Archive for the ‘Images’ Category

ReedGal – PHP Gallery Released…

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 by Ryan Reed

I decided that after a lot of work in my free time, I'd finally release my gallery script. I recently allowed George Simons a chance to test it out. George told me he was really impressed and it did make me want to work a little harder at getting the script out there.

The gallery still has some ways to go, adding some sort of authentication for the "admin" page, etc, but I'm pretty happy with how it is currently working right now.

Check out the ReedGal page or go directly to the SourceForge page.

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Operation Boxhead

Posted on December 21st, 2009 by Ryan Reed

So, I recently took a trip to Tennessee to visit the family, but that's really a story for another post. This story is about what happened when I returned to that non-island of a state, Rhode Island.

Before I left for TN, I decided that the best place for my car was the parking lot at work. It would be pretty safe from vandals as the place has security almost 24/7. But I did recognize that it could snow and I was not there to move the car for the plows. I decided that I would leave the key in my locker at work and ask a friend, Jason Lomba, to move the car if needed. This may have been a mistake.

When I got back from TN, Brian Roy had offered to pick me up. Pretty cool as otherwise I would have just grabbed a taxi. When we got to the parking lot, I noticed my car was in a different spot and the plows had packed me in pretty good. I chalked up the new parking space to having to move the car for the plowing, nothing weird.

I end up grabbing a shovel from work and starting to shovel out the front of my car. Brian suggested starting the car up just to get it warm. Not a bad idea, I thought. I hop over to the driver's side and notice 4 of my friends, Joe Webster, Jason Lomba, Chris Lomba, and Jim Stergiou, hiding behind the car. I immediately knew something was up. I looked in the car and saw that my car had been completely filled with packing peanuts.

Now when I say "filled with packing peanuts," maybe you're thinking "must have filled up the seats and floor." Not sir/madam, that is not really what I meant. The peanuts filled up the entire car and were put in place through the sunroof of the vehicle.

A couple things to note:

  1. Joe spent $120+ on biodegradable packing peanuts.
  2. My boss, boss's boss, and boss's boss's boss were all aware of the prank. They were concerned I'd be upset. I definitely was not.
  3. The name Operation Blockhead came from George Simon's son. I went to a BBQ at George's and his son asked him "why does he have such a block head," referring to me. Yup...
  4. The peanuts start to biodegrade as soon as water is introduced. This causes them to get really slick and stick to the bottom of shoes. They were really annoying to get off.
  5. I had to drive around for a while, looking for a gas station with the large nose vacuum hoses and not the narrow, easy to clog noses.

I must say, it was an interesting experience. Check out the pictures after the break. (Higher quality pictures will be uploaded later this week)

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The Gallery (v2)

Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Ryan Reed

I got around to working more on the gallery that I've been putting together. Currently, it's hosted on my home server, mostly for ease of modifications but also because the thumbnail creation requires php to not timeout in the default amount of time (I believe 30 seconds).

So, what's so great about the script? Well, I'm actually proud of making it myself. The script has a few key features:

  • Just upload a new directory to a defined image_gallery directory and it'll automatically be displayed on the gallery page
  • The icon for each album is automatic. It uses the icon.png file that is placed in the directory with the new images
  • The "rebuild script" will create the thumbnails for each album
  • The "rebuild script" will also extract the exif data from the images (currently, only date, title, description, camera type (not displayed), and apeture (not displayed)
  • If no exif data, the filename is used as the title of the image

Unfortunately, there are some minor "limitations" to how I'm doing things but I don't think they're a problem

  • Limited to jpg files. This is more by design and wouldn't be too tough to fix
  • Using the GD library to create the thumbnails takes a bit of time. It took about a minute to complete the thumbnail/exif-file creation. Unfortunately, php by default will stop a script from running after 30 seconds. An easy fix if you have access to the php configuration file but not all hosts will allow modification of it
  • The album icon is not created automatically. I'm considering a way to do this but it would probably be the toughest part of the script
  • The sorting of the images and albums is done by filename. I could probably find a different way to sort but I like the current method. I leave my images with their default names (DSC_0001.jpg, DSC_0002.jpg, etc) and the album folder names always start with the date (20091021 - Something).

Who knows if I'll put the script online for others to use? It was mostly just created from boredom. I'll have to think about it.

Check Out The Gallery

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The new gallery

Posted on July 31st, 2009 by Ryan Reed

Recently, I've been working on changing up my gallery. Currently, the gallery uses Flickr as the host which is definitely nice for reliability for hosting but it does pose the problem of not being very dynamic. What do I mean by that? Well, for every new Flickr album, I have to create a new page. I'm sure I could work out a way to get around that but I'd rather host all the images myself.

So, what advantages does my script propose over my previous method?

  • Dynamically updates - Everytime a new folder of images is uploaded, a new album page is created for the album. No coding required by me
  • The script automatically creates thumbnails for the images as needed using sizes specified by the user
  • Exif data is pulled from the original image during the thumbnail creation process. This allows me to display time taken, ISO, camera, image description as image title, etc.
  • The display of the pages are easily customizable with css.
  • The gallery requires only 2 files, the main page (for displaying the albums and pictures) and the thumbnail builder

I will admit that this has taken me about a month to get the scripts to the point they are now but it's honestly because I've been learning as I go. Image manipulation is something new, and thankfully, I had a buddy of mine help me out along the way. Thanks Joe.

The new gallery has not been uploaded yet as there's still a few things I want to make sure are completely polished. I may release it for download for anyone to use but I haven't quite decided yet.

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New photos with the Nikon D5000

Posted on May 2nd, 2009 by Ryan Reed

I ended up picking a nice new Nikon D5000 and decided to get some pictures. To be honest, I'm a beginner into the DSLR world so these photos aren't the best and my car could certainly use a good wash.

VW GLI

VW GLI VW GLI

As you can see, the car was extremely dirty and the pictures are so so. I'm going to work on learning all the ins and outs of my camera. Those were just using the auto program feature. After messing around for a while longer, I think I prefer using the manual or aperture modes. We'll see how things go. Expect some nice photos at the end of this month, beginning of next month as there is a road trip with 2 of my buddies, Brian Roy and Randy McCaig, to Houston, TX from Providence, RI. Should be a fun time.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, or anything of that nature.

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VW GLI Progress Update

Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Ryan Reed

Ah, sorry for the lack of updates. I'm a tad slow, in that regard. Anyway, I've been working on a few things. My first little project is my car. Since I got my car, I've been working on getting my car to look exactly like I'd like. Mostly thinking about different things I wanted to do to my car. Then I saw the following car:

Red GLI

(I honestly can't remember who's car it is so if the owner sees this, let me know so I can give you credit)

It's an excellent looking car. It's classy and not too flashy. It's lowered to an excellent height, although I'm not sure if the car would survive in New England. My buddy, Brian Roy, put his Photoshop skills to work and whipped it up to match my car's color.

Platinum Gray GLI with Euro Grille

I have already ordered the grille pieces to replace my current honeycomb grille. While I enjoy the honeycomb grille (it is extremely aggressive looking), I think the Euro style grill from the pictures above is a tad more classy. The ride height will be coming later in the future. I haven't decided if I'll be getting a new set of wheels as I like the huff blades.

Note: I did recently see that PGJetterFTW from VW Vortex has a similar setup. It looks great.

I do think, after the grille, the Euro taillights will be my next purchase. I think they look really good. I'm disappointed that they aren't included in the states stock but I guess it happens. It'll take a little work and a VagCom unit but should be pretty nice looking. I'll definitely post updates as soon as the grille pieces come in.

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Long drought…

Posted on March 16th, 2009 by Ryan Reed

Sorry it's been so long since my last update. I've been busy with a few things. First, I've been redesigning my entire site. Again... I have a problem of wanting to code a little when I'm bored. Unfortunately, that usually means that my site takes most of the brunt. Maybe it works out better that way anyway. It keeps the site interesting. I'm not a huge fan of my current design anyway. Check out the work in progress.

Really, the last thing I've been busy with is my new car. I picked up a 2009 VW GLI. My last vehicle was a 2001 Nissan Xterra. I love the car but it was really bad on gas, not very attractive, and was starting to get a large decent amount of mileage on it (roughly 120k). The new car is sleek, fast, and has decent modding possibilities for when I get bored. Check out some pictures below.

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