We're 18 Months Today!

Today is Dada's 18 month birthday. It's amazing how fast the time has passed since we got back from China.

Here's Dada having her birthday breakfast with mom:

Flickr.com Use Update: Can't Feed Private Photos

As y'all know I've started using the Flickr photo sharing site as an alternative to Kodak Gallery (nee Ofoto), partly because it would make it easier for people to know when new pictures were uploaded because you can subscribe to "feeds" of pictures with specific tags.

Turns out this only works for public pictures not for private pictures. The last word from the Flickr people was a statement 7 months ago to the effect that "it's coming". But nothing yet.

Hmph.

This means that my options are pretty much limited to either making Dada's pictures public, posting here whenever new pictures are uploaded, continuing to send out emails, or doing nothing.

I'm not really keen on making all of Dada's pictures public, so that's out. Sending out emails and doing nothing is missing the point, so I'll try to post here whenever new pictures are published.

You can create an RSS or Atom feed of this blog if you haven't already (for example on a MyYahoo page or using bloglines or any news reader (like the Thunderbird or Eudora email clients). So if I post here with new pictures you'll still get an automatic update.

Or you can just check in on Flickr occassionally. It does offer the feature of letting you quickly link to a slideshow of any user's latest pictures.

Also, you can't yet order prints from Flickr (hmph again) although they have announced a partnership with EzPhoto to do this. This means that if you want to print any of the pictures on Flickr you either need to download it, put it on a memory card or CD, and take it to Target or Walgreens or wheverever they have kiosks for printing digital pictures or let me know what photos you want and I'll put them on Ofoto so you can order prints from there. I appologize for this inconvenience. Hopefully they'll have the print feature worked out soon.

Note too that one of the cool features of Flickr is that you can download the picture at its original resolution, so if you do want to make your own prints, be sure to get the largest size available (to make the best quality print).

In other news, Gran Judy is winging her way home following a very pleasant visit with us here in Austin. She took lots of pictures, all of which are up in Flickr. Here's one of the best:

Don't Wake the Baby

Dada is still asleep and I'm now awake enough to actually do a blog post. Nei Nei (Gran Judy) is here for a while, which is lots of fun. Julie and I are actually going to go to a movie tonight! Woo hoo!.

Lot's going on. Dada is growing like a weed, our house is starting to be built. The weather is getting hot. The usual.

Here is another family's China adoption blog: Our Journey to Baby Sipes. Their daughter is from the same orphanage as Dada (the Maonan District Welfare Institute). They are just about to start their trip to China.

I have started using a new photo sharing and community servce called Flickr (www.flickr.com). It's a pretty cool site, much better than Ofoto (Kodak Gallery). For example, you can download the original picture at its full resolution, something you can't do with Ofoto. You can also create RSS and Atom syndication streams of pictures with specific descriptive "tags". This makes it easy for people to know when you've put new pictures up. It also has a nice slideshow feature.

Anyway, I've started putting up pictures of Dada and pictures of the house construction.

The house construction photos are public and you can see the construction time sequence here: 2704 Wilson Construction Time Lapse Pictures. View it as a slideshow with the delay turned down to 1 second to get the (admittedly weak) timelapse effect.

You will have to register with Flickr, but it's free and pretty much free of advertising.

To see Dada's pictures you'll need to be added to our friends and family contacts list. Just let me know or add me as a contact once you've registered with Flickr (my Flickr ID is "drmacro"). I've also been sending out Flickr invitations to everyone I can think of.

You can use any RSS or Atom feed to subscribe to any tag such that when new pictures are uploaded with that tag, you get notified. You can use your MyYahoo home page to subscribe to feeds, most mail readers, or a web-based site like BlogLines. I've been experimenting with Bloglines and it seems to work pretty well. (Note to Grandpa Bill: This is what will work best with WebTV, I think--we'll talk when we're in Tacoma.)

I've also created a private Flickr group called "Dada Watchers" where you can post your own pictures of Dada, should you have some, and also comment about the pictures.

I'm hoping this will reduce the amount of baby spam email I have to send out and provide a better level of service to those who expect regular baby pictures....