The Fourth Street photos show some promise, I think. And so does the software, though it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I got it reliably running all the way through the chain without being kicked manually (does that sound any better than “kicked by hand”?). Last night I dropped a batch in incoming and crashed, and it went through, and this morning I added a bunch more from the music session last night, and those went through, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
I’m playing with the ability to post pictures quickly and semi-automatically — not all pictures I take, just ones I select. Photos posted this way will appear in snapshot gallery entries named “Photo Blog mm/dd“.
Vertical pictures are currently being presented on their side. Other than that, the current collection of hacks seems to be hanging together a little bit.
We’ll see.
The underlying tech: the cheapest Eye-Fi card, home, hotel (Fourth Street) or Sprint Overdrive Wi-fi, ftp upload to a special user under my Dreamhost account, a cron job to pick the photos up and post them to the snapshot album.
Other than bug fixes, planned changes include: RSS feed, latest photo thumbnail in main blog sidebar, possibly creating a blog entry when a photo blog entry is created (but not updated), web access to set photo caption and description (or delete some).
I think, for once, I got this right the first time. I’ve been casually shopping laptop stands for, oh, a decade or so I guess. It became somewhat urgent when the heat issues got bad enough that they all have vents on the bottom, fans, and still get rather hot at some points.
The Koolsink wraps neatly around the laptop in the bag
For me, the stand is primarily for use on the road. I don’t use it at home that much; I’ve got a desktop system, with a comfortable chair and a big monitor, for that. So one of the big issues is the space it took up in the bag. Also, I’d prefer one that doesn’t draw on the laptop batteries to run additional external fans (those also tend to be rather thick and hence hard to pack).
The laptop nestles inside the Koolsink
I finally found a company that had created the ideal solution to this problem—Koolsink. They make a simple aluminum sheet, bent into a narrow “J” shape (rather like a “j-card” for a CD jewel case), just the right thickness for the computer to fit inside it for storage, and to provide a little slant for use on a table. They make a number of sizes; do be sure to find the right one for your laptop!
As usual with such things, it’s a rather expensive sheet of bent aluminum. Worse, from my point of view, the shipping cost is nearly as high as the product (to the USA; they’re in Canada). And they don’t have retail dealers, they only sell direct.
Laptop on the Koolsink on a table
I’ve now had it for a couple of weeks, though not for a road trip. It fits nicely around my computer in the bag, and works very well both on a table and in my lap to keep the vents clear and my lap cool. I would have to describe it as doing everything I hoped it would do (I admit, my hopes did not include world peace; or a pony).
