By working for free. Go figure.

www.melissaandtim.com … tell me what you think.

Brandon

Well, I don’t and I won’t. Not yet, anyway.

A flying dragon dude at the
Texas Renaissance Festival 2007.

First off, you have to install a new program, and then you edit and upload the photos from there. It takes your photos from one folder, and builds a gallery in another one: Default set for My Documents folder. So you end up with a big folder that controls the style of the album, the original photos, newly made thumbnails, and all the info about the edits you make to the photos.

Then you have to upload this huge folder (About 265 files for this gallery I created that had 35 images) … maybe it will get faster when I upload more albums later? Geez, I hope so.

The Jalbum registration process was easy enough, but it seemed to take me longer to edit my photos with the clumsy built-in editor once I started building my photo gallery.

And when I was done with it all, I didn’t like ANY of the built in “skins,” so I had to go and download a better one, called FotoPlayer. That one is flash based and super nifty.

But, some of my thumbnails were altered by another skin and it’s not so obvious how to change that now.

All in all, it took a few hours to do 30 something photos from last year’s outing to the Renaissance Festival. A big time kill: When using the program to upload to my new Jalbum profile, I kept getting an error message. So I gave up, and - apparently successfully - tried two different ways to upload it to my own Web site.

But, anyway, check it out.

First, here’s the version I directly uploaded to my Web site through my FTP program:

http://www.brandonmoeller.com/Jalbum/071110%20Ren%20Fest/album/index.html

And here’s the version that was uploaded to my Web site through the Jalbum program:

http://brandonmoeller.com/071110%20Ren%20Fest/

I think they’re the same. But after all this, man I’m tired. I’ll try to dig deeper into Jalbum later.

Click to return to BrandonMoeller.com.

Click to return to the Barefoot Drums of Houston working redesign.

It’s an exciting position that I am very much looking forward to. I start on Oct. 27.

For me, it’s kind of like a homecoming, since I graduated from the University five years ago after working for The Daily Cougar for most of that time and for the Journal of Classroom Interaction in the College of Education for part of that time.

Feel free to wish me luck on my new endeavors here, and to everyone I’ve met and had the pleasure of working along side at The Houston Chronicle: Thank You.  Keep in touch.

It was a blast.

On the road again with Kim and Brandon

So … much … outlet … shopping …

San Marcos River gawking

Check out 95 more photos of our trip here or see my 8 favorites - among other great photos of the two of us - here.

For Kim, the trip was a vacation from planning. Which meant there was no itenerary. So a day or so before the trip, the idea pops in my head that we should see my cousin Michelle and her husband Dan. So I e-mail her and plans are thrown together … but they were in no mood for pictures, because the day was also the first day they biked home from work in downtown Austin. They estimated the trek at 15 miles, mostly on a bike trail through Austin’s green belt … but Michelle said it was more brown than green.

Here’s an old picture of them anyway.

Michelle and Dan Bost, Thanksgiving 2006

Anyway, so we were going to see the Bosts, and their new house in Austin. OK, it’s three years old. But I don’t get out much.

Since it was a vacation without planning, we had planned to not plan dinner, and Michelle was going to treat us to her famous shrimp and grits. But as we were driving, Kim mentioned that Texas Monthly mentioned that Luling, Texas (pronounced “Lull-ing” … just kidding, Kim!) was home to two of the top 50 barbecue joints in Texas. So, we stopped and I bought dinner at what Texas Monthly said was one of the 5 best “Smokin’ Joints” in Texas:

City Market in downtown Luling

It turns out that when buying barbecue, you don’t need a pound per person. I know this because I bought four pounds of this stuff, and as a result, was eating it all week. What a tragedy! Nah, it was really good barbecue, perhaps the best I’ve ever tasted from an eatery. And, the smoke is still on my clothes from stepping into the smoke room at City Market. Yum.

Almost a week later: The last of the barbecue, shot at Kim’s house.

Also during our trip, we went to the outlet mall in San Marcos and the San Marcos River. I took lots of photos of everything I saw. Oh, and there was a wedding. So go check out the photos already.

]]> http://www.brandonmoeller.com/blog/2008/10/03/photos-san-marcos-for-the-weekend/feed/ http://www.brandonmoeller.com/blog/2008/09/06/my-custom-wordpress-themes/ http://www.brandonmoeller.com/blog/2008/09/06/my-custom-wordpress-themes/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:10:20 +0000 brandonmoeller http://www.brandonmoeller.com/blog/?p=95 Thought I’d like to share, so please find below the two themes I have recently created and extensively modified to match two Web sites I designed.

Barefoot Drums of Houston

-AND-

BrandonMoeller.com

I originally stumbled upon the ShareThis service by avidly reading Wired.com, which uses it. I used it a few times to forward articles to that certain someone, you know, to further affirm my geekness 2.0. When I first saw the ShareThis interface, I thought: How much is too much? I mean, seriously: All of the latest and greatest Web services just seem to be small variations on the same four-pronged theme: Post content. Share it. Comment on what your friends are posting. Repeat.

Of course, the only problem with that idea is that, thanks to the outburst of all these nifty services, everyone does the same thing a different way. Usually, compatibility seems to be the last consideration.

With ShareThis’ more-is-never-enuff approach, though, at least none of my readers can claim they were left out.

Amazing. And, that’s just the comic book they leaked to announce it.

Now, I’m not saying Google is the best thing to ever happen to this industry.

But, yet again, they just ratcheted it up a notch.

I am currently testing and extensively modifying a theme for my first-ever web design client, Barefoot Drums of Houston.

If you are new to my site, please understand that I am using my Web site as a staging server for my client, instead of testing live on his site.

Thanks for your patience.