Posted by Doug
Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:04:15 GMT
I’d like to get a peek at all the folks working on photo gallery apps in Rails. Mail messages show up on the mailing list fairly frequently related to image handling and cataloging. I also see comments about it on IRC as well. What I don’t see is anything closed to finished and available as free software.
I’m very interested in DAM. I don’t want a “Flickr Killer”, but just something for me to self-host, manage all my photos, and still make it easy and enjoyable for friends and family to browse.
I’ve started a Photo App on the Rails wiki where I hope to at least get a list of folks who are willing to admit they are working on a photo gallery, are willing to share their code, and are willing to accept help from others.
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Posted in Photography, Ruby on Rails | 5 comments
Posted by Doug
Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:51:46 GMT
I’ve updated my photo gallery with my overall site design. I’m getting pretty good at applying the design as a theme in various software packages. This time it only took me about half an hour. A few days ago I had updated my wiki and it took me about four hours.
I have friends that complain my gallery is too cumbersome to navigate. I’m using Apache::Gallery as a mod_perl application to serve up my photos. It’s very simple. It just scans a directory and presents the folder/images it finds there. I’ve modified it to handle IPTC meta-data better and also cache directory indexes. It already creates thumbnails and scales the images automatically.
I like it because it’s very simple. The server is actually located at my house. When I take a bunch of photos and then process them, I just copy the whole folder of processed images to my server. That’s my main archive of the photos and A::G automatically serves them without having to be updated.
The bad news is that if you don’t understand how I organize photos on my hard drive (and thus in my archive) then it’s hard to find photos in the gallery. It’s also impossible to tell which photos are most recently added. Finally, I’ve got all the photos I’m saving just crammed into the gallery. That makes it hard to wade through looking for the best photos.
My Rails Day 2005 project was supposed to be a new photo depot that solved all those problems. Unfortunately, we didn’t finish to the point where I could use it and I haven’t revisited it again.
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Posted in Photography, CSS | no comments
Posted by Doug
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:00:31 GMT
The occasion that gave me time to read TDD was a 3 hour round-trip flight to New York City. I’ll get into what I was doing in NYC later, but I wanted to talk about the experience itself. One of my strengths/weaknesses is that I typically think more highly of myself than I should. Sometimes I just call it self-confidence, other times it’s flat out pride and even arrogance.
I only had a day and some change and didn’t really know which of the billion things to do in NYC given my limited time and limited budget. What I decided on is a self-paced walking tour of Manhattan.
So, I’m walking around Manhattan on Sunday by myself. New York is one of those places where it’s easy to be alone while in the middle of everything. Like many, I enjoy people watching. What I observed is an incredible amount of diversity and similarity. Many people in NYC dress, walk, and act similar. However, the range of people is mind boggling.
I just kept thinking, with all these people, surely I’m walking right past lots of people who are top notch in their field. In fact, I’m probably walking past people who are top notch in my field. I’m walking past people who are mediocre or who are barely making it. I’m just one of the millions of people here.
The whole experience made me feel quite ordinary. It reminded me of Randall Swartz’s Just Another Perl Hacker. Of course, there was a bit of showing off in that tradition. In a way it was false modesty.
I hope the effects of this trip can add some temperance to my attitude. I like to believe there’s a reason that customers, clients, and employers come to me to work for them. However, I need to also remember there’s thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands) of others they could have chosen instead.
Posted in Programming, Photography, Christianity, Community | no comments
