JaDeNyk.com

So a long time ago in a state down south, I made some slideshow style videos of my family trip to Orlando & Disney. Them being simple photo slide shows, I decided to put some music in them. Now, these videos have been on YouTube for about 2 years now, but I'm now getting messages that I'm violating copyright laws because of the music. Let me begin my bit of a tirade by saying, yes, I understand I'm violating copyright law. However, that doesn't make the copyright law any less stupid. These are family videos - simply posted on YouTube because it makes it easier. Combined, over 2 years on YouTube, these videos have 27 hits. WOW... And they're going to pull the videos off because I used a freaking Seal song. I could understand if I was using the video to sell something, or in other ways gaining financially from the video. I'm not. They're mostly pictures of my son (and MAN was he cute back then). I could understand if I put the music over a porn, violent or otherwise potentially offensive video. But, they're of my kid at Disney...

Maybe I'm a bit touchy, but I really find this annoying. Am I upset the videos will be taken down? No. As I said - 27 hits over 2 years... Honestly, it'll just buy me a bit of time before I need to build a better pagination system on my videos page - cause when I have 30-40 pages of videos, that's going to look a bit silly. But it's really the principal behind it all. It's just a bit annoying. I guess from now on, if I decide to do something like that again (which I probably won't now that I have a few good options to take HD quality video) I guess I'll have to record my own music to go over it... Maybe I'll do a really crappy cover of Seal when I do it that way. :)

Damn the man - save the empire.

I just hope they don't take down my video of Nykol, dropping it like it's hot. That'll really piss me off!

So I've been playing with various levels of FaceBook integration, and it's kind of neat. First, I've added fancy shmancy "Like" buttons down at the bottom of each post. I'm still looking into various ways to style it, etc... But it's kinda neat...

I've also been playing around with the Facebook C# API. Yeah, it's only in Alpha release and it really doesn't have too much functionality yet, but I can authenticate users through facebook and pull some info from there to include into the site. I'm really just doing this as a project to learn something new.

I'm also trying to figure out the Twitterizer API to integrate location information from Tweets. I've been working on that for a bit, but I'll get it eventually.

Always learning something!!

So I finally found a way to get my old content (back to 2006 at least) onto the site. Basically, when I left my last host, they wouldn't give me the database or site files. I had all the files, but hadn't gotten a recent copy of the database, so I was pretty bummed out. A lot of the stuff from when we went through everything with Sara was in there and I really wanted it back. So I ended up doing a site-scrape (grabbed the entire site via HTTP using one of those funky utilities available for download) and, tonight, I wrote a quick application that ran through all of the resulting files and ripped the content out. I don't have the comments that anyone left (sorry, it's pretty late and I'm tired) but maybe I'll do that at some other point. For now, I'm just pleased to have the old content back. Please Note: Some of the links are going to be bad - I have to run through and fix them all, so bear with me (as always), but at least the majority of it is done!!

Now I'm off to bed!! G'Nite!

So a new year and another set of resolutions and promises that will last, maybe, a month or so. I'd like this year to be different for my family and I. I want to do things this year that we haven't been able to do in the past. I want to bring the family to Disney, since Nykol and Sara haven't been yet. I want to quit smoking. I want to win the lottery. Well, maybe that last one is a bit out of my control, but hey - a guy can dream, right? In all seriousness, I would really like to see this year bring opportunities that we haven't had in the past and one way we can do that is to get out of the house more often. I'm researching some easy hiking and camping places around so we can do more outdoor adventures. Hopefully get the kids fishing and boating some more too.

I find that each year, I set these types of goals in place, but never find the time to go out and do them. I'm not really sure what I can put in place to change that, but I'm sure looking. If you have any ideas, let me know! I'll add that to my goal list. :) But hopefully writing them down here will help me complete them. Maybe take them more seriously. At least, I'll make it harder to forget!

Happy New Year to you and yours. I hope 2011 brings you all that you need and most that you want.

This is a great progam to help people say thanks to our troops overseas. We have, in the past, sent care packages and gifts to soldiers serving our country, but this is a nice and easy way to say thanks as well. It's called Let's Say Thanks and it's sponsored by Xerox. It's a simple way to reach the heart of a random soldier.