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I caved.

I had to have __it__. I could only find one place online that had it in pink, and since last night, blue and green sold out, and only pink was left. So I jumped on it.

I’m such a SUCKER for cameras. I just really wanted a “mini DV” that saved to a flash card. I have a “real” camcorder which is small for what it is, but it’s still bulky and saves to tape so then I have to move over to M’s Mac and boot it up and “capture” the video (sit and wait while it plays the whole tape).

Believe me, if I ever want quality video, I’ll use my sony HC-20, it’s a wonderful camcorder.

But, for fun, for around town, for from-the-hip shots of wierd old people in the mall, (reminescent of pencam photos), this will be great.

Pink’s the color I wanted, so I’m happy that pink was still available.

Well, this weekend we’re going to have an ebay-fest, put a bunch of stuff up on ebay and make a few bucks (to kinda offset the guilt).

UPDATE: It won’t arrive until a week from Monday.

I think about this alot. I keep meaning to blog about it. I’m not sure I’m in the mood to talk too much about it just now. But I often wonder about this.

If one is female, and she rejects almost all traditional female roles, but is not gay, and is not attracted to the opposite sex, than what is she? I sometimes think there is some third gender, and I’m it.

All my life, even as a child, I did not fantacise about growing up and getting married. I did not talk about a future family or having kids. As young as early grade school I could be heard saying “I’ll never get married.” My whole life I was against having kids and getting married.

I always hated dresses and heels and have never worn makeup.

I see these shows on Discovery Health, and even read books about people who were born one sex but grew to reject it.

I don’t want to be male. But I don’t want to “be female” either. At thirty-something, I still don’t want kids, I recoil when people ask me to hold their baby, I cringe as crying babies, I won’t wear makeup and at this point I totally refuse to wear a skirt, dress, or panty hose.

I’m even skipping periods now by continuously taking the pill. (“Die, uterus, Die!!!”) I’m so deathly afraid of accidental pregnancy that I’m going to start taking monthly pregnancy tests because with skipping periods, I’d never know I was pregnant until it was “too late”.

Maybe I’m a feminist? I don’t think so. But… I don’t, and have never, felt totally female. But I don’t feel male either.

I’m just… weird I guess.

I know I can’t be the only one who feels like this though.

*shakes head* I’m a freak.

So I’m halfway through moving all my photography off my web server and over to fotki.com. It’s taking a while. It’s not hard, nor is it a huge job, it’s just mind-numbingly boring. So I do about 10 galleries a day.

Recently I realized a problem with what I am doing. By moving my images off of my web server where I have meta tags in the html as well as a robots.txt file to deter search engine bots, and putting the images on a photo site, I’m opening myself up to the images being catalogged by search engines like Google Images. When people find images via search engines like that, they tend to act like the images are public domain, and mine aren’t.

I may decide to password-protect the folders and maybe even put the password in plain view. Doing this would deter search engine bots, but still allow people to view the images.

See, the problem with Google Images and other search engines catalogging images alone, is that when people then do a search for, say, “pink flower”, the search engine then serves up your photo without the website that surrounds it. Yeah, the user can click to see the website, but most don’t. Most just download the photo for their own use, i.e. steal it. So even if I have “Do not steal my pictures!” all over my website in red text, people will never see that part.

But allowing people on fotki.com or flickr.com to view my images, the viewers are most likely other photographers who understand this and wouldn’t just steal my images. No, not every fotki.com or flickr.com user is honest, but most are of the same mindset when it comes to how photos are to be shared (for viewing enjoyment, for feedback, not for stealing).

My philosophy may be wrong, but it’s worth a try.

I don’t know yet, I have to think on this one a while. Well, most of them are low-res enough (small enough) that even if someone did steal an image, they couldn’t do much with it, not even makea 4×6 print out of it.

Today is my last day of physio on my feet. I’m not 100% better, but I’m almost there.

I am in the process of moving my photo gallery off my web server and over to fotki. I’m also copying some of my best photos to flickr because I like participating in that community over there. But it hit me recently that now that the photos will be at fotki and flickr, I’m opening myself up for my images to be catalogged in google-images, a place where people seem to think that all images are steal-able. When they were on my server, I had a robots.txt file and meta tags keeping search engines out of the image folders. Now that I’m halfway done moving everything over, I’m realizing the flaw in it.

Idunno.

Most images are too small to DO anything with, it’s not like anyone can make prints and sell them. But still… it bothers me.

Yesterday I felt sick to my stomach. I think it’s cuz the doc doubled the dosage on my happy pills. He said I’d feel nautious when I started them, so maybe it’s the same thing if you double them. I hate that feeling.

The neighbor’s father died, and so I’m housesitting/petsitting (cats, hamsters). They said only go over every other day, but so far, except for one day, I’ve been there every day. Last night M realized that one of the hamsters water bottles was on the floor. I’m SURE it wasn’t like that 2 days ago. We put it back and the poor thing never stopped drinking. I’ll be SICK if that hamster dies. I don’t know if their kid left the bottle on the floor before they left and I didn’t notice (which would mean fri, sat, sun, mon, tue, wed with no water), or if it fell off a couple days ago. Lots of things are appearing on the floor, I am SURE that their cat is knocking stuff off shelves and dragging stuffed animals down the hallway, so maybe he was on the cage and knocked the bottle off. I hope the hamster doesn’t die. I hope he’ll be ok.

Vimeo is an up and coming site for storing and sharing video clips. It’s not open to the public just yet, but I managed to get a beta account and I have to say, I’m quite impressed. I can’t wait until this site grows and offers more features and allows the general public to join. It’s like flickr, but for video.

Remember the Infinite Cat project I mentioned earlier?

Now there is an Infinite Flickr Project, and I got in during the early stages. Here’s hoping that this takes off like the Infinite Cat did. It’s fun! Go create a free Flickr account and join in the fun!

Yesterday was hectic. Had a doctor’s appt in the a.m., and then phyiso in the afternoon. In between I had lunch w/ mom, so that didn’t really leave enough time to go back home. I hate those days where all I do is run around.

But in a way I’m glad the doctor’s appt is out of the way. He upped my happy pills to a dose that is more average. Apparently I was on a low dose, and he fully expected me to react the way I did and was anticipating raising the dose. So I’m glad that I’m reacting as expected.

I also had a talk w/ him about something that happened last time I was at his office that was really bad. Some of the nurses were acting very unprofessionally, talking about me and my embarassing problem in the hallway so loudly that I (and god knows who else) could hear right through the closed door.

I told him about this and he was not only very understanding and kind, but informed me that this particlar nurse had already been fired for doing just as I was reporting. Apparently she did that alot, and she’s now fired fired fired. Good. Bitch.

My doctor is really great. Never rushes me, never seems in a hurry, is real kind.

I continue to be exhausted all the time. The doc gave me some pills to help me get to sleep, since I don’t have trouble staying asleep, it’s just getting to sleep. They last 4 hours. Well, last night, exactly 4 hours after taking the pill, I woke up and had trouble getting back to sleep for the next two hours. *shakes head* I’m a freaking basket case, man. If that keeps happening, I’ll have to call and ask for a pill that’ll help me sleep thru the night. These freaking pills were $50 AFTER insurance paid half the cost! For 30 pills!

Today was a day off for me, so I slept in, on purpose, and then lazed around and enjoyed doing nothing; surfing, watching tv, cuddling w/ dog. Around 4-ish I layed down cuz I was drowsy and when M got home, I felt even worse; more tired, just felt like shit. I think that sometimes when I nap, my blood sugar drops, and I wake up shakey, feeling the way that I do when I skip meals.

I need to figure out my problem. Maybe when I “feel drowsy”, it’s really my blood sugar declining and maybe I need to eat instead of nap? I just try NOT to eat though, because I’m trying to lose weight. Vicious cycle, vicious cycle. *sigh* Idunno.

I’ve moved some of my older photo galleries off my web server over to fotki.com.

Fotki.com is great, and so is Flickr.com. Both give you unlimited photo storage for the reasonable yearly fee. Flickr is more of a “photoblog” in that you have a “photostream”, or stream of photos. Not folders and albums. You can create “sets” but I find those to be a pain.

Fotki is more traditional. You have folders and galleries. So you can have folders by year, and then by subject, for example. Fotki has ftp, which I live by, flickr does not (yet).

Flickr has more of a community, where people comment on your photos, add you as contacts, invite you to groups… there are photo groups with discussion boards and “photo pools”. Flickr lets you blog directly. I can take a pic w/ my camera phone, email it to a particular email address, and in one moment the photo appears not only in my flickr account, but ALSO on my blog at the SAME time. I do this ALL the time with The Pug’s blog.

Both are cool, but in different ways. I like both. I store all my photos at fotki, because it’s straightfoward and organized, especially for the viewer who may or may not be very computer savvy. I put copies of some of my favorite photos on flickr to share w/ other photo nuts, to hear comments, to participate in groups, and I use it to blog photos.

Anyway, it’ll take a while to get all my galleries moved over to fotki, but it’s well on it’s way. Then I can use my web space for other things, like video. Although… there will soon be a place like flickr and fotki but for video: vimeo.com. Ah, the world keeps changing.

Today I got up early (10am, lol) so that I’d be awake when the neighbor came by to give me their key so I can house-sit.

Then we went to the dog park. The Eskie starts fights with other dogs and The Pug just wants to lay around and chew sticks. So that was not really fun.

Then we went for lunch, took a nap, and went to a hockey game. I took lots of pictures but haven’t downloaded them from the camera yet. My new laptop doesn’t seem to see cameras that are supposed to show up as a drive. I have to figure out why.

Then we came home and went for almost an hour walk w/ the dogs. Then I watched “City Of Angels” and then M and I started to watch “What the #$*! Do We Know!?” but he kept falling asleep! I don’t want to watch it alone because he’d REALLY enjoy it, but he always does that. Falls asleep in front of the tv. Sometimes even at the computer.

*sigh*

It’s 3:20am and I’m not tired.

Flickr is crack. Flickr is CRACK! Flickr is crack!

You get on there, you can’t stop surfing good photoraphy. You can’t stop surfing the groups. You can’t stop surfing the tags. You can’t stop compulsively going through you own photos looking for good ones to upload.

It is SO addicting!

I’m dying to get a vimeo account. If there is an invite system, can someone please invite me? Thanks! /begging

(It’s like flickr, but for videos.)

More flickr coincidences:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/topic/12809/

One of many examples: A guy takes a photo of half a rainbow, then later while surfing flickr, finds someone who took a photo of the other half of the exact same rainbow!

This is old news to flickrites, but there are some neat coincidences on flickr, check out this thread:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matt/1424625/

From the thread: quote:

“Wait. Let me get this straight.

That is truly amazing. I am deeply impressed. Any one care to calculate the odds?”

Another neat Flickr meme:

“Desktop Show And Tell”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/desktopshowandtell/

I added mine today, take a look. Can you find it?

The time change is really messing with me. I’m not sure WHY it is. I mean, my bed time changes by several hours each night, and so does my waking time. I don’t have a set bed time or wake time. So why a one-hour time shift is messing with me so much is a real mystery.

#flickrWords .flickrImg { float: left; }

Tonight was the Linux Meetup. Find one in your area: linux.meetup.com Linux talk, tech talk, and food. Fun!

M and I are probably going to host a linux/lan party at our house in a couple weeks. An install-party, barbeque, etc. Should be some geeky fun!

It’s so typical of me to lay around all evening and then run around like nuts at night taking care of chores. M and I watched two movies (*) this evening and then around 1am I/we did laundry, put a small amount of laundry away, did the flea treatment on 3 of the 4 animals, did The Pug’s ear drops, pilled the cat (the tabby gets thyroid pills twice a day). Last night I chose this hour to change the litterbox and vacuumn around it. It’s 1:38am and now I feel like crap, tired, headachy, sweaty and I should be in bed but now I want to unwind with a cold drink and wind down for bed. I can’t got bed NOW or I’ll toss ‘n turn all night. I shoulda did the chores first and then the movies later… but I wanted us to relax cuz poor M did alot of work after work: went to the store, got dinner, made dinner, edged the lawn, walked the dog. He deserved to relax after all that.

Enough babbling, chat later. *Yawn!*

* The Grudge (sucked) and Goodbye Lenin (‘salright).

I have 83 Gmail invites to give out. Do you need one?

Email me at and let me know what NAME you want me to use and what EMAIL address you want me to send the invitation to.

I HATE getting wet dollar bills as change at the convenient store, especially when the person before me was the slimiest looking person I’ve seen in a LONG time. Sweaty, nasty, sweaty bills. Ick.

Man, we worked our butts off today. We slept in and then we went to Home Depot with The Pug and got tons of mulch, replacement bushes, and then we came home and weeded, trimmed, used the trimmer, mowed, mulched and much more. I’m wiped out but the place looks aLOT better.

Sing with me:

“I am such a flaming dork, doo dah, doo dah…”

All this time I have been comments and didn’t even realize it. My appolgies to you who left comments and were wondering why they weren’t showing up. I’m not used to the new version of MT yet so I didn’t realize there was a comment queue built in and that I had to check it to approve comments. I didn’t even know that I had comments waiting.

I promise to be more on the ball in the future.

Not much to say. Went to dinner w/ family on Thursday night, that was nice. Friday night we went out for Indian food (yum!) and then to TarJay. We were supposed to go to a pug meetup this morning but it was raining hard so we didn’t go. Now we are laying around waiting for word on the Pope, playing with The Pug, and trying to decide what to do with the rest of our day.