Yesterday I uploaded a good amount of content to my gallery that I had been keeping on Flickr. My original portfolio plan was to feed the images from Flickr via the API, but since I’ve been using Zenfolio for the gallery/client area Flickr just doesn’t fit into the plan anymore.
I’ve barely uploaded to Flickr in months, which is a pretty large paradigm shift from how I used to deposit images on the net.
Since moving to Ottawa my reef has been an eye sore. The initial move was very hard on the system and the majority of the corals didn’t make it, and I couldn’t bring much water so I relied on a low end filter and tap water. The combo of system shock and poor water, mixed with a Coralife skimmer and a pretty crappy light fixture eventually led to an insane hair algae outbreak. It was so bad I didn’t take any pictures.
So last christmas I decided I needed to replace the low performing hardware with something better because the living conditions for the inhabitants just seemed cruel; bad water. I started off addressing the water source and got a nice 4 stage RO/DI filter, and within a month a brand name T5HO fixture with individual reflectors, and a new hang on back refugium with a change of pump location.
This left 1 issue with the overall system. The unwanted bio-load in the system in various forms of dissolved organic compounds (docs) and new algae growth. It was a battle I’ve won in the past when I was lazy with reef husbandry, but this time I had an unexpected variable. One particular fish decided to kill 3 roommates without cause or concern. One of the dead was my lawnmower blenny, and it decided to go into the biggest rock I have before croaking. That’s when it all went wrong.
So, fast forward almost a year and I’ve just swapped my bulbs to a fresh set from UV Lighting and I got a Tunze 9005 skimmer; it’s been a god send. I had to practically close off the air intake during the first month it was in the system so it didn’t overflow almost daily. The collection cup is large, but the lid has 4 small spaces foam can escape from (kinda sucks).
Things were going so good, I didn’t notice the skimmer had started to under perform. After 2 weeks of almost nothing in the cup I remembered how closed the air intake was and opened it up; guessing at a position. I lucked out. In the morning the cup had a nice layer of skimmate and the foam was approximately half way up the neck and bubbling out in huge bursts.
I had been trying bi-weekly and weekly water changes prior to getting the new skimmer; and it just wasn’t enough to keep up with the cycle of new growth & death of the various types of algae that had gotten into the food chain. The Tunze was the missing piece in a complete ‘win’ for this battle. I highly recommend these skimmers.
All of my corals (and fish) are showing great health and growth. One of the latest additions (a mushroom) is spreading at an amazing rate; covering 10% of the rock in a little over a month.
Jen’s sister Michelle is getting married to her long term boyfriend John(ny) in a little over a month from now; and I’m going to be their photographer.
I’m very excited, because I’ve never been to Jamaica, and I can’t think of better scenery for awesome photos. I hope my camera gear makes the trip alright! I’m going to bring my mobile strobist kit which should cover 90% of possible lighting scenarios.
Since this is a destination wedding, Jen and I will also have time to do some vacation activities like snorkeling.
I deployed a modified Master Page object this morning on avoidwork that I had made for a client yesterday. This method is lifted from .Net (and is pretty common in varying degrees of execution with PHP), and allows for a good amount of functionality; such as skins.
Holidays will be entertaining with skins, and automatically activated.
Apparently no one bid met the requirements for this contract, which surprises me. I have GIS experience, just not with the package they’re using. Bummer.
I’m not enjoying my first contract via getafreelancer. It went from simple to intermediate after I “won” and the spec went from 4 sentences to 6 paragraphs. It’s very annoying considering what I bid.
I’m glad I’ve been focusing on improving my JavaScript apps and corresponding Server Side Objects; everything released and in development runs excellent on this awesome little OS.
A guest account has been setup for the aw:Apps that have been released. Daily builds will be available for download when they’re in development. More information can be found on the application pages.
Our Linux and Windows development servers received a new dashboard. These will be upgraded quarterly.
The title says it all. I had a 15 minute phone interview yesterday for an NRCan contract based around a parcel generator and GIS data. Easy work for me, so I really hope the interview was considered good or great by the people at the other end of the phone. I spoke over a speaker phone, so that made me a little nervous as the time passed. I don’t think it was very noticeable.
Anyways, I’d love to have NRCan on my resume.
I added boolean() to handle the optional third parameter of createCalendar(). This fixes a potential bug. Download