Aaron Riveroll | Photographer

It’s 5 in the morning and I’m still awake. Yay.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.

Anyway, I’m going to take a little nap before I have to get up and head to Qualcomm for some photo taking…but all of you know I’m always changing things up. When I was a kid and finally got my own room, I was notorious for rearranging the furniture in my room at least once a month. I’m OCD, I swear.

Anyway, aaronriveroll.com’s got a new look…so check it out. I didn’t really like the other one to be honest with you. Color scheme was cool, but not me. Wanted something more dramatic…something cleaner…something without flash…and something that would work with the blog too.

After playing with CSS, this is what I’ve come up with. Functional, clean lines…and still delivers the brand.

Let me know what you think…

Good morning…

So, I’m working on a few web projects, including getting Essence Digital’s web site up and cool, as well as fine tuning my site’s wedding section and NGS Media’s wedding site. I’ve also been working on Laura Baker’s new web site, which should be launching very, very soon. We’re actually meeting tomorrow to shoot and talk about the site, so it should be a pretty fun day. Cross your fingers for good weather. :)

But I added a new feature to AaronRiveroll.com, inspired by some of the features I’m putting on Laura’s site…I decided to start a video section to host some of the videos from some of my photo shoots and other adventures, etc. It’s fun…so check it out. It isn’t terribly pretty now…just a lot of links…but it’s still entertaining. Don’t worry, I’ll get around to making it pretty. :)

Okay, this is sort of freaky, but some how my MacBook knows what color my new iPod is.

So smart!! :)

So on Sunday, I was chatting it up with Melissa before the photo shoot and she had accidently left her phone at the club she was go-go dancing at the night before. We both wondered how we got along without cell phones back in the day. We depend upon them so much, it’s obnoxious. Everywhere you go, you see people yapping on their phones…driving, walking around, with those little Bluetooth thingies (which, by the way, I use with geeky pride)…but it’s ridiculous how much we depend on those things. I don’t know what I would do if I lost my phone. I think I would be lost too.

I was standing in line at Sam’s Club on Friday…and while I was waiting for the people in front of me to pay for their jumbo-sized cartons of whowhatsits, I was firing off emails…directions to the calendar shoot on Sunday, emails to models, prospective models, a client we are working with this weekend. Halfway through an email, I paused and looked around and realized I was standing in the middle of a wherehouse sending emails to people and I thought, “Hey, this is the coolest thing ever.”

My friend, Josh, recently picked one up this weekend too and has been discovering the wonder that is the Blackberry. How we ever got along without them is beyond me. I can email, text message, instant message, surf the web, and Google stuff like a fiend. What’s not to like?

Everyone is doing it. The craze is catching on.

Okay, so I’m not as big a nerd as I appear to be, but seriously, this is just freaking cool. Aside from Kirk’s womanizing and Spock’s pointy ears … the fact that we have the technology to restore, enhance, and digitally revive the original Star Trek series is pretty amazing.

Slashdot – Star Trek – Special Edition

It’s not a significant upgrade, but an upgrade nevertheless…the Canon XTi.

Read more…

Along with Skype, Google Talk is definitely a cool communication program that allows you to instant message and call friends all over the world. Now, if that person isn’t available, you can leave them a message … which is sent to the person’s email as an MP3 audio file. You can listen to it in any browser, or download to your computer. How awesome is that?

So seriously, download Google Talk and leave me a message after the meep. My address is my name – aaron dot riveroll at gmail dot com.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

I’m a huge blog fan. Not only do I enjoy writing, but I enjoy reading and I have my list of favorites that I frequent and visit on a daily basis. It’s good to know what’s going on in the world since I’m stuck in an office eight hours a day (at least for now. :) )

I’ve tried several different aggregators and news readers such as Bloglines, Thunderbird, and my current one, Newsgator. I love Newsgator…but I think I have fallen in love with another…Google’s new Google reader.

What I like about it, just like their Google Calendar, is that it’s all integrated into your Google homepage. Gmail, calendar appointments, and other tidbits are right at your fingertips. It’s a beautiful thing.

What I also like about their reader, other than the simplicity of it all, is the ability to play podcasts from within your browser window. So nice when you want to listen to a podcast while surfing the net.

I definitely encourage you to check it out if you have a Google account.

I read about this on several blogs this morning, so I thought I would add mine to the list.

Skype Cracked? – Gizmodo

Seems that some Chinese dudes have cracked the protocol for Skype and they want to release their own version of the great communication software I know, love, and enjoy. They also claim that they can block Skype voice traffic.

Who knew that the Chinese were so lame? I don’t know anyone in China, so it’s not a huge loss for me. But what if I did and wanted to Skype them? That would suck.

China, why can’t we be friends?

Well, for the past several days, Google has been talking about the new chat features they are integrating into their Gmail client. For me chat is chat, so I wasn’t all that excited. I figured it would be cool and all, but nothing really earth-shattering exciting, if you know what I mean.

But I gotta tell you folks, it is super-stinking cool.

I just discovered that it got installed on one of my Gmail accounts…and since I’m sitting here at work thinking about lunch, I thought I would test it out with Megs, who is the only other person on my contacts list that has it integrated in their account thus far. We are chatting right now…and it’s really swell.

Now, it isn’t über-fancy or anything like that, but since I’m at work behind some serious firewall and chatting isn’t really something that needs to be extravagant…just something I can use to instant message with people…it works really well. There are times that I would rather send an instant message and get an instant response from someone instead of emailing back and forth…and since most of my day is spent in this office, it’s nice to be able to have chat features integrated into what is already one of the coolest email clients on the planet.

On a side note, the other day I was going through my spam folder and clicked on a message from “Paypal.” It wasn’t really from Paypal, but from some internet scoundrel trying to obtain account information. Phishing, if you will. But what was cool is that Gmail displayed this huge RED banner at the top of the message saying, “Warning: This message may not be from whom it appears to be.” I thought it was a really neat way of staying ahead of the game in fraud prevention. So many people fall for scams like this, so it’s nice to know that Google is looking out for us.

If you haven’t switched, I highly encourage you to give Google’s gmail a try. If you want an invite, let me know and I can hook you up. And then you can be cool like me. And chat with me too.