Original has been my pet project for quite a while, but I have been losing interest in it over time. One of the initial goals of it was making it effortless to put images on the web. That meant no database setup, no web-admin interface to upload images at the time. You could just use ftp, scp, rsync or whatever to put the images on the server. You still had to run a client-side script of some sort to generate the thumbnails and size versions. And you still do. And that sucks.

Today I bounced into an article about sqlite. The flat file, no hassle aspect of it is very appealing. I wanted to have functionality like most popular images, recently uploaded images, keyword or exif entry queries, but didn’t want a hassle-dependency on mysql or postgresql. But then I realised the whole concept of client sript and server script is too much of a hassle itself.

So here’s why I am going to reinvent the wheel:

• As simple as possible – copy photos to a directory. That’s it. Be those VGA or 10 megapixel shots. No client side scaling anymore^*.
• Integrate with F-Spot for metadata. I still don’t want any web-interface for that kind of stuff.
• F-Spot export should really be synchronisation, not a one-time export. I want the metadata updated on the web if I do it locally. F-Spot can access the remote database file using gnome-vfs fairly easily.
• I also want a similar interface as I have in F-Spot. I should be able to group the photos by date, album (folder), query by tags, I want to do funky javascript slideshows. I want it all.
• Archives of photos should be done on the server too. Any query should be downloadable as an uncompressed ZIP archive or somesuch.
• Oh and it has to have a non-sucky name unlike Original. Websnapz was my initial buzzy idea.

These bulletpoints are only the spark that made me decide to blow the dust away from my php hacking. Although the first thing I did was `sudo apt-get install php4-sqlite` I will resist and design the app first. Feel free to suggest functionality in the comments.

So my GF comes home with some newspapers. I open up the weekend inlay of
Hospodarske noviny and bounce into an
article about national cuisine and french, erm belgian fries. There is a small collage in
the middle of the page and I say to myself. Man, I know this face. I know this
photo!

I actually had to check with the dudes at #gnome-hackers to find a name to
that face and here
we go. I am sure they asked Mark beforehand .

The question remains what the newspaper guys googled for.

Shouldn’t thumbnails have a TTL?

“Let me see if the megaphone works *bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt*, ouch. It does, ok.
Howdy all you Evolution users!”

I’d like to ask the Evolution user community. I’m interested to see if you
use vFolders and most importantly what for. When we got the feature out, I
thought it was the greatest thing on earth. I found myself not using it for
anything but “important” mails in the end though.

I’m interested in real-life use cases. If you read my blog through a
planet, follow the topic link to get to the comments area on my site. Your
feedback is appreciated!

Like most of the gnomes, I’m home again. It’s been fun, although I didn’t manage to overcome my typical geek inner timidity to talk to all the new members of the community. Had fun talking to the GIMP folks. Was extremely happy about Fluendo and Imendio involvment in the perfect wardriving device, the Nokia 770 development.

Hung around with Andreas Nisse, who contributed a couple of icons to the gnome icon theme. Unfortunately, due to me not having my machine around and general “too many things to see, too many folks to talk to” we couldn’t do an Inkscape session we wanted. I also managed to miss a discussion on nautilus with Alex. Bad bad jimmac.

I don’t understand what people thought when they described Stuttgart as a boring and uninteresting city. I liked it a lot, lots of people around Slossplatz, nice restaurants, the club the party was at was pretty wicked. Especially the toilets, where I got confused of course, but I wasn’t alone. Also the weather was rather nice.

I really enjoyed killing the waiting gaps with ridgeracer which I happened to finish on the train from Stuttgart to Frankfurt. With a PSP, the ICE train is faster than the plane, since on a plane you have to turn the device off during take-off and landing. The game is almost as fun as the old Motorhead on the PC. Very fast, very unrealistic, very dramatic. I must have been a fun character to watch while playing. Turning sideways, trying to control the cursing when got taken over in the last curve. Especially the duels after you finish the main set are tough. Opponennts pretty much shooting nitro all the time. I kinda wish there were more tracks. The are really well done, .