Cafe Bucky

When I was starting to learn PHP and MySQL in 2001, I wanted to tackle a project that meant something to me; a non-trivial web application…

So, being a photographer and programmer with some time on my hands, I decided to write a photo database.

The first iteration of FlexiPhoto had a hard-wired interface.  I rewrote it to support multiple UIs and languages.  Sometime in 2004-2005, I rewrote it again as a PHP5 app.

In 2006, I got distracted by Second Life :)  It was like going down a rabbit hole.  I got good at scripting in LSL [1].  I shelved my web projects.  What a mistake!  Although I have learned a lot of web tech in the last 5 years, I had my attention split by learning a lot about Second Life.  It’s nice to be good at it, but it doesn’t pay!  And, damn, I could use some money about now …

So I am back on the case with FlexiPhoto.  I have a virtual Ubuntu machine running at Slicehost, which I’ll use for the public-facing Demo, Wiki, and Download site.  I’m in the midst of dusting off FP (switching database layer from DB to MDB2, for one thing), and expect to have it available within a week.  It’s going to look clunky and very pre-AJAX, but then, I am a big fan of iteration.

A fun side note about Linux and running virtual machines at home: I still have my old 1U rack server, which hosted FlexiPhoto and other sites back in the day.  The damn thing is loud! It’s running an old version of Debian.  My task today is to mirror my Slicehost OS at home.  I’ve installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) on my iMac, hosted via VirtualBox. That will give me synced development & public environments.  I also am able to dual boot my Samsung NC10 Netbook to Windows XP and Ubuntu.  I’ve got it covered, baby!

Geez, geeking out here big time.

Anyways, FlexiPhoto is a good portfolio piece of mine, and I am stoked to be working on it again.  It’s like an old friend :)

[1] …although, to this day, I really think Cory O should have finished LSL.  It even makes Tcl look good, and that’s saying a lot…

The javascript-driven Pictures On A Page package has been updated (along with the demo) – poap-1.0b4.tgz. It features keyboard commands (’n', ‘p’, arrows, ’s’ for slideshow, ‘1′-’9′ to set delay).

POAP is now usable in Windows MSIE. There are some CSS quirks to iron out. It also should be updated to cache image src locations when calling into FlexiPhoto.

The followup to the Canned Gallery is Pictures On A Page. You can download from poap-1.0b3.tgz. This is entirely a soft launch, as I haven’t seen it on a Windows box yet. It might make breaking noises on MSIE for all I know.

It’s a simple front end for flipping through photos, and has many keyboard commands. A new feature is the ability to flip between different portfolios (see the demo). Another new one is to vary the slide show delay (in seconds) by using the ‘1′ – ‘9′ keys.

Have fun. Tweak to taste. Let me know if it works for you. Note that the “FP Collection” Portfolio in the demo is grabbing scaled photos of varying jpeg quality from FlexiPhoto. The other Portfolio is just a static directory of images… no php/db.

This is a quick list of a few projects, past and present.

• FlexiPhoto is the photo database I yap about all the time. Want a simple gallery with search? keywording? just want a browsing interface? Let me know of any feature requests.
• Canned Gallery is a complement to FlexiPhoto, and also a standalone. You can download it from the lower portion of the FlexiPhoto downloads page, or just save it from one of the demos
• ThereThen addresses are the idea of using a URI to express Location & Time. The link acts as an alias for an existing (or potential) web resource. One use would be to search for photos taken last weekend in San Francisco. This is shelved for the moment. It will be released in 2006 in two forms: a standalone example, and as a feature in FlexiPhoto.
• sub-posts – shelved till 2006.
• Grabchars – this is still out there?! wow. Grabchars is a C utility, and is used in shell scripts to get one or more keystrokes. There are default answers, prompts, timeouts, and input masks. I wrote it in 1991, and it’s mentioned in the book “Unix Power Tools”. If someone has done recent work on it, let me know.

An inevitable question I’ll hear over the next few weeks or months will be “So, Where Do You See Yourself, Five Years From Now?”. There are many answers to that, and it would take too long to list them here.

So here’s one of the answers, focusing on “my personal tech projects”, as opposed to “getting a degree” or “travel” or “write a book”, etc. …

I’ve written about FlexiPhoto quite a bit. What I haven’t gone into is how ThereThen Addresses and Sub-posts tie in. The condensed version is: They Do! There’s an overall concept of being able to click on a link, and have a draggable window pop up that has multiple choices of where to go next, where those choices have to do with relevant Locations and/or Time.

Here’s an example to help out. We’ll deal with looking up photos:

• Click on a location within Google Maps
• That pops up a draggable window with a photo from FlexiPhoto .. one that is closest to that location, and closest to the current time
• The window has a few controls in it, which allow searching by date, or a range of dates, or keywords/phrases, etc.

To sum up, over the next few years, I’d like to work on two front ends for searching photos: one is by Map, and one is by Calendar. The two complement each other very well:

• Map – clicking on a point brings up a Calendar with days/date-ranges indicated. The hotspots on the calendar have photos, collections, or exhibits
• Calendar – clicking on a day brings up a Map of points that indicate relevant photos, collections, etc.

Of course, with a grant, this will take a year or less, and then I’ll have another 4 years left to answer the question! Nah, I don’t seriously believe that. There will be iterations on the theme. My thought is that combining the elements of Location and Time for searching in a web app (and my keen interest is for searching photos) is something that hasn’t been explored enough. A lot will done outside of the context of traditonal forms.

Slight update: obviously a prototype or draft version of all the functionality bundled together isn’t going to take a full-time year. I’m thinking of production quality AJAX & Flash front ends, testing, docs, and so on — that’ll take some time.

Yep, it’s true. There’s a a new alpha of FlexiPhoto available

I promise I’ll get to beta before I run out of coffee names. Next step: scope the “2.5 vs 2.6″ feature list.

I don’t want every post here to mention FlexiPhoto, but until I get the word out, and start some momentum on that site, I’ll get ta mentionin’ …

Ok, 2.5a4 (Jamaica) is out!

Now I can get to scary things, like Halloween and PHP Security.

I’d missed the last couple of years of Halloween on D Street in Petaluma. We get 3000 trick or treaters. No, that’s not a typo. It’s insane! We live next to some people who give out cartons of chocolate milk every year (they run a dairy), and everyone that goes there, comes here. 3000 of them. Ask me about my candy bill sometime.

The other scary thing (boo!) can be PHP security. Fortunately, there’s a new O’Reilly book out: “Essential PHP Security”, by Chris Shiflett. I was on the verge of buying the print edition, and was relieved to see it come up in Safari. I know it will help me whip FlexiPhoto into shape.

See 2.5a3 (Sumatra), and the Wiki for the latest bit on FlexiPhoto.

I would like to get a contract soon to do some programming. FlexiPhoto is evolving into a bit of an online portfolio (code is rough, as it’s still showing the “port” from PHP 4, but still, it’s a non-trivial bit of work). I’m up for a wide variety of gigs. See my resume.