Enemy of Entropy

What Happened to Zooomr?

15 March 2008, 11:10 pm. Comments. Filed under Geekery.

Does anybody know what happened to Zooomr? They started out as a promising competitor to Flickr, and I recall hearing good things about their API. Katie, Sam, and I joined back in 2006 when they were giving away free, lifetime Pro accounts.

I had linked to a photo on their servers in an old blog post, and noticed today that the link was broken. I logged in and found that my account is un-Pro now, though Katie’s and Sam’s seem to have retained their Pro status. All of my photos and my profile info are gone. Katie’s profile is blank. She seems to have one photo there, but I can’t open it. Sam has a few photos, but again, I can’t open them.

I emailed tech support, but I was thinking maybe someone else had heard something about the company that might be helpful. I did notice that they seem to be associated with Zoho, and when you email tech support a copy goes to a “feedback” address at a .jp (Japanese) domain. Their “help” info resides on a Zoho wiki, which was down when I tried to access it. (I can’t get to anything at Zoho, in fact – glad I don’t rely on them!)

Crunchbase seems to consider Zooomr a going concern.

Sunday, T-a-Day3

3 February 2008, 11:29 pm. Comments. Filed under Blogging, College, Geekery, Reading.

I did more webifying today, and got all happy because I resolved a template problem. I don’t “know” php, as in I don’t write my own scripts. I’m learning more and more about it working with other people’s templates, and have gotten to where I can mix and match from different templates to get the effects I want. I also spent some time in mysql, trying to clean up some of this site’s tables to make it load faster.

I also read a little, and I’m really, really trying to finish the book I’m on before diving into the delicious stack of books my sweetie brought home from the library for me. I wrapped up the week’s class assignments, too. I wanted to stitch, but I was attacked by a rogue nap.

My project management teacher released the study guide for the final, which is 3-4 weeks away (you can do it any time during week 8, and we just finished week 4). Um, does anybody really study that far in advance? I’ve never been very disciplined about studying.

Sam is editing a chapter of Fledgling, which he re-recorded because he was displeased with the sound quality. He edited Square One earlier. Sorry, Hope, but I don’t think he got to record the latest chapter of Heart of the Hunter :-(

It’s still February, right? The temperature was way up in the 70s today! It’s back down to 50 now—outside. Inside, the temp is still too hot for sleeping comfortably. Pout.

Are there any WordPress geeks reading this? I could have sworn that I saw a plug-in that allowed commenters to send a private message to a blog’s owner, sort of like having comments screened in LJ except that the owner doesn’t ever (couldn’t, as I understand it) make the “whisper” public. I can’t find such a thing in the official plugin repository at WordPress.org, though. Anybody know of such a thing? I don’t want to use a comment form, because of security concerns.1

1 All the comment plugins and forms I’ve seen use the web host to send the message, instead of the sender’s outgoing mail server, making it harder to get anything done about inappropriate messages.

Thing-a-Day 2

2 February 2008, 11:27 pm. Comments. Filed under Blogging, Critters, Fun, Geekery, RPGs, Reading, Writing.

My creative time today was spent webmistressing. I tweaked some WordPress templates to work better, and moved more stuff over from my old site format to WordPress. It may not seem like much, but I always rewrite and update as I do that, so I figure it counts.

Sam and I had lots of fun in our game tonight. It’s a little weird to realize that someone is an avatar of a deity and that not only does he not know it, he’s nowhere near ready to realize it. Then there’s the whole issue of not letting that little fact slip at all, because an entire race of people is waiting for his return (and they really, really need him now, of course).

I really should go to the library tomorrow, but I don’t know if Sam will have time to drive me there. I have books to return and books on hold to pick up. I’d best go to bed now, to improve my chances of waking early enough to ask him.

I need to give Kioshi some extra scritchies, though, and I’m thinking about Jen and her family, who had to let go of their newest feline family member today—he had feline leukemia. I always think of our Andre and Tom-Tom whenever feleuk comes up. I’m glad Kioshi didn’t catch it from his parents, as our babies and theirs probably did. Please, vaccinate all of your pets! Even if you don’t ever plan for them to go outside!

Thing-A-Day With Me!

30 January 2008, 11:45 pm. Comments. Filed under Announcement, Blogging, Fun.

Thing-a-Day 2008 Flyer

I know that Hope and Juliann are doing it—anybody else? Any other Blog365 participants should note that it will be a great source of blog ideas, and I know we all need those at this point.

Further Prof of Insanity: Blog365

1 January 2008, 11:45 am. Comments. Filed under Blogging, Family, Fun, Geekery, Health, Holidays, Home, Homeschooling, Music, RPGs, Reading, Writing.

I got through NaBloPoMo, as ridiculous as it was to commit to posting at least once a day for a month. So of course that small success has led me, in a moment of more-than-usual-lunacy, to sign up for Blog365 (otherwise known as “Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire”).
Blog365
The purpose is fairly clear: to post at least once every day of 2008. February 29 is a “rest day.” Posts may be written on any site, rather than sticking to just one blog, so I’ll try to spread them around on mine/ours. If I can’t get something on the actual site on a particular day due to net connection issues or whatever, I have to write (yes, write! like, cuneiform or something!) a journal entry and transfer it to a blog as that day’s entry.

It would be far simpler to have a system of some sort. Maybe I’ll create a rotation:

Hopefully there will be new podcasts up soon. There will definitely be more music, as we have that lovely concert piano we received via freecycle all repaired and put together. It’s beautiful and sounds great! Not at all bad for one drive to pick it up and less than $200 in repair fees! (Sam wanted to just take it to the nearest authorized repair center rather than doing it ourselves.)

2007 wasn’t a stellar year, but neither was it terrible. Sam has a steady, secure job that he enjoys, in an organization that’s allowing him to advance. , Katie had a lot of health problems, but I’m hoping that we’re on the right path to resolving them. Shelley passed away a little shy of her 18th birthday, but since we’d been told in 1999 that she only had a year (at most) left, we felt that we’d gotten an “extra” 8 years with her anyway. Kioshi has grown into a nice companion, too.

We really kept to ourselves a lot through the past two years. When you’ve been betrayed and hurt as deeply as we were by our former housemate’s sudden craziness in 2006, there’s a lot of healing to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever approach Thanksgiving without trepidation again, but we had a good one anyway. The stress did contribute to the deterioration of my health, and that does make it harder to get out. We’re working on it, though. We certainly learned who our true friends were, and we’ll never forget that.

So on to 2008, which we hope to be full of more time with friends, better health, much more music, Katie spent last night and almost all day today with friends from the school she was attending as well as her new beau. Sam and I spent the day gaming, upgrading some web sites, eating good food and watching movies. If it’s true that whatever you do on January 1 indicates how your year will go, we should be just fine.