Two Cents and a Thousand Words

As always, if you find any bugs, let me know.

Also e-mail me if you can think of any new module or skin suggestions.

Yup, it’s about that time again, isn’t it?

I’ve redone (ie, re-coded) my blog again. Nothing major cosmetic this time, other than a new skin to match the other sections of my site. The real benefit comes in the simplicity of coding and the function-based aspects of it. It’s much easier to understand the code now, and it’s much easier to update when I want to add more functionality. Why is this important? Well, this time I’m actually going to release the source code – sometime. But I will. It’s all set except for some usability changes I have to drum up.

The new features in this version of the blog (4.0, I think) include…

• categories and modules for each skin, making each more customizable
• easier skin creation
• more flexibility for other functions (pinging weblogs.com, updating the blog section of justinrussell.com, etc.)
• easier module creation
• and more great things down the road

So enjoy, and we’ll see how it goes!

See the awesome power of GD at work!

I’ve relocated my photo gallery from the Pine Tree Photos site to justinrussell.com. Why? Well, I started to think that since I was doing all of the picture taking for PTP, it made sense that the photos should be on my personal site instead of on a separate one.

Site migrations are pretty ho-hum… except this one. As you may have noticed, PTP hasn’t been updated since July, and the same picture has been hanging out in the “pic” module of the blog since sometime in April or May. The reason for this is pretty simple; just look at what I had to go through to update the gallery:

1. Open the photo to upload in Photoshop Elements.
2. Resize to 480×360.
3. Put a watermark on the picture.
4. Save a compressed JPEG.
5. Take the watermark off.
6. Resize to 160×120.
7. Save a compressed JPEG.
8. Upload images to site.
9. Download database files.
10. Update photo database file.
11. Update album database file.
12. Upload database files.

…for each picture.

Admittedly, there’s only so much you can improve. That said, here’s the process now:

1. Go to administrative PHP page in gallery.
2. Select photo from hard drive.
3. Fill in information about file.
4. Push “Submit”.

In other words, GD/PHP resizes the pictures for me, places a watermark on the larger one, and inserts them into the gallery correctly without any work by me. Have I said lately how much I love programming PHP?

There are a few more changes I have to do, but it’s basically done. Go ahead and browse the few pictures I’ve already put up, including more from downtown Bangor a couple nights ago.

Anyway… have fun! justinrussell.com/gallery

The GD Library in PHP is awesome. It allows a developer to manipulate images through PHP scripts… well, anyway, you’ll probably see it in action tomorrow. I’m so happy and excited right now; I actually learned how to do something new and useful.

Main Street in Bangor hasn’t had too much luck lately in terms of fire. About a week and a half ago, a welding accident caused a complete loss of inventory at the Shaw’s supermarket on south Main Street. Thursday’s fire at the Masonic Building next to the Maine Discovery Museum was just another case of how fire can strike anywhere twice.

If you don’t know Bangor, you have to understand something. There are basically five Interstate 95 exits in the city: 45 through 49. Take a right at any exit from 46 to 49 coming from the south and you’ll end up within a mile of where all the other exits go: smack dab in the middle of downtown Bangor, on either Main Street or State Street. Bangor has many popular sections, but Main Street acts as the hub – the true “downtown”.

I went down to Main Street at dusk. It’s a really eerie scene; as I parked my car, fire trucks roared by to head to another alarm. Police blocked off all of Main Street from Union to State, so I walked behind Pickering Square up to State and then around and up Columbia Street. Even the BAT bus system had to move operations from Pickering Square to right outside the Bangor Savings Bank on Main Street. After a while, I realized that people were allowed on Main Street. I went down and took a few pictures.

The building smoldered for hours after the fire on Thursday night, and the firefighters hosed the building down; the sub-zero temperatures, however, caused the building to develop a thick cover of ice that still remains. Kevin Bennett took an amazing picture for the BDN article that ran in today’s paper.

I’ve been playing around with GarageBand since about 4:30 PM yesterday (yes, I slept). It really is easy-to-use, even for non-musicians (me). I’ve made a few compositions with the 1000+ provided loops. I’ll probably be getting a keyboard later on, but for now this is more than enough. I’ve “remixed” “Clocks” by Coldplay a bit, and I’ve been doing a few random pieces. Here’s one of the first ones I’ve finished:

Today Today (788 KB MP3)

In addition, there are some great new features in iPhoto (you can finally move pictures between rolls of film… yay!). I love it overall, and it’s definitely worth the $25 academic price tag.

To me, GarageBand is like a low-cost Photoshop for music. The program keeps “layers” of different instruments, and you can edit any of them with a lot of flexibility. You can also record your own music if you’re a piano, guitar, or other kind of wiz… and you can record your voice, too. This opens up a world of possibilites in my opinion. Think about it; someone records an original piano or guitar piece. They slap a Creative Commons license on it and upload it to their site. Other people can then go into GarageBand, edit the song, and add their own piece or put some loop remixes in. Even better, someone could record lyrics over the music if their voice happens to be better than that of the composer (for example, me). It’s musical groupware. I really hope that people can do something with it.

Two layers of clothing on every part of my body is enough to keep me warm on a -13°F walk to class with a -40°F wind chill. Unfortunately, it’s hard to cover your eyes.

Over the next couple of months (probably), I’ll be doing some work on some of my sites. It’s come to the point that I’m seeing problems with the current sites, and I want to redo some of them. Since my schedule is a bit dynamic, I’ll probably be doing bits and pieces here and there; you might see some construction along the way. Here’s a general rundown, since the updates involve some major changes in organization and such.

justinrussell.com

I’ve had the main justinrussell.com layout since May. It’s about time for some sort of change… but nothing too major.

justinrussell.com will act as the hub for everything I do outside of coding. This includes my photography (bye bye, Pine Tree Photography), writing, and random projects inside and outside of school.

The blog will still be a big part. I’m going to go through the code and hopefully make it a bit easier to create new skins (I really want the site to be dynamic). I’m also thinking of making a unique change that would really improve the appeal of skins.

mainesites.net

What about the coding, you say?

M@ineSites is still a big part of what I do. Right now the code I produce is half here and half through M@ineSites projects. Code will be all at M@ineSites at a couple of new projects I’m starting that will hopefully have some implications for a lot of Web users later on. Out of everything, I’m excited about those the most.

Mystery Projects

I’ve been talking about a bunch of projects over the last few months. In reality one’s risen to the top and will hopefully take shape over the next couple of months. I already know some people won’t get it. I also know that it’s possible it could change the world… or at least how people see the world.

This is what I love to do more than anything else, and I’m getting better at it. I’m excited about what’s to come.

This semester I’m taking five courses:

NMD 213 – Information Ethics
HTY 210 – History of Maine
NMD 490 – The Pool 2: Off the Deep End
PSY 324 – Psychology of Adolescence
COS 420 – Introduction to Software Engineering

My first impression is that I think I really like the schedule of classes (Wed/Fri mornings, Mon/Tues/Thurs morning/early afternoon), but I’ll keep busy with my work at ASAP and with meetings and stuff. Seems like there will be a lot of reading this semester and classes based mostly on exams. It’ll definitely be a change from last semester. In addition it will tie almost all of my requirements together, leaving me with free choice (and a small number of required credits) for both semesters next year.

I’ve made some goals for myself this year, and I think keeping up with them will really help me enjoy this semester more than the last one. Fall 2003 was tough, but I got through it. I’m going to try my hardest to find interesting stuff in each of my classes in order to stay engaged. Some classes will be harder to do this than others, but I think there’s enough room to really stay involved with what’s going on in each of them over the next few months.

I’ll come right out and say it; I hope this semester isn’t like last semester in CS. Software engineering should be a little more interesting, I think, and it seems like we’ll be going through the entire design process (it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to the new media design process). We (unfortunately) have a couple of group projects to do, but I’ll get to learn a new language on the way and hopefully have some fun. Hopefully the design material will be valuable with what I want to do later in life. And besides, it’s the last CS class I need for my minor.