Flickr is going well. I forwarded http://pictures.kokopop.com to our Flickr address so you dont need to remember a new thing. So far I have uploaded 1042 pictures taken from 1999-2003. I have about another 1500 to go from 2004 and 2005. I think.

I have been looking through the pictures and making sure the dates and the tags are correct. Some of these pictures are just hillarious. Remember how Friends, the TV show named their shows…”The one where Joey and Monica etc…”; I feel like these pictures should be named the same way.

The one where Ethan was flirting with the slutty girls in the bar.
The one where E&J were only wearing supermarket paper bags on their heads.
The one where Jared is a man eating chicken.

Memories. Ahhh. This is why we take pictures. To remember these things. I am going to make a DVD slideshow and send it to people. My only problem right now is getting the dates fixed up. They are all over the place.

I am pleased with Flickr.com in general. The capabilities are pretty diverse and robust. The only complaint I have (and of course, this is the one thing I would pick on) is the UI. There spread all kinds of features around the page in seemingly random fashion. I found some pretty useful features completely by accident. I think a more organized information architecture, putting the buttons and links in a more logical order would help.

The upload tool seems to work, but the tagging and sets features are sketchy. I am finding it difficult to keep my sets in orders. Basically, I want to organize the sets by year. Most of my newer images have time/date stamps but a bunch of the old ones do not. I need to fix the issues. Set management is not crystal clear how it works.

An example of a UI issue was when I clicked on a set, the only way to view all of your sets was to click Cancel. There should be a button called “Sets”, since these are the top level organizing factors. Additionally, tags do not seem to work as they are supposed to. I tagged lots of pictures, but when I go to “My Tags” they just aren’t there.

Overall though, this looks great. I wonder how long it will take Google to do something similar with Picassa. I tried Picassa by the way. Neat little program.

If you have not been invited to our Flickr page, please let me know.

First, here is the SNL “Chronicles of Narnia”. Ben Peters showed it to me. Pretty funny.

Ok some projects I am working on:

1. Rip CD’s to MP3 so we can get rid of the CDs. Maybe sell them to Amazon.
2. Burn all Lipka pictures to DVD Slideshow.
3. Set up Flickr.com pro account and upload our pictures (3 Gigs). Based on the raves of Rachel Luxemburg, I am going to try Flickr as our primary photo sharing vehicle. My only concern is privacy. I don’t think you can set permissions on it. I will see how it goes.
4. Still decommissioning the Exchange server. Only one more mailbox and I can take it down. Then I can try to install Windows Media Center 2005 and attempt to make a home-grown TiVo.
5. Help Katie to sell the kids car-bed and Missile Command on Craigslist.
6. Continue to test Gmail. **Here is what I did.** I set up my primary mail box on Network Solutions. Then I set the box to forward my mail to my gmail account. Then I set the Gmail account to send as glen@kokopop.com. So I am basically using Gmail as my personal web mail server. Very little advertising, and nice interface. I will update as I use it.

This song is just hillarious. I am copying the entire lyrics here.

Woke up quick at about noon
Just thought that I had to be in Compton soon
I gotta get drunk before the day begins
Before my mother starts bitchin’
about my friends
About to go and damn near went blind
Young niggaz on
the block throwin’ up gang signs
I went in the house to get the clip
With my Mac 10 on the side of my hip
I bailed outside and I pointed my
weapon
Just as I thought the fools kept steppin’
I jumped in the fo’ hit
the juice on my ride
I got front and back, side to side
Then I let the
Alpine play
I was bumpin new shit by NWA
It was “Gangsta Gangsta” at the
top of the list
Then I played my own shit, it went somethin’ like this:
Cruisin down the street in my six-fo’
Jockin’ the bitches, slappin the
ho’s
I went to the park to get the scoop
Knuckleheads out there cold
shootin’ some hoop
A car pulls up, who can it be?
A fresh El Camino
rollin’, Kilo G
He rolls down the window and he starts to say
It’s all
about makin that GTA
Cuz the boyz n tha hood are always hard
Come talkin
that trash and we’ll pull your card
Knowin nothin’ in life but to be legit
Don’t quote me boy, I ain’t said shit
Bored as hell and I wanna get ill
So I go to a place where my homeboys chill
Fellas out there, tryin to
make that dollah
I pulled up in the 6-4 Impala
Greeted with a 40 and I
start drinkin
And from the 8-ball my breath start stinkin’
I gotta get
my girl to rock that body
Before I left I hit the Bacardi
Pulled to the
house, get her out of the pad
And the bitch said something to make me mad
She said somethin’ that I couldn’t believe
So I grabbed the stupid bitch
by her nappy ass weave
Started talkin’ shit, wouldn’t you know?
I
reached back like a pimp and I slapped the ho
And her father stood up and he
started to shout
So I threw a right-cross and knocked his ol’ ass out
Cuz the boyz n tha hood are always hard
Come talkin that trash and we’ll
pull your card
Knowin nothin in life but to be legit
Don’t quote me boy,
I ain’t said shit
Punk-ass trippin, but it’s alright
Homey scored a kee,
he’s gonna fly
Punk-ass fly

The holidays went without a hitch. Everyone was happy. The boys had their orgy of sugar, fat, family and presents. They watched holiday stop-motion animation. They rode their new bikes, we played tennis. It rained and drizzled alot of the time. Ben, Darcie and Claire stayed over. Matt and Claire got along well.

Overall, a low stress and pleasant holiday weekend.

I got some shirts, a headset I am going to use with Skype, and a keychain. I got Katie a new canister vacuum cleaner and Netflix and a date on Thursday to see Pride and Prejudice at the San Jose Rep. (Babysitting included)

My head is filled to the brim with stuff. Making it hard to blog. Some shorts:
1. Vista is just not baked yet. I can’t even get it to work for 48 hours without crashing.
2. Windows XP 64-bit is just not “faster” than Windows 32-bit. And all my software doesn’t work.
3. I am debating installing Movable Type. It is a powerful blog editing program. I am not sure if I want to do this. Looks like it runs Perl MySQL and maybe PHP. Ok forget it. I am not installing this. Wordpress looks like the same stack. I would consider a asp.net version. Hmm, do I even have a database on that machine?
4. An alternative to http://pictures.kokopop.com. Flickr. For $25 a year, I could upload ALL of my originals to Flickr. Right now my pictures are not being backed up, so maybe this kind of service is a good idea. Plus this makes the bandwidth, not our problem. Although the pictures would be public. Is this a problem?

Other stuff on my mind, but this is enough for now.

A trip down memory lane.

• Our first Grainger UI. This the famous “first” global/local navigation site for a big company.
• Original Commadot.com
• The infamous Vagina site for Vday. And my personal favorite Flash intro with “Do Right” audio. Silly Koko thank you.
• GE Medical Systems. The template that saved the day.
• Christmas for Reader’s Digest. How two Jewish New Yorkers designed Christmas for America. Well, not quite.
• the Game still works! Wow.
• Our old homepage.

I love Web Archive. We should have saved copies of everything. What were the URLs of our Holiday cards? Anyone remember?

A dated, but good presentation about RIA using Macromedia products.

I still think Macromedia Flash is the best avenue to build real RIA business applications today. However, I see clearly the problem with choosing this technology. In many organizations, the engineering group dictates the technology used on the client-side. It takes alot of management risk and vision to demand an RIA from their development organization. Most management has not experienced real interactivity on the web (especially in business apps), so they do not know to demand it. It is a catch-22…Until the experience is standard, management of new web applications company’s will not demand the higher quality experiences.

Macromedia is working on the next generation of their Macromedia Flex product. This product is targeted directly at the engineering community. They are attempting to create a “Visual Basic” for Flash. The problem here is that Macromedia has no experience with developer tools.

Additionally, Microsoft is working on an alternative model called Sparkle. Sparkle, will allow development of RIAs. Of course, the output will be built into internet Explorer 7 and Vista. Of course, Microsoft will use it’s monopoly of the OS and Office to make Sparkle work better than Flash. Of course, they will crush Flash like everything else they have set their sites on. Of course, they will tightly integrate with .net. Of course, they are going to win this fight.

So that makes my original statement moot. Making an RIA app for today’s technology, runs the risk of being outdated within a single year. Better to use Sparkle and build for the future.

Overall, this puts the lowly UX designer in a pickle. We want to build rich UX applications, but we need a partner in engineering to meet us halfway. We need to have the technology resolved. Hopefully, this situation will not too much longer.

Need more time to buy gifts this year. I got something nice for Katie, but the problem is that Katie sees all of the credit card purchases in Quicken. I think that is cheating. I need to get gifts for other people too. We are both behind. The boys are quite a handful these days, full of energy and light. Sometimes those two aspects turn into fire.

In general, I am anxious for the future. I feel positive that my world will improve on all levels. It just will take patience and a positive attitude. Oh, and money. Happiness requires alot of money.

I found this cool “wait” icon. Nice.

Wikipedia has a wonderful explaination of the history and usage of puns.

Walter Redfern (in Puns, Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: “To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms“.

They explain the different varieties of puns. (Homographic , Heteronymic, Homophonic and Double-sound.

“The pun is mightier than the sword.” - James Joyce

“The eleventh pun always gets a laugh, even if no pun in ten did.”

Howard Stern is leaving free radio and moving his show to Sirius satellite radio. I used to listen to the show alot from 1990-1995. After meeting Katie, I started listening more and more to NPR. NPR is very rewarding and fills my head will knowledge that I cherish, but NPR does not make me laugh.

Stern’s show made me laugh at everything. I remember fondly, the entertainment he provided me, while driving for 2 hours to get to Epic Records for my unpaid internship. I remember sitting in my car mesmerized at some crazy thing that was happening. I think he has made a significant impact on the entertainment industry. He made it ok to be self-referential, to talk about your life and the world around you. He made it ok to talk about each other in a more frank and open way. He literally loosened the mores of our culture.

I am not going to get Sirius radio yet. It is just too much money for 1 device and subscription. I would consider it for $5 a month, but not $12. Maybe one day the money won’t be as significant.

Anyway, I hope that Stern is a huge success and that this marks the beginning of satellite radio penetrating the mainstream. NPR is still my radio source, but I will miss the occasional chuckle.