Roblog

We were at Glen Rose this past weekend for the biennial Roden family reunion.

As we were leaving Big Rocks Park after having played and waded in the shallow water, a man with a camera asked if he could take Elena and my picture. We were scrambling on the rocks, and I was lifting her up onto a large one. I repeated the feat at his request. He took another picture of Elena climbing on the rocks as well.

My "parental radar" never went off during this. Perhaps it was because the photographer asked me directly about taking pictures. Perhaps it was because he did look like he was taking pictures of the site rather than trolling for little kids. Whatever the reason, I felt fine letting him take a few Big Rocks shots of Elena.

He then gave me a copy of his card, and he asked about setting up a blog, once I told him I'd link to his site from mine. I looked at the site, Texas Outside, and it looks pretty nice. I'm not sure what he'd use a blog for on that site, but I'll email him to see if I can help.

We had an eventful Sunday. After the normal Sunday morning activities (church and yardwork), we caught a 1:10 PM showing of the new Pixar movie Cars. It had gotten mixed reviews (stunning visuals, but hackneyed plot), but with a G rating and the past Pixar films among my favorites, it was a good opportunity to take my daughters to the movies.

They liked it, I think, although they were a little squirmy towards the end. I thought it was much better than some of the reviews it has received. It was visually breathtaking (the race scenes are spectacular), and the story was entertaining. We'll own the DVD shortly after it is released (just in time for the 2006 holiday season, I should think).

After the movie, we stopped at Old Navy to get some light sweaters for the girls, and then to Toys R Us to buy a bicycle for Amanda. We had gotten a really nice girls bicycle from a friend, so we got helmets and training wheels on Saturday. The bicycle fit Elena better, so that became hers, and she loved zooming up and down the sidewalk on her bike. We got a slightly smaller one (already assembled) for Amanda. She picked out a My Little Pony bicycle.

We then went to Sweet Tomatoes for a early dinner. It was just before 5:00 PM when we left the restaurant. The girls fell asleep on the short car ride home. I carried them in and let them continue their nap on the couch. But at 7:00 PM, an hour before their normal bed time, they were both still asleep! I gave them the carry test: if when I carry them to their beds and they continue to sleep, I consider them down for the night. That's just what happened to Elena - she got 13.5 hours of sleep last night. Amanda woke up twice (at 9:00 and 10:00) but both times not for very long. She got nearly 13 hours of sleep.

Today, it appears that the pre-assembled bike was not assembled correctly, as the training wheels are too low, causing the back wheel to not touch the ground (we haven't yet decided if we'll ask for our $10 assembly fee back). I'll fix it when I get home from work, but I hope Donna was able to survive their enthusiasm for a bike ride (they were asking about it even before I left for work this morning). I suspect fixing Amanda's bike will be the first thing I do when I walk in the door.

I am really bad about uploading pictures to my website anymore. In the past, it has been because I have not been able to keep up with titling and putting comments on my photos in iPhoto, but at present I am essentially caught up with that. And yet I have not yet uploaded any to my website.

I have recently determined that this is because of how my online pictures are organized. It's all based on "collections", which are basically sets of pictures that are uploaded together. This made sense when my pictures were not managed by a database, since the pictures would have to be presented in a static HTML index page. But I would rather be able to upload pictures one at a time and have them available quickly on my website.

So I'm in the progress of changing my online picture presentation scheme to move away from collections. I'm thinking of transforming the collection idea into "keywords" and presenting the pictures primarily by date taken. This way, I can create a set of pictures with the same keyword (like "Glen Rose 2006") to be able to present them as a set, but also simply upload pictures with no keywords.

Look for those changes, and some new pictures, within a month or so.

Well, it didn't nearly take me as long as I thought. My design of my pictures page is complete. I'm really pleased with the layout, and it definitely encourages me to keep it updated more frequently. This week, I have uploaded 109 pictures, including two picture collections: Florida Trip 2006 and Roden Reunion 2006.

The pictures page now has three sections: a display of the latest 20 pictures added to the site, the most recent collection added along with an ability to select any other collection, and a calendar-like grid showing the number of pictures from each month and year available. These changes meant I had to update several other components, most notably the search page. I still have a few tweaks to make, but everything is functioning well.