I’ve had major problems with missing photos and album inconsistencies with my iPhoto ‘06 library whilst running Tiger, but since moving to iLife ‘08 on Leopard thing have been working quite well. Until today.

This black exclamation screen made me say, “Ack!” This is what happened.

I had three event albums: x, y, & z.

1. I moved 30 photos from event album from album x into album y.
2. I renamed album x with the title of album y.
3. I then merged event album y event into event album z.
4. 6 photos originally from event x are giving me the screen of death.

A spotlight search reveals that these photos are located in album x and when I go into the edit mode the photos appear. I thought that if I reverted to the original photo in edit mode, iPhoto would relink the thumbnail of the missing photo to the image file. But now when I click on the thumbnail, I get a squished, horizontal photo:

Besides being really annoying, this photo makes me look fat. *puts down tub of ice cream* Ok, well I’m off to go read the mac forums. I’ll let you know if I figure it out. I wish there was a simple way of relinking iPhoto to the actual image like you can with video clips in FCP. I really don’t want to rebuild my iPhoto database.

If you are smart and know the answer, please let me know. If you are not smart and just want to share in my iPhoto library misery, please feel free to post me comforting messages.

I cannot tell you how giddy I am right now. I have been through the ringer trying to embed videos, create photo galleries, post videos, make buttons, side bar video thumbnails … It’s always a hassle, especially since I’m not a whizz at flash. I used Widgetbox.com for quite a few JS widgets for my revver videos, 2.0 mashups on my old blogspot blog. And since moving to Wordpress, I’ve relied on the plethora of WP plug-ins. But more often than not, they don’t work, or do what I want them to do. I’ve always wanted a really clean, simple, and functional image gallery. And the Flicker Albums plug-in ain’t cutting it.

But at 2am this eve, Techcrunch brought Sprout: The Online WYSIWYG Editor for Flash into my world. I’ve been playing with it for about 30 minutes and it is dead easy to use, especially if you have a PS background. You can create a video album, audio player or a music playlist, and a image slideshow in seconds that the lovely Sprout coding monkey will publish to most social net sites i.e., Facebook, Myspace, blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, page flakes, etc.

To test the new site, I made my first “Sprout”: An image slideshow of some shots I took at my first Wedding shoot. It took me less than 15 mins to create and customize my sprout. All I had to do was import my flickr photos and Sprout did the rest. There are controllers at the bottom for pause/play and fwd/back. I was also able to add a hyperlink to my flicker album at the bottom. (Takes a few seconds to load)

Link to original article.

Scrolling through my stats, I noticed a large increase in the number of visitors from France (mostly coming from the link on the Wired Magazine’s 2007 Sexiest Geeks.) I also tracked back some of the visitors to the article pictured below. I’ve included a paraphrased translation below, just incase you can’t read like a zillion foreign languages like I can, cuz of my 6 years+ of linguistically diverse university education (not that it’s a big deal or anything):

Every year Wired magazine organizes a small contest, allowing the public to elect the the hottest “geekette” of the year. It’s obviously on a purely informative and instructive basis that I have deligated this important information even with a capital : P Note that to be as complete as possible, I am also under an obligation to illustrate this news with a few clichés: (cue picture of me and lovely, uber tech-celebrity, iJustine.)

Youch. That’s gotta burn. I guess I’m the clichéd Brunette Geekette. Just another attention seeking, no-talent wannabe lookin’ for a sweet piece of the iCeleb pie. right? she doesn’t even play WOW. how can sheeeeeee call her self a geek! I bet she can’t even find the Terminal on her MB. Loser. ugh, and I bet she looks like an old hag without all that Photoshopping.

I’ve tried to prove my geekiness, but the French aren’t biting. you know what Gordon Ramsay would say about the French and it would have a loooot of swears in it.

I guess it’s a good thing I have such rock-solid self-esteem. *starting to tear up* I’m not a sexy geek cliché? Am I? *looks down at mismatched socks, reaches for her favourite robot, watches the red lights flicker in his emotionless eyes* “Who am i?” I ask the robot: “I am the atomic pilot robot. Please give my best wishes to everybody.” That’s nice.

I really want to be an original geekette. So I need your help! You’re geeky right? Yeah… totally. You’re staring at your Futurama box set… boba fett figurine…Xbox for the 10th hour… fueled only by candy, crisps, Dr. Pepper & Red Bulls… I just know it. So please give me 3 tips to make me an uber l33t geek!

1. Gordon Ramsay’s potty mouth.

“Now reach in your pants and find your bollocks!” PS. how many mls is a knob of butter anyway?

2. Sufjan Stevens marathons.

143 plays last week according to lastfm. i find ol’ Sufjan maximizes my productivity with minimal distractions and doesn’t depress me or prompt unnecessary introspection like most of my music in the indie/folk genre.

3. Funny British TV shows.

All these years I just thought I had an disagreeable sense of humour. Now I find an entire nation with dry, sarcastic, self-ridiculing, awkward humour. I finally belong! Long live the BBC! Fawlty Towers. Peep Show. Fonejacker. Trigger Happy. The Office. Extras (except for the depressing and disappointing Christmas special. booo!)

4. iChat screen sharing.

It never gets old for me. What desktop do you have? What programs are in your dock? Stacks or no stacks? How do I do xyz? Oh you can show me, on MY screen? hizzah! It’s also extremely useful for controlling your desktop from your laptop.

5. Making up my own spelling and punctuation rules.

Language is about communication. Do you understand teh zani LOL Catz? ROFL? Thought so. Language is constantly evolving, so why should we adhere to ancient, stodgy grammar rules or completely opaque orthography?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still gonna judge you as slightly incompetent, if you don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” or “to”, “too”, and “two” or spell “definitely” “definately”. That’s a given. But if you already know the basics and have good enough eye sight to see the angry, red dotted line under your erroneous spelling, starting a sentence with “because” or “but” or choosing to not use capitalization of “i” isn’t the Worst. Thing. Ever. especially in a landscape as vast, diverse, and continually changing as the www. So I say, let’s get creative with language!

6. Procrastinating.

Must design superwikkybooyah web site for my media company. Uhh. Too hard. Where do I even start? Best Web Gallery? Uhh. Look at all these amazing sites. I’ll never be able to do that. Procrastinate. Eat biscuits. Another cup of tea. 7 months pass. Uhh. I should really get on that web site. How do I get from nothing –> great web site? Procrastinate. Eat chocolate pudding. Pirate. Arrange transformers. Blog. Uhh. 2 more months pass. I should really break this down into manageable pieces. Good thought. *draws a tree-like mind map* That’s good for today. Now, where did I put those biscuits?

The other day I met up with an old friend from my Blades of Glory days who asked, “When did you get so geeky with all that stuff on the internet?” (he’s not so technologically inclined). “You used to be so… organic,” he continued. I’m not entirely sure what he meant by “organic”… i blended well with shrubbery… i smelled a bit like dirt… i was tasty, good for you, and wasn’t sprayed in loads of pesticides???

Whatever he meant, I’ll admit that I’ve gotten pretty intensely geeky with social nets over the last few years. My very first experience was with MySpace in 2004. I lasted one month. During that month, I received over 100 creepy messages from internet suitors and Sir Spam-a-Lot. That, and the design aesthetic alone, was enough to turn me off MySpace permanently. But having a small taste of an internet community started an insatiable hunger in me to connect and be heard.

After finishing graduate school, I had a wee bit of a “Post-University-WTF-do-I-do-with-My-Life-Now?!?” Crisis. I literally ran screaming from my MA defense all the way down the west coast to Anaheim, California, through the Disneyland gates, to Futureland and up the steps to Space Mountain, then across the park to Splash Mountain, then finally settled during Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (Peter Pan was closed. Lame.)

This was the beginning of my “Return-to-Childhood-Shirk-All-Adult-Responsibilities” phase. So far it’s lasted 4 years. I may push it through 2008, just for good luck.

So after uni ended, I moved from Victoria to the big city of Vancouver to find work and I was lonely and needed a creative outlet so I started my first blog “they mostly come out at night… mostly @blogspot in November 2006. The community was immense, but I am a bit of an elitist snob so I moved to Wordpress shortly thereafter. And it was in one of these blogging commuities, that I read about the Facebook phenomenon.

I was most reluctant to join Facebook and put it off for quite some time. It’s reputation as an American college dating site really turned me off. But one day I joined, and ever since I’ve been moaning about it. For every good experience there seem to be 10 bad ones. The wasted time looking at crappy, poorly lit, drunken self-portraits kills me, yet I can’t seem to part with the random delight of connecting with some really cool people.

Which brings me to my beloved Twitter. On June 20, 2007, I began my journey with Twitter. I started out slow, twittering to myself in the wee hours. And then within a month, I got literally obsessed with tweeting my every move and @tweeting everyone elses’. ‘What are you doing?’ became ‘What are you wearing, eating, drinking, listening to, thinking about?’ and most importantly ‘What techno iGadget are you lusting after?’ It was brilliant. it changed my everyday mundane existence into a bright and shiny one that I could share with glittering iFriends. And they are so beautiful.

And that’s how it started. And from there it all went pear-shaped. I lost control and the beast started controlling me. I was literally signing up to a new social net everyday. I’d create a profile, surf for a bit, add a few friends, then I’d lose my password, get locked out, and forget about it all by the next morning when more fresh, crispy bacn arrived in my inbox.

I’m at the point now where I can’t keep track of it all and I’m finding myself aimlessly wandering the 2.0 www for hours without a single recollection of what I’m doing, what I just did, and the kicker, why?

So over the next couple months I’m gonna start chucking the 2.0 losers and committing to the 2.0 winners.

Here’s the list I’ll be dealing with:
Twitter
Flickr
Lastfm
Facebook
Revver
Pownce
Virb
Vimeo
Digg
Jaiku
MyBlogLog
del.icio.us
Technorati
StumbleUpon

I know there are more, but I’ve already forgotten what they were. Anyway, this post is too long. I’m boring myself. I’d rather hear what you have to say. So lemme know what your favourite 2.0 nets are and what you love and hate about them. Much Love.

Gravatar > No Gravatar. Uh, i don’t get it, what’s a Gravatar?

“A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is a 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.”

Sounds awesome doesn’t it? but it must be super hard to do, right? wrong!

“Signing up for a gravatar.com account is FREE, and all that’s required is your email address.”

Just upload your personalized avatar, whether it is a Simpson’s character, an 8 bit graphic, your lovely face, or your cat Marmalade, and shizzam your gravatar will identify your quirky individuality when ever you comment on most blogs (especially mine) and web forums. and from a design perspective, it just looks cooler than a set empty gravatar place holder that usually makes you look like you’re under witness protection.

So whacha waiting for? Sign up for a gravatar already!

PS. Remember that the gravatar is assigned to one email address. so be sure to use the same email every time you comment, or it won’t appear.

PPS. The person with the best gravatar will win this lovely swan ice sculpture. that’s a lie. it’s already melted. it’s the thought that counts really. isn’t it?

The Canadian Figure Skating championships were held in Vancouver this week. I managed to get up in time to see the Senior Dance event at 5pm. I know. I’m still on that 7am bedtime routine I seem to be good at. And I am a perfectionist, so everyday I try to perfect my unhealthy sleeping habits. I think I’ll go for gold tonight. 8am! yeah, that’ll win me some high marks from the judges. Oh yes!

As you might know from my bio, I once graced the ice… mainly with my bottom at 6am. People always ask me how I got up at 5am almost every morning for 10 years. That, my friends, can be answered in one beautiful word: Nap.

I’d get home from skating, hop in a nice, hot shower, eat some carbolicious food and some protein shakes, then get right back in bed where all the warm goodness is. I could never sleep for very long, but even 20 minutes was glorious. Then, I’d wake up, strap my rollerblades on and cruise right into class… 20 mins late.

You never learn anything in the first 20 mins anyway. Right? Anyway, it’s a wee bit late to fill that gaping hole of knowledge in my brain. Perhaps I’ll fill it with some useless youtube clips. Yeah, and like some really sweet tweets about Starbucks consumption, or like more buzz about another Apple product I can’t afford.

Here is my figure skating photo diary of the Senior Dance Event at Canadian Nationals.

Congrats to the lovely Bethany Puttkemery and Kevin Gallagher, the last remaining old skool CIDA (Canadian Ice Dance Academy) peep left in competitive skating. Props! Those were some serious twizzles.

New Canadian Dance Champions, Virtue and Moir.

not one little bit. just look at that mushy, stodgy pasta with overcooked and mildly suspicious looking veg. bluuurrrgh. turns my stomach just thinking about it.

my worst airplane food experience was on an Air Transat flight from Cancun, Mexico back home to Vancouver (see below screenshot as evidence). it’s hard to really discern what kind of food it actually is. it took me a few minutes to figure out which parts i was supposed to eat. apparently, it was the cold, overcooked, “soupy” scrambled eggs inside the waffle/pancake/inedible cardboard boat. i bet the cooks had a really good laugh over this one.

What’s your worst airplane food experience? (or *gasp* good airplane food experience)?

PS. i’ve become completely nocturnal. staying up until 7am and waking up at 3pm. it’s possible i could be turning into a vampire. if i post a video of me licking raw meat, i’d start protecting your jugular. i’ll come for the geeky ones first.