Yeah, I get that message a lot. Adam’s camera is set to take GIGANTIC pictures by default and changing the setting requires an advance degree in engineering, so any product photos I take end up being 1000000000000px by 1000000000000px. Well, something like that. Needless to say, they all need to be resized before uploading to Etsy, or I will get the lovely message shown above. I would also like to keep the original Gihugeous version in case I need to blow them up and make giant posters of them. Or use the high-res shots for portfolio prints, which is more likely.

The easiest photo resizer isn’t really a program, it’s more like a process automator. It’s called Picture Resizer 3.0 (okay, so they didn’t spend a lot of time on the name) and you don’t even need to open a program up to use it. Here are the official instructions from the website:

• Download “PhotoResize400.exe” and place it on your desktop.
• Drag and drop JPG files or folders with JPG files on the application icon.
• The tool will resize JPG images and save them next to the originals. Names of the new pictures will be based on the original names, with a suffix indicating their size. For example, the resized version of MyPhoto.jpg will be called MyPhoto-400.jpg, where the number 400 indicates the size of the picture.

So once the icon is on your desktop you select your pics, drag them over the icon and drop. It automatically resizes and places the new pic beside the old. Done.

If you want to resize to a size other than 400 px just change the name of the file. I changed the name of the icon on my desktop to PhotoResize800 and all my photos were resized to 800 px when I dragged my folder over the icon. There are a bunch of other ways you can tweak the program described on the website, but I just needed a quick and easy photo resize tool and this fits perfectly.

I could survive for 28 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Huh. Well, now I know. Thanks to Michelle from Scribbit for helping me find this out.

Remember when I asked Colin what the opposite of Portland was and he said Florida? Well, It turns out the opposite of Portland is actually somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Huh.

Antipodr.com – find the other side of the world for anywhere you want. Not sure why you’d want to, but it might come in handy if Jeopardy ever gets big again or you ever meet Ken Jennings.

Items I have been working on, but haven’t had a chance to list yet…

I just found a new way to make waking up and getting out of bed easier when your furnace is broken and the guys hasn’t come to fix it yet. Rare situation, yes, but you work with what you know, and I know our furnace is broken and the guy hasn’t come to fix it yet.

First you run out of bed as fast as possible and put on any clothes near the bed you can find, including socks, extra pants, sweaters and another sweater, on top of the warm pants, longsleeve and sweater you went to bed in. Then dive back under the giant duvet and wait until you are so hot you have to get out and take off some clothes or die of heat exhaustion. By then you are up and warm enough to brave the frigid house.

Of course this could also be filed under “ways to fall back asleep warm and cozy and make you late for work,” but I don’t usually find myself looking for ways to do that so I don’t think I need a file for it.

Check out the Sixth & Elm feature on the IndieFixx galleria. The Galleria is a juried marketplace of indie shops curated by IndieFixx’s own Jen Wallace and is a good place to look for some new way to spend all the money you are supposed to be saving for things like food and car payments.

Chuki isn’t the only one growing older last month. I hit the first big milestone: “The Big 3-0.” A lot of people worry about turning 30, but I don’t really have a problem with it, although the frequency with which people are wiling to use the phrase “The Big 3-0″ does alarm me a bit.

My dearly beloved took advantage of my obliviousness and scored Sheryl Crow tickets (3rd row!!!!!!!) to her concert in Toronto that I didn’t even know about. How’s that for head in the clouds, eh? The ONE person left that I have not seen in concert that I desperately wanted to, and I didn’t even know she was in town. And even better, KT Tunstall opened the show, someone else I have been hoping to see.

From this Photo that Adam took of my Violin and Guitar together:

Check out the Roadside Scholar blog for the Sixth & Elm interview by Gigi Leonard, and the feature she did a few weeks earlier on Sixth & Elm as well. Gigi, the author of Roadside Scholar, is quite an extraordinarily nice person and it was fun to work with her.