I grew bored with the theme I was using for mattuhrich.com so I decided to create a new one. And I find it easier to design a new theme than to create the crummy content that makes up this site. Since all the themes I’ve designed in the past use sans-serif fonts, I went with a serif font, specifically, good old Times New Roman. I was also weary of the standard site design of post text with a side-bar on the right or left. I realized that I rarely used the links on my site and other peoples site, so they could be banished to the bottom of the page. I’ll put a few important links under the heading along with the search box as I continue to develop the theme. Maybe I’ll use something like ClickHeat to see if visitors clink on the links at the bottom of the page a lot and move them if they do. I’d probably only be seeing my own clicks since I’m the only regular visitor to this site.

The BlackBerry I have for work has a built in GPS. It’s a Curve 8310, in case you were wondering. I find it to be a satisfactory device… satisfactory, that is, if I lived in a universe in which the iPhone had never been invented. I don’t… but I also don’t pay for it, so I’ll live with it. I like the full keyboard and being able to check scores and weather. It’s browsing use is limited by the crummy mobile browser and slow EDGE Network speed. But if you’re sitting in a doctor’s office or need to prove your friend wrong when he claims that Mad Elf is a Barleywine, then it comes in handy. I also enjoy entering golf scores while I play at oobgolf.com. You friends can see your score updated live while they sit at work.

I was playing around with it and thought it might be fun to geotag some of the photos I take. This is exactly the sort of pointless self-indulgence that I find fascinating for a week or two.

My search turned up two ways of accomplishing this task without having to create something myself. The first was a site called loc.alize.us. Simply, the site is a world map, using Google Maps, that displays all the photos that people have geotagged with a bookmarklet in Flickr. As you move around the map, you can see a display of the photos in the portion that is displayed on the screen. There was a way of embedding the photos you have tagged on your site, but I just couldn’t get it to work. It would forever say, “loading…” I’ll still tag my photos on the site because it just takes a single click. It’s also useful for getting the coordinates of a location if you didn’t have your GPS when you took the shot.

The second tool I found is called DrasticMap. It requires you to have access to a mySQL database and know a little PHP and maybe some JavaScript. Luckily, all that was true for me. I had to make some modifications to get it working like I wanted, but it wasn’t too difficult. The result is my Geotagged Photos page. I will be adding a link somewhere on the site in the next couple of days. So take a look periodically and see what mind-numbing boredom looks like on a map.

At some point this winter, I am planning on geotagging a photo from the top of Ski Roundtop. The trick will be getting down the mountain after taking the shot without falling on my camera or BlackBerry. That’s a lot of pressure.

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I had some Tostitos Multigrain today. They taste good, go well with salsa, and since they are multigrain, you can eat a whole bag in one sitting and it’s totally healthy… right?

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Update: I grew bored with Times New Roman and switched to Helvetica.