A Picture Share!

Here's brendan at the lady bears softball game.

A Picture Share!

We went to the dunk contest at Wash U, but there were no tickets left. We ended up watching intramural softball instead.

Group shot after the toy store. 

You can tell from this picture that it was grandma and grandpa who took Hayden and Brendan to the toy store. Mom & Dad would never give Brendan a mallet within 5 feet of his brother. Rookie mistake. 

Thomas the Tank Engine saves the day. 

Anyone see the movie "Strange Brew?" I believe those guys would say: "cool ND took, eh hoser? Take off." 

Lesson for the Day: You don't need toys, if you have a toy shop nearby. 

It's been a while since I've posted, because either Brendan or Hayden has hidden the adapter for the card for my digital camera. I have a back up adapter, but that was broken by one of them earlier, so I'll either be posting pictures, or permanently frying my card. This picture is McBrendan and McHayden on St. Patrick's day.  

A Picture Share!

Jay and his raman noodles getting ready for Chris' retirement

A Picture Share!

Here's Pete. He's a lawyer.

A Picture Share!

Here we are at the Fox Theater. Great shot, huh?

A Picture Share!

Here's Hayden doing his Bam Bam impersonation.

A Picture Share!

Here we are celebrating St. Patrick's Day (a day late).

Blog Technology

I've had a few people ask me about how I put together the blog. First of all, any digital camera will do. Mine is a 4 pixel Canon PowerShot that I got fairly cheaply off of E-bay. Then I use Picasa, which is free software distributed by Google, to manage my pictures. Picasa will take the photos off of your camera, and organizes pictures into directories that you can easily navigate. It also has a bunch of really useful editing tools. The one I use the most is the "red eye" fix, which removes red eye from photos and is very easy to use. It also has a number of other tools that help you to adjust color, enhance photos, and print.

The best part of Picasa is that it connects automatically with Hello!, which is another piece of free software that makes it really simple to place pictures on a blog. Once you download and install Hello!, you tell it the name of your blog (for instance, mine is zychsters.blogspot.com) and your login id and password, and it will automatically place your pictures on your blog.

It sounds complicated, but it's not at all. You just navigate through your pictures in Picasa, and select the ones that you'd like to add to your blog. You then click the button in Picasa that says "Share with your blog using Hello!" and the Hello! program opens up. You then type a caption for each picture, and click "Publish." Hello! then formats each picture automatically, and places them online.

It's also easy to add pictures using my cellphone. I have a Treo 650, which is a PalmPilot-cellphone combination, and I use Sprint PCS as my provider. There's a free picture service called Flickr, which provides basically the same service as Hello!, except for cellphone users. I set up an account with Flickr, and they gave me a custom email address that I input one time into my phone. Then I take a picture using my phone, and then click on the email address, which is saved in the phone. I can type a caption in using the keypad on my phone, and when I click the "send" button, the picture is automatically placed on my blog, along with the caption I entered. Since my cell phone's camera has a very low resolution, these pictures aren't as nice as the ones taken with my digital camera, but they look ok on the blog. Since I always have my phone with me, I can always add a picture to my blog, wherever I am.

This all looks and sounds really complicated, but all it takes is a couple of hours of time to download and install all the software, and then it's incredibly easy to place pictures online. It's really amazing how many people have told me that they check in regularly to see the family. I can keep all of our relatives and friends updated, and it only takes me a few minutes to upload the pictures and add captions. Best of all, I have a digital journal that I can keep forever. By the way, there's yet another free piece of software, HTTrack Website Copier, that I use to create a complete copy of the blog. Once I make a copy, I burn it to a CD, and then I have a permanent record that I can use to embarrass the kids when they get older.

Sorry this post is so long, but since several people have asked me about the software I use, I thought I would pass it along to save everyone else the headache of researching all of the different pieces of software. I'm sure that there are plenty of other setups that will work just as well, if not better, but this is what works for me.

Looking back on the post, I realize that it makes me look like a big nerd, but if the shoe fits ...

Back home after a long day golfing. Thanks Aunt Shannon! 

Another great golf shot. 

I don't have a good caption here, I just like the picture. 

Already sitting down on the job, on the first day. It's so hard to find good help these days. 

The Fourth Law of Boys states that any two boys, given any two objects, will eventually use them to do battle. 

In Florida, they have beaches that you can visit, even in the winter. In St. Louis, we have sand traps. 

The 9th hole at Augusta, a cinderella story ...  

Good golf etiquette means replacing bunkers to the same state that you found them in. Of course, good golf etiquette also means not letting your children play in the sand traps, but we won't go there. When Aunt Shannon babysits, anything goes! 

I'm I getting old, or are those groundskeepers looking younger and younger these days? 

Apparently, Aunt Shannon took the boys out on the course. In case there is anyone from Forest Hills reading this blog, these were all taken at the Ballwin Municipal Course. ;-) 

One man's yard waste is another child's endless entertainment. 

I don't know what's happening here, but that grin on Brendan's face makes me think that he's up to no good. 

Look, ma, I'm king of the world! 

Hayden has had enough and is hitting the road. 

No, Brendan, it is not a good idea to see if your brother will eat rocks. 

Since Brendan is the larger of the two boys, he usually pushes around Hayden. Looks like Hayden is about to extract some payback when Brendan least suspects it.