Chichipanguanorrea 3.0

Pictures from my trip to Medellín.

Sharing your pictures on the web seems like a very trivial matter, right? well I can tell you it is not that trivial. Here is my story.

Back in 2004 when I first created Chichipanguanorrea I chose Fotopic as the solution for sharing my pictures. The interface was ugly but uploading the pictures was very easy with a Java-based plugin. Unfortunately the free version of Fotopic has a limit of 250 MB which I reached a couple of years ago. Today if you ask me to rate Fotopic, I would give them a 4 out of 10.

Later in 2005 I created a flickr account and started uploading pictures. Since the free version of flickr has a limit on the amount of data you can upload each month and it only shows the last 200 pictures (the rest of the pictures can still be accessed through perma-links), I decided to use flickr as the place to upload ONLY my best pictures. I really like many of the features flickr offers: tags, a huge community, nice interface, geo-tagging, but the limitations prevents it from being the best option for uploading tons of pictures.

In 2006 I decided to try some options I could easily integrate with my WordPress blog: I tried FAlbum and Gallery but it was zenphoto who won my heart. I installed zenphoto in my blog and have been using it since then. It is really easy to upload the pictures and the galleries are created automatically. My only complain would be that including a picture inside a post is not so straight forward.

Today I decided to revamp my picture gallery after updating my blog with the latest WordPress distribution available last night. I’m between upgrading my zenphoto installation to the latest version which has some new features or trying NextGen gallery, a WordPress plugin that seems to be very popular among WordPress users. The good news is that I can try NextGen without removing my current zenphoto installation nor I have to duplicate my picture galleries.

Here are some examples of how NextGen works:

Test 1: adding a picture with the reflection effect

Test 2: adding a picture with a watermark

Test 3: adding a gallery

At this point I’m liking NextGen a lot, but I’m having trouble getting the pictures to show up. I think this is because I’m pointing to the pictures from zenphoto and the permissions might not be properly set up. I noticed that even in zenphoto I cannot open a picture file directly

Rocks path

Originally uploaded by Daniel Jaramillo



Today I decided to drive around Capital of Texas Highway / 360 and find neat places to take pictures of. That is how I discovered the Bull Creek District Park.

Still learning how to take good pictures. Check my latest pictures on flickr and leave some comments if you love/hate what you see.

Learning to fly is one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs.

Are you a really good brother or are you that stupid?

I must say that you have to be both, to drive from Austin to New Orleans by yourself to only stay four days (2 of which I spent driving). My sister went to New Orleans because The Acoustical Society of America was meeting at the creole city and I figured it was a good idea for us to meet over there. We stayed at a very well located hotel (The Chateau Dupré) right in the french quarter so we never had to drive anywhere. We walked the french quarter and the garden district, had good food at different places, visited the Lafayette cemetery, took the St. Charles Streetcar, had coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde and Hand grenades at Bourbon St.

Pictures available here.

I spent most of last week in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. The purpose of the trip was mainly to see the concert Me verás volver of Soda Stereo, one of my favorite bands ever. The concert was AMAZING! Check Marcos‘ blog for the chronicle and take a look at the official concert photos here and here.

Besides seeing Soda Stereo, we also went to the Fórum Universal de las Culturas 2007 at Parque Fundidora and saw the exhibition Isis y la serpiente emplumada (Isis and the Feathered Serpent), walked around the Macroplaza, went to the MUNE museum to see the Buddha: Guanyin exhibition, to the History of Mexico museum (my 3rd time there!), to the Marco museum to see the first Julio Galán exhibition after his death and to the Tecnológico stadium to watch the soccer game América vs Monterrey.

It was a great trip and you can see it by yourself.

Which one is your favorite?

Ana Laura Correa de la Lanza. (Testing flickr to blog functionatilty)

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Review of the flickr to blog functionality
Pros

• Easy one-step way of posting pictures in my blog.

Cons

• Picture size goes from 500px to 250px. As you can see 500px is too large for WordPress (perfect size is 400px) and 250px will be too small. Now I know why they do this: its because those are the default sizes for Small and Medium in flickr (click on a picture, and then click on the All Sizes option above it).
• No way to categorize the post from flickr

Last weekend was labor day holiday and usually different stores arrange sales. Half Price Books one of my favorite stores in Austin had all its inventory with 20% discount. This store carries used books, cds, dvds and even lps and tapes.

First I went to the photography books section and got my self a really good photography book that is currently in its 9th edition and sells for $84 at amazon. I payed $14 for the 7th edition. I also bought a smaller book called How to Photograph People for $3.

Then I went to the foreign language books and got my self two books in spanish Rumbo a la libertad y Halcones de la noche each for less than $5.

After that I went to check the music and decided to buy some Opera, so I grabbed Carmina Burana and a compilation of songs by Puccini and Verdi.

Finally and this is the most interesting part of my Half Price Books adventure I was looking at the international artists section and I found a cd from Almendra.

This is an argentinian rock band from the 60’s and Luis Alberto Spinetta was part of it. The cd includes the album “Almendra”, plus some singles. I think this is an album that you will even have trouble buying in Argentina, so the fact that the cd is in Austin is really intriguing. How the hell this cd got here? I’m probably never going to found out, but it is interesting to think about it. Maybe I should do something similar: sale my Cuarto Acto cd from Estados Alterados or Shampoo from Calle Silvestre, hide a note inside the cd cover and ask the new owner to contact me and describe what he thinks about finding a very rare album from Colombia in Austin.

Back in 2004 I bought myself a very small and nice digital camera Pentax Optio S4i as you probably already knew. For 3 years I’ve been taking lots of pictures and having lots of fun with my camera, but over this past 3 years I also realized how point and shot cameras are very limited and how SRL cameras can take gorgeous pictures. Photography slowly grew in me as a hobbie and I started getting interested more in the subject. Seeing the amazing collections of pictures available at flickr or looking at the pictures taken by friends like Johnny Kings or Niv was definately a motivator.

Anyway, thats a long introduction to tell you that I just purchased a new Nikon D40x digital camera with a 18-135mm lens and I’m really excited to learn more about photography!