I got up this morning at 8:30 thinking that it was 9:30 so I got a good start on the day. I didn’t realize what time it was until after I had showered and gotten ready for church and looked at the clock and time had gone backwards. So, Min made me breakfast. She made croissant sandwiches with egg, cheese and fake ham. Mr. Humphreys even got up for a little bit to visit with us.
I have finally done the web log analysis for 2003 for Sheep Guarding Llama. I use the program Analog to do the analysis. I think that it is really intersting to see the data for the site for the year. So I posted the analysis to the site so that everyone could check it out. Here is the 2003 SGL Web Logs. I sure got a kick out of looking at it. The really cool part is to see just how many readers we have had. It is amazing how many people read the site everyday! It is very obvious which months I was getting busy and wasn’t able to update the site on a regular basis because the readership dropped off but as soon as I started posting again, it came right back up.
Min and I made it to church over at LaGrange with dad and then headed over to Leicester to visit for a little while with Grandma before lunch. When Grandma went to lunch we headed back to the house and packed the car so that we could drive out to Frankfort to visit with Min’s family. We went first over to Denny’s to get some lunch. I had a hankering for the fish and chips because they are the only place around that I know of that has cod instead of halibut and that is often what I am in the mood for. We got through lunch pretty quickly and hit the road east around 2:00.
We had a good visit. One of the main reasons for the visit was to pick up the wedding pictures that we had out there (fifteen roles worth!) and to get the wedding videos that Min’s dad had taken. We are hoping to get the pictures all scanned in (this will take a little while, my dad is planning on getting a film scanner and we are holding out for that since the quality will be better and it will be way easier to use) and the videos transferred to digital so that they will be available for download from our site. Eventually all of the wedding pictures will be over there. There are just so many of them. It took hours to upload the ones that are there already and there aren’t all that many.
We decided today that we really need to start using our cameras more. I still have my good Nikon 5005 analogue camera that I got when I was sixteen or so plus we have the Olympus Camedia D-460 digital that isn’t anything impressive but works well for what it is. So we took the Camedia along with us to get into the habit of taking it places and using it. I had purchased a 128MB memory stick for it not so long ago so it is able to hold like 588 images or so at the lower quality setting which is pretty nice. That is a ton.
We didn’t get home until almost 1:00 am so Min had to get straight to bed because she has a relatively early interview down at Keshequa High School in Nunda for subbing (not that they will ever call just like York, Pavilion and whoever else approved her hasn’t!) But it is good to get her available at as many places as possible so that at least there is a chance that they will call her. The real problem here is that there are so many out of work teachers that they are getting all of the substitute positions first. That makes it really hard for someone who isn’t certified to sub at all. I have a noon metting tomorrow over at the Omega Grill with my rep from the Yellow Pages. The funny thing is that he works in the same office as Leanne. He is meeting me down here in Geneseo because my car is still in the shop and I can’t get anywhere. We have to talk about getting Niagara Telecom’s ad into the southern area yellow pages. Right now, we are just in the Rochester one. So anyway, we got home late and I spent some time hanging out with the hamster because he gets lonely without me. So while we were playing I took some pictures of him because I know that everyone has been dying to see our really cute little hamster. So here he is! I hope this image isn’t too huge to download. Sorry if it takes forever.
It has been a long time since I put a photo in the dailies so I think that I am due for one. And it is by baby hamster so I want everyone to see him. He is such a sweetie. We love him so much. He still has not bitten anyone. He is the best hamster ever.
By the way, I know a lot of you out there work with digital pictures and feel that you have to buy expensive photo editiing software to be able to do anything powerful and so most of you stick with the awful free tools that come with scanners and cameras and stuff. I use the open source product called The GIMP, which stands for the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is one of the big three pro photo editing tools available today. And it is totally free. It is a really nice package. The biggest drawback is that it is not easy to learn to use. But, there are a couple of good books about it that you can pick up anywhere or through Amazon. But, I suggest that you give it a try. Get the power without spending the money. And the people who put the time into making it do it just for the appreciation that is generated from happy users. So go out and appreciate. You can download either the current stable version or the latest and greatest (currently 2.0 prelease number 2) development version, both for Windows, from HERE. So what are you waiting for?
If you do install The GIMP, you will need to first install the GTK library (which is on the same site) before installing The GIMP itself. Don’t worry, this is painless. Then just install The GIMP. If you are not running Windows XP, then you will need to download WinZip first. One of the really nice features of The GIMP is that it reads both Photoshop and PaintShop files so that you can work easily with people using the other major image manipulation programs. I am using the experimental 2.0 version because I like to live on the edge and see new features first. But I am brave and daring.
It is nice to know that the following is still in place even after a long week without updates. No sooner did I post this morning than Emily emails me something about the new content. Nice to know that we have loyal readers.