But I was recently put in a unique situation when I received correspondence from Pierrick in reference to the photo gallery software we’re using over at Strahotski.com.

Never before had I been asked to provide a testimonial for anything.

Running a fansite about an attractive actress pretty much requires a healthy batch of photos and we had been limping along with the NextGen plugin for Wordpress since the inception of the site.

One of the reasons we went with NextGen originally was our lack of enthusiasm for some of the big players out there.  Both Gallery and Coppermine seemed clunky and overly complicated, as well as a little bit more difficult to modify than we would have liked.

Fast Forward two years and 2000 pictures later and we found ourself at an impasse.  NextGen was getting too hard to navigate, and we still didn’t like Gallery and Coppermine.

This led me to start researching lesser known alternatives in the field until I happened upon Piwigo.

Piwigo is a French-based open source project.  Aside from a couple of French classes in high school, I really wasn’t equipped to handle the language barrier.

Luckily for me, the folks at Piwigo have spent a fair amount of time on translations to English and it was more than enough to get me going.

Piwigo was immediately easier to configure and lighter-weight than the gallery software we had tried before.  It lets you easily mirror a directory structure of images into a browsable, rateable, commentable web-based gallery of photos.

The feature list for Piwigo is quite strong with the ability to support registered users, uploading of photos, and complete management of the whole thing.

For our needs, we actually ended up stripping out a fair amount of features.  Strahotski.com need only support public users who want to peruse the hotness of Yvonne Strahovski, afterall.

Piwigo’s ability to support permalinks for both the galleries and photos was a huge plus.  For the purposes of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), human readable links is one of the most important things a site can have.

The package also has a nice extension feature where you can download a number of extensions to give even more flexibility to an already flexible system.  These proved to be the hardest to use, however, because a large number of them have not had their readmes translated to English.

As a native English speaker (and only an English speaker) there are some strange choices of wording in the admin interface, and the color scheme of said interface is a bit gawdy at first (black and hot pink ftw!).

These are minor quibbles, however, with an otherwise well-oiled software package that does what you want it to do in the simplest way possible.  It is fast, responsive, and easy to configure.

If you find yourself in the same boat that we were in where you don’t like your choices, check out Piwigo.  It may be just what you’re looking for!

– Check out the Strahotski.com Gallery for a look at Piwigo in action! –

Sounds like a great idea, sure, but to actually be effective it has to work.

So far in the last 45 minutes, I’ve yet to see a picture and my TiVo has reset itself 5 times while trying to stream a movie.  It claims I have a great signal and will receive the highest quality.

One time, it didn’t reset itself.  Instead it just hung on the Netflix screen for 10 minutes until I finally had to pull the power cord and give it another shot.

Then one time I actually got audio, but no picture and then it reset.

For those who don’t own a TiVo, the box resetting is extremely slow and painful.  It literally takes well over 5 minutes just for it to reboot itself.  Excrutiating.

I realize this must be working for some people, but for me it’s an epic fail.  I may well cancel my Netflix subscription now.  Part of the reason I was hanging on was for this revelation.

Lrn2Test, TiVo.

Previously, my sites were all hosted at Dreamhost.

Dreamhost wasn’t completely bad. They were extremely easy to use and were pretty good about holding my hand through whatever I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, the reliability of their servers left something to be desired. They were down a lot, and slow almost all of the time.

That was fine and dandy for my own little personal blog that no one reads, but when we launched Strahotski.com it was clear that we’d need something with a little more beef.

I tried a 1&1 Virtual Private Server first. It was clear that such a solution required far too much oversight.

It wasn’t just managing a website anymore — it was managing a linux server. I’m sure I would have been capable given the time, but it just isn’t worth the effort.

Plus 1&1 Customer Support is really bad. I would have a hard time recommending 1&1 for this reason alone.

I asked for my server to be re-imaged. I was told it was going to take one hour. Two days later, no re-image.

I sent an email to customer support and no word for 3 days. So, I just cancelled entirely. I don’t have time to wait for them everytime I have a problem.

On the upside, 1&1 did pro-rate the amount of time I had used and refunded me most of my monthly fee for the VPS. That’s worth something.

Then a friend recommended Media Temple on hype alone. He hadn’t used it, but the grid technology sounded intriguing and their marketing was much more appealing than their competitors.

So I signed up and immediately fell in love. The interfaces are so nice, and they let you have slightly more control over things than Dreamhost did. It feels like a natural progression from the cheapo hosting that is Dreamhost.

I’ve had two customer service issues so far (both my own fault), and they’ve been extremely quick to respond and never got confused about the requests.

The end result seems to be a much faster load time on both Strahotski.com and Lykaon’s Lair. That alone would be worth the move, but I also get good customer service and a more usable interface to control things with.

Only time will tell on overall reliability but so far it seems better. I reserve the right to change my mind, but as of right now I’d definitely recommend Media Temple for your hosting needs. It’s one step up from Shared hosting without the hassle of a VPS.

His reply was a common one, “So you’re a programmer?”

He certainly meant no ill-will with the assessment. It’s a common misconception. Still, I can’t help but cringe when that’s the word used to describe what I do for a living.

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

It was awarded to me by the Dwight Look College of Engineering in College Station, Texas.

That’s right, the college of engineering.

I’ve been able to program since I was in fourth grade (no lie, QBasic for the win!). But engineering? That’s an actual professional skill.

In my opinion, programming is little more than a trade skill.

While it’s not as easy as digging ditches (intellectually speaking), it’s also not exactly rocket science.

Kids in elementary school are taught to program on a rudimentary level, and kids in high school could likely program as well as me — and I have a degree and 6 years experience.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend a lot of time programming.

I absolutely do spend a lot of time programming, just like an architect spends a lot of time drawing plans.

But I am no more a programmer than an architect is an artist. It is simply something that I must do to convey my real skill — engineering.

Dictionary.com has a number of entries for the word engineer. Three of them are worth noting:

1. to plan, construct, or manage as an engineer

2. to design or create using the techniques or methods of engineering

3. to arrange, manage, or carry through by skillful or artful contrivance

My job is not to write code and make little programs go. My job is to solve problems. My job is to understand complex systems, design within the bounds of said systems, and provide a product that will perform with utmost efficiency and grace.

I would love nothing more than to give up programming and just sit around designing software. Engineering software systems is a much more challenging endeavor.

Having to program is all part and parcel to the whole job description, but that doesn’t make a software engineer equivalent to a programmer. It merely means that a software engineer can program.

Programming is the art of implementing a solution to a problem. Designing those solutions, however, is the domain of the engineer.

The recent search for Steve Fossett has brought just such a technology to the forefront, known as Mechanical Turk.

This high resolution satellite imagery gathered by the program has allowed people to find numerous plane crashes. With it solving these mysteries, could it be applied to solve others?

Author Benjamin Radford thinks so.

In his article, he describes how this technology could (and should) be used to try to find existence of some of the larger cryptids alleged to roam the globe.

Is Bigfoot too small to show up on camera? Maybe, he posits, but a breeding population shouldn’t be.

With lake monsters being so large, and having to surface for air from time to time, they may make an excellent candidate for satellite discovery.

Although this is an intriguing idea, the article correctly points out that the imagery is unlikely to prove anything.

If nothing is found, then cryptid believers will just argue that the animals in question remain well hidden. If they are found, though, zoology as we know it may change forever.

Sounds intriguing. Let the search begin!

I speak of FiOS. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, my tiny suburb finally got the fastest Internet known to consumers.

The picture below is an actual bandwidth speed test from this very computer.

Your eyes do not deceive you. That’s a verified 30.4Mbps download and 4.5Mbps upload. That’s hot.

In addition, I picked up FiOS tv despite the fact that I knew my TiVo Series 3 was going to make them want to scratch out their eyes with a dull blade of grass.

Although the tech was here for a whopping 10 hours, she managed to get everything working on the first go. That sadly is much faster than the slowness record previously set by Comcast.

After being convinced with Internet research that Verizon did support the Series 3, she agreed that it must work but she didn’t know how.

In the end, another tech drove out and it was extremely painless after he convinced her that it was no different than doing any other cable card. She just needed some guidance in how to find the diagnostics in the TiVo software.

The only really bad thing about our tech was fear of her own abilities. She spent a lot of time lolly-gagging on the phone and worrying whether she could accomplish her task.

But she did. And now I have FiOS.

I have easily double the number of HD channels I had before, and my Internet is faster than I could have ever dreamed of back when I got my first 14.4Kbps modem.

The future is bright.

In a forum post on his own website, Michael Bay has admonished Paramount for dropping Blu-Ray and claimed that he wouldn’t be working on Transformers 2 if all it could ever hope to see is HD-DVD.

Quite a bold statement to make. The Transformers franchise is certainly a cash cow for Paramount, and having it lose any steam is sure to make someone pay attention.

Whether Bay is just venting or would seriously walk away from the project on this principle remains to be seen.

I would hate to see Bay walk away from our robots in disguise, but as long as Megan Fox stays put, I’ll be watching.

There are some on the list I’m glad to see like Data, Robocop, and the Terminator.

C-3P0 and R2-D2 also make an appearance as well they should, though it’s not fair that they have to share a spot.

Some are lame, though. The Iron Giant? I’d rather see the robots from I, Robot than the Iron Giant.

At least the Fembots got some credit.

How did he screw up? Let me count the ways. First off, he was apparently allergic to my cats. That’s unfortunate, but not really my problem. Perhaps they should have a pet pre-screening question on the phone to send out a tech who isn’t eager to go because he can barely breathe or see.

It took him 3 hours to install cable to three televisions, one of which doesn’t work. Why it took him that long, I can’t really say. I’m not a cable tech so maybe it’s just that hard.

Let’s focus on the main television with the TiVo, though, because that’s where all the weirdness occurred. In preparation for Comcast’s arrival, we hooked up the TiVo, made sure it worked through our network and hooked up our over-the-air antenna to one of its many inputs.

He unhooked the antenna with a grumbling along the lines of “When are you ever going to use your antenna?” My wife didn’t question his assumption because she figured we’d just hook it right back up after he left.

This proved harder than expected since he STOLE our coax that was going from the wall to the TiVo. That’s right – not only did he unhook it from the TiVo, he also unhooked it from the wall and took it with him. WTF?

He then proceeded to install the CableCards one by one, waiting 20+ minutes between each because Comcast had to do some mojo on their end that took a long long long time to do. After that, he set the CableCards to “Acquire Program Information” which is just a little spinny thing that seems to take a really long time.

He got restless, apparently, and being tired of allergic reactions from the hell-demons that are my cats, he informed my wife that he was leaving and that everything would work fine. Wrong. Nothing worked fine. The spinny thing ended with an error that the CableCards weren’t responding properly.

A lot of tinkering on our part and two calls to Comcast later, it would appear that Comcast is unable to send a signal to the CableCards and they don’t know what’s wrong.

So what’s the answer to that? Send another inept technician out to fix the problem. Yippee! At least they’re coming on Saturday this time…

Your TiVo advertising such things is sure to be a hit among guests. The first and second generation TiVos already took some heat for deciding random things about their owners as shown through the random stuff they recorded.

Although my TiVo has never questioned my sexual orientation, it did decide that I spoke Chinese there for a while. I also apparently went through a black & white classic movies phase.

Now the game goes up a notch so that you can include your friends! What’s worse is the imminent bad answers that you’ll come up with to defend your TiVo’s habits.

Friend: “Dude, why is your TiVo recording Debbie Does Dubai?”

You: “Umm… my mom’s in it.”

Or maybe you could just have some fun with it:

Friend: “Is your TiVo recording Captain Planet?”

You: “Yes, I fully believe in the power of heart. Would you like to see?”

My TiVo Series 3 is coming by UPS this week. I’m eager to see what fun TiVo has in store as it redefines my own definition of myself yet again. It’s better than a furby!

EDIT: I just learned that my Tivo Series 3 is actually coming today. It’s on the truck for delivery as I type. Let the fun begin!