I finally uploaded several sets of photos I took during a vacation in 2005, and a group of photos from Manhattan when I was playing tour guide for a relative of mine.  It looks like my hard work finally paid off:  I wanted a personal gallery in-house to keep my photos rather than a relying exclusively on a third party service like Flickr, but now I can have the best of both worlds.  I installed a module that allows me to export my in-house photos to Flickr while still retaining its descriptions and tags, which makes photo uploads and synchronization so much easier now.  I really need to start using my cameras again, and with this headache out of the way, you should finally start seeing more photo uploads on a semi- regular basis now.  Do I not rock? 

One thing I need to get off my chest:  Gallery2 is the crappiest crapola craptastic crappy dappy pile of chewy mooseballs I’ve ever seen pass off as a photo management system.  Ok, I’m being a little harsh here, but really, when it comes to offering features likes ratings, comments and so on, it is a thing of hell.  Captcha wouldn’t work, I couldn’t get email notifications of comments, the ratings systems was primitive and pointless, and the slideshow is so basic I suspect it’s still using the same code from 1997.

Still, it’s the only gallery that I could successfully embed into WordPress using this theme, so I’m pretty much stuck with it for now.  It’s one saving grace was being able to export my photos to Flickr, so if you want to comment or fave my photos you can do it there easily enough.

One extra thing about Flickr: my photos get MUCH better exposure there.  So much that a map guide requested my photo of the Lincoln Memorial for use in their Washington edition.  They didn’t pay me a dime though, but still, it’s nice to have a little recognition.  You can see it here.

And before I forget, I also added a link in my sidebar where you can easily chat with me in real time (if I’m around.)  You can find the link in “My Current Status” right above my Twitter widget.  Tres awesomeness, dude. 

Now without further ado, my new photo sets!

Enjoy!