Web Development Conundrum – Photo Content Management Systems

This is going to be a very technical post but I’m looking for help here…

Can anyone please point me to a really great On-line Open Source Photograph Content Management System (CMS)?
I have a lot of photo’s I need to put up and I can’t seem to find a decent CMS designed solely to host photos, and NO I don’t want to use flickr and all that other Crap, I want something more… personal.

Anyway… if you know of one, please leave a comment.

Thanks.

M.

UPDATE: Found a great one… ZenPhoto, watch out for implementation soon :)

Technorati Tags: CMS, Help, Photos, Photograph

You Decide…

I had an interesting thought today… You know those people you have in your life who always seem to give you uphill every time you interact with them? And, every time you encounter them, you end up asking yourself “Great, how is —————– going to screw up my life today?”

Well, isn’t that a matter of perception?

We decide how “whoever-they-are” is going to make us feel and think at any given time. I’ve encountered so many people just feeling bad around certain people, and then feeling bad every time they think about them. Let them go, they are not going to contribute anything positive to your life so why bother with them.

Just a thought.

Technorati Tags: Decision

What Marketers Do.

We’ve stopped selling products. We Sell Idea’s, We Sell Culture, We Sell Ideology.
Try to think exactly what you are buying into next time you feel like buying a really good looking pair of shoes, that cool car, that new watch and even mundane things like soup, soap, toothpaste.

A lot of thinking goes behind the brands and what they represent when they “interact” with the consumer in the kitchen, bathroom, wherever.

And if you have some guys name on your underwear right now, this message is especially for you.

Ask yourself.. “What the #$%^ have I bought into?”

How much will it cost to buy you out?

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Brands, Ideology, Culture, ideas

Links 09-03-2008

35 Cool Gmail Hacks – how to Power-Use Gmail with its customised flexibility (for Firefox Users)
11 Resources for Learning Guitar on the Web – For the Start-up Musician
Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well – For Writers :)
The Shy Person’s Guide to talking to Strangers – for the Socially-Challenged

Have fun. Feel Good. Peace.

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Guitar, Hemingway, Writing, Shy, Sociable

Get Shot for Real: New Age Force-Feedback Gear

Remember when the Force-Feedback functionality had been instilled in game controllers, where the little touch-pad would shake in your hand… Well, this takes it to a whole new level. TN Games have a vest which hooks up to your console and makes you feel the gun-shots, explosions, finger taps, etc. How cool is that? Imagine playing Call of Duty with this thing and actually getting shot, this is incredible. I can imagine this technology being used for real simulation combat training, I don’t think that’s too far from the truth.

Apparently the vest also works with horror games and the like, where you can feel fingers crawling across you. That would scare the shit out of me, just the thought is making me shiver. Eww.

You have to admit that it is very cool gear though, Happy gaming.

The vest is available from TN Games for $169.

hat tip to Kolby

Technorati Tags: Force-Feedback, Gear, Games, Call of Duty, Shot

Star Wars Manga – Longer, Better and more Violent!

The Manga adaptation of the first three Star Wars movies is by far the best thing to hit Star Wars culture, ever. From the Star Wars Blog, we have a comparison between the Manga version and the original Marvel adaptation of Star Wars.

From the Star Wars site:

[I]t’s truly an unfair comparison to gauge how well Marvel Comics originally adapted the classic trilogy films against how Japanese artists did the same. The deck is definitely stacked in manga’s favor. For the Marvel adaptations, produced during each film’s post-production period, the artists had not seen the films — they were working merely from the script, with some key photography and maybe some concept art… Japanese manga has a much more flexible format and page count to accommodate a more deliberate and varied pace of storytelling. Since the Japanese manga versions did not come out until 1997, the artists benefited from years of studying the flow and dynamics of the movies.

It’s not just the problems of pacing and available space – while Marvel’s 22-page limit for each issue reduces the destruction of Alderaan to one panel, the manga spends six pages on the same event – but also of editorial restrictions: Vader cutting off Luke’s hand is shown in all its gory detail in Japan, but American audiences find a piece of machinery suspiciously in the way.

But as much as the manga adaptations improve on their American ancestors, they do lack the wonderfully overwritten exposition of the Marvel books. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when those words say things like “Then, the darkness swallows him. Deep. Vast. Unnatural in its totality. And with the sudden hiss of a lightsaber igniting… Luke finds it conceals far more than he ever dared imagine! wouldn’t you rather have the words themselves?

Need I say more?

Technorati Tags: Manga, Star Wars, Marvel

Amazing Environmental Architecture – Paris

Vincent Callebaut, a French architect, has plans to build a very post-modern looking Anti-Smog innovation centre which will serve as a super center of some sort where people can hang out and do arbitrary things like look at art, eat, meet, shop, etc. He plans to suspend the building above the Canal de L’Ourcq to remind Parisians to be ec-conscious and at the same time look really cool. The specs on the building are even more interesting…

- 2700 square feet of solar panels will produce enough energy to power the building and more.
- A structure coated is with titanium dioxide, called the Solar Drop, which reacts with UV rays from the sun that break down smog using photo-catalysm – a process which at the presence of light produces hydroxyl radicals and holes (h+), which react with organic materials and harmful gases to produce water and carbon dioxide. There is no additional pollution introduced in this purification process.
- Rainwater is collected from the rooftop for use in the building.
- A helical, 148-foot tall “Wind Tower” captures breezes coming across the canal and turns it into energy. Images by Vincent Callebaut

Link

Technorati Tags: Design, Environment, Photocatalysm, Paris, Vincent Callbaut