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Creating your own photo gallery with jAlbum

For about 4 years now I’ve been posting images onto my website. It’s really not that hard to do, and I really love having access to photos anywhere in the world! It’s really pretty easy to set up too so here’s some tips on how to get started.

Personally, I’d recommend checking out Google’s Picasa. It’s really easy to use program for simple photo editing such as red eye, contrast, or brightness adjustments. It’s also the easiest way I’ve found to manages my albums, & it can export smaller versions of photos. When necessary I use Photoshop to make more complex image edits. Once the images have been shrunk, I run them trough jAlbum to create the web album. (It’s not as hard as it all might sound.) I just tell jAlbum where my photos are located and where I want the finished product to go. I specify what skin I want to use, hit go. Then I get up and go make a sandwich. By the time I get back to the computer, everything’s done. I may actually over-complicate the process, because jAlbum might actually have a feature to automatically shrink your images down, I’ve just never looked.

Once everything is created it is all output into a new directory on your computer. You can simply take the contents of that folder and upload them to your website. Most web space providers will tell your ftp address, but it usually “ftp://www.YourDaminName.com”. Input your ftp address into the destination and set the source as your newly created album folder, and start the transfer. There’s tons of free ftp programs out there to make this easy. If you can’t find one you can even use internet explorer. just navigate to “ftp://www.YourDaminName.com”, and drag the files from your new album folder to the internet explorer window.

Here’s how it all looks when your done. I’ve used an XP theme so it looks like you’re browsing through a folder on a Windows PC. I know It’s not the most visually appealing look, but it accomplishes what I want it to. jAlbum does have a number of skins available to customize how it looks of your website.

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Sharing Pictures Over the Web

Lately I’ve been doing rather large events over the weekend where lots of pictures are taken. So what I’ve been doing is getting pictures from everyone present, sorting them by time taken, then putting them into one album. I find that one tool that works great for this is Google’s “Picasa.” Picasa is a great photo management tool that displays your photos chronologically and even offers some basic fixes to your photos. Photoshop is great for editing photos too, but when you’re working with over a hundred photos, something quick and easy is best. Perhaps Picasa’s best feature is it’s auto resizing. If I tried to send someone a dozen pictures the email would be huge. Picasa resizes them down to a manageable size enabling me to email lots of photos to people with only the click of a button. It’s prety cool. The program is free and I’d definitely recommenced checking it out.

I took some photos from Washington DC and the weekend of the 4th, and that’s how I post all that stuff. Check it out here. If you were there, and you haven’t sent me your pictures yet; get with it and send them to me. Picasa makes it simple.

Link: Download Picasa
Link: Some Pictures From July

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Whitewater Rafting in ME on the Dead River

Last weekend I went on an awesome whitewater rafting trip to The Forks, Maine, home of the Dead and Kennebec rivers. Our destination was 5.5 hours away but was totally worth it. Sure the drive was arduous, but once we got up there the times we had were amazing. Taking my father’s Prius ended up being a great choice since I averaged about 48 miles per gallon for the weekend. We were a little concerned about the weather as is was potentially supposed to be rainy, but in the end all was ok and I even got a sunburn. We ordered some pictures and a DVD, but don’t expect to see them for a few weeks. When they do come in I will link them from this post. The camping part was just as fun as the rafting, so in the meantime, check out some of the other non rafting pictures from the weekend.

Link: Pictures I took.
Link: All pictures from the weekend.

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A glimpse into my madness

Some people say I am crazy; going skiing every weekend, working every week day. At times I wonder myself it this is true. Then I have a weekend like I had this weekend. The type I haven’t had in two years. I am covered in bumps and bruises, and I am here to tell you that I wouldn’t want it any other way. I had a wonderful weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the 30+” of snow that Cannon received last week. The 6-8″ that fell all day on Sunday was just the icing on the cake. This is why I do this. This is why I love winter.

Click this image to view pictures from my weekend.

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“July” … I mean “January” 4th weekend

So, Did you attend any good barbeques over the weekend, What great July weather we had, nearly 70° outside. Wait, what’s that you say? I have the wrong month? Oh, it’s January, not July. Sorry, my mistake. I guess the either just had me confused. I ask this of my fellow Bostonians; “Why are people celebrating this.” Hey, newsflash!! Your house is going to be underwater if this type of weather keeps up.

By the way, If you’ve never read any of my other blogs from past years, I complain about this topic like every post. The truth of the mater is this. We live in New England, like it or not, it gets cold and warm here. The problem is that, this usually happens seasonally, not weekly. This poses a small problem that perhaps you have seen in the news. Trees only have so many “Blooms.” Most have around 4. This means that if we keep getting these long strings of days, trees will bloom, and we’ve wasted 1. It is common to waste a few blooms as temps stabilize in springtime, but if we waste too many now, we will have a summer that feels like summer and looks like winter, doesn’t that sound fun? I was in New Hampshire over the weekend; “NEW HAMPSHIRE!!” & I saw trees blooming. Problematic.

It seems that old man winter is back now however, and the ski areas are getting snow & cold temps again, at least in ski country. Not to say anything for Blue Hills down here in Canton, MA, where I was supposed to teach one night a week.

My request to you is this, please embrace the wintertime. It’s really not so uncomfortable; you just have to prepare for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. I love Baseball, Barbeques, Biking, Fishing, Sailing, Swimming, & all the other things that come with summer, but there better when you can really value them, by having both “a summer” & “a winter,” “…Because without the bitter baby, the sweet just aint’ as sweet” -Vanilla Sky

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