• Flickr is where I put my “artsy” pictures, mainly the ones that I take with my Digital SLR.
• Facebook is where I put my “best of” personal pictures. I try to limit the number here since most Facebook friends probably aren’t interested in going through 200 vacation photos.
• MobileMe is where I put all of my personal pics. This is primarily for family who doesn’t mind going through tons of photos. It also provides lots (10 GB) of storage and the option to download high rez versions of each photo.

All of this centers around iPhoto, where I store everything. I have two separate libraries, one with all of my personal photos, and one with all my DSLR photos. I usually end up taking a ton of mediocre photos with the DSLR in order to score a few keepers, so I didn’t want to have all that mixed into my main library. After everything is in iPhoto, I use several tools to get them out onto the web:

• FlickrExport to upload photos directly to Flickr from iPhoto. It costs £12, but it’s well worth it for the convenience it provides.
• Facebook Exporter to upload photos directly to Facebook from iPhoto.
• iPhoto’s built in Web Galleries to upload photos to MobileMe.

Once they’re on the web, I want to let people know about them. For Facebook photos, friends are automatically notified through my timeline, and I use My Flickr to do the same for Flickr photos. For my MobileMe stuff, I’ll usually just send a Web Gallery link to anyone who may be interested.

Well there you have it. This took a little time to research and set up, but now that I’ve done the work, I have an organized photo collection that’s pretty easy to manage.

The Sumner Hotel (London, England) - A nice, quiet hotel that’s outside the main tourist areas (which I liked). It blends right into the block; so much that I didn’t even know it was the hotel when we first arrived. It’s very quiet inside (except for the creaky floors) with a B&B type feel in the common areas. The decor is contemporary but conservative; no glitz like you see in many boutique hotels. It’s about 5 minutes from the Marble Arch tube station, and we were able to easily get wherever we needed from there. We really liked this hotel and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind being off the beaten path.

Tigerlily (Edinburgh, Scotland) - This hotel was rated in the top 65 hotels in the world by Conde Nast Traveler and it definitely deserves it… it’s really, really cool. When first shown our room it kind of knocked my socks off – wide open with high ceilings, high windows and a very contemporary style. I had the same feeling when we came back later that night to find the whole room illuminated by red lights! Appreciation of quality and attention to detail were evident throughout the hotel – from the decor, to the service, to the food (breakfast was sooo good). Although it’s pricey, I feel like it’s a good value for what you receive. I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys boutique hotels.

The Kingsmills Hotel (Inverness, Scotland) -This hotel was a Marriott at some point, and that’s just what it feels like – a Marriott from the mid 90s that hasn’t been updated and is starting to show its age. The staff wasn’t overly friendly (and apparently not satisfied with their jobs according to what we overheard in the bar), the decor was slightly dated, and the food was mediocre. The room was clean, but not “squeaky” clean. The hotel is certainly acceptable as a place to spend the night, but I feel it’s overpriced for what you receive. If we went back to Inverness I would look into one of the many B&Bs or guest houses instead.

The Royal Horseguards (London, England) - This place brought the awesome back. It’s a grand old hotel right on the River Thames. It has a conservative but modern decor and the rooms have recently been updated with all the modern amenities (room key enabled power, TV in the shower, towel warmers, electronic do not disturb, etc.). The staff was friendly and very helpful throughout our short stay. The place is pretty classy (I felt slightly uncomfortable walking through the lobby in jeans while everyone else was in tuxedos), so I don’t know if I would want to stay for an extended vacation, but it’s great for a short stay or if you’re traveling on business (or if you are classy).

That’s it! We had a great time and are looking forward to our next journey across the pond.

When at home, I listen to most of my music through AppleTV. This means the TV is on a lot, so I’d like an interesting screen saver. Unfortunately, AppleTV falls a little short in this area. It can rotate a set of photos as the screen saver, but you can only choose from a small group of Apple photos, your own iPhoto collection, or photos from a specific Flickr account. I like my photos, but don’t want to look at them all the time, and I had a hard time finding a Flickr user with a large enough album to keep things interesting.

What I really wanted was a way to display the Flickr interestingness collection. Interestingness is a pool of, you guessed it… interesting photos, that changes all the time. Unfortunately, since AppleTV only provides the ability to link to specific Flickr accounts, you can’t access this dynamic collection.

After searching for a solution, and inspired by this post, I finally came up with workaround. It’s a script that queries photos from interestingness via the Flickr API, then adds them as favorites to a special Flickr account I created called dailypool. The script runs every night, so there are always fresh photos. Since this Flickr account can be viewed by anyone, you can easily link to it on your own AppleTV.

Here’s what you need to do to set it up. This assumes you’re using AppleTV v2.

Add the dailypool Flickr account:

1. On your remote, press Menu to get to the main menu
2. Select Photos in the left menu, then Flickr in the right menu
3. Select Add Flickr Contact, then type dailypool using the onscreen keyboard

Set dailypool favorites as your screen saver

1. Press the Menu button on the remote until you get back to the main menu
2. Select Settings in the left menu, then Screen Saver in the right menu
3. On the Screen Saver screen, scroll down to and select the Slideshow menu
4. On the Choose Photos screen, select Flickr, then select dailypool, then favorites
5. Press the Menu button on the remote until you get back to the main menu

That’s it! Next time your AppleTV goes into screen saver mode it should display interestingness photos that will be refreshed every day. Enjoy!

To help, I created a Ruby script for automatically processing codes. Every day, it reads 10 codes from a text file, then submits them to mycokerewards.com and logs the result. That way, I could just add all my codes to a file and it would take care of the rest.

I’ve provided the script below, as well as instructions for configuring it on a Mac (should be similar on Unix/Linux). If you’re using Windows, you can do the same thing by downloading Ruby and setting up a scheduled task. This isn’t the most user-friendly process, so a little development and/or command line experience would be helpful, but if you don’t have that you should be able to work it out by stepping through the instructions. Good luck and happy redeeming!

Here’s the code

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require 'xmlrpc/client'
require 'logger'
 
class McrSender 
  @@SERVICE_URL = "https://secure.mycokerewards.com/xmlrpc"
 
  def initialize(codeFile, logFile, readCount, username, password)
    @codeFile = codeFile
	@logFile = logFile
    @readCount = readCount
    @username = username
    @password = password
    @logger = Logger.new(@logFile)
  end
 
  def send_codes
    i = 1
    # read file into an array
    lines = File.readlines(@codeFile)
    lineCount = lines.length
 
    if(lineCount > 0 and lines[0].strip.length > 0)
      # login
      if(login == true)
        @logger.info "Successfully logged in."
 
        puts lineCount
 
        # process items and remove them from the array
        i = 0
        while (i < @readCount && i < lineCount)
          code = lines[0].chomp
          send_code(code)
          lines.delete_at(0)
          i += 1
        end
 
        # write array back to file
        File.open(@codeFile, "w") do |file|
          file.puts(lines.join())
        end
      else
        @logger.error "Could not login with username '#{@username}' and password '#{@password}'."
      end
    else
      @logger.info "No codes found in code file (or the first line is empty). Exiting."
    end
  end
 
  private
    def send_code(code)
      args = {'emailAddress' => @username, 'password' => @password, 'screenName' => ' ', 'capCode' => code, 'VERSION' => '3.0'}
      service = XMLRPC::Client.new2(@@SERVICE_URL)
      result = service.call('points.enterCode', args)
      if(result[0]['ENTER_CODE_RESULT'] == "true")
        earned = result[0]['POINTS_EARNED']
        @logger.info "Successfully entered code '#{code}' Points earned '#{earned}'. "
      else
        message = result[0]['MESSAGES']
        @logger.error "Error entering code '#{code}'. Error message: '#{message}'."
      end
    end
 
    def login
      args = {'emailAddress' => @username, 'password' => @password, 'screenName' => ' ', 'VERSION' => '3.0'}
      service = XMLRPC::Client.new2(@@SERVICE_URL)
      result = service.call('points.pointsBalance', args)
      result[0]['LOGIN_RESULT'] == "true"
    end
end
 
sender = McrSender.new("codes.txt", "log.txt", 10, "YOUR_EMAIL", "YOUR_PASSWORD")
sender.send_codes

How to install

1. Make sure Ruby is installed on your Mac. (It is by default in Leopard). You can open terminal and type the following to check. It will return the Ruby version if it’s installed.

   ruby -v
   

2. Download the zip file containing the script, code file and log file.
3. Extract the archive, the move the McrSender folder to the desired location. I’ll use /Users/doug for the remaining instructions. Replace /Users/doug with your own path.
4. In the bottom two lines of McrSender.rb, change “codes.txt” to the full path to your codes.txt file, “log.txt” to the full path to your log.txt file, “YOUR_EMAIL” to the email address you use for My Coke Rewards, and “YOUR_PASSWORD” to the password you use for My Coke Rewards. (NOTE: All of these values should be surrounded in double quotes)
5. Add your My Coke Rewards Codes to the codes.txt file. There should be one code per line.
6. Open terminal then type the following commands to change permissions on the Ruby script to make it executable and on the codes.txt and log.txt files to make them readable and writable.

   cd /Users/doug
   chmod 755 McrSender.rb
   chmod 666 codes.txt
   chmod 666 log.txt
   

7. Create a cron job to run the script every day. Again, in Terminal type:

   EDITOR=nano
   crontab -e
   

   Your cron file will open up in the nano command line text editor. Add the following line to run the script at 6:00 am every morning:

   0 6 * * * ruby /Users/dwburns/scripts/McrSender/McrSender.rb
   

   (Again, change the path to your own path).

You can test it the first time by running (something like) the following in Terminal:

/Users/doug/McrSender/McrSender.rb

Cover of 1984 By George Orwell

I have a bunch of commuting time on my hands these days, so I decided to start reading (well actually listening to) all of the books that I should have read in high school. This includes books that weren’t on my curriculum (but everyone seems to have read),  as well as the books I was supposed to read, but didn’t since I was such an awful, awful student.

First on my list was 1984 (this one falls into the “not on curriculum” category). I’m, a long time Mac fan and have wanted to read this since first seeing Apple’s 1984 commercial, but just didn’t find the time till now.

After finishing it, I have to say it’s one of my favorite books of all time. Incredibly intense, incredibly depressing, incredibly thought provoking, and incredibly awesome. It’s classic for a reason; the writing is impeccable and absorbs you from the first moment. In addition, the narration by Simon Prebble in the Audible audiobook version is incredible.

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do. If you have, take a few hours to re-”read” the audiobook version. It’s great stuff.