Gold Plated Blog Posts

Whatev.

• Topics:
• Picasa
• India
• Bumper Stickers
• Travel

Comment Moderation Through the Picasa Tools Suite

If anyone has ever read about my innovative commenting setup, you can probably guess that it results in one thing: a lot of random spammy comments. It also results in people who wouldn't normally comment on my photos doing so, which is what I built it for so it's a success in that sense. Still, cluttering the image pages with gibberish or inappropriate comments isn't good for the user experience. Unfortunately, the only way to monitor the situation is to periodically view every image in my account...until now!

Introducing Picasa Comment Moderation. With this tool, any Picasa user has the ability to view and delete comments in their Picasa account with the click of a button. The comments are sorted by the date and time they were posted and you have the option of viewing between 5 and 50 comments at a time. The image, image title, and coment author are displayed on the screen for your reference, as well as a link to the image on Picasa's website. You can even hover over the image to see the description if you're not quite sure what you're looking at.

You may notice that when you hit the link to go to the Comment Moderation tool, you're actually taken to the front page of the Picasa Tools Suite. This is for two reasons. The first is that Google requires one single exit point for any site requesting access to a user's Picasa account, so it was impossible to make a page dedicated to Comment Moderation when I already had the Picasa Image Name Updater. Secondly, doesn't two tools constitute a suite?! Well maybe not. If you have an idea for another tool I can create, please let me know so that I can truly make it a legitimate suite.

As always, the Picasa Comment Moderation tool was created with the Lightweight PHP Picasa API. Using the API proved very easy in enabling me to display and delete comments. In fact, the entire project only took around six hours to write. Now go use it! And if you have any comments/suggestions/bugs, send them my way.

Black Friday Bumper Sticker Blowout

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, I hope you had a great time with family and friends. Each year around this time I get excited about getting great deals and I'm bringing the excitement to my own collection of bumper stickers. I've cut down the price of all my political stickers to cost. Now understand that it is CafePress cost so it's still pretty expensive, but it's the lowest I can sell them without losing money. Just click on any of the links below and get your stickers!

One Year Down, Many More To Go

Some said it wouldn't last but here we are a year later and going strong. Debbie and I celebrated our one year anniversary last Sunday in grand fashion. We took JetBlue to Washington, DC and spent four days there. Then we Greyhound' up to New York City for three days, and concluded our trip in Boston via Amtrak where we spent two days. We crammed a ton of sightseeing into just a few days and even had time to visit Philadelphia, Lancaster County, Hershey, Plymouth Rock, and Portland, Maine! In the process of all this, we took about a thousand pictures (literally). I've personally leafed through every photo and selected the best ones so go take a look.

We had a fun time but were completely exhausted and blistered by the end. We walked almost everywhere. Our two biggest walks were from the White House all the way to Arlington Cemetery in DC and then from Battery Park to Times Square in New York; they totaled about 4 miles each. They don't seem like much now but crammed into 10 days was a bit overwhelming; I had a hard time walking to the corner store by the end. Despite the pain, it was well worth it to see a lot of new things.