Now that I have a few nights to myself (without taking pictures of haunted attractions), I will update the Dev Log with current issues:

Haunted Attraction Photography:  I have been counting page requests on that part of the site and I'm happy to announce I have over 1,404 requests from 341 unique IPs for the pages since Oct. 17th (I don't count my accesses).  This is even more impressive when I say I have not done a bit of advertising.  Truly.  I really don't have to convince most of those who know me; you all KNOW I don't advertise or do anything by way of self-promotion.

Charging for Photography:  All haunted attractions say I do work of a caliber for which I can charge.  Perhaps I should?  If so, my fee for the 2006 season will most likely be $140 per event hour.  This also covers transportation, basic post-processing/editing, hosting fees, any new equipment, and such.  Perhaps I should put a "PayPal: Donate" link on the haunted attraction picture pages this year?

This poses an interesting problem.  I want to own my pictures.  If I were to charge, the law would be "work for hire".  This means I keep copyright, but the attraction owns the pictures.  While they are authorized to use the pictures as they please, it will be illegal to use the pictures for anything else not in the contract (or selling them) without negotiating and paying me a fee/royalty.  Technically, this is almost exactly the agreement I have with the attractions now: they can use the pictures for their web site, but cannot use them any other way.  So, perhaps it's okay not to have ownership since I will still have copyright on the pictures?

DevFolio Upgrade:  Dude.  The hosting company handling DevFolio.com, my media and application storage/staging site, upgraded my hosting plan.  Check it out:  disk space (2GB --> 10GB), bandwidth (100GB --> 500GB), email accounts (500 --> 1,000), and MySQL databases (10 --> 25).  Wow.  I guess I don't have to worry about storage and bandwidth accrued from doing the haunted attraction pictures.  I could very well buy another domain name and host it off a subdirectory from PhoenixPo.com or DevFolio.com (or use programming to switch it around).  Poor PhoenixPo.com: its core hosting service is under the old account--50MB storage and unlimited bandwidth.  I could upgrade, but unlimited bandwidth has its perks if I start offering free web services.

PMP Search:  Very few of you know I am in the market for a Personal Media Player (PMP), while the contrary is true for knowledge of my extravagance when it comes to electronic devices.  (heh, heh)  I want a PMP that can store my camera's pictures so I can view them at the scene on something larger than my camera's LCD.  I also want to use the PMP as a device to show people a photo portfolio.  There's another side, too: I want to use the device to carry media files wherever I go--that and to Tony's place so I don't have to rely on my third laptop's first hard drive (3GB, now in an external shell).

So, what have I found?  Well, the PMP market is normally from $200 - $550.  I found one for $679 and it looks like a winner--the Cowon iAudio A2.  That is, if it can support 6.3 megapixel images (the site said up to 4 megapixel, but another PMP supports up to a certain resolution, then sizes the picture down to fit, so I'm not certain what this PMP will do to >4MP images).  If not, the $506 iStation i2 seems to be next on my list.

Check out a helpful comparison sheet of some PMPs on the market.  Thanks goes to the EBay seller, mstation_mp3, for providing everything but the Cowon iAudio A2 data (I added that because it's the PMP that's currently in the lead for my attention, then the seller's iStation i2).

I have been watching the PMP marketplace off and on since January and it's just starting to get interesting.  I will take my time and make a decision I won't regret.