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New to the Pictures Section

This is kind of a two-part post. The first is to just let everyone know that I've finally uploaded pictures of the Portland wedding that my Uncle Steve took. If you were at the wedding, there's a good chance you'll find yourself in one and if you weren't, check it out to see what you missed!

If you've ever used the commenting option at the bottom of each picture, you'll also notice a few new features. I'm sure you know how frustrating it is when you don't enter your name and it inserts "Some anonymous shmoe" as a replacement. My first new feature alleviates that problem to a large extent. Now the first time you enter a comment on a computer, it will remember your name and if you forget to enter your name in a future comment, it will insert the name you used in your last comment. It won't follow you around from computer to computer (that would be impossible) but it will work on any computer you use as long as you don't clear your cookies.

If you like to comment on photos you probably know the feeling you get when you accidentally hit the Enter button after leaving half a comment, or the feeling you get when you leave comments after heavily drinking the night before and wake up to find yourself the laughing stock of the community (the cameronhinkle.com community, that is. ....so basically, me). At your rescue is the new "delete" button. It's in the form of a red X and it will appear at the end of all your future comments. Again, it only works per-computer and will be there as long as you don't clear your cookies. If you don't know what "clear your cookies" means, you'll have some catching up to do. I would start here.

For those of you who care, I'll get a little into the specifics of how I made these possible. The first is easy, I just set a cookie in your browser that contains the name you enter for each comment, then I check for it if you don't enter a name in the future. The delete button is a little tougher. Cameronhinkle.com now keeps a cookie in your browser that holds a pipe-delimited list of comments that you've made. Every time you enter a new comment, it adds the comment id to the cookie. Then whenever you view a picture on CameronHinkle.com, it explodes the list of comment ids into an array and iterates through each comment id to see if it exists in the array of comments that have been submitted for that photo. If a comment is found in the array, it puts the red X inside a form at the end of that comment with the comment id as a hidden field. When the X is clicked, the form posts the comment id to the server and the comment is deleted using my versatile and robust Picasa API. The way that it is deleted is similar to the way it's posted, which you can read about in my article Comments: Enabled. I haven't worked out all the kinks (in fact it just blew up on me a second ago) but it's coming along nicely and I think it will be a really useful addition.

This deleting mechanism obviously opens up a bit of a security risk. All someone would have to do is post a comment id to the page to delete any comment they want. I'm not too concerned about this because I don't know who would care about deleting comments. Also, it would be a little bit of a hassle to find the comment id for a particular comment, especially if you don't know anything about the Picasa API. If I put the X next to every single comment I could definitely see someone clicking all the X's just to be annoying, but it's probably inconvenient enough as it is that no one will bother. If I'm wrong and there is an incident, I'll just encrypt the ids before I store them in the cookie. I would do that now but I wanted to make the page load as fast as possible.

Hopefully this and the Comments: Enabled post has given some people a few creative ideas of what is possible with the API. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on the Pictures section in general and am always trying to come up with ways to improve it. Of course if you don't use it then all my work is in vain, so go comment find your favorite picture and make some comments!

Two Weddings and a Honeymoon

As my friends and family already know, September was a busy month for me. It started of on the 6th, where Debbie and I had a had a small wedding ceremony in Richland Center, Wisconsin in front of Debbie's friends and family. We then traveled back to Portland to hold another wedding in our hometown of Portland, Oregon. Hours later, we rushed off to Maui, Hawaii for a one week stay at the Grand Wailea Resort & Spa on Wailea Beach. Thanks to everyone who was able to attend either wedding, they were both perfect days and it was great to see everyone.

Debbie and I have finally finished moving all of her stuff into our home and we are just about settled in. Coming back from our great trip to Hawaii was kind of a drag but it was nice to be able to come back to a house that Debbie has done such a great job decorating. I don't know how she did it, but she turned a bachelor pad into a quaint little home for the two of us. When she started working on it, I didn't quite realize all the stuff that wasn't going to work anymore. All of a sudden that giant cable spool/coffee table looked out of place.

For those of you who like pictures, I've just uploaded a lot of pictures that I took at the Wisconsin wedding. Check them out here. I would have put them up earlier but I found out real quick that those honey-do lists stack up fast :-P I also uploaded most of the pictures of Maui and there are some really spectacular views. The sunsets were just amazing every night. You can see those here. At some point I'll also be uploading some of the pictures from the Portland wedding that my Uncle Steve took with his new Nikon 300000000000. That will probably come in the next week so come back soon.

Thanks again to everyone who shared the day with us, it was a great celebration. If you're interested in getting wedding pictures or you just want to say hi, feel free to leave a comment here or email me. Mahalo!

Stepping Out of the Kiddie Pool

In case you missed the Sunday Morning announcement, Debbie and I got engaged over the weekend! That's right, I got out of the kiddie pool and started making some moves. Now finally we can stop walking around the block to avoid wedding shops and hiding all the wedding magazines at the grocery store before Debbie makes it to the magazine rack :)

I like to think I had a pretty good plan for proposing, and it went off really without a hitch. Last Christmas I got Debbie a Bible but I forgot to write a little note on the inside (my bad), which she repeatedly reminded me of. So Friday night I stole her Bible from her and wrote the marriage proposal on the inside. I had gotten Debbie a season of the Gilmore Girls on DVD for her birthday a few weeks ago but she unfortunately saw it sitting on my porch when it was delivered, so instead I got her this little guy. Then Saturday morning I emptied out the DVDs, put the Bible inside, put a note on the front, wrapped it all in birthday wrap and took it to the beach. After a day of shopping at the outlet mall, we found a spot on the beach and I gave her the present. She opened it, read the note, I slyly got the watch (yes, watch...it's complicated) out of my pocket, she takes the Bible out of the case, reads the inside cover and when she looks up, I'm on one knee! Then it was all over but the waterworks :)

It's no secret that Seinfeld has been an abnormally (and unhealthily!) large part of my life since about the time I started high school. It was thus fitting that with this major life decision looming, things were no different. As I was preparing the Bible and Gilmore Girls case for Saturday's events, Seinfeld just happened to come on the television after whatever I was previously watching. Perhaps acting as a dear friend warning me of what was to come, the following clip played:

Luckily, I was so sure of myself that even Kramer could not convince me otherwise :)

Anyway, check out pictures from the day over here. We had a great day and proposing was just the icing on the cake. Now we're moving into high-gear, trying to get everything together for the wedding by the end of this summer. Thanks for everyone's congratulations, we're both very excited!