If you have a project (web or print) and need stock photography, but don’t have the budget for Corbis, Getty, etc… then you should check out iStockPhoto. Or more specifically my portfolio there…

I just got accepted as a contributing stock photographer. It took about a month between application adn acceptance of my first uploaded picture. My photos have recently been sitting stagnant on archived media, so I figured it was time to bring them out for the world to see and use. I’m anxiously awaiting my first download.

I sincerely hope that these or future pictures will be of use to someone. I may not make much money from this site, but being a semi-amateur, at least I get some recognition, exposure to the business end of photography, and the fuzzy feel goods that my work is not crap.

Web Form Lessons of the day:

1. Use the maxlength attribute on text input fields to limit data to the max length of the same fields in your database. If this value is likely to vary in the future, use an include and define the field lengths as constants in your favorite scripting language and then write out the constants in the HTML where needed using script.
2. Test, test, test. Use permutations of possible entries to test your forms. Use spaces, numbers, letters, accented letters (especially if you will have non-US users, but not JUST in that case…), capitalization and punctuation. Use different length strings. Add extra spaces to the beginning and/or end of the entries to test that you’re properly trimming the input once submitted.
3. Escape your text strings so that submitted strings with valid characters such as ‘, “, etc are able to be used in places where they logically could be used (including name fields!!!)
4. Wrap your database commands (e.g. SQL inserts) in a transaction so if one fails, they all get rolled back. That way if your process does fail in an unanticipated area, the user can gracefully recover the process and your database does not have useless crud data bits floating around.
5. Don’t use JUST JavaScript to validate your forms, do it on the server as well. We surf with JavaScript turned off, we surf on our cell phone, we surf in text browsers, we surf on our PDAs. You can’t guarantee your application’s business rules will be applied on the client side.
6. Name your name/address fields logically so my Google Toolbar “Auto-Fill” function will work with your forms. Besides, it’s just good practice.
7. If you’re writing a kiosk application, or a public access aplication to be used at say a museum or a festival, turn off autocomplete for your form’s fields (<input type=”text” name=”name” AUTOCOMPLETE=”OFF”>) I don’t want to see everyone elses’s input, nor do I want everyone after me to see mine.
8. If a radio button form field is not required, don’t have one selected by default. How do I turn it off? Or, mark it as required, because it is once you auto select it from the get go.
9. Put the name of the month after the numerical representation in drop downs. I don’t want to count every time I want to put July, but forget that it’s the 7th month. Vice versa for credit card forms. Please have the month number there so I don’t look at my credit card expiry as 07/07 and have to count and figure out that the 7th month is July.
10. Do NOT mess with tab order!
11. If you’re going to monkey around with the cursor and pop it into a field using Javascript, have the decency to only do so if 1) there is no data in that field already, and 2) the cursor is not already in another text field. Frequent users will start to type in login fields while your table ridden page is still loading, tab to the password field and then get half their password in the login field when your onLoad() function fires.

While not necessarily all encompassing, these are some of the most important issues that are oft forgotten. Are there any others I missed?

Now, for the answer to the BIG QUESTION, why???

Because my last name is O’Leary, NOT OLeary.

Because I’m tired of non-transaction based registration processes half failing and leaving me with an account I can’t use because your form dorked out and when I go back to correct your crappy UI flow, I have to choose a new username I don’t want because your system already has the old one allocated. Only problem is, I can’t log into it because it doesn’t fully exist.

Because your database only allows 8 characters for my userid and/or password (why BTW?) and your form doesn’t limit it to that amount so when I create my account I don’t know that the username/pwd I used will not work because you truncated them for me behind the scenes when you inserted them and the database just silently chooped the end characters off.

Because you don’t want to piss off your customers.

Because you want to make the web a better place.

We went to see the “new” epic, Troy last night at the Valley 6 drive in. It double featured with Secret Window.

One of the first scenes of Troy has the two strongest warriors from two armies fighting for the final say on the victor of the currently raging war. On one side was a behemoth of a man. On the other side was Achilles, one of the most glorious fighters of all time. An hour or so later after Achilles was roused from a slumber in a neighobring town, the fight was set to take place. It took all of three seconds for Achilles to side step the warrior’s only swing of the sword and slice his own sword straight into the neck of his opponent placing a death blow.

While an amzing (albeit short) fight scene, the biggest take away for me was what Achilles told his so called King just after winning the war for him, “Imagine a king who fights his own battles; wouldn’t that be a sight?”

Odysseus later commented, “War is young men dying and old men talking”

How true both of these quotes apply to the current Bush administration’s take on world domination. The war is being waged by leaders sequestered in a room making blind judgements based off of greed and revenge. Ignoring the will of the people they lead and sending young soldiers to die while not being courageous enough to even set foot (but for one Thanksgiving dinner) in the country where the war is taking place.

Does one country really need to have more power, more control, more space, more anything? Are we as humans never satisified with what we have? Is too much never enough?

It’s shameful that humanity feels the need to settle perceived grievances through brutal hostilities over maybes, I wants, and what ifs. I hope for a day when the meek will indeed inherit the earth. I will likely be dead and gone by the time this happens (if ever it really does).

We can only hope for a world where peace exists. Where the Palestinians and Isrealites get along, where the Irish can live in their own country without fear from an ever present British occupation, where dictatorial states feel comfortable enough to not kill people just for opposing them, where embargos don’t exist to lock people in one country from helping their family in their homeland by living and working where better opportunities exist.

Perhaps the greed and hubris of our world’s so called leaders will one day be there ultimate undoing.

They Rule is a site with a Flash enabled front end to a database of data on some of the country’s largest companies’ Boards of Directors. You can see how two companies are related via shared members, you can see what members of one Board are on another, and more.

This is a wickedly powerful application to see how these people that essentially rule our lives share their power. See a screenshot below to see how Time Warner, Inc’s Board Member can assert their power to the other Boards they participate on.

Credit goes to Boing Boing for this one…

Google has really been storming the headlines recently. From news of their impending IPO to privacy concerns over GMail they are billing top news worthy status. Search is big, REALLY big. The Internet is pretty much useless without it. There’s just too much information on the Internet to find what you want without a good search engine. Forget that this one can translate, convert measurments, find your plane’s status, and give you reverse directory information!

Google has planted themselves firmly as THE company that does search. I’ve always wanted a peek inside the company, but oddly enough, had never found a blog from anyone who works there. Like Evan Williams, Google’s Blogger Program Manager says in their newly founded Google Blog, “…it’s not like we own a recently relaunched service where you can create a blog in two minutes or something…”

Take a trip over and see what they have to say for themselves, I will be…

If you’re a blogger (new or old) you’ve got a blogroll. That list of blogs you keep tabs on because their content and/or style of writing if something that just strikes a chord with you.

I’ve been following a very few blogs for quite a time. Recently, I jumped in head first. I got an aggregator for my new Pocket PC to compile the slew of blogs I’ve been finding lately which are truly remarkable.

I created a web accessible opml file to feed into the aggregator so I didn’t need to tap the URL into my PDA each time I found new site. This also allows me to easily display my blogroll on the home of my blog with no extra work again. Just a simple parse through a free OPML PHP parsing script and the blogroll in it is on Travesty’s home page.

The power of do once use many is so important to me. If there’s a process that I can automate, I do it. Why spend my time repeating work?

So anyway, my blogroll is now present in the right hand column under the search box. Use it, and keep an eye out for new additions to come over the next week or so. Visit these visionaries and listen to the words they speak. They’re not at the top of the food chain for no reason…

Drop me a line if you’re interested in doing the same but can’t get a handle on the lingo.

People have been asking us for more recent pictures of our daughter. For them, here you go!

For model agencies, I’m her manager, shoot me an email…

It seems that lately my sense of smell has been fairly stunted. I can perhaps attribute this to my smoking habit. It seems to do that. I haven’t had real taste for years either.

Today, however, things changed dramatically. I was greeted with a plethora of smells today. I’m not sure if my smell has improved or not. I actually think it has more to do with the fact that I’m no longer so wrapped up in everything but the moment.

I’ve been trying so hard to not stress out and just live in the present. I’ve been doing so well at this lately that my stress has all but disappeared. I have my daughter Kelsey to thank for this new point of view, and she can’t even talk yet.

This afternoon while out taking photographs (another hobby I’ve left sorely negelected) at Gasworks park, the very distinct smell of cut grass floated me back to my childhood when I spent the weekend mowing and helping garden. Living in a condo in the middle of a city gives little time or opportunity to experience this. I’ve just been blocking it out without even realizing it.

After dinner I went to a hotshop to watch a beginning class blow glass. They use wood blocks called paddles. The faint scent of slightly burning wood was wafting through the shop like a taunting barbeque just asking you to relish in the wonderful smell.

While there, we stepped out back to grab a quick smoke, and I smelled my favorite smell, one I so rarely get to experience in Seattle (oddly enough). I smelled the rain. Or, more precisely the electricity in the air after a rain. Even though we get so many days of rain here, we rarely get the kind that you can actually smell.

Smells are around me every day, and I just hadn’t been paying attention to them. My new live life stress free attitude has gotten me to stop thinking so much and to just live. Today I realized that it is finally beginning to work.

Life is so sweet when you just take the time to smell it.

I finally got the pleasure to sit down for a dinner with a couple of the Channel 9 crew. Lenn, Charles, and I had a nice meal and some great conversation.

It is so refreshing to see people so committed to evoking change at their company, despite the risks that may come from it. It quickly became quite obvious that these guys and the rest of the team are very serious about this project and the positive implications this has for the image of Microsoft. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a team anywhere have the drive and desire that this team does.

Given time, support, and an objective ear, this project could revolutionize Microsoft . Even greater so, this may well be the new way that companies transact conversation and dialouge with their customers. Others are already starting to follow suit.

My bets are on a positive ending. Microsoft just can’t afford to stop something like this. It’s the start of a new image. It shows they listen, it shows they care, it shows they WANT our business as opposed to EXPECTING it.

Ballmer/Gates et al, This is what the Microsoft customer public has been asking for the past 10 years, don’t take it away.

This record breaking attmept is crazy! Two guys named Chris and Dean just finished an attempt to break the Guiness Record of most miles run on a treadmill in 24 hours.

Their site lists all the details along wth pictures from the event. That’s darn near 6 marathons in one day. I stand in awed amazement. I’d be lucky to be able to do one marathon in a day (becaues it could very well take me that long to walk it…)

They collected money for charity during the event – the YouthAids organization benefitted from this grand gesture.

Did they do it, or did they miss the mark? Visit the site to find out…