Migrating from Gallery to Piwigo

I guess I’ve never written about it here (except in passing) but for the past 10 years I’ve been running Gallery to manage my photo websites (before that I hand-coded HTML pages!). I started with Gallery v1.4 way back in October 2004, upgraded to Gallery v2.x in November 2005, tried the Gallery v3.x alphas and betas in 2009 and 2010 (but didn’t really like them) and then finally upgraded to v3.x in October 2011. Then, in June 2014 it was announced that the Gallery project was going into hibernation. I wasn’t too worried as the software was pretty stable and there weren’t a lot of security issues, but always in the back of my mind I knew at some point I’d have to move on.

My theme of choice for Gallery was Grey Dragon by Serge, a heavy Gallery user who also contributed themes and modules to the project. After the Gallery team announced the hibernation, Serge starting looking at and evaluating replacement candidates, which I followed with interest. He eventually settled on Piwigo, a French-based open source project (which believe is pronounced “PEE-wee-go” and was formerly called the PHP Web Gallery), and converted all of his G3 sites to PWG (including porting his Grey Dragon theme). Over the holidays, I decided to give Piwigo a try.

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The FitBit Family

Everyone seems to have a fitness tracker these days. They’re the hot new personal tech.

I pre-ordered the original FitBit back in 2008 but ended up cancelling my order once they shipped (over a year and a half later) because at the time I had met my weight loss goals and decided I didn’t need one. Four years later I got my wife the FitBit One and ended up with one (no pun intended) myself in January last year. I really took to it, just for basic step counting and weight tracking, even calling it “generating system/debug logs for my body” in an e-mail I sent to the Daily Tech News Show (see the clip below, starting at 28:04):

My wife now has the Flex and my daughter got a Charge for Christmas, so my family is a FitBit family. We all use the FitBit app on our iPhones, compete against each other in step counts, etc. It’s actually a fun “family” activity. I particularly like the Charge because a) I finally got my daughter to wear a “watch” and b) it’s paired to her phone so when I call her my name appears on her wrist and it vibrates so I know she’ll see me calling. 🙂

Oh, Happy New Year by the way!

Sennheiser RF120 wireless headphones

Sennheiser RF

For Christmas I received the Sennheiser RF120 wireless headphones (and charging stand). My old wireless Sony headphones were starting to show their age: the original rechargeable batteries no longer held a charge so I had to use alkalines, the cushioned ear cups were peeling, and there was just too much interference and hard to get a clear signal.

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Thanksgiving road trip: back home

It was a long week (4 days of travel, 3 days of vacation) but we’re back in warm Florida after our trip up north to Ohio for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Despite the heavy snow on Thanksgiving day, slightly warmer temperatures on Friday allowed for the roads to be clear and easy to navigate, so once again weather was not a factor in our trip. We left Cleveland around 9:00am (36 degrees!) and stopped for a late lunch with old college friends in Lebanon, Ohio (46 degrees). We ended up staying and visiting a little longer than expected so we weren’t back on the road until 3:30pm. Around 4:00pm we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky on I-75 South. We stopped for gas and a driver change in Lexington around 5:30pm (55 degrees!) and at 7:00pm crossed the Tennessee border. We grabbed dinner at a Zoë’s Kitchen in Knoxville around 8:00pm (not bad!). Another long night of driving into Georgia and we stopped just north of Atlanta at our hotel in Kennesaw at 11:15pm.

Sunday morning we were checked out of the hotel and driving south on I-75 by 8:30am, and then stopped for a quick breakfast at Sublime Doughnuts in Atlanta. We crossed our final border into Florida at 1:00pm and stopped for lunch in Lake City about 45 minutes later (and it was now a wonderful 75 degrees). We ran into terrible traffic through Gainsville (Gator fans driving home?) that seriously slowed us down. Instead of a three hour drive from Lake City, we didn’t get home until after 6:30pm.

Our total round trip was about 2,739 miles, 48 hours in the car, whew!

Offhand note: I learned that Touch ID on my iPhone 6 Plus doesn’t work reliably when my hands are cold and dry like they were in Ohio.

Happy Thanksgiving from Cleveland

Happy Thanksgiving from snowy, Cleveland, Ohio!

What posessed us to drive over 1,200 miles from warm, sunny Florida to Ohio around arguably one of the busiest travel times of the year? 1) It was a little last-minute; we didn’t have any big plans for Thanksgiving and had nowhere else to really be. 2) Our dog is 16 years old (17 next month!) and we don’t like leaving him in the kennel for extended periods, so we wanted to bring him with us and didn’t want to deal with last minute flights with a pet. 3) Road trip!

We actually left Florida early Monday morning (75 degrees). We crossed into Georgia on I-75 North around noon and stopped shortly thereafter for gas and food in Valdosta (now rainy and still 75 degrees). After a brief stop for my daughter at the American Girl store north of the city, the rest of Monday was just more driving until we eventually stopped in Clinton, TN for the night at 8:30pm.

Tuesday morning found us back on the road, crossing into Kentucky and making a brief stop at the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum (yes, the first KFC). It wasn’t open, and seems to be under rennovation, but at least we got to peek in the windows and read the historical marker. The weather continued to cooperate (although it was getting chillier as we header further north) and driving was smooth: we were through Lexington around 1:15pm (after a stop for “lunch” at Graeter’s, something we can’t get at home), then Louisville about 45 minutes later. Yes, we veered west to I-65 North because we were going to go through Indianapolis to see my wife’s grandmother on our way. I-65 is where we ran into some bad construction traffic (and I witnessed a tractor trailer swerve, hitting a van, and going into the median). But by 5pm we were in Frankfort, IN (north of Indy) visiting briefly with grandma. We continued on I-69 North to Fort Wayne and then onto US-24 to cut northeast into Ohio, crossing the border around 7:45pm. We finally connected to I-80/90 and made it to our final destination at 10:30pm. It was a long day, but we made it (and by now it was under 40 degrees).

We won’t be doing a lot of sight-seeing while we’re here …mostly spending time with family and friends. Tonight, Thanksgiving, the snow is really coming down! On Saturday, we start the two day trek back home (I hope the roads are clear!).

WIJFR: Lucifer’s Hammer

The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival–a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known….

I just finished reading “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that tells the story of a stray comet that collides with the Earth and the resulting aftermath.

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NextDesk Terra

NextDesk TerraI spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer both at work and at home, so for some time I’ve been considering getting a standing desk (reading reviews on LifeHacker and The Wirecutter) but was never really serious about it. Then for my birthday my siblings all contributed money towards the standing desk fund so I decided it was time to pull the trigger and try it in my home office.

It definitely wasn’t the cheapest option, but I selected the NextDesk Terra. I tend to keep and use stuff for a long time. My last setup, just your typical MDF computer desk and hutch, I got back in 2000 and survived multiple moves. Hopefully the Terra lasts just as long and from what I’ve seen so far with the build and materials quality, I think it will.

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Back from New York (and I don’t have ebola)

The past two weeks involved a lot of hard work (and very long days), but the upgrade was a success and I’m back home in Florida. Here’re some tidbits from my trip:

  • $17/night for WiFi at the Marriott East Side? and no room service?
  • there’s literally a Starbucks on every block here … sometimes more than one on a block!
  • next spring our office is moving to 1 Rockefeller Plaza, right across from the ice rink and Today Show
  • ah, NYC pizza and chicken parm from La Bellezza
  • saw a crew filming an episode of “Blue Bloods” across the street from the office at St. Bart’s
  • missed the solar eclipse (couldn’t get anywhere where I could see the sun in the city)
  • I saw “Pippin” at the Music Box Theater, with Lucie Arnaz
  • the ebola thing happened the day before I left
  • got to use TSA Pre-Check at JFK on the way home … nice!

Two weeks in New York City

Hard to believe it’s been four years since my last business trip to Manhattan! But it’s time for another PeopleSoft Financials system upgrade so I’m off to New York City for the next 12 days.

I left this morning from Tampa, flew into JFK on JetBlue, took a car into the city, checked into my hotel, and was in the office on Park Avenue by 3pm. Until next Friday, this’ll be the easiest day of the trip. We’ll be working all weekend, so that means 12 straight days in the office.

I forgot how loud the city can be, even up on the 18th floor. The weather is moderate, but looks to be rainy and chilly next week.