disjoint thoughts

I’m happy to present to the world, my own photography portfolio site!

http://benjaminsmithphotography.com/

Photography has been a hobby of mine for awhile, and I have thousands of pictures on Flickr. I’m the first to admit that most of them are utter crap. As I’ve gotten better, the ratio of crap pictures to good ones has gotten better. Still, even out of my good pictures, there’s only a few that I’d like to show to the world as my best work.

So, I decided to build a little Rails app that would show off my best photos from Flickr. I created a Set on Flickr and added my best pictures to it. Then using the Flickr API, my Rails app displays the photos in a nice, clean, professional looking layout (although I think there’s some bugs in IE). I also decided to pull posts from my blog relating to photography, giving the site some nice content as well.

I’m thinking about cleaning up the code and open sourcing it. Maybe even added support for other photo bucket sites and out blogging engines. For now, it makes for a sweet way to show off my photos.

The only thing I love about buying new (or used!) gear is getting a smoking deal on said gear. I also love getting the latest and greatest stuff before anyone else!

The Clymb is a new deal site that sells outdoor gear, and I got a beta invite! Beta invite, plus cheap gear sounds right up my alley. The site which goes live on Wednesday follows a model similar to woot.com. One deal per week at very discounted rates. They also have a concept of GreenShipping, which is an interesting idea.

The Clymb has plenty of competition. I already monitor steepandcheap, OutDoorDaily, REI’s Deal of the Day, Whiskey Milita, and SpadOut. So we will see how they fair.

If you’re interested in checking out the site and signing up for a beta account you should DEFINITELY use this link: http://theclymb.com/invite-from/BenjaminSmith because if you use that link, and you end up buying something, then I get $10 credit towards my next purchase! And since I don’t have an actual job at the moment, I will need as much free credit as I can muster for new gear!

A couple of months ago, I hit my one year anniversary of working at OpenRain. Actually it kind of went past unnoticed by me, but Marc and Preston noticed and made sure to get me an awesome anniversary gift. Unfortunately it took several weeks to make and deliver, but that only added to the mystery as they told me my “gift” was coming soon! So without further ado, here’s an unboxing of my one year anniversary gift from OpenRain:

Meet Bobble Head Ben. Thanks guys, I’ve had a great year working at OpenRain!

So the old host of my blog closed up shop (damn you economy!!) and I’ve moved my blog to a new host. As you might be able to tell, things look super lame right now. Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll have everything looking pretty again and better than before! Standby for changes.

Tail rotor blade from a Sikorsky H-34 or weapon used against the zombie uprising?