A couple of days ago I came across this article that had a number of family holiday photos that were awkward, strange and funny. (Please take a look at them and come back.)

I was talking to my friend, Manshu, about them and I said, “you know what, I think I have some somewhat similar photos – I’m going to search for them and post them if I locate them.

When I was a kid my grandmother used to make all of the female family members matching nightgowns and would make us put them on and pose for a photo. That was the one I was hoping to find but it must be in my Mother’s stuff, which is currently stored at my brother’s house.

But fear not, I did locate a couple of gems.

The Photos

1978 – This is me, my cousin and my brother dressed up like elves. I decided we would wear red and green, I made the hats, and it was our job to distribute gifts. I am the only one who looks happy. Where are my pants? And it’s a Polaroid – those must have been the height of technology around 1978.

1996 – Me, my Mom and my brother Dylan. You just gotta love my Vermont “Web” Site shirt, which must have been a gift, the Santa hat, and the Snowman sweater. My brother is allowed to slide because he was only 10 and Christmas is his birthday.

1979 – Me, my Mom, my Dad, and my brother John. This isn’t a Christmas photo but it was around Christmas because we went to visit relatives in Arizona that year and took a trip to Nogales, Mexico, which is a border town. Again, I’m the only one that looks happy. Maybe my Mom is jealous because everyone is wearing has a sombrero but her. But, maybe she didn’t want to mess up her Dorothy Hamill haircut. My daughter asked if it was a real donkey- unfortunately, it is.

It’s fun to laugh at the collection of awkward family photos that we find online but I’m pretty sure we all have something similar. Or maybe it was something about the 70′s and early 80′s ;-)

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Slightly Awkward Family Photos

This week I have street fliers, Facebook, WordPress, Star Wars and more.

Enjoy!

• Vintage JS – add a vintage look to your photos. I have a lot of old photos that are yellow so I don’t really get the appeal of adding that feature but there are some cool effects here.
• How to Sync Facebook Events With Google Calendar – But not the other way around.
• The Geek Zodiac v. 2.0 – I got The Spy. It’s not accurate so it’s about as accurate as the “real” zodiac.
• Upcoming Admin Style Refresh in WordPress 3.2 – Some screenshots of the WordPress admin in the upcoming version 3.2.
• 32 Examples of Awesome Star Wars Graffiti – This week we celebrated Star Wars day on May 4th and here is some Star Wars graffiti to commemorate it.
• What’s Coming in WordPress 3.2 (Features & Screenshots) – A comprehensive look at the upcoming version of WordPress.
• The world’s 13 most brilliantly pointless street fliers. – I really like the Lionel Ritchie one. I would also add the missing unicorn one that was in my neighborhood a couple of months ago.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 5/8/11

Update 2/16/11: This only works on personal profiles. It does not work on fan pages. The photos can not be set in a particular order on fan pages.

On the new Facebook profiles there is a row of photos below your name, which are photos that you have been tagged in. People have been doing some cool things with those photos so I decided to figure out how that was one. Below are some examples of creative photo use and instructions on how to set it up.

Of course, all of your hard work can be ruined by being tagged in a new photo.

The hardest part is getting the images to display in the correct order. I uploaded and tagged my letters a couple of times before I got it right. Also, while FBOOK isn’t the most creative use, it makes me laugh ;-) I also considered using the word NINJA but that has been played out.;-) I could also use my name with an image on either side.

Instructions

1. Create your images or crop current ones. The should be 96x67px in order to fit in the space provided.
2. Upload the images. It may be possible to upload them all at once if you are careful about the order but I found it was easier to do it one by one. So, upload the first image and then tag it with your own name.
3. Within the album, you can tag it by clicking on it and a drop down box will appear. Your name should be the first one in the list.
   
4. Again, do this one by one. Perhaps the upload order doesn’t matter but the tagging order definitely will make a difference.
5. If you want to spell a word, upload and tag the images in reverse order. So, for FBOOK I uploaded and tagged in this order K-O-O-B-F. If you want the images to be in a specific order, do the same thing and upload and tag them in reverse order.
6. And that’s about it – you will have your custom images or word on your Facebook profile page.

Keep in Mind

If anyone tags you in an image, that image will show up in these photos and mess up your hard work. You can change your privacy settings so that images you are tagged in only show up to you but this causes a couple of problems.

1. You will still see the tagged image in your row of photos.
2. If you set tagged photos to only visible to you, then you can’t set up the custom layout that I’ve described in this article. You would be the only one that sees it.

Facebook has made a mistake in not allowing us to turn off tagging by others completely. I would prefer to be able to tag photos of myself and not let anyone else tag photos of me.

Also, if you have any “friends” that are practical jokers, they can tag a bunch of photos of you and do something like this.

Here are instructions for removing and hiding tagged photos of you.

More Examples

The photos on the new Facebook profile can be used creatively but can also be abused by your “friends”.

Do you have any examples of creative uses of the these photos?

photo credit: Rob Larsen

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Customize Facebook Photos on the New Facebook Profile

Almost a year ago I wrote about how a simple gallery could be added to a post or page using the WordPress Gallery Shortcode. At the time I found out about it because include and exclude were going to be added to later releases. It is now part of the shortcode.

Last week I used the gallery shortcode for the Halloweeen themes post but I didn’t want to use all of the images in the gallery – the photo of the cupcakes is in the gallery associated with that post but I wanted to exclude it because it isn’t an image of a theme.

Using include or exclude looks like the following

[gallery exclude=”21,32,43″]

You can not use include and exclude in the same shortcode – it has to be one of the other. The numbers being exclude are the attachment ID’s for each image that you don’t want to display. When I looked in the gallery, however, for that post I didn’t see any attachment ID’s.

It turns out that you have to get the attachment ID from the media library.

1. Go to Media > Library
2. Click on the title of the image that you want to exclude.
3. The attachment ID will be in the URL in your browser’s address bar. For example, the image include in this post has the URL
   http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/wp-admin/media.php?attachment_id=9633&action=edit The attachment id is 9633.

I typically add images through upload/insert when writing a post and not through the media library. It would be helpful if the attachment id was included in both locations. At any rate, this feature makes the simple image gallery included with WordPress a lot more useful.

photo credit: Schristia

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Include and Exclude Images with the WordPress Gallery Shortcode

I really like Flickr for photo sharing and to find photos with Creative Commons licenses to use in my blog posts.

There are also a lot of fun Flickr groups on pretty much any topic that you can think of.

So, since so many of us use Flickr I decided to list some of the best Flickr plugins for WordPress.

1. MudSlideShow – This plugin will create a photo gallery in a post, page or Widget. It can be used with Flickr and Picasa photos. The gallery is not automatically updated when new photos are added to Flickr or Picasa so the gallery will need to be updated manually.
2. Flickr Digest – This plugin will create a post with all of your photos uploaded to Flickr in a specified time period.
3. suiFlickr – Easily add your flickr photos to blog posts.
4. Flickr Photos – This plugin makes it easy to display your photos on your site. It also allows you to display and group or public photos.
5. Flickr Mini Gallery – Embed a gallery from any Flickr account or group.
6. FlickrAPI – Easily display Flickr photos by set, user, favorite, group and public streams.
7. Live Flickr Comment Importer – This plugin will import comments on a Flickr photo to the WordPress post of your choice.
8. Fidgetr – This is a widget that will display the latest photos from your Flickr photostream.
9. flickr-slideshow-wrapper – Another plugin to add a slideshow to your blog from one of your Flickr sets.
10. flickpress – Adds a button to the post editor to make it easier to locate Flickr photos for your blog posts.
11. FancyFlickr – Another plugin that will display your photos in a styled array.
12. Flickrpress – This plugin contains a widget and shortcode function to display photos in the sidebar and within posts.
13. Tylr Slidr – This plugin adds a button to the toolbar in the visual editor to make it easier to add a flickr photo to your blog post.
14. Flickr Gallery – A plugin that will facilitate using a shortcode to add flickr photos to your WordPress photos.

photo credit: www.patriciawillocq.com

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

14 Flickr Plugins for WordPress

My brother, John, is turning 40 this weekend. I’ve enjoyed teasing him about it, but, of course, I will always be older.

Turning 40 didn’t really bother me – not as much as I expected and not as much as turning 30 did. But, for some reason, John turning 40 is really affecting me.

Even though he’s one of my favorite people, part of me still sees him as the 9 year old bratty brother that I couldn’t stand. The one that I was always trying to get away from and the one made me wish I was an only child.

And then I stop and think, “wow. John is 40. Where did the last 30 years go?”

John doesn’t really mind growing older and neither do I. I’ve found that I can’t stay up all night and still function the way that I used to but otherwise I’m more confident and am a happier person than when I was younger. And it helps that John and I are both relatively healthy.

And, you know, confidence and self-awareness aren’t the only highlights of getting older. The following photos should should show why ;-)

John – about 20 years ago. Nice hair. ;-)

John – 10 years ago. Trying to coach soccer to children who would rather play in the dirt. Apparently with that beard these were the Mt. Man years.

John – last summer.

We might be getting older but it sure seems like the photos improve. Especially once we move past the Bono haircuts.

Disclaimer: I asked John’s permission to use these photos and write about him. No siblings were hurt in the posting of this article.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Thoughts on My Brother Turning 40 and Mullets

• How to use Facebook with a feed reader. – Facebook RSS feeds are notorious for being impossible to find. This article tells how to find them. Unfortunately, the color scheme makes the article a little difficult to read.
• How to Save Money While You Get Your Freelancing Business Going – Good tips for saving money. I would say the ‘Consume Less’ is a good practice all the time.
• 250 Thesis Theme Resources – An enormous list of resources for all you Thesis fans.
• 7 Things You Can Do to Get Real Followers on Twitter – The key word here is “real”.
• Octopus on yo head – Apparently, there is a flickr group for everything. I found out about it because they asked if I would include one of my photos. ;-)
• How to Display Author’s Twitter and Facebook on the Profile Page – This includes a function that will add fields to the user page that can then be pulled to the author page.
• Man Throws Bike at Thieves on Scooter
  
• The Skunk Whisperer Rescues Baby Racoons
  
  Young Raccoons Saved from Pepsi Machine @ Yahoo! Video

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 1/10/10

When I was researching the upcoming features for WordPress 2.9, I came across the following: “Add support for ‘include’ and ‘exclude’ to (Gallery Shortcode)”

I didn’t know what the gallery shortcode was all about so I looked into it and was pleasently surprised to discover a built-in WordPress feature that allows you to display a simple image gallery on a post or page.

The gallery shortcode will display all of the images that you have uploaded to that post or page as thumbnails. Here’s how you do that.

1. Upload an image using the upload/insert button for the post or page where you want the images to display.
2. Save the upload but don’t insert it into your post or page.
3. Do this for each image that you want to display.
4. Add
   

   [gallery]
   

   into your post or page where you want the gallery to be displayed.

The gallery will look like the following:

These are all photos of my favorite soccer goalie, Iker Casillas, who plays for Real Madrid. He has nothing to do with this post but I needed images for this article and he is one of my top ten celebrity crushes. ;-)

The gallery shortcode has a number of options that can be added to it. Some of them are:

• columns – You can specify the number of columns for the image display
  

  [gallery columns="3"]
  

• id – This will display images attached to a specific post. For example, the gallery above displays the images for this post but by using the post id number I could display the images from a different post in this one.
  

  [gallery id="292"]
  

• size – will set the size of the images. The default is thumbnail but you can also use the medium and large images.
  

  [gallery size="medium"]
  

Obviously, this is not as full features as a gallery plugin like NextGen Gallery but for a quick and easy gallery on a post or page this shortcode works great.

I just can’t believe that I was completely clueless about it until recently.

If you want to read more about the gallery shortcode, there is information in the codex.

photo credit: voteprime

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

WordPress Gallery Shortcode: Add a Simple Image Gallery to a Post or Page

This week we have sci fi, productivity, scotch tape, WordPress and more.

• 9 Best Eco Apocalyptic Science Fiction Films of All Time – I haven’t seen all of the films on this list but I would have to say they are pretty good choices. Waterworld isn’t on the list but then, that wasn’t a very good film – unless you watched it as a comedy. ;-)
• 10 Productivity Tools for Computer Addicts – I don’t think you need to be an addict to appreciate these applications – just a computer user. I could go on and on about Notepad++ and Greasemonkey so I completely agree with those choices. After Firefox, Notepad++ is my most used application.
• A Reuse Program for Scotch Tape Dispensers and Cores – What do you do with the useless plastic parts that are leftover after all the tape has been used? Start a reuse/recycle brigade.
• 10 Useful WordPress Hacks for Advanced Themes – If you are comfortable working with your WordPress templates there are some great hacks listed here, such as how to style each post differently and adding multiple sidebars.
• Bits + Watts – This site is useful for fellow Philadelphians. It has the music from bands that are going to be playing in upcoming shows. So if you’ve never heard of the band, you can hear the music and decide if you want to go to the event.
• Exploit Scanner – This WordPress plugin searches your files, posts, comments, database, and plugins for unusual code to help you determine if you’ve been hacked or to find where the hack is located. I have not tested this plugin.
• 10 Hour Time Lapse of Two Cats
  
• Street Tap Dancing
  
  See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social Lists 10/25/09

This year the topic for Blog Action Day is Climate Change. If enough bloggers participate, perhaps more attention will be brought to this all important issue and to the international climate negotiations scheduled for December in Copenhagen.

I have decided to write about 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action scheduled for October 24th. Alex and I will be attending in Philadelphia and hopefully there will be one in your area.

Most climate experts and scientists believe 350 parts per million is the upper limit for the safe amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is where 350.org gets it’s name. We are currently at 390 parts per million so it imperative that the this amount is reduced. The event is scheduled for October 24th because that is 6 weeks before the scheduled climate talks in Copenhagen.

Go to 350.org, select Search for Actions near me, and then enter your location. Events are scheduled all over so unless you live in a very remote area, you should be able to fine one.

The event in Philadelphia sounds educational and fun. Katherine Gajewski, Director of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, will be speaking and the keynote speaker will be Ray Anderson, radical industrialist and author of Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. After the speakers, participants will form the 350 graphic shown at the top of the page. After the even there will be a book signing with Ray Anderson.

I will readily admit that I am cynical about rallies. They generate a lot of garbage, give people a false sense of having done something worthwhile, and are almost always under-reported by the mainstream media. I am looking at this event, however, as an educational experience for my daughter and as an opportunity to spend time with like-minded people. To make some real personal changes, I recommend reading the pdf for No Impact Week inspired by No Impact Man. It isn’t necessary to do everything in the pdf but we can start with small changes such as not using plastic water bottles, having a meat free day and driving less. No Impact Week formally starts this Sunday October 18th but I see no reason why it can’t be integrated into our lives at any time.

Will any of you be participating in the International Day for Climate Action or No Impact Week. I would love to hear about your experiences.

photo credit: 350org

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Blog Action Day: Climate Change – Internation Day for Climate Action October 24, 2009 – 350.org