./janella.com

picnik - Great online photo editing site. You can upload photos or access your Flickr photos to edit. Very easy to use.

tripadvisor.com - Are you planning a trip this summer? Good site for hotel reviews, as well as advice on what to do when you get there. The forums are very helpful.

gorillapod - One of my wife’s birthday present to me this year. This little gizmo is very cool and can support my Nikon D70s. I can’t wait to use it on our trip! I’ll provide more details on the trip in a later post.

Battlestar Galactica - Briliant gripping sci-fi show that is so different from what I watched as a child. They had their season finale last night. We now need to wait until 2008 for answers!!!

How Clean is Your House - New show - at least stateside - from BBCAmerica. Now I’m not the neatest person in the world, but after watching this show, it really wants me to strive to be much more organized.

Corinne Bailey Rae - Love her CD with Like a Star. Get the two disc CD to hear her cover Bjork’s Venus as a Boy.

It’s a Grind - New coffee place I like. We tried the one in Gilroy and in Cupertino. It’s difficult to beat nice service and free Wi-Fi.

Brightcove - The easiest way to share videos, at least I think so. They have a simple to use interface to upload and share videos. I think the results are much better than YouTube (see below)

Farrah took me to watch 300 today at the Sony Metreon’s IMAX theater.  But first she took me to breakfast at Sears Fine Foods in Union Square.  Breakfast was great, and you can read my review on Sears Fine Foods on my Yelp profile.

When we bought the tickets, I asked the ticket agent how was the movie.  His response was “Awesome!"  When I asked how it was in IMAX, his response was once again “Awesome!"  As we walked away from the ticket counter toward the escalator, the ticket agent muttered a line from the movie (that I happened to have said to Farrah on our walk from our fulfilling breakfast):

Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast, for tonight we dine in Hell!

This was our first experience watching a movie in IMAX.  Before the movie begins, there is a small presentation on what IMAX is: blah blah screen size, x amount of cool speakers, etc.  It’s an entertaining presentation that shows off the features of an IMAX theater.

Ok, now to the movie.

It’s a simple story of a small immovable army versus a large unstoppable army.  It’s a bloody and gory movie, but beautifully filmed  containing loudly spoken dialogue  spoken - we’re in battle after all - much like that of the comic book.  There are speeches here and there but they don’t drag on or bring the fill down.  Every character has their role that predictably plays itself out to the end.

What I liked about the movie: The look and sound of the film, especially in IMAX, is difficult to ignore.  It played a major part in making the film enjoyable.  The gore was just enough on the comic book side to not be grossly unappealing.  The actors were given enough dialogue to chew the scenery when given the chance.

What I didn’t like: Um, no real movie trailers before the film started.  Oh, there was a trailer for Spiderman 3, but it was an older trailer.  Guess they don’t make trailers specifically for IMAX.

300 in IMAX: **** (out of 5) ; *** 1/2 (regular theater)>

One of the best things about Wordpress is the ability to change the look of your site pretty quickly.

So how do you like this current theme now? It’s called Digital Photography Blogs - Shiny Theme (more info). Though I modified it, and it looks good, it is a bit difficult to maintain, and I think, read. Here is their warning on their site:

We promise that you don't want to use this theme. It was designed for our first blog network, Digital Photography Blogs, and works great for that one purpose. Other people have tried to use it and have suffered greatly. That said, we still get lots of requests for it, so use the theme if you dare!

Encouraging, huh? Anyway, this theme is the first of four. Each Sunday (if I remember) I will update the theme on ./Janella.com. At the end of the four weeks, please vote with your comments on that blog entry. Your choice will be used on Janella.com - at least for a while :)

Note: I did not create any of the themes to be used. I just modified them slightly, as is allowed, to fit with how I feel it should look for the website.

Just received the spam announcement that Tori has a new album coming. Looks like she’s doing the different persona thing she did with her cover album Strange Little Girls

OK, last I heard, Facebook was the new MySpace. At least that was what I heard.

I then go surfing the other night looking for Wordpress themes for this blog and I stumble upon Virb. I thought, cool looking site and all, but wasn’t sure what it was (plus, I was just looking for Wordpress themes).

I then listen MacBreak Weekly, a podcast I listen to often, and find out it’s the Virb that is the new MySpace. When is Vox getting into this mix? Yeah, I suppose they’re not after the MySpace crowd, but Vox is pretty cool.

So, of course I sign up.

Not much there yet, but it’s pretty cool and customizable as heck. Very clean Web 2.0 look. There’s a strong slant on music, photos and videos there. The basic design is clean, but like I mentioned, you can customize the style through WYSIWYG interface or through stylesheets and more. Pretty straightforward stuff.

Give it a twirl.

If you haven’t heard, Late Night with Conan O’Brien is coming to town. His show will be filming at the Orpheum Theatre from April 30 to May 4th. You can find more details through this link.

I’ve only been to one television show taping in my life. It was back in the 80’s when I went to a trip to LA. The show I was lucky to see: Gimme a Break. Yeah, I don’t remember much about the episode that was taped. All I can recall is that it was well rehearsed and pretty much lasted 20 or so minutes.

I’m working on the website a little, so if you happen to be on it and the page changes suddenly, do not be alarmed.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

Interestingly scary.Save & Close

BossaNova asked me to look at some web hosting companies for him. The rates on his account were going to increase over 50% I believe - I’m not good with math. He called in to complain. To appease him off the bat they offered to keep his pricing the same as his current hosting price. But at that point he was upset that it was necessary to call in at all.

I have personally experienced the same type of tactic. AT & T would do the same thing when my DSL passed each contract year. They would send me email saying my DSL price was going up unless I committed to another year. Then one year they decided not to contact me or offer me any special pricing. I think it was because they noticed my account was very old and that I had services they offered at a premium price without any additional cost on my part (e.g. a static IP). I would need to call in, being on hold anywehre from 10 to 30 minutes, just to get my pricing back down. Finally I got fed up with the customer service and crappy speed and went to cable.

So, I told BossaNova there are many good web hosts out there with many more features than his current one offers. I volunteered to do the legwork for him. This also gave me an opportunity to use Google’s Spreadsheet.

I find the free service easy to use. I was able to put the data in (hopefully) a presentable format. The service only freaked out on me once, saying I lost my Internet connection and any changes I made weren’t saved. Good prompt warning message as the only modification I made was in a single cell. If you have an Internet connection and don’t have access to Microsoft Office but need a simple spreadsheet program, I’d give Google Spreadsheet a try.

So, BossaNova, here is the spreadsheet for you (and anyone else I suppose). I may update it again after this post, but it will be accessible at the same link.

I hope you are able to find a good host out of the ones I have listed. From the list, I have personally hosted websites at four of the six companies. I recommend them all. But for me lately, disc space offered hasn’t been one of the features I’ve been looking at since I host my photos on other services. If this is the case for you, and if you like good service and reliablity, I’d go with Dotable. I’ve only been with them for about a month right now, but it’s been pretty smooth sailing. You can see their uptime server stats at http://status.dotable.com/.

I’m posting again directly to Janella.com using the famous Wordpress. Yes, I have left my irregular blogging on my Vox account. Actually, I will continue to do irregular blogging on Vox, but my regular musings will occur here.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Vox a lot. I like it better than MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, and LiveJournal. Why?

• Nice templates
• Friendly community
• Easy to use blog posting screen.
• Great privacy controls. You can let everyone, friends, family or neighbors view what you post.
• The ability to upload photos, videos, and sound files.
• The ability to access your accounts like Flickr, Photobucket and such to post.
• Meeting new people.

What ended up NOT working for me was:

• Lack of personal customization. Recently added was an ability to add a banner images which is cool, though. I would like to have had the ability to add links to my other 'Me Sites'.
• Inability to for non-registered users to comment on your blog entries.

While the pros seem to outweigh the cons, the cons felt pretty big as time passed. If I never had a web hosting account or used Wordpress or MovableType, I guess I wouldn’t know what running my own blog/site would feel like. But that last pro, Meeting new people. is a big reason why I keep my Flickr account and will keep my Vox account.

There are so many interesting people out there, posting funny personal musings, intriguing thoughts. and stunning photographs that it’s hard to pry yourself away from a community you’ve joined. So I will be a visitor there from time to time. But for now, and the foreseeable future, I’m right here and will write here.

I’m home.

Tru dat!