Posted by Lyle Troxell Tue, 05 Sep 2006 22:44:21 GMT
A while ago I mentioned Flock at the time it did not become my default browser, but now it has. I am making the switch today. I like the additonal features of clean integration with my blog, flickr and with del.icio.us. Let's see if it's stable enough for me to stick with it.Posted by Lyle Troxell Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:07:00 GMT
In part one of Building GeekSpeak.org I explained that we have a content management system that uses a layer of XML. But hand editing XML is a pain. HTML, generally a form of XML, is also kinda difficult to edit by hand, that’s why the blog world has adopted markup. A comon form of this sort of markup, which I use in this blog, is Textile. Generally this allows a user to use a simple text format that is translated to html. Miles Elam whipped out some Java and made mText, a markup that transforms to our SimpleDoc xml format.
Read more...Posted by Lyle Troxell Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:16:00 GMT
For GeekSpeak each show page has a title, an abstract with teaser, and content. The content is optional and we normally use it to add information about the show: guest bio, news links, questions and answers, and other things addressed durring the show. For a while now I have wanted to add comments so that multiple people can add content at the same time. This would mostly take place durring the show.
Read more...Posted by Lyle Troxell Thu, 01 Jun 2006 23:05:00 GMT
I have a Nikon D70 and just programmed my “X10 8 in 1” remote to release the shutter. The code I used was for a Sears TV: code 079. (holding SET UP until led stayed lit, hit TV and then entered 079 – then the power button released the shutter.) Make sure your D70 is set for remote mode.
Posted by Lyle Troxell Fri, 07 Apr 2006 04:19:00 GMT
A list of the free applications that I must have on Macintosh OS X.
Read more...Posted by Lyle Troxell Thu, 23 Mar 2006 18:20:21 GMT
Flock is a free, open source web browser. ...we’ve started with integrating tools that make it easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you.
I heard about Flock months ago and my first thought was "forking firefox’s code base is a bad idea", but I just fired it up and it is a wonderful experiance. Flock is a modification of FireFox that extendes the browser to be a fairly robust web editor. Flock uses web APIs to give a user a client application that for multiple web applications: Flickr, Blogging and other "Web 2.0" services.
I think Flock is a wonderful take on giving editing tools to a user.
<!technorati tags: blogging, flock, Web 2.0
<!Posted by Lyle Troxell Mon, 13 Feb 2006 06:52:00 GMT
In 1999 Sean Cleveland and I launched a little online magazine called PCExtreimist.com. The same week that it launched I started wworking for a Radio-Station website company, Feed the Monster, where I met Miles Elam. XML was the cats meow then, and Miles and I saw it’s “perfection” esp in the separation of content from layout/design. Feed the Monster was all about good design and shared content about the music industry… great looking, high-profile, radio station websites with shared content. The company tanked. Content Management is hard.
Read more...Posted by lyle Sat, 13 Aug 2005 08:15:09 GMT
Like many others I am extreamily frustrated by Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 export features. The Organizer (only in Windows version) alows you to do some great management of collections of photos and of hierorical keywords. It starts out with multiple first level Keyword groups; People, Places and the like. Each of those top level keyword groups gets a unique icon. In each of those groups you can have more keyword groups or individual keywords. And these keywords can have thumbnails assigned to them. For example in my People master folder, which has a person icon, I have my imediate family as individual keywords; Wyatt, Daria, Gwendolyn and Lyle. I also have a hole bunch of sub folders; Geeks, Family – Troxell, Family – Sterlin, Family – Byrd, Wrights, UCSC, and many many more. Each of those folders has sub folders or indevidual keywords with thumbnails. So – now I can drag a person’s keyword icon onto an image (or multiple) and assign the keyword to the photo. It is fantastic. Oh – and if I want to find all of the Photos of my son, I just click on the checkbox next to his keyword thumbnail… presto. And you can do that with any keyword or keyword group/folder. But there is a catch. After you get in the 12,000 photos and above range the application starts taking 30 seconds or more to assign a keyword to a photo. Being the Geek that I am I decided to try and get to the bottom of this.
I found that Photoshop Elements 3 uses an Access database file and ODBC to read and write to it. I don’t think there is an easy way to make the app more efficent, but there might be one: you may be able to determin the ODBC name it is trying to use and hard code that to a better database… MS SQL for example. But this would probably be… well practically not possible. The route I went was “get far away from this app”. But I want my data. So I opened up the Access file and tried to grock the relational structure. Big problem… I can find the groups and keywords and how the keywords are assigned to the groups/folders… all of that has fairly understandable relationships. The problem is that there are no references to the acutual photos. Well there are some, but none that map to any of the keywords. I think the app does something special with this album file that acces does not get… or I don’t know access well enough to pull the data out.
Status: I can get the keyword structure from Access. I just need to do some exports and the throw it into a better database (open source). And I can have Photoshop Elements 3 Organizer write the keywords to any jpegs I have. (it can write exif data to jpgs, psds and tiffs). And then all I have to do is write a perl script, or some such, that will read in the exif and find the keywords in the hierctical keyword structure… I’m thinking a RubyOnRails app for viewing and such. But here is the rub. I have about 10,000 photos in Elements Organizer that are in RAW format, specifically Nicon Raw (NEF). PSE 3 Organizer can not write to NEF and will not even use the new Adobe RAW converter to go to NEG files. So the work around that I am planning: export all of my RAW files at JPEG. And do the grab thing I had planned. So.. that is my goal. I’ll post my progress…. oh and my long time goal is to have all of my photos online as small files (max 800×800) and an easy way to add meta info to them and to get the RAW file. Yeah, that should be a breeze.
-lyle
Posted by lyle Tue, 10 May 2005 03:33:51 GMT
A while ago David Lawrence contacted KUSP and said that he wanted to speak with me about the name “GeekSpeak” and how I use it. I looked up his trademark on “GeekSpeak” and started to freekout.
My basic thought was that I would have to change the name of my show, and Geek Speak is a great name. Needles to say, I was bummed. I talk to David on the phone and he says he likes my show and doesn’t want us to stop using the name. Whew.
So then today David asks me to be on his show. I’m on hold right now to go on air. Like many of my own guest I am a little nervus.
Posted by lyle Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:39:39 GMT
Marina Troxell, my sister, is loosing her kidney, this will be the 4th she has lost in her 29 years. Her husband, Chris, was going to donate one of his to her, but the last test came up positive for rejection. So it’s a no-go. Chis has rejected Marina as well; they just filed for divorce. They have two small children, Ariana, 3 and Arora age 1. Chris says he just doesn’t love Marina, maybe never did. And blam! Just like his father, he is off. And Marina is left alone with two kids and a masters degree in operatic voice, looking for a kidney and a way to support her children.
