Wedding Photos
We received our wedding photos last week. I selected some of my favorites and posted them online here. These photos are not of high enough quality to print, so if you want a print just let Ashley or I know and we’ll work it out. We paid for the copyright release, so we can have them printed anywhere. And if you are friends or family and want to see the entire set, let me know and I’ll give you a link to the master set. There are many great photos that I didn’t post, so if you were at the wedding there is a good chance we have a picture of you that you haven’t seen. You can also order direct prints directly from the photographer there, and the quality of the photo will be as good as you can get.
Our photographers were from Hawes Photography and Design in Blue Springs, Missouri. I can’t say how happy I am about the service they gave us on our wedding day and the quality of the photos. They did everything professionally and they quickly took away all of the nervousness I had about how the photos would turn out. They didn’t miss anything on our wedding day, and I’d recommend them to anyone else who needs a wedding photographer.
And while I’m giving out thanks, I also have to give special thanks to our Jeff Vaughn from “Two Guys, a Girl, and Some Speakers.” He went above and beyond what I was expecting. I’d recommend him to anyone needing a DJ, especially anyone that gets married at Longview Mansion. And everybody at Longview Mansion was great, too. The wedding went without a hitch or a problem.
Tags: [wedding, wedding photos]Why I’ll never use an iPhone
Ashley and I finally received a photo cd with our wedding photos in the mail, and I thought it would be nice if we could view the photos on our music players. I own a Zen, so all I had to do is drag-and-drop the photos from the cd straight to my player. I plugged in Ashley’s iPod expecting it to work the same way, but there was no directory waiting to take the photos. After fiddling for a while with the device trying to get it to show the photos, using help I picked off of Google, I couldn’t get it to work. As I gave up in frustration, my first thought was, “And you were thinking about using one of Apple’s phones?”
The iPhone has been out a while, and it is a very cool device. I think that the way it seems to wrap up what most people want out of computers and phones into a hand-held device is remarkable. It’s still made by Apple, though. Apple makes quality, thoughtful products that work well, but they all seem to require more “buy-in” than I’m willing to pay. Apple products seem to want me to do things their way instead of being flexible enough for me to do things my way.
The best example of this is the restrictions around the iPod and iTunes. I have a music collection that I highly value, consisting mostly of mp3 files with some wma files. Most of the music is ripped from cds, but some is purchased from eMusic, buymusic.com, the Yahoo music store, and Napster. I have them all stored and backed up, and I want to easily move this music to my music player. With most devices it’s a drag-and-drop process, but with the iPod I would have to convert some of it to Apple’s format. If I buy music from iTunes, that music is stuck in Apple’s format. If I choose to go with the iPod but later decide to go with a different music player later, I have to convert back out of Apple’s format into a more standard format. Maybe I’m being picky, but why should I have to waste my time converting and managing files? It’s 2007, why should I have to read a manual to figure out how to use a silly music player? Why can’t I drag-and-drop with the iPod?
I know that I could drag-and-drop with Apple if I decided to stick with iTunes, Quicktime, Mac computers, iLife, etc., but that’s what I mean about requiring too much “buy-in.” Even if Apple’s products are best today they might not be the best tomorrow, and I don’t want to invest any data into Apple-only formats that make it difficult to switch to someone else. So despite all of the iPhone’s cool features, I won’t touch it until I can use it without committing myself to using Apple’s other products.
I think that one of the best results of the iPhone is something most people aren’t talking about: the competition it will bring to the cell phone market. Companies that create cell phones are going to have to keep up with the iPhone’s features and price, and I think they can do it. In a year or two when I’m ready for a new phone, I bet I’ll be able to pick a phone similar to the iPhone but with a better price and features. Just look at the music player market. Earlier this year I purchased a 30gb Zen for $50 less than the 30gb iPod, and the Zen had a better screen, battery life, and compatibility with more music stores.
Tags: [apple]Eminent domain use here in KC?
This totally passed without me even seeing it, but eminent domain was used in Kansas City, Kansas to take over the Indian Springs mall. It seems like a classic example of how eminent domain is used. The government spies some land that it wants, so it uses eminent domain, its ability to “condemn” land, and the court system to force the owners of the land to sell the property for a low price.
According to the article, a new law going into effect this July will make these types of land grabs subject to state legislative approval. They got through ruling through in June, of course.
Tags: [No Tags]Website issues fixed
I just received confirmation from my hosting provider that my websites are back and everything is working correctly again.
Last week, I experienced a small spike in traffic due to the people reading my comments about the internet radio situation. I didn’t think it was a problem, but on Friday and Saturday my hosting account was temporarily suspended due to CPU use overages. The jump in CPU usage was beyond what would be caused from a few more hits. They moved my account to a new server, and the same happened. I’m responsible for the CPU usage my website uses, so for a while I thought I’d be forced to move to another host or give up hosting my own blog.
One of the customer reps I talked to said he thought my site was being exploited by someone. I hadn’t updated the software I had running my sites in a long time, and once I did the problems stopped. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that it had to be a fluke maybe even a problem with my software or the host. I just can’t imagine anyone finding a way to cause a CPU spike, let alone want to do it. Since everything works now and since I really don’t want to scan through my server logs or try to figure out what vulnerabilities my site used to have, I’m just going to drop it.
My old website frame wouldn’t work with the latest version of Wordpress, so I found a new theme that is simple and works pretty well.
Tags: [No Tags]Bye Bye Allofmp3!
Allofmp3.com, one of the internet’s biggest sources of illegal music, has finally been shut down. Another site that operates in the same way by the same company in Russia has sprung up to replace it, but the fact that something finally happened to Allofmp3.com is still good news.
For anybody who doesn’t know what this site is about, Allofmp3.com was a Russian website that sold songs for pennies compared to the prices offered by services like iTunes or Napster. Despite protests from music labels and artists that Allofmp3.com was taking their property, Allofmp3.com claimed that it was selling music legitimately under Russian law. Russia does not respect intellectual property rights, so I don’t necessarily doubt that Allofmp3.com’s claims were true. Still, they were selling other people’s music without permission. If Russia is ever going to be taken seriously as a country worth trading with, sites like Allofmp3.com can’t be permitted.
I see similarities between the allofmp3.com issue and the internet radio royalty rate issue we have in the US. I read allofmp3.com’s legal argument (since the site is now down I can’t reference it), and if I remember correctly they claimed that Russian law allows other organizations to set and collect rates for music, with or without the permission of the individual who owns the music. The owner of the music can contact the organization and get the money from the sale, but the owner does not have the ability to make the organization stop selling his or her music.
Sound familiar? It’s a compulsory license, like the one in the US that allows webcasters to broadcast other people’s music without their permission for rates that the owner never set. Now, there are differences between these two cases. The save-net-radio advocates want to broadcast music, while allofmp3.com sells music. And unlike the save-net-radio advocates, allofmp3.com sells music at rates that practically constitute giving it away. If one were to measure the extent at which both sides want to violate someone’s intellectual property rights, allofmp3.com would blow the save-net-radio people out of the water. However, the fundamental idea behind the two are the same. Both want to use someone’s intellectual property without obtaining permission, and both want to use the government to do it.
Tags: [allofmp3, internet radio]Mickey Mouse Martyred
A few weeks ago, a character on a Palestinian kids show, Farfour, became a national story. This character, who closely resembles Mickey Mouse, tells kids how horrible Israel is and how great it is to be a martyr for the Palestinian cause.
I thought it was terrible that anybody would take a popular character like Mickey Mouse and use him to promote such horrible ideas, but the show went further. On a recent episode of that show, Farfour is “martyred” by Jews who are trying to get Farfour to sell his grandfather’s land. The video can be seen on Little Green Footballs and the transcript on memritv.org.
Tags: [farfour, palestinians]Back online…
I’m back online, for now. I still don’t know the cause of the CPU spikes, but hopefully today’s changes will fix everything.
I had to toss the old site frame, though. This is the best one I could find without doing an in-depth search. I’ll need to edit it a little bit, but it looks nice and it fits my needs pretty well.
Tags: [No Tags]What Happened Here?
I’m trying to diagnose the source of the sudden spike in CPU usage my site has experienced the past two weeks. I’m in the middle of upgrading and configuring how this site works. I really hope this doesn’t take all day!
Tags: [google map]