Although I don’t look forward to doing anything about it (see below), one area of this site that needs some tweaking is the photos section. Currently, the photos page is a separate blog with templates created by Doug Bowman of StopDesign. What I liked about these templates is I could upload pictures from within iPhoto, but as I have gotten more involved in digital photography, I don’t use iPhoto anymore - I’ve moved up to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. And exporting from Lightroom to iPhoto just to export again to my website doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I have had a Flickr account for a while, but haven’t really used it for anything. While looking around for other alternatives to my current setup, I have narrowed my options down to the following:

• Flickr
• SmugMug - which I learned about from a WSJ article
• zenfolio - from poking around the DP Review Forums

All of three of these are hosted solutions - meaning the pictures don’t live on my server anymore, and I don’t really have a problem with that. Let someone else do the heavy lifting. There are existing Lightroom export/upload utilities for each of these as well - another bonus.

If you have any experience with any of these, please fire away. I’ll let you know what I finally decide.

As an aside, I have been playing around with the Aperture 2.0 trial, but more on that later.

Yes, the WFB post was the first one in a while, seven months to be exact. The standard litany could apply: I was busy at work and raising a small child left barely enough time to read what was going on out there, much less write about it. A four month trip to the Central Command Theater of Operations was also a contributor. And there wasn’t that much interesting stuff out there to write about, interesting to me at least

Even when I had the time, the drive just wasn’t there. Upon further review, it came down to this: after re-designing this site from scratch a year ago, the thought of having to create something with even a hint of HTML made me run for the tall grass. I was just burned out on anything related to “creating” anything for the web.

However, I think that spell has passed. Time to bear down and get after it.

P.S. I still don’t give a crap about the iPhone.

I was quite saddened to learn of the death of William F. Buckley, JR this week. I actually was snooping around the NRO site and happened upon the announcement in The Corner within about 30 minutes of it being posted. As I read numerous tributes to him over the following days, I reflected on Buckley’s influence on me.

My first introduction to WFB was Happy Days Were Again, which I bought when I was a sophomore in college. I had heard of National Review before then, but I would be lying if I said I was precocious 15-year-old reading his columns and signing up for Latin classes to be able to understand them. But that book was the start of it for me. As read more and more of him, I was in awe of the depth and breadth of his knowledge and in later years, I remember remarking to a friend, “I’m sure as hell glad is on our side.”

I did actually see him in person once. In the spring of 1995, during my junior year at Texas A&M, he moderated a debate between former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. As I was entering the auditorium, I walked right by him as he was exiting his car. He had a huge smile and seemed genuinely excited to shake the hands of those there to greet him. It was a profound regret of mine later on that I didn’t pay close enough attention during the debate.

Over the years, I anxiously awaited the release of his next tome. Just last week, I finished his most recent book, Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription. My personal favorite is Let Us Talk of Many Things, his collection of speeches, which contained a story of him pretending to drown so that then President Reagan could save him in order to earn the National Review Medal of Freedom.

The one piece of writing from Buckley that I always remember is a short reply to a letter reprinted in Buckley: The Right Word. In it, an Air Force Captain writes about a close friend, an admirer of Buckley, who was killed during Operation Desert Storm. He replied:

I am profoundly moved; and I extend you, his friend, our condolences, even as we share your pride in our friend. Gratefully, –WFB

To William F. Buckley, Jr, I am profoundly moved by your contributions to this country over the course of your very full life. And I would like to say thanks.

Recent events have caused me to modify my ongoing list of things I really don’t care about. Here is the current Top 5:

1. Actually, anything remotely related to the iPhone
2. Hacking the iPhone
3. David Beckham (although if you add his wife, he bumps up a spot)
4. Anything relating to any Presidential candidate before 2008
5. iPhone 2.0 Wishlists - it is only a matter of time, might as well start early