I’ve disappeared for the last few days because I’ve been working on The Thripp Public Library. While I can’t open it to the public yet (Dad won’t open our house to the world), I’m working on it now because I have time off and Dad’s generously donated lots of his books. Though I wanted to use Evergreen or Koha, I picked the simple and obscure OpenBiblio as my library system, because it’s the only thing I could find that would run on shared hosting. I was disappointed by the lack of features to start, but I’m starting to like the power and control with it, especially since the database makes sense, so adding new features is easy.

Before I even got started, the first step was to choose a barcoding format, classification system, and spine labeling format.

I don’t like Library of Congress (LC) classification because it’s arcane and confusing, so the Dewical Decimal system (DDC) was the default choice. But what to use it for? You can use it for everything, but I decided right away not to use it on fiction items, instead opting for “FICTION / *last name*” as the spine label and call number, which is the same as the Volusia County library system. It may not be ideal, but it’s much easier to use. Biographies are tougher. I chose DDC, but I put two lines above that say “BIO / *subject last name”. The DDC part is always “*numbers* *first three letters of the author’s last name*”. Large type items get “LT” at the top of the spine label. Spine labels == call numbers, always. I created a template file for spine labels in OpenOffice.org Writer, which I add to as I catalog books. Then when I get to twenty or thirty, …

... continue reading

I was looking around today, thinking “What one thing can I do on my website to make it a highly useful photography resource.” It didn’t take long. I decided and set out on releasing my entire portfolio as royalty-free stock images in their high-resolution glory, all free under the least restrictive Creative Commons license. If you’re any sort of digital artist, this is some awesome news, because I’ve literally put years into this stuff. You can do anything with them; even commercial stuff. All you have to do is credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back here at http://richardxthripp.thripp.com. Click here to see the complete gallery, or choose from some of the quick picks below:

Thanks, and enjoy. Click “ShareThis” below and get the word out to your friends.

I’ve been working on the Thripp.com network non-stop over the past ten days. It’s looking great; I learned a lot and made a lot of progress with features. The next step is to move my blog, Brilliant Photography by Richard X. Thripp, over to it. I’ve done it and you’re reading it now.

The reasons are so I won’t have to maintain two separate Wordpress installs, so I’ll have nice threaded comments as on Thripp.com (see comments here for an example), so people can comment while logged in at Thripp.com, so I’ll appear in lists around the site, so I’ll have the nice statistics I’ve set up, so I’m supporting my own product, etc. The challenges are implementing my Wordpress install’s features in Wordpress MU, while restricting many of those plugins to me, and the new URIs. The compromises are giving up caching, selling prints, Xanga mirroring, and Twitter. It’s all worth it because I’m fighting this battle to the death and I can’t be diving my efforts. I’m sabotaging myself if I don’t move here.

I couldn’t get yak to work on Wordpress MU, which I used to sell my prints. It would try directing to the main site, and when I changed that in the code, there were more errors. So I’ve removed it and won’t sell my prints anymore. I only sold two in five months anyway, and this will free me up to not have to enter each product into the produce table, so it’s not all bad.

I couldn’t get WP-Cache or WP Super Cache to work for this blog, though I could’ve tried harder I suppose. So for now, there’s no caching (except the Wordpress object cache). The site actually loads faster than the old one, though; I’m getting