Month: April 2005

On organizing photos

I am looking for a better way to organize my photos. I have a whole lot of them and a lot more are coming.

Currently, I have a somewhat good organization but it is not very convenient to use. I have all pictures in the photos folder. Most of them are sorted into albums by date and name (/photos/year/year-month-day_album-name/). Others are organized into projects. Actually, I’ve had only one project so far – “Picture of the day“. I am using it to store single pictures and pictures which don’t belong to any particular album (/photos/Projects/POTD/year/month/day/). I have also created a Photoblog, which basically shows one picture at a time using the reversed date sort of my “Picture of the day” images.

Locating albums is fast and easy, but they are not adding up at the speed of singled out images. Single images need easier navigation. I’d go even as far as searching. Thus they need tagging or some similar mechanism. I also need a better photoblog with previous/next/today navigation, comments, and RSS feed. I also want to be able to use my images in posts for this blog once in a while. Ideally, I would also want a way for offline browsing of these pictures. In any way, I don’t want to store images in the database – they are just fine on my hard disk.

There is also something else. For some time now I am postprocessing all pictures that I publish. I want the original image to be stored somewhere handy. It shouldn’t be visible from the web, but it should be trivial to find if I need it.

From what I want, it seems that I need some database usage at least. Even if just to store the tags/keyword and comments. If I’d go in this direction, I want it integrated with my blog as much as possible. I want the same user and SPAM control.

I have been looking at different plugins for WordPress, as well as integration of some 3rd party tools. So far I didn’t manage to try any of them.

Do any of you have any suggestions based on my needs? I’d really appreciate it.

Update: Tried Gallery. Doesn’t work for due to the way it integrates to WordPress and impossibility of using EXIF comments as image titles during the import of albums. Other than that, seems to be a good piece of software.

Update: Tried Coppermine and didn’t like it for the above reasons.

Mood

Something must have happened or else, or else what?, exactly…

I can’t work today. My mood sucks. I am pushing myself to do at least something useful, but I can’t. Usually I’d get into this after a major drinking party or not sleeping for a few nights or something like that. But nothing a long these lines happened recently. After my mother-in-law came to stay with us a couple of days ago, I am sleeping rather well. I haven’t been drinking. At any serious level at least. I feel good. The weather is good – not hot, not cold, just warm and stable.

There really must be a reason for my mood, but I can’t find it. If I could, I’d find it and get rid of it and do something productive. Any ideas?

Fingerwork is gone

Olga accidentally noticed today that Maxim’s fingerwork is gone. His has a lot more control over his bodyparts these days. His fingers are usually closed tightly into fists. Only when he studies some object or surface he uses his fingers sporadically.

I find it interesting how unnoticed the change was. We used to watch Maxim’s fingers all the time. It was lots of fun. Than something happened and we switched our attention to something else. Probably those were his smiles, but I can’t be sure now. After some time passed we noticed that his fingers behave differently. We could as well missed the change all together.

Life goes on…

Still no summer

If you were planning to come to Cyprus for hot summer this year, then don’t do so just yet. Normally, by this time of year, we would have high temperatures, clear skies, and starting to warm up sea. This year is not normal though. We are still at around +20C. A bit less than that though. Skies are cloudy gray. It was raining several times today. One of these rains was pretty heavy with huge drops falling for about half an hour.

The latest weatehr forecasts suggests that snow grains are coming… I am getting scared.

Impersonating

Looking at Maxim after his feeding, I often had a feeling of de ja vu. He looks so much like someone else I know that it almost hurts. I just couldn’t figure out who it was. Closed eyes, puffed up cheeks, bend legs that resemble a yoga sitting position, total relaxation – all of these were the characteristics of someone else. I was practically banging my head on the wall already…

… and than Olga told me who I had in mind – Budda! Most of all those Budda sculptures have the same characteristics, which are so well copied by Maxim that it is really unbelievable. Now I wonder where he could have seen Budda?