I found quite a lot to think about in this TED video. From thinking about how we view the world by the lens we choose to view it with, be it media, news, who we spend our time with, etc. to rethinking the relationship between being productive and being happy. Could we have it backwards? Instead of basing our happiness on meeting goals, are we more likely to meet our goals when we start out happy, with a grateful and joyful attitude? Lastly, can we train ourselves to be extraordinary instead of average by embracing happiness and ignoring “normal”? Personally, I’m going to give Shawn’s advice some serious thought.

This week marks the 261st anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, a victory for the Americans led by Daniel Morgan, over the British led by Banastre Tarleton. Each year, on the weekend closest to the data of the battle, the national park hosts a weekend-long historical encampment. Despite it being a bit chilly Saturday morning, we hit the road to drive the 45 minutes or so up to Cowpens to learn more about the local history. Of course, we also wanted to get some photos!

Those of you who have seen The Patriot will be familiar with some of the details of this battle, as the final battle of that movie is loosely based on a combination of Cowpens and another battle fought in the Southern Campaign. Namely, the use of militia at the front to draw the British to an unorganized charge over a ridge, where the regular Continental lines were waiting for them just out of sight. That’s about the only true similarity between this battle and the scene from the movie though.

For that matter, if you get the right Ranger guide for your tour, you’ll also learn about all of the other things he thinks popular historians have gotten dead wrong about this battle as well. I can’t speak to everything he told us, but I can tell you that if you read a history that talks about the “hills” the lines were behind, they are incorrect. We’ve been there, there are ridges, but nothing that even resembles a hill! Morgan got there first and used the lay of the land to effectively hide parts of his army in plain sight, by using the slight ridges of the field to keep them out of the British line of sight. We live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, there are lots of hills near us, not so much when you go over to Cowpens.

So, despite the chill in the air, it was a lovely enough to spend a few hours exploring and learning from some folks dedicated to keeping the history alive!

This has been a bit of an off year for me as a photographer. Dealing with all the changes and challenges of this year has kept me busy, obviously. Not really traveling much this year compared to the last few certainly contributed to that as well. On the other hand, I have spent some time exploring some of area I am now living in, and while I don’t have as many photos to choose from this year, I have many that remind me of the wild ride that has been 2011, and have enough personal meaning to be among my favorites of 2011. I hope you enjoy them as well!

A.k.a:  “Things you can do when you work at home, that you can’t do in a cubicle.”

Such as take a few minutes and get some aerobic exercise when things are slow, or when you’re waiting for data to process/load/index. When you work in a cube, your coworkers might not appreciate that.

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday weekend!

I’ve written many times that I’m very appreciative of tools that allow me to post to various networks, with one-step. RSS feeds, for example, are great to feed from WordPress to Twitter or Facebook to allow a new blog post to show up in multiple places without any extra effort from me.

In that same vein, one tool that isn’t really new, but that I’ve only recently started playing with is Instagram. On it’s face, it’s a neat little add-on for the iPhone camera, that allows you to take photos, apply some neat filter effects, and share those photos. It’s behind the scenes that I really see the value though. After taking a photo, and applying a creative effect, I am then presented some options to Geotag, and share across other networks.

In my own workflow, I can take a cool little photo of a place we are visiting, like walking around the campus at Furman.

Now I can push the photo out to Twitter and Facebook, letting folks know where I am, what kind of cool things I’m seeing right at that moment, and I can also store a copy of the photo along with my other online photos at Flickr.  And, I can do all this in one iPhone app, not by making visits to a bunch of different networks.

To me, having the ability to share information to the people who are interested in seeing it, wherever they happen to be, without me having to take extra time, is a huge benefit. Instagram gets that.

When we moved into our new place at the end of October, and it turns out that the only available cable TV/internet bundle available to us is through Charter. It would not have been my first choice, given experiences I’ve heard from others, but it is what it is. I had U-Verse in my apartment, I want U-verse to get their stuff together and extend out to the new place, which is only 10 minutes away, but I digress.

Once we had the installation done, it was my turn to take their modem-to-PC connection and add our networking stuff to it. Yes, they make you clone the MAC address, which was easy enough. In Columbus, we had a similar setup, the cable modem connected directly to a Hawking router, and then I also had a Linksys WRT54G router that was set to work as an access point. This gave us the luxury and freedom of wireless, but also the ability to have a hard wire connection to the internet that was not touching the wireless part of the network.

I set things up here the same way, but after a couple of weeks of having to power cycle the Hawking every 4 hours, I decided to try and troubleshoot the problem by removing the Hawking router. With the WRT54G acting as the router, connected to the cable modem directly and with the desktop machines plugged into it, the problem went away. So it works.

On the other hand, the curious side of me can’t help but wonder what happened? Did the Hawking somehow get damaged in the move? It’s been a steady, stable router for almost 10 years. It’s not impossible that it has gone bad on me, but it seems odd that it would suddenly have problems after a move, it seems even odder that it would work fine for 4 hours, and then lose it’s WAN IP address.

Or, is Charter doing something with DHCP that the older router was having trouble with? Given Charter’s reputation for attempting to “solve” any connectivity issues through a network by selling you their wireless router, it’s certainly possible that something odd is happening there. Though it does appear to be working with the WRT54G, so if they are doing something, is it only affecting older routers, or are they simply using a newer DHCP technology and innocently causing problems with older routers?

Truth is, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know, but like most technical things, so long as it works, I probably shouldn’t care, right?

Thanks to Amy Bowser-Rollins for letting me be one of the case studies on her Litigation Support Guru site. It was sort of fun to think about my answers and get them written, hopefully they provide some insight for someone!

You’ve probably noticed the weekly “links” post that gets dropped into the feed and picked up in other places like Facebook and Twitter on Sundays. If you’re interested in seeing those same links, only in real time when I add them individually instead of in the weekly wrap up, you have myriad choices to do that as well. They start out on my Diigo account, then through the magic of If This Then That, they go out on both my Twitter, and the Facebook page for this site.

If you’re following either of those, you’ll see the links as they get added, give or take 10-15 minutes. You’ll also see various other things I share as I come across them in those channels, that aren’t necessarily showing up here on the blog.

Speaking of the Facebook page, for what seems like years now, I’ve been feeding the blog posts to both the Facebook page, and my own Facebook profile. I’m toying with the idea of stopping that, and only linking to select posts on my own profile, letting the page be the place to follow the blog in it’s entirety on Facebook. This way my friends and family don’t have to see every new post. Any thoughts on that type of change? Would you “like” the page to see the blog posts on Facebook, or are you already getting them elsewhere and don’t care where I post them on Facebook?

I’m also toying with a few other ideas, but not ready to commit to them just yet, and trying to figure out how a Google+ page fits in here as well. I’m trying to use it more, both my own profile and the pages, but that lack of automated import is hard to get over!

I’ll be sure to keep ya’ll posted!

This being the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, it’s a good chance to take a step back and remind yourself all that you have to be thankful for. I’m not going to bore you with a list of all the things I’m thankful for, but this year, with all the changes that have gone on, this is especially poignant. It can be difficult to pick up and make major changes in your life or career. As exciting of an adventure as this has been, I also know it’s been difficult to start over in a new place, leaving behind many of the friends and family that I depended on.

Luckily, it’s 2011, and staying in touch with friends all over the place has never been easier. Luckier still, the people I count among my closest friends are more than willing to stay in touch even if it is electronically, for now.

The Internet, and social networking tools in particular, have really changed the dynamic when it comes to making big changes. Yes, I miss the people I used to spend time with more often, but they are still part of my life, and maybe now that we’re settled in, they can even come explore this new area too. Technology allows us to maintain relationships that would have required so much work before. It also allows me to build new relationships and connect with people regardless of physical location. I know a great many people through my websites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., and have come to consider them friends, even though we’ve never met. I’ve learned from them, shared with them, laughed with them, and even disagreed with them sometimes, all online. We truly live in an amazing time.

It may not be the easiest of times, and god knows it’s difficult to keep up with all of the changes that are constantly being thrown at us every day, but we are capable of doing things that were nothing more than dreams just 15-20 years ago. There’s certainly something to be said for being thankful for that!

So, I hope you all enjoy a great holiday, and never take for granted the people in your life, whether they be right there to celebrate with you, or miles away. Either way, it’s easy to let them know how important they are to you.