What a great summer day! Went to a block party at Bethel Family Worship Center, which was a lot of fun. Later we had a dip in Mom & Dad’s pool and had a cook-out. It was a sure sign that summer is here… well, that and the 90+ degree weather.
I snagged some pictures of Sam this past weekend during our REORGANIZATION-A-THON… we tried on some different costumes. It was a lot of fun.
Some friends from work joined us on Monument Circle (Center of Downtown Indianapolis, IN) for the 44th annual Strawberry Festival. This is the third year that Carson and I have been… the weather threatened to go bad on us but it thankfully waited until we were long gone from the Circle to start pouring. I got some good pictures of the Indiana State Capitol, the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, and of course the kids. If you want to join us next year, put the second week of June 2010 on your calendar.
I’ve done a bit more customization on my photo site to try and make it more tuned to what I think people want to see.
I used to have a box on the Galleries page that had “Featured Albums”… I tried to keep it updated with the latest albums I thought people would like to see. It’s too manual of a process and it only holds 4 albums so I decided to stop using it. Recently I found another SmugMug user that had written an add-on that displayed his most recently uploaded photos.. I thought this might be kind of neat but might clutter up the page a bit and wouldn’t really show all the newest albums. I dug a bit more into his posting and there was a second user that had altered the add-on to show the most recently update albums. PERFECT, I thought. There were a few tweaks that I had to figure out to get them working on my site, but I’ve finally got it set.
The new box called “Latest Galleries Updated” is viewable at the top of the Galleries page… it shows the last 12 albums I uploaded an image into and it features “< Newer | Older >” navigation in the top right to browse through what I’ve updated lately. Below that box is the normal Gallery Categories boxes. They currently are unchanged. With this new capability at the top of the page I may start looking at re-organizing how that is setup as well to be easier to navigate.
Also tweaked a bit is my landing page slideshow… I hid the control buttons and randomized the play order.
Finally, not related to the photo site… I’ve listed my blogs on the Outside.in site. This blog: http://outside.in/neighbors/airthom SolarFlarePhoto blog: http://outside.in/neighbors/solarflarephoto It’s a geotagging site for news, blogs, discussions, etc… I’m experimenting with it to see what it can do for me. Feel free to check it out yourself.
We got bunk beds for Carson (and Sam eventually) and we transformed Sam’s crib into a toddler bed… great adventures in sleeping this weekend.
We had a pretty full weekend, with Jada graduating in the morning(see previous post), swimming in the afternoon(see previous post), and a big storm in the evening(see my other blog) on Saturday and then Sunday we got library cards for our family and hung out at the Brownsburg library for awhile, then stopped by Jim Butz’s retirement party (my High School band director), and finished off the day at a birthday for one of our dear friends Nick.
Butz retirement:
Click to see the full gallery.
Nick’s Birthday Party…. BOUNCE!!!
Besides a really off performance, Jada (and Oreo, her classmate in the pictures) graduated from Puppy School. She has grown a ton since we got her and she’s a sweet girl. Later we went to Poppy & Nanny’s to hop in the pool for a bit, it was fun (and a bit chilling).
We took Friday off and went out to Negley to have a long weekend at Jenni’s Grandma’s place. It was a great visit, we went out to a few different places in Ohio’s Amish country and the rest of the time hung out with family. My mom did a bang up job on the flower beds while we were there with the grandsons’ help, of course.
I discovered a great website and I want you to be a part of it. IndyStar.com is looking for the best photos of the Greater Indianapolis area to be put in a full-color, hard-bound, coffee-table book.
I submitted a photo or two and would really appreciate you looking at it and voting for it. Everyone who submits a photo is eligible for some great prizes, and a discount on the book. The photos that get the most votes will be published in the book, so the book is truly the best of the Greater Indianapolis area. Registration, voting, and submission are all free, so join me and help shape the Capture Indy Project today!
What are you waiting for? Sign up now then go vote for my photos!
See my cross-posting on my Solar Flare Photography blog.
To all the Mom’s out there… especially to Shirl, my Mom, my Sister, and my lovely Wife.
