Gold Plated Blog Posts

Whatev.

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

I Knew I Recognized That Pie!

In an attempt to motivate ourselves to lose weight, Debbie and I have been faithfully watching NBC's The Biggest Loser every week. Two weeks ago they played a home video of one of the contestants, Arthur, in front of his favorite pizza place, proclaiming it as "...the best pizza in Southeast Portland." It was a strange moment for me because I had no idea he lived in Portland but even before he said anything, the backdrop was eerily familiar. With a little help from Hulu and Google Street View, I got to the bottom of the mystery.  As it turns out, Arthur's go-to pizza joint is just two blocks from where I grew up:

Oddly enough, I don't know anyone who has ever eaten at Hometown Pizza but I think Debbie and I need to try it out on our next "fat day". Hopefully we don't run into Arthur.

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!