Vera's Latest Kill

Vera has developed a habit of hunting crickets, and apparently they taste good to her too. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to film her hunting excursions, but she did allow me catch her latest kill on video ... and she even let me record her LIONESS vocals too! :D

Ocelot is none too impressed: :)

EWV 0830-2008

My knitting life has been a bit drab as of late, only completing a stash buster wash cloth, EWV 0830-2008:

Vera: Tails of a Growing Cat

I've committed to taking at least one photo of Vera on the first Saturday of every month. Of course, one photo leads to ... well, more photos. But that's ok. Here are August 2008 photos:

She went for a walk around the neighborhood.


Check out that coat pattern!


But then she's spotted on the belly.



She seems to like going on road trips.

It appears as though Ocelot is not as thrilled about taking photos :) He looks a tad wasted, eh? I keep telling him to stay away from the Rum and Tequila.

A Flickr Alternative

I recently received an account alert at Flickr that states that I am nearing 200 photos!! Flickr states that I may upgrade my account to "Pro" or else I will only be able to view only the newest 200 uploaded photos. The older ones won't be deleted; I just won't be able to see them.

Of course, they have their "one month free" spiel; however, upon looking at their pricing plans, I don't see where the free one month is - especially considering that they start billing you right away. It occured to me that they should only start billing one month after you upgrade your account; at least, that's how I would like it to happen.

Then I started to wonder if there are Flickr alternatives. And that is when I found this post on Photographybay.com.

Fotki was the most attractive, offering free & unlimited image hosting for websites and blogs; which is, at the core, what I am looking for. I signed up for a Fotki account to see how this works. It's cool that the hosting is free and unlimited; however, there is no option to manage the photos. For example, if you need to obtain the link location again (for whatever reason), then you're S.O.L because the upload it is not listed in your Fotki account. You'd have to re-upload the photo! I guess if you're organized enough to keep a separate running tally of all your uploaded photoes, then this isn't a problem; but that's a pain in the backside. There's also no way to delete images if you want.

I won't be using Fotki, and the only other on that list that appealed to me was Zooomr. It's free and unlimited. While it's not the same as Flickr, it seems like a pretty descent alternative. I found another source that was not on the Photographybay.com list, which is MediaFire. It's very different from Flickr in terms of its functionality, but "different" doesn't have to equal "problem".

I am partial to MediaFire's layout and GUI, but I don't like that I cannot get a URL for my photo tags - for example, a URL that will only display photos tagged with "Ocelot". (The URL is always the same .php address no matter which tagged set I'm viewing.) And when viewers look at a particular photo, they can see all of the tags for that photo; however, none of the tags are links so - viewers can't click to see all photos with the same tag. Zooomr has the tag functionality though. Between the two, I'm sure I'll settle with one that I live with. I'll just have to readjust my habits (which shouldn't be hard), because I seriously cannot see myself paying for Flickr; which isn't a poor reflection on Flickr, but a frugal reflection on myself.