tallphil

Mashing the Flickr API

Fri, 2 May 2008 22:30:36 GMT

As my brain was too tired to do any more revision this evening (hmm) I sat down to investigate the Flickr API. It's been bothering me for a while that I can't afford enough storage on my server to host as many high-quality photos as I want for people to see. I've been playing with various solutions for a while in the back of my head, all involving somehow hosting my photos offsite and still bringing them into my photo browser. I'd heard good things about Flickr Pro Accounts - unlimited uploads and storage, unlimited sets (albums) and I knew that the UBU PhotoSoc website grabs photos from it's group on Flickr. So I thought I'd have a look at this API. I haven't had very good experience with APIs before - they tend to be fairly strange beasts to achieve the security and cross-compatibility that they're useful for. In this case PHPFlickr came to my aid - a PHP wrapper for the Flickr API. Anyway, instead of just investigating I ended up coding a few pages and I'm quite excited. My Flash Photo Browser runs off dynamically generated text strings and I managed to write Flickr equivalents that grab the data from Flickr through the API. So, I have a solution! Buy a Flickr Pro Account, upload as many photos as I like using the handy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom plugin by Jeffrey Friedl and my Flash Photo Browser will dynamically update with everything done sensibly and automatically! Watch this space...

Making Adverts, part 2

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:13:59 GMT

I had an unplanned afternoon off revision today (should have been donating platelets, but nearly passed out a few minutes in so they sent me home...) I've come up with a design for the next format - 400px by 600px. I did this one for La Sportiva, tried to keep it simple and went with a similar 'motion' or 'swooshy' feel to the first... What do you think?

Making Adverts

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:40:39 GMT

I'm planning to enter a competition at the end of the month where you have to make four web adverts of different sizes for the Lyon Equipment (Petzl, La Sportiva and Beal). You're only allowed to use images off their respective websites, though photoshopping is allowed. Anyway, I've done my first - a Petzl ad for the horizontal banner (squished to fit in here, so the images are a bit off): Any comments / suggestions? I'm not sure about the final tagline, but can't think of anything better...

tallphil productions

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:09:00 GMT

The new version of my professional webdesign site is up to beta stage - you can see it here. The site still needs some tweaking before release, so any comments appreciated!

David Blaine on FunnyOrDie

Wed, 2 Apr 2008 12:17:51 GMT

David Blaine Street Magic 2 on FunnyOrDie.com Found this sketch yesterday, made me chuckle enough to want to put it up here... If you liked it, it's the second of a three part series - you can find the first one here and the third here...

Walking in the Lakes

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:07:13 GMT

Ok, have finally put up the photos from Pete and my trip to the Lake District before Easter. You can see the album here. For those that are interested, our main expedition was up to Lingmell, then Scafell Pike (highest peak in England, not that that's saying much) then on to Broad Crag, Ill Crag, Great End and Allen Crags before wild-camping at the foot of Glaramara. A (very) early start then got us up to the top of Glaramara to see sunrise before pottering back down to the car. Apart from the incredibly cold night it was a fab trip! Woke up to find all of our stuff frozen, including the apple i was planning to have for breakfast. Appreciated my lovely new sleeping bag!

Vista SP1 / VistaGlazz

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:08:27 GMT

Vista has just updated itself with the first service pack, SP1. Whilst I haven't had time to see any differences, it was immediately obvious that I'd lost all of my lovely visual customisations - yup, the update unpatches the lovely patched files for customisation of windows with non-microsoft themes. So, off I went and used VistaGlazz (mentioned in my older post here) and everything went tits up. Classic windows style and unable to open up any of the windows display panels. Oops. Solution was thankfully not so tough - the lovely chaps here have already created patched files that work with Vista SP1. Just replace the files (mine were in C:/Windows/System32) with the new versions (back up the originals), reboot and all is back to normal. Phew!

Photoshop Express

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:56:17 GMT

A new plaything from Adobe was released yesterday on Beta, Photoshop Express. Originally billed as "Photoshop online, for free" it's not really all that. It does come with a few tools, not far off what you might find in the vista photo viewer - enough for your mum or dad to add a few tweaks to the odd photo. What was of more interest to me was the ultra-slick interface (a shining example of what can be done with Flash) and its ability to integrate with Facebook, Picasa, PhotoBucket and soon Flickr. I'm hoping that its API will allow direct hotlinking to images so that I can play off their bandwidth into my tallphil flash photo viewer - could I finally have a single upload solution to supply all of my online photo websites? Give it a try anyway, I certainly like it and at the worst you get a free 2gigs of picture space and your own website.

Firefox Logo

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:24:54 GMT

I was taken to the welcome page of a firefox add on recently which had a large version of the Firefox logo (here) and I was surprised to see a 'fake' globe. I say fake, it has a blob that looks like it might be the UK, and a blob near it which could be Scandinavia. However, 'Africa' looks nothing like Africa. Why didn't they use a normal world map? Maybe they wouldn't want to bias any country but they kind of already did that with the northern blobs. Anyway, I made my own version - maybe I'll win a cookie.

Armadillo Run

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:21:49 GMT

The latest addictive game to catch my attention is one Armadillo Run. It's a very simple game with no flash graphics or backing music yet it has an amazing ability to divert me from work. The premise is simple - get the armadillo (yup, he's not a basketball) to the blue sphere and keep him there for a few seconds until he teleports out. You have a series of materials which you can place, tension and blow up but only a limited budget. All in all, a fab game which should keep anyone entertained for a few days... You can get a free demo here.