Flickr stats

Has everyone tried out the new Flickr homepage yet? I love it. If you haven't, login to Flickr and look at the bottom of the page. You should find a link to try out the new homepage. Click on it, enjoy the music (totally serious), and explore the new page.

One of the best new things I found was an option to turn on statistics about my photos. I'm such a numbers geek, so I had to do this. It told me it might take a while to compile all of the numbers, but I checked back in a few minutes and it was ready. What I found was shocking!

I should give some back story here. When Jared and I were first looking for a place here in Columbus, I took this picture of my foot on the dashboard of my car (I like taking pictures of my feet, apparently). It's really not that exciting of a picture, but somehow it was getting way more views than my other pictures. So about a year ago, I decided to try to take a picture that would surely get more views than any of my other pictures. The result was this picture (safe for work, I promise), which I strategically named "Foot Fetish." Sure enough, it has gathered just over 2,000 views to date, and 7 people call it a favorite. But to my surprise, that is not my highest viewed picture. What picture could possibly get more views than that?

This one, apparently:

Yes, somehow a cart full of Wii gear is way more exciting than a bunch of feet - this picture has gotten over 7,000 views to date! That's a whole hell of a lot more than the foot fetish one. Nobody calls this photo a favorite though, and that doesn't really surprise me. My guess is that the majority of the views came right after this photo was taken, when a lot of people couldn't find a Wii in the stores and were looking around online for photos of one - although the stats don't seem to go back far enough for me to confirm that.

The foot fetish photo is still racking up views, but it will be a long time before it ever surpasses the cart o' Wii goodness. If you want, check out the rest of my stats here.

Thing #7 - Technology

Every time I hear the word "technology," I think of the song from the end of Napoleon Dynamite:

"I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... but I still love technology, always and forever."

Ah, technology. I almost feel like writing a totally cliche post about how technology moves so fast, and how hard it is to catch up, and how I can't believe kids these days are doing this thing instead of that thing, and how they have NO IDEA how hard it was for me when I was their age, blah blah blah. But (thankfully, for you) I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to list some cool things I'm excited about:

Google Chrome. I haven't downloaded it yet, but I will soon. I read the comic that they put out to promote it, and it sounds really awesome. I don't know that this will replace Firefox for me, but it should be fun to play around with.

The iPhone. I think I've decided that I'm going to get one, but I'm not sure when. I just think it is so cool that there is a phone that does practically anything you could want it to do. I don't really need it, but who cares? Nobody NEEDS an iPhone. I just want one! :)

Picnik. This is a site where you can edit images for free, and it's super easy to use. I don't have Photoshop or any other photo editing software, but I wanted to take a picture I had and make it into a logo for my blog. I found Picnik (which I had heard of before, but never used), and within minutes I was able to do exactly what I wanted with my photo. Sure, it's not as sophisticated as Photoshop - but it was fast, easy, and did just what I needed it to do. Sometimes I'm amazed at how much you can do online for free!

What cool things are you excited about?

Thing #6 - Playing with Flickr tools

Well, I played around with some of the mashups, tools, and third-party sites suggested - my favorites were the trading card maker and FlickrSLiDR. Here are my creations:

My librarian trading card!

I love that photo - I was dressed up as Madame Trelawney from Harry Potter for the 7th book release party at Barnes & Noble. Can you see the resemblance?

A slideshow of my photos tagged "library":


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thing #5 - Fun with Flickr!

Columbus Metropolitan Library,
originally uploaded by silver marquis.

I have to admit, I'm cheating a bit here - I took this photo over a year ago! But it's one of my favorites, so I wanted to use it for this post. Flickr is about the best thing ever, and I'm glad to see all of my coworkers discovering how wonderful it is and having fun with it. I have a pro account, and it's the only online service I actually pay money for. I've always loved to take pictures and share them with friends, but it wasn't always so easy getting someone to sit down and look through a photo album with you. Now my friends can enjoy my pictures at their leisure! Also, it's really exciting when someone you don't know finds a picture you took and either comments on it, marks it as a favorite, or uses it on their website or blog. This blog used my photo, and so did this article. Very cool!

So that's Thing #5, and now I'm moving on to Thing #6 - playing with Flickr mashups!

Summer fun-ness

You may be wondering what I've been up to. Or maybe you haven't been. Either way, you are about to find out. Oh, the magic of blogging!

First of all, I visited Chicago two weeks ago - and it was amazing! There is so much I didn't get to do (I needed to stay there a week longer!), but what I did do was completely awesome. One of the places I had to visit was the Threadless store. If you've never heard of them, check out their website - if you like unique t-shirts or creating your own designs, you'll love it! Anyway, I visited the store and bought myself a shirt. They also have art prints for sale based on the t-shirt designs. The best part is that they release the newest designs in the store before they release them online - so I got my shirt early, and actually wore it on the day it was "officially" released! Very cool.

Another place I made sure to visit was the Chicago Public Library. This is apparently the largest library in the country (and with 79 branches, there's really no doubt in my mind about that), and the main library is called the Harold Washington Library Center in downtown Chicago. I visited the library on a Sunday - I expected the place to be packed (my library is a madhouse on Sundays!) but found that it was quite peaceful. There were 9 floors - I didn't visit them all, but I could tell that each was laid out the same way. The exception was the 9th floor, which was a beautiful open room with a few tables and a glass ceiling. Surprisingly, only one person was using the space to study when I went up there. If I lived in Chicago, I would be up there everyday! You could even see the top of the Sears tower through the glass. The library had a very modern feel, but I have to say that I wasn't really impressed with the layout of the floors or the use of the space. The walls and decor were... well, not very exciting either. Not bad, just not as impressive as I had hoped it would be. But overall, it was a very nice building.

Check out all of my Chicago pictures on my Flickr page.

In other news, last weekend I was in the Pride parade with Spin Columbus. We did pretty well and everyone seemed to enjoy our performance - we got a lot of compliments afterwards, which made everyone feel really great. This weekend I will be performing with them again in the Doo Dah parade on July 4th - come out and see us if you can (and if it doesn't get rained out)!

Erica's realization of the month: Sunglasses are AWESOME. I bought a pair for myself on the way to Chicago, and I instantly felt both way cooler than usual and much more vacation-y. Now I wear them all the time, and I'm not quite sure how I have lived almost 26 years without them. In fact, I'm pretty sure people smile at me more when I wear them - this is probably either because of the aforementioned coolness factor, or perhaps because they can't see my eyes (and thus can't see the weird look I would have normally been giving them). I have also started noticing just how bright the world is without them - and when I drag my groggy self into work in the morning, the last thing I want to see while driving there is anything bright and sunny.

What exciting revelations have you had this summer?