EPKPhoto's Tidbits

Last night I posted 42 of the photos I took at this year's Honors Ski Trip.  Every year, the RIT Honors Activities Committee plans a day trip to the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort.  Thankfully I came back unscathed despite my somewhat comical trips down a couple of the runs at Bristol.  I only took photos for a few minutes on the trip.  The rest of the time I was skiing or trying (ie., failing) to capture some decent video.  I continue to have an appreciation for skilled videographers as I stick to the art of still photography.  Enjoy the photos!

Apparently I've been running this website for four solid years now.  That's right, today, January 5th, marks the 4th birthday of epkphoto.com.  Every year this day comes around, and I feel like doing something special, but I never get around to it.  Well, this year is different.  Today I'm making my new photo gallery system live!  In the past weeks I have been working on building a new underlying infrastructure to manage my mounds of photos stored on this website.  So take a look at the newly redesigned epkphoto.com/portfolio/ to try out some new things.  Other than the layout, not much has changed from a user's perspective.  The fact that many photos are tagged and drive the tag cloud display is certainly new, but it is only a hint at what lies ahead.  Now that I have a better database-driven engine to manage my photos, in the future you'll be able to select your own favorite images, add tags yourself, view the most popular photos, and a host of other cool things.  In my usual style, all this is hand-coded, so let me know of improvements I could make as I go forward!  Enjoy 🙂

For the record, I'm back home in Virginia, and it was a somewhat humid and partly rainy day in the low 70s. That's quite a departure from the frozen tundra I left in Rochester (intentional exaggeration, of course 🙂 ). Christmas and my 21st birthday are just around the corner, so I'm looking forward to this week!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the concept of keeping a wallet in your back pocket a bit strange? Sure, my Dad keeps his wallet there, and so does Steve Gibson of GRC and the Security Now podcast (they brought up the topic of whether sitting on a wallet will damage an RSA token that is shaped like a credit card on episode #122). Personally, I would never be able to stand a lopsided rear end every time I sit down. Isn't it uncomfortable to have that lump under your buttocks (and only one buttock to make it even worse for OCD types) all the time? Anywho…I guess I'll just be a side pocket kind of guy. Maybe I should worry about more relevant things, like the fact that there are 12-18 inches of snow forecast for tonight and tomorrow in Rochester! In my past two years here at RIT, I haven't seen that much snow come down at once. We still have a few inches left on the ground from previous snows, so this could be interesting 🙁

After a bit of reading on the web, I'm pretty much sold on the still-in-development GM Chevy Volt. It looks like General Motors can't resist getting back in the battery-powered-car game, despite the outlash from the lousy way they handled the EV1 (watch Who Killed the Electric Car). Fortunately, GM's Vice Chairman Bob Lutz is telling the world that they are very committed to making the Volt a success. So, picture this: a car that runs solely on battery power for up to 40 miles on a charge. That's a great start, but the Volt revs this up a notch by adding an internal combustion engine (as GM calls it, a "range extender") to keep charging the battery and ultimately obtain a 640-ish mile range! Current plans have the vehicle showing up sometime in 2010 with a production run 12 times the number of first-run Priuses. This is certainly a car I'm going to be watching. For more coverage of the Volt, check out EcoGeek's coverage of the LA Auto Show and a series of interviews with GM execs on gm-volt.com.

Many people have heard the concept of "native species" as it refers to the plants in their backyards or the wildlife around their homes. I don't think enough people realize, however, the devastating effects that non-native species can have. An article on "The 5 Worst Invasive Species in the World" by Environmental Graffiti reminded me how bad the problem can become. Luckily, considering native species seems to be more and more common in landscaping projects. Some scientists are also having great luck replacing corn-based ethanol with cellulosic ethanol produced from switchgrass, a native Prairie grass.

As I said in a previous post, I want to post more often about environmental topics that I run across. To that end I have been following several eco-based blogs over the past few weeks. Quite often a story catches my eye, so in the future I'll try to post and comment on such items here. To get things started…at the beginning of November the U.S. Conference of Mayors held a summit on climate protection. Former President Bill Clinton gave an hour long keynote address highlighting work of his Foundation's "Clinton Climate Initiative" and showing our country's mayors that being "green" is good for business and the economy. He stressed that our cities need to work together on a local level to push sustainability and green practices as an example to the rest of the world (and to the US Federal government) that being green does not mean losing money. If you have the time (and Real Player installed…yuck), watch his address. I watched most of the speech and have to say that Clinton has not lost his touch for public speaking (of course he was good at RIT, too). I sincerely hope this makes a positive impact on the environmental considerations of our country's cities.

Another gallery on the site: photos from National Portfolio Day 2007 at RIT. This past Saturday a group of us CIAS Honors students sold concessions at the event that garners hundreds of visitors from high schools in the western New York for portfolio reviews. Our honors group was selling food, drinks, and candy to raise money for a trip to several cities in Europe this coming spring. We plan on visiting any alumni we can and studying culture and architecture in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest. In the meantime, it's exam week here at RIT. In just a few more days I'll be heading home for the Fall/Thanksgiving break. It has been a busy quarter, and I have plenty planned for the break…so not much will change 🙂

I just posted a new gallery of photos I took last weekend. They are of a surprise birthday party we held for my Grandma. To say the least, she was both stunned and overjoyed to see so many of her old friends and family come together for the event. As I noted in my last post, I installed Leopard last weekend as well. I have been running Apple's new operating system on my laptop and desktop for the past week. My initial impressions are quite positive, though I do have a list of frustrations that will be worth sharing when I have a chance. Look for that in the next week or so.

My primary Macs are now running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I performed a clean install on my PowerBook and an upgrade on my Mac Pro. I have to say I'm really digging the latest version of Apple's operating system. Sure, it has a few kinks here and there, and I'm still waiting on compatibility updates to a few applications, but overall this new cat is a success. Along with its heavily advertised new features, Apple made some significant improvements to the user experience that I think will make using the OS easier and more enjoyable for new users (which Apple seems to be getting a lot of lately). I'm trying to record my frustrations as I encounter them, so perhaps I'll have some suggestions for Apple in the near future.