What's Yellow and Green and All Over?

Oh, my husband hates seeing these things in his yard!

I never knew they didn't belong, until he started waging his war on them.  It's a pretty hopeless case.  They're everywhere.

And they are kinda pretty...

Of course, Jeffrey wouldn't agree with me.

Speaking of pretty - have you checked out Flickr recently?  I snipped all these dandelions off my flickr photostream, which now includes every photo I've ever uploaded - and 1 Terabyte of FREE storage!!  AND makes all the pictures look pretty, oh so pretty, and makes it easy to see all the newest photos from my contacts - like this one that just happens to also be of a dandelion.

Yeah, I haven't been using Flickr much for a while, but I am going to have to get back to it.  And start taking more pictures with my camera instead of just my phone.

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Backing up My Photos

One of my friends mentioned yesterday that he's archiving every single photo on his computer to Flickr.  He figures $25 (per year) is a cheap back-up for all his photos.  I never thought about it that way before.  I've always had a free account at Flickr, and I haven't been consistent enough with my uploading to figure I needed a paid account.  With a free account, you have a 300MB per month limit on photo uploads, and I've never even come close to exceeding that.  But, as a back-up for all my photos ... that might just be worth paying for.

Currently I put my photos on CDs and DVDs and back them up to an external hard drive in the basement.  Which is all well and good, unless something happens to my house, like a tornado or a fire or some other disaster.  Then what?  The hard drive is in the basement.  My computer is in the house.  My photo CDs and DVDs are in the house.  I can look for new homeowners insurance until the cows come home, but I'm never going to find insurance that will be able to get my photos back.  I think my friend has the right idea - $25 per year is not a lot to pay for peace of mind.  Maybe I need that pro Flickr account after all.  I at least need to find someplace other than the house to store my CDs and DVDs.

What do you do to protect your photos?  Is there a better way than uploading them all to Flickr?  I'd love to hear it.

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• 4,000 Photos Accidentally Deleted: Is Your Flickr Account Safe? (blogher.com)

How to make a Green Monster Smoothie

I was just checking my Recent Activity on Flickr and found that someone had used one of my photos in a gallery called How to make a Green Monster Smoothie.  So I clicked to see what that was all about.  It was really cool - like a story in pictures.  I'm thinking I need to try putting together a gallery or two of my own on Flickr.  You know, in my spare time.

I'd like to know if I can actually add some text to a gallery, because even though the pictures are really cool, I still don't really know how to make one of these Green Monster Smoothies.  What would be really great would be if the actual recipe was included.  Think of the possibilities - recipes for cookies, for weight loss drinks (you know, for after you eat the cookies, or maybe instead of the cookies), for simple suppers and fancy dinners, recipes for practically anything.  I could have some fun with this.

In the meantime, I'm thinking maybe I should buy some spinach and start adding that to my smoothies.  I'm not sure my husband would actually drink them, though - if they're green.

4 on Explore

I was scrolling down the page when I noticed my Flickr widget. I'm used to seeing 2 on Explore, so I had to go check and see what the other two were.

1. Glow, 2. Sunset, 3. Stacks of Waffles, 4. Beth and Balloons

Do I know why or how they got there? No, but it's still kind of fun to note. I got to 4 one other time, but then it dropped to 2 and has stayed there for ages.

Follow Me if You Can

One of these days I really am going to have to keep track of my trail through the Internet. It used to be easier before tabbed browsing - I'd just keep hitting the back arrow to see where I came from and how I got where I am. However, I love tabbed browsing, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. Now, when I see something I want to check out, I open it in a new tab so I don't lose the page I'm already on. Sometimes I have 15 or more tabs open. Right now I only have 12. So, sometimes, when I find an interesting page, I can't remember how I got there - mostly because the tab has been open for hours before I find the time to look at it.

Here's a really small example of that trail through the Internet I'd like to trace: the other day I was reading Part 4 of Deb's series on RSS and Feedburner. In that post, she mentioned a post on Absolutely Bananas, which I read. Then I started looking around there, and found this: spell with Flickr pictures. So, of course, I had to try it. For this post, I just spelled my name,

but I spelled out "Beth & Cory's Mom" when I first found this, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see it. How cool is that? It's really fun. Go ahead. You know you want to try it.

Always Take the Camera

I have so many pictures to get downloaded from my camera. I was talking to my brother, the photographer, the other day, and he said he doesn't understand how I can go so long without downloading the pictures. It's just that I got behind when I was busy doing other things, and now I feel like I have to go back to the date I left off and download them all in order - because that's just the way I do things. I did go ahead and grab some pictures of our kitten off the camera card the other day so I could upload them to Flickr. If I don't, she'll be all grown up before anyone gets to see the pictures!

While talking to this same brother, he asked me if I was ready to buy the new Canon S5 IS since the price has gone down $100 recently. I said, no, I am very happy with the camera I have, thank you! He's the one who recommended it to me, and I'm really glad I listened to him. I was looking at getting a new camera last fall, because I wanted more zoom. He said to buy either the Canon S2 or the Canon S3, and I ended up finding a really good deal on the S3, so that's what I got. So far I am really happy with it. It can take some pictures that I would never dream of with my old camera, both because of the increased zoom (12x optical) and the image stabilization. I love image stabilization!

The only complaint I really have is that the camera is too big to fit into my purse, so I don't take it everywhere with me the way I did the old one. I still carry the old one in my purse, and the other day Jeffrey and I saw a bunch of hot air balloons off in the distance. I had him stop so I could take a picture, but I really missed my zoom - the old camera only has 3x optical. I felt like I couldn't see those balloons at all, and I wished I had known they were going to be there so I could have had my 'real' camera!