Most of the other tutorials on Linux shell scripting are either too basic or skip too many important intermediate steps. The concept of this tutorial is to maintain a balance between these two. It covers many of the real life examples of shell scripting that are missing from many other tutorials.
I will just start the day off with my new favorite photo slideshow software for Mac users. It is called FotoMagico. I started using this software on a family wedding DVD and really enjoyed the flexibility it offers for motion within a frame. I did build some large slideshows and it caused the application to crash a few times but I easily was able to work around the crash.
Previously, I only used a Windows machine with ProShow Gold for slideshow creation. Now I will use FotoMagico on my Mac instead. My wife and I have built many (20 or more) action DVD’s for her photo business with ProShow Gold. I have really wanted to find something as good for Mac and FotoMagico is probably the closest. I have purchased Photo2Album and compared it as well.
Below is a list of high level likes and areas for improvement for FotoMagico. I have sent my requests to Boinx and they acknowledged my request promptly and said it would be looked at and prioritized by Marketing and Engineering. Cool….
Likes:
- The safe zone for pictures is accurate on every TV I have played the slideshow on
- Tons of export options
- The user interface for seeing motion start and end is easy-to-use
- Integration with iTunes and iPhoto
- Ability to add photos directly from a folder or share
Improvement areas:
- Add the ability to automatically place the slide number on each picture in a show.
- Add a visual representation of the audio file that will allow you to edit the song length and fades to your liking.
- Add the ability to select all images in a show and make a selection to randomize the transitions between each image – Saves were rather slow on large slide shows with a few hundred pictures. This issue might not be a FotoMagico issue as much as it is me doing this work on a 1.5GHz G4 Powerbook 17.
If you have to use Windows, my slideshow creation software of choice is ProShow Gold. For the money, I never saw a reason to upgrade to Producer even creating 20+ shows a year for my wife’s photography business.
I will continue to build slideshows in FotoMagico and I will promptly put them up for others to see when I get a chance.
Curtis
We took a trip to San Antonio on August 26, 2006 to visit Sea World and spend some time with Amber and Zach Minson. Zach is Jeanee’s nephew and he recently married Amber. He is living in San Antonio right now for Air Force training to be what I call a combat arms specialist.
Pictures are here.
We left Austin around 9′ish and arrived just in time to avoid long lines getting in. We immediately did most of the shows and were entertained. We then did the waterpark and rode a rollercoaster or two. The kids had a great time and Jeanee and I love going to see the dolphins.
The last time Jeanee and I went to Sea World was before the kids were born and the park has changed a bunch. When Jeanee and I went, the park had no rides or water park.
The rides were great but the water park was to small for the number of people in the water. We quickly left the water park to go see more shows and visit more fish 
The Shamu show is named “Believe” and was basically a story of a little boy who dreamed of being with a whale and he eventually did. They brought a child or two out to get a free wood whale tail necklace and they got to get real close to the whales.
I wondered during the Shamu show what the real names of the whales were since (3) whales were in the show. Things that make you go hmm…
The coolest part of the show was they really let the whales splash the audience. We got to the show early and were in the first 10 rows. We got soaked when the whales inverted vertically to a head down position then flapped the tail pushing a ton of water into the audience. The water was at the most 60F. We got soaked….
Ryan rode the Steel Eel coaster with Jeanee and was terrified during the ride. Ryan is (8) years old but he has ridden some pretty major rollercoasters in Dallas and Houston and loved them. For some reason this time the first hill scared him pretty good. They got a picture of him at the bottom of the first hill and you can tell he was not wanting to be on the coaster at that point in time
Krystal and I did a little shopping while Ryan and Mommy rode the coaster.
We all enjoyed the ski show and Krystal really was glued to the girls doing ballerina moves on skis. She stated that she wanted to do that when she gets older many times.
We had a great time and will for sure go back to Sea World next year. Now the kids have to start school and summer is over.
So, this is my first post. I thought I would start explaining why I am doing a blog for the family. I had a thought that it would be really cool for the kids (Ryan & Krystal) to be able to look back in history and see what they did while they were growing up. I could do this simply by writing it down but that just would not be geeky enough. I wanted to do an electronic version.
So, my choices were documents stored on our computers or blog entires to share with not only the kids but other family members. I started on the implementation of the blog the last week of August 2006 after purchasing our domain.
I started using iWeb and while it was functional I wanted to do more. I noticed that DreamHost offered a pre-installed version of WordPress. I have in the past seen WordPress implemented at Writers Block Live and really liked the look and feel and organization of that blog. I also really like the added plugin abilities for WordPress.
So, I have installed WordPress on Dreamhost and I have chose a theme I like and now I am off. Now I need to figure out how to save my entries over the years for the kids to review later in life.
Well, enough for this post, on with the family oriented postings…
C