Posts that have the tag "dev"
The Future
I've recently, replaced the entirety of my Blog and the majority of image pages with OOP code. The last step I need to take is to make the final touches on my image upload program.
From there, it'll be time to implement some of the functionality that I've been putting off. I've already set up the ability to hide images and folders from the public (the purpose is to provide a place to store images that aren't necessarily for gallery purposes, but can be used in the blog itself), but I need to start implementing it in my HTML and PHP.
I also have ideas to add to my blog functionality, such as the ability to start entries and store them as drafts for later editing. There are, also, other tweaks I want to provide for the main page, such as the ability to go to the first page or the last page.
But, more importantly than the development of this blog, I feel like I need to really start focusing on the content. The excitement of developing a functional blog with functional authentication, BB Code, images and so on is starting to wane, considering I started this project more than a year ago. The first recorded post was made on January 28, 2009. Before that, I had a previous blog that was completely scrubbed after making major development changes and before that, I had already been programming a bit of information in a proto-blog. I've been working on my website in its various incarnations for more than 1.5 years. So, now, it's time to start focusing on providing something interesting.
The good news is that spring is finally here. The past week and a half has shown a dramatic warming of the weather from the low to mid 30s to the 50s. I can finally get out and maybe produce something worthwhile photographically.
Posted on March 11, 2010 at 11:34 am. 0 comments. Tags: dev website photography
Java
I'm about half way through Beginning Java Objects, by Jacquie Barker. This is a few months after finishing Murach's Java SE 6. The first portion of the book dealt with syntax and I feel as though I had a pretty decent grasp of the syntax already, so I was able to go through that portion of the book quickly and easily. The second section was about object modeling for a project. This portion of the book I glossed over and didn't really bother reading very in-depth. However, I started to realize the importance of modeling objects.
I've been struggling with direction in modeling objects for legal software I want to design as well as modeling objects for my blog, which I want to fully revamp into OO design. Thus, I think it would be very beneficial for me to re-read this whole modeling section before continuing on to the third section of the book.
However, before I even go back and read that, I decided to put Object modeling on the back burner for a little bit so that I could start a new book: TCP/IP sockets in Java by Kenneth Calvert. Before I can fully realize how the objects in my legal software can work, I want to become knowledgeable of Network programming so that I know which objects should do what and be more qualified to program the legal software.
As for my PHP objects, I'm finding it difficult to separate the procedural issues from abstract issues. That is to say, I want to try to abstract what my blog does, but I find the procedure creeping into my abstract description. Nonetheless, I'll try writing it out further in the hopes that I can feel my way through this.
Posted on December 21, 2009 at 10:07 am. 0 comments. Tags: Java admin php development dev
Laptop
I just got my new laptop in. I purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad T400. Border's offered a discount through their corporate account plus a coupon for 15% off. The total came to a little over $800 (ouch!) but all other laptops from companies like Dell and HP that had similar build quality were similarly expensive or had inferior hardware. So, I just went with a trusted brand. read more...
Posted on December 19, 2009 at 10:27 pm. 0 comments. Tags: laptop Apple OSX development admin
Image Uploads
I thought I was going to get the search functionality started, but I've been working on the image upload script. Initially it was designed merely to work, but now I'm revamping the code to be far more extensible. I've added a for loop so that I can upload and deal with multiple files at the same time.
Posted on October 04, 2009 at 06:12 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev image upload images gallery
Current Events
A few things have been going on in recent days. First, and foremost, I've run into quite a few problems with my image upload scripts. Initially, I found that images that had a space in the file name would fail. So, I had to add quotation marks wrapped around the file name. Though, of course, I made a dopey mistake and ended up putting the quotations around the command and the file name (oops). Needless to say, the batch files wouldn't work. Lucky for me, I spotted the problem and rectified it relatively easily.
Though, I had a couple images added to my gallery that had no actual image, but all the information. So, I had to construct an image editing page, much like my folder editing page. It's in an incomplete state right now, but I have the ability to delete images now.
As far as the upload program is concerned, I've gotten a lot of the kinks ironed out, but I need to start integrating it into the actual gallery as a whole, including styles and links to the upload page. I also want to be able to handle multiple image uploads. Right now, I have the ability to upload two images, but I only process one image. I'll need to add fields for all the images that will be uploaded and maybe I'll take a look at some of the Javascript accordion-style methods to hide data.
I've also been learning about Java io. I've written a batch program that will avs script files. When I encode video, I use avs script files to frame serve all the episodes of a TV series. When you have 20-some episodes, it can be tedious to make an avs script for them all. Because they're all the same, I can create the files in a batch. I used to have a php script that did it for me, but it was cumbersome to use, at best. Now, I have a Javascript program that I use to create avs scripts for me from a single template. Later on, I'll create a program that creates mkvmerge job files from a single template.
Posted on September 01, 2009 at 10:36 am. 0 comments. Tags: dev admin site image gallery gallery java javascript
Long break
Wow, been almost half a month since the last update. The gallery is actually working, but I still haven't written a large chunk of the functionality related to the image gallery.
However, I've been studying 3D modeling in Maya for a few weeks, so that's been hogging my progress. Not much more to report.
Posted on July 26, 2009 at 11:02 pm. 0 comments. Tags: website dev 3D maya
to-do list, follow up
In regard to the to-do list that I posted earlier, I've done the following:
In re 1): I've decided to just use a single folder genre for images right now. Later on, I can create a second layer of folders that can hold multiple other folders. But, having a folder that can contain both folders and images was just too much to handle right now. It would just end up looking pretty bad.
In re 2): I've experimented with the ability to upload multiple files. It looks like I can just add as many upload boxes as I want. I'll have to handle each file, though. In the end, file handling will probably be relegated to a for loop that will check for file availability. If the file isn't available, there was nothing uploaded.
In re 3): I've not touched on this yet.
In re 4): I've set the appropriate image quality settings I want. I've also decided to strip all EXIF data from the actual images, as they don't need them. The resultant images have about 15kb less data.
In re 5): I've not touched on this yet.
So far, I've added the Image file and folder info to the MySQL database. I've modified the upload program to add the EXIF data to the SQL database. It will also name the files based on the next incremented ID. I've also built the php-based folder gallery, image gallery and image display pages.
As soon as I implement user authentication (in order to allow editing files and folders) and design methods to modify the data, I think I'll be ready to start making the site live.
Posted on July 15, 2009 at 01:33 am. 0 comments. Tags: website image gallery images dev
Image Gallery to-do list
I want to write out what needs to be done for my image gallery program. Today, I organized the files related to my image gallery and modified them to be modular for later use. I also renamed them to clarify their purpose. So, instead of a bunch of numbered files, I have names that denote their use. I fixed some bugs and updated the upload page to have text areas and a drop down box for comments, tags and folders. I've also refined the tables for images and their respective folders for when I create the tables.
The following is my to-do list for the image gallery:
1) I need to decide how the folders are going to be organized and displayed
2) Figure out how to upload multiple files at once
3) Develop methods to modify image information at a later time, including moving to another folder
4) Finalize image quality settings
5) Develop a script that allows me to add and remove folders and edit the folders properties, such as the folder icon
I can't think of much more to do beyond that, so I'll get back when I think of more to add.
Posted on July 14, 2009 at 09:36 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev images image gallery website
Time taken out
I've been busy with other things recently. I've been writing a review of the ASUS My Cinema-EHD3-100 which has been sucking some time out of my life. Moreover, I've been having to run personal errands to clean my apartment and I've otherwise just been plain lazy, resorting to watching The Wire or playing Assassin's Creed on the Xbox 360. Tonight will be no different as I have to get some laundry done.
Reading my Java programming book has been similarly slow as I've felt myself getting too tired frequently on the train. As such, my image gallery project keeps getting pushed back. I will eventually get around to starting the project, but it will take a little time.
In other news, I purchased a few older Xbox 360 games. Mass Effect, Devil May Cry 4, Prince of Persia, Ninja Gaiden II and Dead Rising. Each of which were less than $20 new.
I also decided to purchase Unreal Tournament III. Now, the thing about UT3 is that I really don't have much desire to play the game. Rather, I want to learn to develop levels and models in the UnrealEd engine. For this reason, I opted to purchase the collector's edition version because it contains a bonus disc of video tutorials on using UnrealEd. I also have the UT2k4 Editor's Choice edition, which has similar goodies included. I'll combine this with the Maya Personal Learning Edition (included on the UT2k4 disc) and my learning Maya book to start immersing myself in 3D modeling and animation.
Posted on July 07, 2009 at 02:32 pm. 0 comments. Tags: 3D Maya Unreal Tournament Xbox 360 website dev
Image Conversion
Initially, I had created a script that had two pipes that opened up to the console. The first pipe would access imagemagick and make the conversion from the source file to a lower res, compressed file. Then, the second pipe would remove the source image after the conversion is complete. Initially it worked just fine, but for whatever reason, it's no longer working. Now, it appears that the two pipes run in quick succession, so Linux attempts to delete the file before Imagemagick has completed its operation.
I've built a work around that builds a batch file and then uses a pipe that runs the batch. This appears to work just fine, I've had no problem with that.
My next concern is figuring out how to name the files. With comment and journal entries, the id number is entered, but not utilized anywhere else except during search and retrieval. However, with images, I'd need to utilize the id# in order to name the image as well. So, for an image with ID # 200, I'd expect to name the image 000200.jpg. When naming the image, I'll either have to:
A) Use "null" for the ID # like I usually do, and then do a search immediately afterward for the latest image and use that number or
B) Do a search of the SQL table, find the latest entry and use a ++ increment for everything.
It would seem to me that either option has equal efficiency. I'll have to decide which is easier to write.
Posted on June 28, 2009 at 12:13 pm. 0 comments. Tags: website dev admin imagemagick
Whitelist
I realized that I had the Whitelist function in multiple places. So, I removed the whitelist function I had in my comment script. I then edited the whitelist function I wrote to accept any generic whitelist in array form. Finally, I added a bunch of functions to the whitelist script to accept numerous common whitelist arrays. I also gave the ability to use your own custom array if need be.
Posted on June 26, 2009 at 10:59 am. 0 comments. Tags: website dev
Done for now
Well, I've systematically altered all the main files and scripts of the website to add comments, make the scripts more efficient, trim the code and fix some of the issues I had before that resulted in odd bugs and anomalies in the way the code worked.
I think I've worked out a lot of the problems that existed before. Now, I just need to integrate my development page into my live page, as both are disparate. Soon, I hope, I can actually start on my image gallery scripts. I've already worked out the way I'm going to organize the galleries. At this point, I just need to start putting the disparate scripts I've been working on together.
Posted on June 25, 2009 at 10:44 am. 0 comments. Tags: website dev server
Site Updates
Holy Crap, the code for my site was far worse than I expected. I'm currently reviewing the entirety of my website's pages. There are quite a few deficiencies in the logic in some of my pages. Moreover, remnants of debugging exist. Finally, I was far too concerned about removing any bit of javascript from my page that I made some rather roundabout coding when Javascript redirects would have been better. I'm also going through the code attempting to comment the code so that it's more readable.
I'm also pulling apart the code attempting to separate and abstract some of the functionality, such as page redirects, which may be better off as a function.
Moreover, I also learned more about cookies. Turns out that when you initialize a cookie, you cannot use that cookie on the same page. My new code would authorize if it could read all cookies that I set for authorization and de-authorize if it could not read them. This would merely be a variable that would enable certain features on the page for authorized users. So, my page would tell me that I wasn't correctly logged on, but going to any new page would show that I was, in fact, logged on. What I found out was that my old setup would authorize if the cookies were correct but would NOT de-authorize if the cookies were incorrect. This, to me, was rather sloppy. So, I changed this aspect, but it's going to necessitate an extra step in logging in so that the login pages reads correctly.
In the end, this will take a few days to be put up.
Posted on June 01, 2009 at 10:17 am. 0 comments. Tags: dev php javascript website admin
Java
I've decided that I'll buy myself a blackberry phone in the near future. My contract is up in September, I think, but I'm able to get a new phone in May. Meanwhile, I keep hearing this, that and the other about the new Blackberry 9630 Niagara. Unfortunately, there's absolutely nothing official written thus far, so there's no release dates, prices, street dates, nada. So, I'm sitting here in limbo.
However, that's fine. The purpose of a purchase of a blackberry is less to be in and with it and more to be able to do work when I'm not at a computer. The one thing I'm most excited about with a blackberry phone, though, would be to learn Java and object oriented programming. In fact, I don't really need the phone because Research in Motion (RIM) offers Blackberry emulators for developers that allow me to use the phone and program for it, including using an internet connection. I'm currently using Sam's Learn Java in 21 days book and I'll post results later on when I start writing programs.
Posted on April 14, 2009 at 08:14 am. 0 comments. Tags: Java Dev Blackberry 9630 niagara book
Images Scripts Update
I was thinking about this and I feel that things would be better if I stuck to a single sub-gallery method and just implemented tags of one sort or another. That way, I can have my sub-galleries of special events, such as specific vacations. And I can also just add tags to all the images, so that I can separate them by genre or type.
Posted on March 13, 2009 at 10:33 am. 0 comments. Tags: dev site images
Image Gallery
I've come to a realization that I've missed something in my image gallery. read more...
Posted on March 12, 2009 at 06:01 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev images site
Updates
I know I've been very lax in writing in the blog for a while now. Reason being that I'm moving soon. So, I've been making a lot of arrangements to pack up and get out. I'm unsure when my internet will be up and running, nor am I sure which provider I'll use. I may just stick with Comcast for the time being. read more...
Posted on March 04, 2009 at 05:07 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev camera audio
Comment Screening
I wanted to talk about the necessity for comment screening. Before I developed my current blog I had used Livejournal for years and had WordPress installed for a few months. When I was using LiveJournal, people who wanted to leave comments had to be registered users. Registered users who used spam would be brought to the attention of moderators and banned (or so I presume) and, as such, spam was generally far more controlled.
When I used WordPress, no registration was required and because of this, a ridiculous amount of spam was left on my blog. To give you an idea, over a few months, I received about 3-4 legitimate comments on the 3 posts I made in that short period of time and about 60 or so spam comments.
Because of this, I've decided to employ comment screening in order to protect my site from being hit by spam bots. There's nothing I can do to prevent the spam bots from visiting sites and automatically filling in the fields, but I can prevent the material from being visible.
Posted on February 23, 2009 at 11:59 am. 3 comments. Tags: Dev comments
Image system
The next project I'll work on is my automated image indexing system that will take image uploads, convert to lower resolution images with a converted thumbnail and possibly a medium-sized, blog-friendly size. The image information will then be placed into a table and an image index will be created. I hope to incorporate tags as well into my system.
Posted on February 23, 2009 at 11:00 am. 1 comments. Tags: dev images
Comments
After a short hiatus due to personal issues, I think I've finally gotten comments up and running and ready to go live. I'll be monitoring which comments are used and see if tweaks need to be made.
Posted on February 23, 2009 at 10:54 am. 0 comments. Tags: Dev comments
Comments...again
Problems have arose and I've been unable to continue writing my comments script for a period of time. I only resumed writing yesterday. read more...
Posted on February 19, 2009 at 11:51 am. 1 comments. Tags: dev comments
Comment System
I've written about half of the comment script for my template page. read more...
Posted on February 09, 2009 at 09:39 am. 0 comments. Tags: Dev Comments
Break Function
I've added a new function to my site. read more...
Posted on February 04, 2009 at 09:34 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev site
Website Update
I've included the ability to look through my blog and search based on tags. Now the thing about tags is that I may, or may not have consistent tags. I don't know, yet. However, I'm not sure how to use a drop down menu to add multiple tags. I'll think about that at another time. There are still two more functions that I need to write: Comments and a break function that will allow me to only display a portion of an entry on the front page.
In the meantime, though, I went on an inspection with my firm to a glass recycling plant. I was tasked with video taping the entire thing. I was, initially, going to bring my entire video recorder. However, on second though, and after reading through the depositions of people associated with the plant, I decided that it was probably far too dusty to take my own camera. As such, I brought the firm's video camera, which is an old Sony Handycam. The camera took 8mm video cassettes. I wasn't aware that those tapes were even made anymore, but I found a two pack at the Walgreens in our building
The plant itself was, of course, quite dusty. It was a very complex affair with lots of unassuming machines, and conveyor belts. There was a machine behind me that seemed to tear up paper or cardboard and dumped it into a cardboard box (a large one). There was dust everywhere, frequently coming off of conveyor belts. On two separate occasions I either felt crap get in my mouth or down my shirt and realized that it was coming from above. One time I tripped over a pile of dust.
The machine we were interested in was a machine that sucked up dust and crud from drying glass bottles and conveyed it to another area. The case involved a worker who got his foot stuck in a screw conveyor and got it ripped off. The problem was that he spoke little English and despite signing off on the safety courses, took no heed to them.
Whatever the case, I'll get crackin' on a break command.
Posted on February 01, 2009 at 04:06 pm. 0 comments. Tags: dev work recycling
First Post!
The site is now LIVE! I've finally gotten around to writing the necessary components of the blog to make it whole and complete. Because I will remove the temporary database I was initially using, I'll explain this website. This all started as a project on my part to learn PHP and MySQL as well as hone my HTML skills and learn CSS. This site is completely written in Notepad by me. The site is XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. I host this on my own connection on a TSOP modified Xbox running Xebian, which is a modified form of Debian.
The site utilizes a password protection system to allow me to sign in and out. It uses SHA1 hashing on the client side so that no passwords are sent over HTTP in plain text. The hashes are useless by themselves as validation is protected by cookies and session variables (meaning both client and server side validation).
I've written several scripts to allow for typical Blog navigation including sorting by pages and permalinks. I've also included BBCode styled regex scripts so that I can bold, italicize and add urls. I've worked fairly hard on sanitizing any input that users have to prevent SQL injection.
There are two scripts that I need to write still:
- Tag sorting. Each post will include tags and this should allow me to sort by them
- Comments. Comments will probably take a while to fully flesh out. I'll need to fully sanitize the text field, while providing myself an area to screen, delete and approve comments. Don't expect this for another couple of weeks
I also have another project involving image uploads. I want to write a script that uploads an image file, converts to a downsized, compressed jpeg with a max width or height of 800 pixels. This new file will be stored on the server starting at image 1. It will also produce a thumbnail version. From there, I want to place into a database information about the image, such as the camera, focal length, aperture, ISO speed, shutter speed and date taken as well as any comments I have about the picture.
Anyways, I'll write more later.