Schonhose

In the summer of 2006 I decided to start my own photoblog. I had just bought a new DSLR and was looking for a way to display these images. I found Pixelpost to be the only package meeting my requirements and I started using it. During the development of my photoblog I fixed some issues in Pixelpost and after that I found myself on the development team.

Together with Piotr I fixed a lot of bugs and added a lot of features in the 1.6 release. One of the main features I worked on was alternative language support for templates. I also developed some addons, one of the biggest the Googlemap addon to display images on the map. It is still a nice showcase of the addon power in Pixelpost because it uses a lot of workspaces to plugin its code. If I look at the downloads from my site over this period the absolute number one addon is the Entrypage addon, followed by the Googlemaps addon.

Working with the codebase of Pixelpost made me realize one thing: the code needed a complete overhaul. Jay, Dave and myself started making plans for the new revamped version of Pixelpost, the illustrious version 2.0. Like all good plans it started out real nice and we made some nice progress. In our attempts to make it clean, lean and mean we had to restart a few times from scratch. It took a bit longer than anticipated and we also had other stuff to attend to. All this lead to a stop in the development, ultimately leading to a blogpost on the forum describing the current situation.

Over the last year I came increasingly disgusted with the administration panel of Pixelpost and the lack of features found in other programs these days. Also I found it hard to maintain the self-imposed upload scheme of posting a new image every three days while not taking any new images. And last but not least, I also found I uploaded an image both on my blog and on Flickr. After some reviewing I discovered Flickr had most of the features I implemented on my blog as well. It had the maps, a nice way of organizing images with tags and sets and an easy way to upload images. Next to that it features multiple sizes, something I always wanted to use on my blog.

So I decided to scratch the blogging idea, turn the whole thing into a portfolio and use Flickr as a base. I closed my photoblog (e.g. stopped uploading pictures) and set out on a search to fulfill my requirements. After a couple of weeks programming and figuring out the (wonderful) Flickr API I present you with my revamped portfolio: http://foto.schonhose.nl.

As always there are some minor issues to fix, which will be dealt with in the next few weeks. I managed to retain most of the features of my old blog, although the comments now go through Flickr. Flickr doesn’t allow anonymous comments so that is the only drawback I found. That being said, over the last year I only got 2 legitimate comments, the rest was SPAM. Love to hear your comments on the new site!

Today I managed to get to the root of a problem I have been trying to eliminate for some time now. It all has to do with the “use the EXIF coordinates” feature of the GoogleMap addon for Pixelpost. It seemed when using this feature the location magically shifted a few meters or even more.

When using reverse geocoding for latitude and longitude values Google Maps focuses on nearby (and sometimes not so near by) “points of interest” or the closest address it can find. This behavior can be changed by changing the following Javascript function function showLocationLatLng().

Change the code of that function to:
function showLocationLatLng() {
var latlng = new GLatLng(document.forms['view-latlng'].lat.value,document.forms['view-latlng'].lng.value);
editMap.addOverlay(new GMarker(latlng));
editMap.setCenter(latlng, 16);
}

This will force the addon to use the exact location of the image provided in the EXIF.

While working on the Googlemaps addon I thought it would be useful to re-install Google Earth. Last time I removed it from my computer due to the amount of space it took on my C: drive, which is rather small. I was rather hopeful Google would provide an easy way to change the location of the cache to another drive.

Well, turns out I was wrong. But there is a way to do it, but it requires two hacks in the Windows Registry. The keys you need to change, as well as the location are displayed below:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Earth Plus]
“CachePath”=”F:\\Google Earth Cache”
“KMLPath”=”F:\\Google Earth Cache”

As you can see I moved the Google Earth Cache from the C: to my F: drive which has lots of space left. I wonder when Google will implement an easy way in the options panel of Google Earth. In the meantime this hack will work. Remember to make a copy of your registry to be on the safe side.

Well, today it is wednesday and my last post was more than a week ago. So I decided to update you what has been going on over the past few days. First off, I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I basically tried to take it easy. I’ll probably take it easy until next sunday or so since it feels so good (and I’m still not 100%). Every once in while you need to rest and cleanup things in your head.

Well, I haven’t been completely away so here is a list of what I’ve done:

• A new addon, called “EntryPage” was released last weekend. It is basically a simple way to change the entrypage (the page your visitors see when they visit the site) of a Pixelpost installation. Read more about it and grab it here.
• Jay Williams, over at D3 Designs, made a really nice plugin for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It allows you to directly export an image from the Lightroom program over to Pixelpost. It has been out for about a month now but I finally got around to test it. (Yes, I have been swamped, you guessed that right). If you use Pixelpost and Lightroom you should check it out.
• The new improved Googlemaps addon is getting real close to being final now. The code has been working for quite some time on my blog and I have added some nifty features to make my life much easier. How about providing the coordinates when you upload a picture instead of adding them after the upload? That really speeds up the process.
• A couple of guys at the Pixelpost Forum are building their own PayPal supported shop addon for Pixelpost. I’ve been thinking about a similar addon for a few months now. I pretty much finished the whole back-end system on paper so I can start writing some code when I’m up to it. The main focus is on security and flexibility. The main concern right now is how I would handle foreign orders for prints. I’m not even sure if anyone wants to buy a print of my pictures but I consider it a learning possibility nevertheless.
• Dmitri Popov over at Linux.com has written a real nice review about Pixelpost.
• The last item is a shameless plug for two websites I visit daily. If you got the time, check out Matt Kloskowski’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips website for some killer tips on Lightroom as well as nice presets and other stuff. The other site is Scott Kelby’s Adobe Photoshop Insider website. This week it is Lighting Gear Week, so all posts are about lightning in general with examples of possible gear. Really interesting stuff.

Well that wraps it up for now, back to taking it easy.

Over the last few weeks I made quite a few improvements to the Googlemaps addon for Pixelpost. Today I finally managed to do something that has been on the list for nearly a year now. When you click a clustered marker you will get an infowindow containing a Flickr like scrolling element.

For those of you interested in what it looks like, here is a screenshot:

Other improvements include a more logical way of clustering based upon K-Means++, clusters are stored in the database in a real nice hierarchical system, and real nice icons for the new cluster method. Ow, and did I mention it works in Firefox, Safari and the dreadful Internet Explorer?

I’m still thinking if I’m planning to leave the earlier clustermethod in the addon or if I delete it. I tend towards deleting the method and all options related to it since the K-Means is far more superior.

Anyway, I updated the version on my blog to the latest development version. Check it out here.

Please note this addon is not available to the general public, and I’m doubtful it will ever be. With the amount of support lately chances are pretty slim.