Smugmug and Flickr

I have both a Smugmug and Flickr account. Shortly I’ll write a brief review about why I like both and why one might be better over the other for some people.

In the mean time, you can sign up for a Smugmug account here. Please keep the referral link in — I get credited $10 and you save $5 (so we both win!). You can read more about Smugmug at this site. Note: You can also manually enter: H8yH17Omj9w86

Update 5/4/2005: My Smugmug vs. Flickr Review

Spam Karma

Even though the new WordPress 1.5 has excellent builtin spam protection I was starting to see some some spam getting past. The problem was that the current spam moderation relies on keywords in the comment body and some recent spammers were getting through by putting random text in the body but then putting their name has the url to their site (mostly poker sites).

So, I’ve installed Spam Karma to stop the spam. The setup was extremely easy and I’m hopeful that any spam will be stopped.

Armstrong Will Do 7th Tour

Armstrong Sends a Message, Seeking 7th Straight Tour Title Source: New York Times

Lance Armstrong
Robert Laberge/Getty Images

After mulling the decision for more than six months, Lance Armstrong announced yesterday that he would compete in this year’s Tour de France.

Armstrong revealed his plans for the Tour, cycling’s most prestigious race, and the 2005 season in a statement on the Web site for his team, Discovery Channel. He said he was looking forward to winning the Tour de France for the seventh year in a row.

“I am excited to get back on the bike and start racing, although my condition is far from perfect,” Armstrong, 33, said in the announcement.

His coach, Chris Carmichael, said last night that Armstrong made his decision to race in the Tour during the team’s training camp in January. Armstrong was sluggish when he arrived after taking eight extra weeks off, and Carmichael had a feeling he would skip this year’s Tour. But Armstrong slowly began to turn into the cyclist of old.

“We started talking about goals,” Carmichael said, “and he started saying, ‘If I’m going to suffer in training, I might as well suffer for the biggest race of all, the Tour de France.’ When he started thinking about it, I think he realized that nothing motivates him like the Tour de France does.”

WordPress 1.5

I just upgraded to WordPress 1.5. One of the most outstanding upgrades, IMO, is the new theme manager. With the click of a button I can switch between themes. The default theme is now Kubrick…the theme that I’m using can be found at the bottom of the page. I still have some tweaking to do (such has making the javascript menu on the left work correctly), but all-in-all I really like the look of this theme. It does seem a little washed out to me so I might enlarge the fonts a little bit and bolden the colors…

Back to biomolecular chemistry studying. 😉

10 x 10

10×10â„¢ (‘ten by ten’) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10×10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10×10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life.

10×10 is ever-changing, ever-growing, quietly observing the ways in which we live. It records our wars and crises, our triumphs and tragedies, our mistakes and milestones. When we make history, or at least the headlines, 10×10 takes note and remembers.

Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other.

Very cool. It really captures the essence of the news and what’s going on in the world. I like the fact that it is totally automated…no human intervention. In that sense it is much like my often visited news.google.com.