I’ve just saved you all a lot of money, which you can soon spend on limited edition “Burningbird” refrigerator magnets. Collect as many as you can; trade ‘em with your friends.

And stop by Loren’s and share your own car story.