February 24, 2006

Blog Cross-pollination

I've spent time over the last few nights focusing on the migration of my old MAME website to a new MAME blog appropriately called... well... mameblog.com.

I'm going to be doing a lot of photos of my arcades (inside and out) soon to update the documenation on those projects. In the process, I'm hoping to create content for both of these sites along the way: documenting the photographic techniques and experiences here, utilizing the fruits of the labor over there. :)

Fellow children of the 80's: click on over to my other blog for a bit of nostalgia... ;)

- Aaron

February 16, 2006

Gallery Automation Project (nearly) Done

I've been working off and on for a week or more on a major workflow automation project for the blog. Let me start off by quickly pointing out what this means for the readers in terms of new features:

• Every photo gallery can now be viewed in either of two forms: HTML gallery or flash-based slideshow
• Links to both are embedded in the articles now as dropdown lists ("View photos as...")
• The number of photos and pages (for the HTML gallery) are listed below the dropdown list
• An index of the galleries exists both in HTML and slideshow form
• The dropdown list below the random image in the top right of every page will take you to the indexes as well as the gallery categories
• The random image box in the top right by the banner now runs the slideshow or, if you don't have flash installed, my original random image script requiring no plug-ins

So what's the "workflow automation" all about? Well, generating galleries and linking them to a blog article is already a multi-step, albeit relatively easy, process. The addition of the slideshows, though, added a significant extra layer of work in the form of carefully structured XML configuration files. Since I want to be consistent and I don't want a ton of extra work to stymie the urge to post new galleries, I figured it was time to streamline the process as much as possible. Past experience has told me that once the posting process becomes too complex, spur of the moment and casual posting grinds to a halt. I want the process to be trivial enough that I won't have any excuses not to post more frequently. :)

The behind-the-scenes story of how this process works is, of course, disturbingly geeky. Fortunately, there are plenty of other fellow geeks out there that might be interested. The rest of this piece (and I predict it will be rather long) will cover the gist of what went into this project thus far. If the binding together of iView MediaPro, AppleScript, linux, OS X, ssh, scp, a big chunk of python code, MySQL databases and various bits of HTML and XML technology interest you... read on.

Here's a linked list to the various tools and technologies use:

• iView MediaPro 3.02
• Mac OS X
• Fedora Core Linux
• AppleScript
• Python programming language
• MySQL Database
• OpenSSH
• SlideShowPro

Detailed description below the fold...

Continue reading "Gallery Automation Project (nearly) Done"

February 1, 2006

Photo Slideshow: Inauguration of Gov. Tim Kaine

I don't usually mix the photos between halfpress and my other blog, Documenting Democracy, but I've been experimenting with a fantastic new flash-based slideshow tool and decided to use my most recent set of photos from DocDem for the initial test.

First off, those of you with Flash plug-ins installed will notice that the random image box in the top right of the screen (next to the banner) is far more complex now (those without will see no difference). It replaces the original Python application I wrote last year to place a random photo from my galleries on the page with each reload and provide a pop-up tooltip caption and photo specifications. I've replicated all of that functionality with this new tool while adding automated dissolves. You can manually control the show, too, by fiddling with the various buttons along the bottom. Clicking on any of the images will take you to the appropriate normal gallery while just hovering over it with the mouse will give you the caption.

I want to begin offering all of my photos with my traditional HTML galleries and, possibly, these new slideshows. To kick off the process (and to give me a vehicle for experimentation), I've put together my three galleries from the inauguration of Gov. Tim Kaine in a slideshow.

Open the Slideshow (three galleries)

I've created a legend for the buttons in the bottom of the slideshow window. It will play sequentially through all three galleries. You can skip to another gallery by hitting the gallery icon on the left and move around through the photos with the +/- buttons and the individual photo numbers. Previews of the other photos will appear if you hover over the numbers.

You can read all the background stories on these photos and reach the regular galleries by visiting Documenting Democracy, specificially the articles for Friday, the Ceremony, and the Richmond Ball.

I'll be doing a lot more with the slideshow application in the coming days and will post more geeky, behind-the-scenes technical information once I have time to write it. :) In the meantime, enjoy the photos!

- Aaron

October 3, 2005

No, I'm Not Dead & MT Update

No, I haven't passed away and halfpress.com isn't dead either. :) Life has been Busy with a capital 'B" lately. I've got a lot to write about, actually, and want to do the various topics justice in the coming days. Among the various things going on has been the completion of my second MAME arcade (details on the first one here), the installation of the DS3 circuit upgrade I ordered last November (long, sordid story), and a handful of other things I'd like to share, vent about or otherwise blognosticate upon for a while. I'm just trying to catch my breath right now.

Regarding the MAME machine: I'm in the process right now of getting another blog set up to house the information (I'll RSS-crossfeed it with this blog, too). My plan is to migrate all the content from my previous MAME arcade site to the new MovableType installation I just completed a few minutes ago. Once I get the new look for it in place and the content migrated, I'll link it to the world and begin the process of documenting the building of the new machine. It'll take a few days, so bear with me... I'll also be co-authoring the site with my good friend and other local MAME afficianado, John Coleman. I'm getting ready to do the Linux work for him on his partially-finished CPU and we'll document his project on here as well. We've got big plans. :)

As for the DS3... information on all the facets of that project are for another post that I'll get around to writing soon. The dust is still settling, but the impact of it has been tremendous in many (positive) ways. You should undoubtedly be seeing a vast improvement in how fast this site comes up compared to just over a week ago. More on that later...

For now, I'm off to finish tinkering with the guts of the new MAME blog and catch up on last night's episode of Rome which I missed since I was... well, tinkering with MAME again. :)

Oh, and the new MAME blog is running on MovableType 3.2, so I felt compelled to do the update on here as well. So far as I can tell, it didn't eat halfpress. If you hit any pages, though, that seem borked, don't hesitate to let me know so I can fix them. I still have some new features to explore and possibly implement in the coming days.

August 4, 2005

So what is halfpress?

Half-Press, halfpress, 1/2press?

Eh... doesn't much matter how you write it, I guess. I tend to find halfpress to be the easiest one to type out of the bunch. (halfpress.com, halfpress.net, half-press.com and half-press.net will all get you here, by the way.)

What is it, though? It's my personal, relatively photo-centric blog.

Why should you care? No reason, really... unless you're a friend, a family member or just happen to be interested in any of the things I might write about, rant about, photograph or otherwise toss out for the world to see. It's all about thinking out loud, sharing information and, from time to time, accidentally creating something that might prove useful (or serve as a warning) to others. ;)

Continue reading "So what is halfpress?"