If you are a Professional SmugMug user, and just want to replace the SmugMug logo (not develop a custom theme), you can do the following:

• On the “customize” page, add the following to the CSS box


.smuglogo {
width: 170px;
height: 33px;
background: url(http://yourphotos.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXXXX_XXXX-O.png) no-repeat;
}


• …and in the Header section:


<div/>


Of course, make sure you replace the background photo with YOUR logo, and your logo’s sizes. Try to keep the logo as small as you can so it fits into SmugMug’s layout….or you can go and figure out how to override that too

I imagine leaving wasn’t always an option.

Originally uploaded by M. MacKenzie

All of the exit signs in this particular cold war nuclear shelter have broken arrows in them. I wonder if this is someone’s idea of a joke.

“Broken Arrow” refers to an accidental event involving nuclear weapons but without a risk of an outbreak of nuclear war. (wikipedia). It also refers to a mediocre movie release in 1996 starring Christian Slater and John Travolta as well

Depressing.

Originally uploaded by M. MacKenzie

My trip to Diefenbunker yesterday really has me thinking about how close the world came to destroying itself fairly recently. This kind of thing… a briefing format/outline for how to tell the higher ups that we’ve been attacked with nuclear weapons just blows my mind.

Diefenbunker 6-1-2008 (12 of 48)

Originally uploaded by M. MacKenzie

I went out to Diefenbunker, which is where Canada’s leadership would be hanging out if were were attacked with nuclear weapons during the cold war.

There is something about the contrasting angles in this shot that I love.

Black 5-18-2008 (6 of 12)

Last week I bought a piece of black foamboard with the intention of making a box in which I’d take shots of small items that I found interesting. Of course, I’m kind of bored of photographing “things”, and decided to attach the foam board to my garage wall with gaffer’s tape, and play around with my 2 Opus K-500 lights. This shot had one light at 50% power with a barn door and diffuser attached illuminating her arm and back, and another light on her face at 55-75% power with a snoot and diffuser attached.

This shot was all about “black”, so I am reasonably happy. Thankfully I have a live-in model for my experimentation with this kind of thing

Maureen @ Blue Cactus

Originally uploaded by mattm

I went downtown today meaning to experiment with my 17-40L ( a lens that I don’t use nearly enough ), but as soon as we got downtown it started raining heavily. At least I got this photo

This Sunday I visited the Great Wall of China at Badaling. It was raining very hard, making the path slippery and full of people with umbrellas that always seemed to nail me in the neck but when you are in China, the Wall is kinda a must. I got this picture with my little Canon G9 and I think its a gem.

Yeah, it must be annoying being a model for the latest idea I had with my camera. What you see there is a snoot made of gaffer’s tape and a cereal box…

Just in case you don’t recognize me

[NOTE: see the first comment below, I added a script to get the auth_key for you.]

Today I decided that I would like to backup my flickr account to my Mac. After a few attempts at using a Java based UI tool “FlickrBackup”, which had terrible network performance for some reason, I fell back to my trusty old Perl skills.

Here is what I did:

1. Install Net::Flickr::Backup

To install this module, open up a terminal and type:

cpan

When CPAN loads up, type:

install Net::Flickr::Backup

Its pretty much that easy.

2. Go to Flickr.com and create an API key. Create one for a web application, and enter pretty much any valid url as your callback. I know, its not a web application…just do it, k?

3. Get an auth_token. This is harder than it needs to be, but here is how I got it done:

- First get a frob. This page shows you how to do it manually. Mac OS X has a terminal command, “md5″ that you can run to make your api_sig value. for example:

md5 -s 000005fab4534d05api_key9a0554259914a86fb9e7eb014e4e5d52permsread

Which would yield a MD5 hash of: f2c52fb8fd3124314227bbc0f48003d3

Which it turn would mean the auth url needs to be like:

http://www.flickr.com/services/auth/?api_key=9a0554259914a86fb9e7eb014e4…

Once the URL is constructed, paste it into a browser, and approve access to your account. Once you approve, flickr calls your callback url. I just made my callback a bogus url like http://mattmackenzie.com/authdummy/

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