I have done it before and here I am doing it again. Every time I sort of promise to myself that it will be the last time but somehow I always manage to let time go and leave my blog unattended. I hate it!

I’ve been thinking a little bit about it and I think I have come up with a couple of reasons for this most recent lapse. One reason is that I am at the end of the school semester and I have a presentation due on April 27th to get ready for. I know what my weekend plans will be, other than a couple of engagements we already have. Once school is over, I will have to concentrate on my capstone project but I should have more time available then to dedicate to this site.

The second reason I have identified is because I am tired of the site. A friend brought up the other day that I’ve had the same look and structure since day one and I needed a change. I could not agree more! When I started the site in its current form, it was a fun project. Little things had to be done to bring it all together, it was fun. I need to bring that fun back octavioheredia.com and I have a few ideas of what I want. However, time is a limited commodity right now and my site has to take a back seat for the time being although it won’t be too long.

I know the couple of you who continue to visit will understand where I am coming from, I thank you in advance for your patience. I am not giving up on my site, I am just letting you know what is going on.

Since I upgraded to a pro Flickr account, I’ve decided to upload larger files to my account. I was motivated to make the change since my upload capacity drastically changed with the pro account, so it is not longer a concern. However, this change in photo size, broke the photo section of this site since I programatically pull the image from the Flickr stream.

I will take this opportunity to do some work with the Flickr API and thus fix the problem with the current code which requests an image which is too big for the current design. I am also thinking about migrating the older albums which still reside on my server to Flickr but I fear that might be a very time-consuming task and one that will have to continue to sit on the back burner for a little while longer.

update: the error has been fixed to work with the larger images but I still would like to do some changes with this gallery. I’ve downloaded a couple of PHP classes which abstract the Flickr API to check them out over the next few days.

If you have visited the photo page lately you might’ve noticed that things look a tad different these days. The difference is that I’ve started using Flickr to host and manage my photos online instead of my own hosting server. I really liked hosting these images on the same server as with this site but storage space was starting to become a factor, not a cost factor but an organizational factor.

My hosting plan allows me to have an expanding allocation of storage as long as such use lies within their terms of use. A personal gallery is covered by such TOS so I was not breaking any agreement. However, given that I am on a shared server, I was never 100% certain that my content would be there the next day. I’ve worked on this field long enough to know that things can and will go wrong, it’s just a matter of time. I’ve never had a problem with my hosting company but as the size of my photo gallery began to increase, the backing-up process was also becoming more complex (to the point that I stopped backing up the images I posted on the site completely).

My decision to move my photos to Flickr was also based on how easy it is to upload and manage my photo with the web application. I can also easily share them with friends, family and the whole community if I choose to do so. On a technical aspect, I can still link my own site with my photos through the use of their public API. This programatic access was what eventually tilted my decision to use their services, since I was able to show the photos on my site while still having the benefits provided by their platform.

There are a few things that I still need to do with the photo section (add a cache feature) of the site but for the time being I am releasing it to the world. The latest photos are from Sarah’s birthday party which we celebrated last Friday (3 Jun). So, in case that you are looking to share some photos with friends and family, I will recommend you to evaluate a free account or let me know if you have any questions I might be able to answer.

May 1st was marked by the release of many great new designs around the web, including many great blogs. These new designs were part of the CSS Reboot and May 1st Reboot projects and have put some thoughts about redoing my own site in the near future. Don’t expect any changes soon but I have a new interest in the visual appeal of this site.

It has been rather quiet around here for way too long, at least longer than what I ever wanted to ignore my site. It also seems like once in a while things do get to the point where I have little choice but to remain absent from this site, and this is one of those points.

However, the absence will not be long since I have written down a couple of ideas already and will make sure that I get to them this weekend. Work has presented a couple of situations that are worth bringing up and get your opinion. Finally, just so you know, I really really don’t enjoy writing these type of entries but it was necessary to do so.

Thanks for understanding!