I mentioned back on 13 April I was going to be replacing the current Gallery software (powered by a packaged with the same name) with a SourceForge project called Coppermine. I selected this software from the various free gallery products available for its clean default appearance, straight forward navigation, multitude of uploading options and its file structure. I had many issues with Gallery that made me more and more displeased with it. Coppermine was installed successfully back on the 13th and has been working since, but I delayed an announcement until now as I had not uploaded all my pictures yet. I do still have to finish customising the skin to match the rest of Mount Sutro and add captions to many of the pictures, but the content as a whole is there and fully organised into main categories (cities for the most part) and the subcategories ("albums") of particular days or events.

The picture cropped and used as this article's header is one I have been meaning to comment on since it was taken. When Erik (pictured to the left) and I came into possession of cigars from Key West we were excited to finally try something we had discussed doing since we were of age to purchase tobacco products, but at the same time hesitant. The exact and proper methods eluded us and we did not wish to screw our first time up. We were cigar virgins indeed and properly intoxicated, a fact which probably was not in our favour.

I remembered a photograph taken when Ernie and company visited Orlando for Gay Days 2003. It was taken not on one of the occasions I spent time with Ernie, Mike and Don but during an evening they visited with ex-Orlando blogger Dan Benjamin and web-standards aficionado. Supplementary to publishing this photograph depicting Ernie and Dan with cigars at Pleasure Island, Dan included a very thorough instruction guide called "Regarding Cigars." Erik and I used this guide to successfully enjoy our first and to date, only cigars. I had Erik's brother Steven take this picture and I modified it in Photoshop to best match the one that had drawn me to the document that proved so ever helpful. Via telephone several months ago Ernie asked if I had ever shown Dan this tribute picture and I had not. Therefore, Dan: Thank you very much for your wonderful guide and my continued enjoyment of Hivelogic and Automatic Labs.

* the original version of this photograph lives in my Gallery but Dan's edited version is only a broken link these days.



ADDENDUM: Previous links to the Gallery and photographs contained therein should mostly redirect to the album index of the new Gallery. It took some time setting the .htaccess file correctly as it is so I am likely to just let it go. As I doubt no one has bookmarked a picture this should likely pertain mostly to visitors arriving via image search engines