I was just watching the television news and they had a story about a woman who parked her car outside the coop filled with donated presents for underprivileged children. While she was in the store, the car was broken into and the donations were stolen. I find it unbelievable that someone could carry out such a robbery right on elmwood. Did nobody see it or say anything?

As (e:matthew) and I have discussed for over a year now, the 90s are coming back. I was totally amazed when I saw a whole section of grunge flannel at the Gap.

I have so many pics I wanted to post this week. Lets see how motivated I can get.

This post was sent directly from a Nikon s7c camera. So this is the second one. If anyone else wants a caera that can post to their journal, you should check out the nikon s7c

Newegg has it for $299. It is a 7MP digital point and shoot with wifi that allows you to send pics form anywhere. I wrote a script for processing the special messages it sends and posting them directly on your journal.

I love this freakin' camera. Like I said tehy have them at newegg for $299

I just got this message from Nikon's Media relations at MWW Group .

My name is John and I'm with Nikon's media relations firm, MWW Group . I came across your S7c post and am curious to how you got the camera to post directly to your blog? I can be reached at ___@___.com . Looking forward to hearing from you.

My Response

Hey John,
I am delighted with my Nikon s7c camera. I purchased it expressly for the purpose of posting to my elmwoodstrip.org journal and to encourage other users of my journaling site to post more images on their journals. I hope that the wifi system on the phone encourages more of the users to buy the camera and post on their journal.

Elmwoodstrip.org is a non-profit community blogging site for Buffalo, NY that I started as my MFA thesis project in 2003. I am very interested in helping the users publish media without having to purchase/learn how to use middleware software such as photoshop, etc. This camera is especially great because no matter which quality mode they take the pictures in, they have the option to send them at lower (journal ready) resolution (TV mode?)

Before purchasing the camera I had assumed it would actually send the images to an email address as attachments. Elmwoodstrip.org is already equipped to accepted journal posts via email as a way to deal with posting media from more antiquated cell phones that cannot upload files via their web browser to the users journals. Unfortunately, many of the users cannot afford the expensive monthly service charges to use cell phones which can post to their journal via the internet. When I saw the camera could connect to any "free" wireless hotspot without a service contract, I realized that this could spell a revolution in blogging live media.

HOW IT WORKS -

When I sent the first email I was disappointed because I had to visit the nikon site directly to grab the images. I had hoped the images were included as file attachments in the email. Then I realized that nikon gallery page referenced by the URL in the email contains a reference to a zip file which houses all the media files.

Being a web programmer, I wrote a PHP script for the elwoodstrip.org server which does the following.

1. Waits for the emails to arrive.
2. When they arrive, it parses the text to get the URL to the Nikon gallery page contained in that email.

3. It then visits that URL and finds the hidden form fields which contains the information needed to access the zip file. I am not sure why the "download all" button URL itself does not contain the information to access the file. This would make the process so much simpler and I don't see how putting it in a hidden form makes it any more secure. It appears that when you click "download all" the page uses javascript to submit the hidden form via POST which then presents the user with the zip file data.

4. To simulate this I store the hidden form field values and then simulate hitting the download all button by sending POST content to the nikon page that the form ACTION URL.

5. My server reads the binary zip data from the nikon server and saves the zip file to a temporary directory.

6. the server grabs the camera ID and the senders email from the nikon email.

6. The server then unzips the file. It matches the camera ID up with the user profile on elmwoodstrip.org. The users with this camera have to enter in their camera ID to make this happen.

7. The media files are then moved from the temporary cache folder to the appropriate user's journal media directory.

9. A journal is written by the server for that user including all media attached. The user then can login and edit from their desktop or mobile phone and add extra text.

QUESTIONS:
1. it would be nice to be able to type out a message to be sent with the email on the camera. You could easily type using the dial, in the same way you type out the email addresses. It can be awkward to send someone images without any textual content. For the journals it would make it that much greater.

1. Can there please be an additional link to the zip file in the email that comes to the user when they send the media. That woudl make this whole process so much simpler.

2. Is there some sort of API to allow users to have the media post directly to another server besides Nikon? I am just afraid to encourage many people to buy the camera only to find that nikon gets rid of their gallery site at some point and the cameras then no longer do wifi?

4. I think you guys are really missing out by not capitalizing on this. I would be happy to work with you for developing APIs to post on the major blogging sites directly from the camera. I think you could sell an exponentially greater number of cameras if people knew this could be done. In fact it would be even greater if you could put the address to post the data to into your camera. That way it could work with any system.

5. How did you find out about my journal. Was it all the hits to the nikon server while I figuring this out last night? ;)

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Thanks for your time,
Paul Visco
Developer - elwmoodstrip.org - Buffalo, NY's Original Journal Community
System's Analyst - Roswell Park Cancer Institute

This post was sent directly from a Nikon s7c camera.

The last couple days have been filled with the crazy bustle of the holiday season, yet I haven't done anything particularly holiday. Today is (e:enknot)'s birthday celebration party at our house It is a little strange to have lots of people that we do not know over at the house but it ha sthe potential to be really fun.

(e:lilho) cut my hair finally. It looks much better now.




Had a great lunch with the gang at Ambrosia. I love their ambrosia chicken and fried calamari. However, their octopus is really sub par in comparison with the one at Kostas. I think the one at Ambrosia is out of a can.


There was was ant on the wall at work. I have never seen an ant in the winter.


All of the furniture is upstairs for the party.














The office is basically empty, just like I like it. I really hate excess furniture in that room. Its like rocks in a stream that ends up in an eddy. The shear fact that an extra piece of furniture exists in the room, brings life to locations such as "next to the furniture", "on the furniture", " behind the furniture", and "on the piece of furniture."

Then those laces fill up more. E.g "On the box next to the piece of furniture" or " under the desk in a box." It really makes me insane.



(e:robin) came to town with her cute boyfriend but they were too cold to stay in our house.




(e:terry) took this pic, I think it looks nice so I decided to post it.

Yesterday was my one year anniversary at Roswell. It is amazing that the year went by so quickly. I still love working here even though sometimes it makes me crazy how many different directions I end up going in. Actually, maybe that is why I like it. It is much more dynamic than teaching was and there are consistently new more complicated problems for us to solve, instead of me teaching people to solve the same basic problems over and over again as I was doing at Canisius.

What is even more astounding is that I got promotion that I was totally not expecting. I am now a systems analyst/senior programmer for the web team. Thanks Nick Barone, I owe you for directing me here that one day in class and to my boss Del for promoting me.

Everything is going so great right now that I keep expecting to get hit by a car. Hope to see everyone at the party this saturday.

Home of the Hits
I wonder what the elmwood strip will be like without Home of the Hits. I will always fondly remember it as the first place I got to buy blue hair dye during my rebellious years. I used to love having blue hair. I am not sure why because blue isn't anywhere near my favorite color. I probably looked like gonzo.

I wish I could say that I remember all the music I bought there but I think I have never purchased music in my life. Maybe one year for christmas I got a gift certificate for a CD and I bought a german learning on.

Headaches
Tonight I had another massive migraine. That makes like 5 in a month. I know they are gonna start because I get dizzy and it hurts to look at light. Then my nose runs a bit and bam. I feel like I am gonna puke. It has something to do with my my neck look at the ocmputer screen at weird angles. Especially, the laptop.

Luckily, a study came out today saying there is no connection between brain cancer and cell phones. Yet the doctor whose study it was still sai don TV today that he likes to change sides of his head that uses and use speaker phone. Oh that makes me feel freakin' better.

Tasty Animals Are Smart Animals
I ate octopus which was nice. I like to eat the smartest animals, which makes me think that monkey's and dolphins probably taste good.



Running Back and Forth
Last night running home was so cold. My hair filled up with ice because for once I forgot my hat.





Luckily, work is so close to work. I really thought I was gogin to get hypothermia. I came home and sat right by the heater. These are the worst videos I ever took I think. I am glad I went to school for computer art instead of video.

::Download Flash Video::

::Download Flash Video::

I wonder what it like to have so many people blog about your dissapearance.


Matt and the squirrels in the zoo



I get so excited about my heater. It can get my office to 90 degrees of moist heat. Now it just needs a sofa kind of thing. I am going to buy one soon.

I seriously had the most stressful day today. It seems like everything is out of control for the moment. Then we had and oh so fun screaming match at the house when I got home from work at 10:30PM. That's always a fun way to cap off the day.

I decided to finally brave the cold and walk home at 10:30 because I was hungry. I didn't go get lunch because the rest of my team was going to McDonalds for lunch and I haven't eaten there since 1994. I like to keep it that way. Not to say that I will not eat the occasional fast food meal but McDonalds is never going to be part of my menu.

On the web design front I finished surebert 2.09 which is even better than before. I want so bad to integrate it into the new estrip. It would make the site much better but I really don't have time for that right now.

I would do anything to have a week of programming time to work on estrip. I have like 10,000 ideas and re-factoring jobs I want to do. Sometimes, I miss being a student/proferssor for that reason but most of the time I don't so I am not going to dwell on that.

There was an article in the Buffalo News about the salaries of all the hospital CEOs. I know this is my boss's boss's boss so I probably shouldn't even comment on this, but I am surprised that Dr. Hohn, the CEO of Roswell gets paid $644,000/year plus benefits. It's just way higher than I expected. Apparently, he, like many other CEOs in the area helped make the hospital profitable and so that makes him worth so much. He oversaw it's transition from a state organization to a public benefit corporation (WIKIPEDIA - Public benefit corporation).





Quote from the Buffalo News

Roswell is unique in the area because it's not a community hospital. Although it serves cancer patients from a broad geographic region, its other missions are medical research and education, and it gets significant funding from grants, especially from the government.

Founded in 1898, Roswell employs 2,700, including 227 doctors and scientists. But with only 101 beds, it handles less than 5,000 admissions and 153,000 outpatient visits in a year. However, it has about $89 million in grants and contracts, with 522 research projects.

It's one of 39 national comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute. And it's one of only 10 of the 39 that are separate from a university. So when setting compensation, the board and a consulting firm look at seven hospitals that are most similar to Roswell, including Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston.

"Ultimately, supply and demand drives compensation. There's no way to get around that," said Richard D. Paris, Roswell vice president of human resources. "Ultimately, you get what you pay for."

Hohn, an experienced surgeon and current chairman of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, has led the hospital for about a decade since being recruited here from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In that time, he's overseen the hospital's conversion from a state entity into a public benefit corporation.

Yet his pay, as well as that of three other top Roswell executives, is actually less than that of three-fourths of the seven comparable cancer centers, and right at the midpoint for all cancer centers and teaching hospitals, Paris said.

I decided I was sick of chewing on my mustache every time I eat. Maybe shaving my head is next.