I love Ben’s art

September 7th, 2009 | Filed under Blog, Friends, Lawrence, Life, Photos

I love Ben’s art. There, I said it.

Yesterday we had a lovely coffee date with Ben and his blushing bride to be, Martha (see bennyandmartha). Martha and Teressa were there for wedding planing business, more specifically the pastries and cakes for the reception. I couldn’t be more excited that Teressa is helping out, as I get to be the official cake-taste-tester while she figures out exactly which recipes are working and which ones are not.

While the ladies discussed all things bakery, Ben and I sat on the other end of the table and nerded out about TVs, movies, video games, and most of all his latest artwork. Ben hooked me up with four of his latest Moo cards to promote his awesome etsy store and blog. Check out the store to get full sized prints, and more importantly check a few of my favorites including “Watcher,” “Super Dee” and “The Start of Something Big.”

Nerd Post Alert: URL Shortening

August 22nd, 2009 | Filed under Blog, Rant, Technology

So, I get excited about web app setups and configurations from time to time, if for no other reason than that it tends to be a distraction that allows me to work the problem solving part of my brain. Now, almost every aspect of my professional life revolves around problem solving, however, this kind of thing ends up just being for fun and allows me to work the muscle without the strain or fatigue of real work.

In the tech press this week the world’s been all aflutter with stories about url shortening services shutting down and links to content being lost to the 404′d internet ether. After reading a few comments by Dave Winer, John Gruber, Matt Mullenweg and even the Buzz Out Loud Crew, I decided to look into how hard it would be to setup and configure my own custom url shortener. This is not because I think I’m operating at the same level as any of the above, but that I like to own my content. If this website is anything it’s an experiment for me to understand the inner workings of the web for users, content producers and media shops alike.

While I’m in no way a big name blogger, this site is a place for me to update friends, learn as well as promote myself and my work. If this website were to disappear tomorrow very few people would notice, and the web would just continue chugging along. This effect is multiplied even further when it comes to my use of short urls (like bit.ly, tinyurl.com or tr.im). No one cares if my short url links on twitter or facebook just stop working. But I care…and that’s what matters.

I can hear you saying Matt, you don’t have everything on this site under one roof, and that’s true. I used to locally host my own photos with open source software but I just gave up. The software wasn’t updated very consistently and there were many bugs. Eventually I just started using flickr.com full time…I even setup a paid account. I started embracing flickr with open arms due to the ability to upload and tweet photos to flickr from my iPhone with a combo of twitterrific and mobile fotos. I don’t own the urls where my photos live and any day Yahoo could just announce they are closing flickr and all my links and photos would go poof. The only solace I have that this won’t happen, like half the “free” web services out there, is that I’m paying for flickr. The chances of it disappearing, at least in my monkey brain, decrease dramatically when money changes hands.

So, after a little googling I came across an article by lifehacker discussing how to setup yourls.org on your own php server. Exactly what I was looking for. After only about 15-20 minutes of setup I was up and running. The bulk of the time was my hosting service updating the DNS records so that the mattkapp.net url was live and pointing at my server.

I’ve been testing this a little so you should be able to click this link (http://mattkapp.net/3) and it will take you to my flickr photos. Yourls will shorten any url I want and is protected behind a password so that spammers can’t take control of the url and blast out messages with my domain. Also it allows me to automatically tweet when I have updated a blog post to my twitter account. At first glance this feels a little spammy, however I don’t post all that often and I figure that if someone is following my tweets they’d be interested in my more long form ramblings.

So consider this post me planting my flag in the sand and controlling my content’s destiny; as well as a simple project to distract from all the 3D/Comp work I’ve been doing and a way to test out the shiny software I’ve discovered. Enjoy, and if anyone has trouble setting up thier own let me know and I’ll try to help.

Austin Wedding Fun Time

August 18th, 2009 | Filed under Blog, Family, Friends, Photos, Travel

So, I’ve finally regrouped and started to come out of the coma that always follows a vacation. For those that don’t know we spent a very relaxing weekend at two very close friend’s wedding. It was a fantastic time of catching up with old friends, making some noise downtown and watching two dear friends tie the knot. Now, by making noise I mean we got the “band” (Tom Tinker & the Whisky Boys) back together for one night on Friday. After about 15 minutes of rehearsal we banged out some of our greatest hits for a crowd of friends and family. It was a blast and reminded me how effortless and fun making music with Grady, Dan and Matt was. We all kind of had that moment where we realized that we could have actually been a Rock ‘n Roll band…but life and college and jobs and everything else got in the way. I know I don’t have any regrets as a I love my career and the direction life has taken me…but I definitely miss making music 3 to 4 nights a week with my friends. There’s just something about being on stage with your friends…but enough whimsy.

Teressa and I spent most of our down time split between the fantastic Stephen F. Austin Hotel and checking out the historical and political sites of Austin…including the gorgeous State Capital and the LBJ presidential library and musuem. The latter being a very moving museum and display of his Presidential archive and artifacts. Both Teressa and I found ourselves wiping away tears while reading a passage from one of Johnson’s State of the Union speeches. As much as the country loved Kennedy, it was really clear that Johnson was the president who brought home the promises of JFK, including equal rights, the American dream (via his Great Society) and most of all the space program. I have to say that I really walked away with a much greater respect for the man. It also reminded me that we HAVE to stop by the Eisenhower museum in Abilene sometime. I’ve driven past it every time I visit my parent’s and have always been in too big of a hurry to stop. That changes next time.

All and all it was a fantastic and beautiful wedding, and Teressa looked like a million bucks on my arm. Also, it was really nice to take a vacation. We haven’t left town for a trip in over a year and it was really refreshing to spend 4 days with my lady…but it made going back to the ol’ grind more than a little tough. My only complaint was that we couldn’t seem to find any of the local flair that people equate with Austin. Everyone we talked to said Austin was like a big Lawrence, and in the sense that there is a College, lots of bars and restaurants they were spot on. But we couldn’t seem to find any kind of local, quirky shops that we’ve come to love about downtown Lawrence. Oh, well…maybe next time!?

Oh and Matt & Libby, thanks again for the sunglasses…I’ve never felt like such a hipster!