I’ve started using Flickr for online photo sharing and backup, partially influenced by the fact that I took almost 600 photos on vacation and don’t want to put the stress of uploading gigabytes of images on my server. I did have to spring for Flickr Pro, which is an extra $25/year, because the 100MB/month upload limit on a free account was too small, but I asked around and the general response was that it’s definitely worth it. Currently I’m using a trial version of Aperture to sort through and edit my vacation pictures, and as I finish with each day’s pictures I’ll upload them to my photostream (with FlickrExport for Aperture) and post them here.

In addition to mass quantities of photos, I now also have real furniture. My grandmother and I made a trip to Ikea one afternoon and I got a dresser, a TV stand and a bookcase; unfortunately my roommates were both gone when I got back, so I had to carry the boxes all in by myself. A little rearranging was needed to get everything inside and have room to assemble it:

The TV stand was the first thing I put together, and definitely took the longest.

It does look pretty cool though, and lets me keep all the cables for everything neatly out of sight.

My tentative setup, before I’d assembled the dresser:

Only minor injuries were sustained in the entire process. My arm was rather bruised after carrying in all of the boxes:

While building the TV stand I dropped one of the back panels on my finger, but other than that I managed to get everything assembled and remain unscathed.

Next was the dresser a few days later—considerably easier to build than the TV stand.

The finished product:

The finished setup for my electronics: TV and speakers on the TV stand of course, cable box and modem on one of the shelves below, and stereo receiver and router on the dresser.

It was another several days before I got the bookshelf put together; a cold, my general laziness and the fact that there was still lots of stuff on the floor in my room intervened, but I did finally get it put together. It was by far the easiest to assemble; the instructions actually said one person could do it, and I did it while fighting off a nasty cold.

Like I said, I’ve been fighting off a cold for most of this week. Yesterday was definitely the worst of it, but I’m on my way back to being healthy. I even did the dishes, which my roommates are too lazy to take care of—while sick. By hand (with hand sanitizer on hand). Take note, ladies.

I’m kind of giving the Danny Choo photoblogging style a shot here. Probably won’t be a regular thing, but I’ll at the very least post thumbnails or links to new photosets if I have more than just a handful of pictures to share.