EPKPhoto’s Tidbits

As I parsed through my various news of the day, I ran across this cool description and video of a concept for Firefox on a mobile platform.  The post is by Aza Raskin, the Head of User Experience at Mozilla Labs.  As you saw in my last post, I'm excited to move to a more powerful pocket mobile device (like the iPhone), so I would love for Firefox to be a part of that.  Watch the video…the concept is pretty interesting.

After a couple hours of politely arguing with multiple Sprint representatives a couple weeks ago, I was able to correct an error that extended my family's Sprint wireless contract for another year.  So, our current family plan will expire on our three phones by the end of this month.  That may mean I will be in the market for a new phone shortly.  Thanks to my impeccable technology purchase timing, it just so happens that a newly revised iPhone (the iPhone 3G) will be available in just under than a month from now.  Unfortunately, that would require my family to switch from Sprint to AT&T…so we'll see what happens.

Yet another year at RIT has come to an end.  After an adventurous time storing furniture in Rochester and loading my car to its brim, my Dad and I are on our way back home to Virginia.  Overall, my third year at RIT was an excellent one.  Now that summer is about to begin, I am ramping up for a 10 week experience working for the FBI.  In about a week, I will be moving again to Alexandria, VA.  From there I will be able to commute to FBI headquarters in DC and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico.  I am truly looking forward to this experience working for another goverment agency, which may eventually turn into a career.

I also have quite a few personal projects planned for the summer.  I want to make a couple of my web development projects publicly accessible, do some more remote work for NASA and the RIT Honors Program, experiment with all sorts of things on my Linux servers, and better develop my photo printing skills and choice of inkjet papers.

As promised, I have implemented a new design on epkphoto.com!  The home page is pretty much set for the time being, but many of the other pages have quirks that I will be ironing out over the next week or two.  Going from a totally dark, black layout to this new bright, white layout comes with a lot of changes, so I appreciate your patience as I fix everything.  Let me know what you think of the new look!

In a couple spare hours recently, I have been working on a total makeover of the visual presentation of this website, epkphoto.com.  The new design is nearing completion, so I felt it may be a good idea to post this little warning before I make it live.  So, in the next few days, don't be surprised if you come to epkphoto.com and the site looks totally different.  This new design will include a white background, so that will likely be the most shocking aspect of the change.  Most of the content will be in the same places, so don't worry about me dropping any sections or radically moving around pages.  Think of this as a simple visual refresh :).

This past weekend, I upgraded the server that runs this website to the latest version of Ubuntu, aka 8.04 Hardy Heron.  The upgrade was not without its flaws, but thanks to some significant planning and test upgrades on my part, I was able to pull it off with limited server downtime.  This experience was much improved from my last upgrade about 6 months ago.  Fortunately, the server is running smoothly now…you probably didn't even notice the change.  In the larger scheme, though, it looks like Canonical, the folks behind Ubuntu, are pushing hard to prove that their Linux offering can hold rank with products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise.  That makes me happy because Ubuntu has been powering my public web and email server for more than one and a half years now, and I do not see that changing anytime soon.

A man who needs little introduction these days is Al Gore.  I have been following his more recent efforts to give the world a wake-up call on the climate crisis we face.  Recently he presented his latest set of slides and motivational words to an audience at a TED conference in Monterey, California.  Please, no matter what your attitude toward climate change, take a few minutes to watch the video I included with this post.

If you had not guessed, I returned safely from my 10 day spring break leadership trip to four cities in Europe.  I have been editing my photos from the trip as I have had the chance.  Sorry for the delay, but to say the least I've had a lot going on lately ;-).  As I finish them, I am posting the photos in this gallery: CIAS Honors in Europe.  Right now, the first 2 days worth are there for your viewing pleasure.  Eventually, I hope to leverage the functionality of my hand-coded gallery system to include tags or descriptions under most of the images to give you an idea of what we saw.  The trip was amazing, so keep checking back for new photos to be added!

This is a quick post since I'm about to head out the door.  I'm going to be traveling in Europe for the next 10 days.  If you need to reach me, it will probably have to wait.  I will return on March 10th, and that is the first time I can guarantee I'll be able to check email and voicemails.  This trip is sure to be a blast.  A group of us from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences are going to Prague, Dresden, Krakow, and Budapest.  I'll be sure to take tons of photos and tell you all about the trip when I get back!  In the meantime, I'm going to be off the grid, so wish me luck

I have had a Canon PIXMA Pro9500 inkjet printer in my apartment since mid-January.  I am very impressed at the quality of this printer, and it has done its part to re-energize my desire to create prints of my photographs in addition to displaying them in digital formats.  A few weeks ago, however, the printer began reporting ink tank errors.  It started with the Photo Magenta and Yellow cartridges.  Eventually, the errors on those two cartridges would no longer allow me to print.  I called Canon's customer support center and after speaking with the representative for a few minutes, they sent me two replacements in a few short days.  Last week, however, the Green tank began reporting errors.  I called Canon again, and the representative arranged for a total replacement of all 10 of my ink cartridges.  That's no small replacement considering these buggers cost $15 each.  On both occasions the hold time was very short and the representative was kind and helpful.  Not to mention I found out on the second call that their support center for all of the United States just happens to be located in my home town of Chesapeake, Virginia!  Thanks for your great support, Canon.  The box of new ink arrived yesterday, and I'm back up and printing.