After some feedback (thanks!), I’ve decided to continue to host images on my own site after the redesign. It gives me more control over how images are displayed, and also allows the image galleries to retain the same feel as the rest of the site. Now the trick is to figure out how to manage it all.

I’m currently using Dave’s album.pl, which has served me well, and isn’t so far off from the right solution. There seem to be plenty of options out there, and I’m looking for the one somewhere in between album.pland Gallery, which might be overkill. For example, it’d be nice to have an admin page where I can upload new images and change captions through a web interface, but I don’t need to have comments or display EXIF data for every image or allow other users to upload images. Any suggestions?

I’ve been playing a bit with an updated layout for the site. So far, it’s nothing drastic, but hopefully things come across a little cleaner. It’s also a good opportunity to update my HTML/CSS skills, which date to about 1997. Reading a bunch at W3Schools, I gather quite a bit has changed since then. If you’re interested, you can check out my progress here (currently only the main page and “Projects” page are new). Feel free to send me any feedback you might have.

The ice cream came out quite well, I think. If I had to make some suggestions (as per their request):

I think the sage in the coulis is an excellent start, but it wasn’t enough for me. I went ahead and steeped a few more leaves in the milk/cream mixture as it was simmering, which gave the ice cream base a much strong sage flavor (be sure to take them out before mixing in the coulis).

For those in the US, 300g of strawberries seems to be about a pint. I used about two pints (and doubled the rest of the quantities) and was happy with the amount of fruit/flavor in the end.

I cut way back on the sugar, even though it means harder ice cream (as Mr. Lebovitz points out, you can add alcohol or more fat to make it softer). I used a little more than half a cup of sugar for almost twice the amount of ice cream. 1c sugar in a pint would’ve been way too sweet for me.

Overall, I’d definitely make it again – I like herb/fruit combinations, and even with frozen rather than fresh strawberries, it was a successful recipe.

One of the things that was really bugging me about Blogger (and prompting me to consider WordPress) was the inability to create links within archives to the previous and next archive files. So on the page for March 2001, I wanted a link to February’s archive and April’s archive. Since Blogger didn’t have an easy way to do it, and since switching to WordPress at this point would be like finding a new apartment because you didn’t like the door handle in the bathroom, I figured out a way to create the links myself in PHP. The archives are now much easier to browse (something I actually do on a regular basis).

Had a chance recently to photograph and write up my latest knitting project (no, not the sweater I’ve been working on for almost 10 years): a scarf, knit on the bias. On the sweater front, though, some friends came over today to do some knitting and I started sleeve #1. I think the sweater and the robot arm are in competition to see which project takes longer. Sorry robot arm, sweater has a good three year head-start on you.

The other night, my friend Mike lamented that his digital camera (a Canon SD450) stopped working after a couple years and a couple too many trips to the beach. He knows I like taking stuff apart, and asked if I’d be interested in trying to fix it. Of course! This afternoon, we took the thing apart down to the gears, and removed about a quarter teaspoon of sand out of the innards. After a thorough cleaning, we managed to get it back together (with only one superfluous part left over) and working!