BojanM gave me a good idea for a photo I could use for my company's new website. In order to fit in the site's theme I needed the black and white image, so here is the original. Since the trees have not fully bloomed the color version is not very good, but the B&W version is more effective as it emphasizes the structure. I will have to go back and shoot this one again later this year.
Natchez Trace Arch Bridge in Color
Natchez Trace Arch Bridge
Sometimes when sending files through email, you want to be able to simply right-click on the file and select "Send to mail recipient" form the context menu. If you are an Outlook 2003 or 2007 user, you might have noticed that when you do this Outlook generates a plain text email with your files conveniently attached. While a plain text email is nice, and probably the way
all email should be, most of us have been spoiled with html email that allows fancy formatting and we want to keep this functionality when we right-click to send attachments. Not only do we want this formatting ability, but we also want our signatures to be automatically appended to the end of the mail.Below are a few steps to create a new "Send To Mail Recipient" context menu shortcut that address these issues:
Outlook 2007:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /a
This is a cannon that is on the Carter House grounds. I like the image because it appears the cannon is popping out of the screen. I wish I had put part of the left wheel in the frame to balance it out a little more.
Canon At The Carter House
The other day after much procrastination, I finally got myself to go out and take some photos. I started out wanting to get some shots of old barns, but I got an old, yellow railway station instead. The sign on the side door stated it was the private property of the Walters's.
Walter's Railway Station
I've been doing some indoor, still-life photography lately to try and learn some better lighting techniques. This was done with an off-camera, diffused flash at camera right. The back(left side) of the apple was lit by light bouncing off a white surface. I cannot remember the power of the flash, but I think it was set at 1/4 power.
Apple
A few months ago I gave my old Buffalo (WHR-HP-54G) router to my uncle in law. A few days later I went online to purchase a new router and was very disappointed to find out that they were temporarly unavailable in the US. Since I could not buy my favorite router, I decided to use an old laptop and try out IpCop.
I must say I was very pleased with IpCop. The installation was quite smooth even on an old notebook with PCMCIA cards. Unfortunately, after some time of testing, I decided to go back to DD-WRT. The notebook was just too old and too run down to run reliably, so against my better judgment I bought a Linksys and got DD-WRT back up and running.
I bought a WRT54GS (WRT54G with SpeedBooster) from my local WallMart. (I happened to see it while I was browsing around in the electronics section and it was priced relatively low ($59), so I decided to give it a try.) I wasn't sure if that particular model was going to run DD-WRT, but I took it home anyway. (I felt pretty confident I could get the original firmware back on it and take it back if I didn't like it.)
When I first opened the box I was little worried as the serial number on the bottom of the router read v.7.2. I had never seen this in any of the routers, but a little search on the internet revealed that 7.2 was most likely a "quick-fix" release to version 7. I went ahead and followed the instructions for loading DD-WRT on a v7 router. (DD-WRT's wiki does not list the version 7.2 on their compatible devices list. Technically, one could say v7.2 is a version 7, but I'm pretty sure they would have the specifically listed it, so I'm going to assume they don't know if it works or not.) Everything installed ok and I'm now an "almost happy" owner of a new Linksys router. I still don't like that Linksys crippled their WRT54G/S.
So, if you need a new router and happen to find a Linksys WRT54GS with serial starting CGNE, then you can flash it with the latest release candidate of DD-WRT. Below you will find the links to everything you need for this specific version of the router.
I recently came across an Outlook plugin that I really like. It's a tool that has been around for some time and has actually already been replaced, but many people still prefer the original plugin to the new. It's called Lookout and it's basically an instant search for Outlook. I've installed it in both Outlook 2003 and 2007 and it works very well. (You have to tweak it a little for 2007, but it's no big deal.)
Here are the links you need:
Photography has been an interest of mine for a long time. I've recently started getting back into it and I've been debating whether or not to start a separate blog on the topic or include it in this blog. I've decided to just make it part of this blog for now, so here is my first image.
Sunflower
Over time I've grown very tired of the same old Windows XP look. I've tried using some other themes, but installing them properly is a little time consuming, so I've given up...That is until I recently discovered XPize!
Xpize is basically an installer that changes the Windows XP GUI by installing a new theme, new icons and images and even adds some new programs like a better task switcher.
Have a look at their main site for more information: http://www.xpize.net/
One thing to note is that this program does update DLLs as many icons are embedded. I was a little worried at first, but after using it for some time, I think it's pretty stable. At least as far as I can tell, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
