Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Alternate take on the Santasaurus shoot

Christmas cards were only mailed yesterday and today. Most will be late. I let R pick the one I printed; this one is the #2 choice.

We are back on the road tomorrow, Highway 89 of course. That, and I am still disentangling my site from our company's MT installation, so I might not be blogging for a few days as Xmission redirects the host over the holidays.

2007 has been a spectacular year for me and my work. One of the best things has been what's been happening right here. New visitors, new friends, from so many different aspects of my life.

When Bryan, Rich and I organized the first Photowalk in SLC, I had no idea it would take off. This morning our Flickr pool had 43 members, and I'm sure we will grow again in January with the indoor studio event. Here's some of the new people I've met through Photowalking:

Annie, Harley, Laura, Paul, Scott, Trevor.

I did the 37Days Artist Trading Card Challenge as a lark, and now look who's visited the Ann-alog:

Annie, Cindy Jones Lantier, Kikipotamus the Hobo, Nina, and Rick.

One of my most popular posts this year had nothing to do with photography, but rather a knitting tip for hand-winding wool. It's good to be able to contribute something to the greater Internet depository of craft instruction. Google-Giver-of-All knows how frequently I consult the oracle myself. These bloggers stopped in to look:

Eliea, Lisa, and Teeni.

Then there's the Other stuff (like my main topic, photography...). From all over the globe, meandering their ways through the web, these folks took the time to comment and enliven things up here on the Pixel Remix:

Airhen, Denise, Jay, Kevin, Lisa, Pete, Scott, Tracy.

Near and far, thank you all for being part of the greatest year of my life. Best wishes for a happy holiday, and even better things in 2008.

Thanks to Bryan Jones for the image. The three probes used in the analysis are Signature Immunologics products.

First, the picture. Here's what Bryan says about it: A multispectral image of a mouse eye revealing the diversity and complexity of the mammalian retina. The retina is a specialized tissue that captures light and processes initial form and movement making up the initial components of vision. This particular image is rendered by probing the tissue with detectors for three molecules important for metabolic function, taurine, glutamine and glutamate. The colors that emerge come from assigning each small molecular label to a color; red, green or blue.

Oddly, I've never mentioned in my blog that I happen to own 50% of one of the world's smallest highly profitable biotechnology companies. R and I started Signature Immunologics in 1996, long before we were married. If you need a way to detect neurotransmitters in your tissue samples, we've got the products for you.

I did the original website for the company, R changed it a few years later, and then we did nothing to the site for a very long time. We've also been having a big think about where we want to take the company in the next few years. Then I made the trade, and in the worst case of mission creep I have ever gotten myself into, I have now designed and implemented not one, but two new websites, and I still have to the do the one I originally promised.

Upgrading the Signature Immunologics site gave me a good playground to work my way through the new templates in MT4. I've been using MovableType since 2003, but the new version has completely redesigned templates (good) and minimal documentation (bad, a deplorable Six Apart trend since they released MT3.3). I have a few observations on transitioning to MT4 that might be useful.

(The rest of this post is about the guts of MT4, really boring unless you are an MT user).

Goat Kick'em

I had an unspoken wish to be invited to the 9rules blogging network when it was smaller. After the recent exodus of my favorite blogger in the club, A Rain of Frogs, I've changed my mind.

Now I think the only blog club I'd like to be in would be something like a 62rules network. I'm not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (if I were, I wouldn't tell you - it's anonymous, right?), but Rule 62 has broader social relevancy than for just a bunch of self-organized drunks. Think about that concept for a minute. For 70 years, AA has managed to hold it together by sticking to a common purpose and not getting distracted by opening treatment centers, fixating on cults of personality or going after the bucks. I'll bet AA could sell a ton of ads on their website, but they don't take money from outside the membership. They know what they are about, and they are successful because they only do one thing: help people get sober. Looks to me like 9rules has strayed away from the concept that caught my attention in the first place. I'm not in their club; I don't want to get involved in their fight, but I'm not attracted to the social networking aspects of the new 9rules. Me, I don't even want a Facebook profile.

I don't have time to figure out how to start a blog nework, but if I did, I know how many members there'd be and what I'd name it. In the meantime, go visit A Rain of Frogs if you want to read some quality writing on the web.

Nevada Falls Remix

Remember that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens her eyes and Oz is in color? Just magic, at least it was when I was a kid.

I have apparently lost my mind, because I agreed to redo my husband's official website. The risk to marital harmony notwithstanding, as it will surprise no one that neither party takes instruction well, we have negotiated a trade for services that is equally advantageous, and I badly want what he will do in exchange. More on that later.

What you will see today if you hot-link my images from Myspace

Today I swatted at one of the gnat-problems buzzing around my personage [definition, see esp. #3] - MySpace users stealing my images to decorate their webpages or chats. Let's be clear: using my copyrighted images without my permission equals theft.

It's a nuisance, a "luxury problem" right now, but I don't particularly want my images in association with a juvenile rant from someone old enough to know better, or, as I saw today, beside someone elses' photo of chocolate Easter bunny genitalia. I have the responsibility to protect my copyright. I also tossed in livejournal.com for good measure, and I can assure you that I will be adding to the banned-from-hotlinking-list.

I'm not a code monkey, so it took a little time and help from on-line forums I found via Google-giver-of-all to figure out how to write the .htaccess instructions. Should you need to solve a similar problem, I present to you the .htaccess code that worked for me. However, PLEASE do not use it to link to my image. After all, that would be theft. And that isn't nice. (But I'll let you serve it for yourself if you ask nicely.)

"That's great that you're helping [client]. Because I host his site on my personal account with my website and dozens of others, I can't give you ftp access or password, but I can send you his files for editing."

Excuse me? That's what my client's service provider emailed me today when I asked for the login details for his site. I would like to say, "after I scraped up my jaw from the keyboard..." but I actually wasn't that surprised.