Is not a secret at this stage, but I still don’t know what my major project is going to be about. I am a bit worried about that, because is not something I’ve been putting off, I have actually been trying to come up with something for the past two weeks. I decided to write about this to see if from the chaos in my head comes some order which could help me find something interesting I can work on with.

-The Premises-

1) I am aware I don’t have to do something groundbreaking. But it definitely have to be something that interest me, that way I am sure I’ll keep working on it as much as I can.

2) I am aware originality is actually quite difficult, but you can definitely get inspiration from other works, or simply try to re-do something with you own spin on it.

3) In my search from inspiration I’ve come across something I was not considering before. I think I want to do an installation and not a website or application. This is not written in stone, but is something I am definitely exploring and I think it would be something very interesting for me to do. I also like the fact that it ends up being something more tangible than a website.

4) One of the things I’ve been researching is using computers and photographic cameras. This, I am very interested in.

5) I’d like for the user to be able to interact in a more natural way with whatever piece I do. Maybe voice, maybe gestures… basically anything out of mouse/keyboard or a touchscreen would be very interest to explore. Still, I can’t decide on this

-The Idea?-

I think I better break this post into two or threee. . . more to come in a bit.

Ok.

Locofoto.net , authorship-project version is done.

Is decent (me thinks). It has a lot of php going on, with a crazy amount of loops and stuff. BUT it does have room for improvement. I should have put a list of users where people can simply click and see their pictures (if the owner allows them). Maybe a little friends network, which makes perfect sense for a site like this.

I would like to improve the site. Now without the pressure I might be able to keep adding bits here and there to make it a bit more friendly. The loading of saving pictures for further editing is not happening at the moment. I need to work on the flash bit for that, and if I do that I should use some sort of switch for the php to recognize if the picture has been edited before or not and act accordingly. For now I am going to rest a bit and try to do the essay on time

Anyways, I am happy with it. Let’s see what the mark says afterwards.

blah blah blah blah.

I thought my project would be in better shape by this stage… hey, don’t get me wrong , I think is looking nice.

the problem is , as usual, the code syntax.. action script for some reason is not doing what I want it to do… which basically sucks… big time.

Anyways… I’m going to get it working I’m sure… and when I do that everything is downhill from there, and the site will be usable.

While doing the great amount of testing i’ve been doing on my laptop-server and on the uni server, I found out yet more areas that need to be improved… but then, the whole site is a big thing waiting to be improved… I reckon i’ve learned a lot about how php handle things and its possibilities, and same with flash. I’ve always known flash is powerful, but is still so annoying to work with it that sometimes it just kills me.

I’ve already asked for some help with the flash bit, and I am going to try to make the whole site a bit more user friendly by adding a couple of graphics and simplifying the process, cos right now you have to click “continue” like a zillion times. to see anything… but again, that was part of the developing stage where I am still.

Hopefully the site will be usable by tomorrow in the afternoon. The problem is that the mySQL uni server is a total disaster and when everybody is working it just dies, and as most of everybody’s pages the first thing they load is the connection to it, means that pages don’t work cos they can’t connect to the mySQL server. Which is already a HUGE problem while we try to test our sites in the impserver.

Our demonstrators never told us, but I am wondering if we should have used the…

msql_close();

…command at the end of our pages, since that may close the connections and open a new one on the next page, instead of leaving many connections open… but I am no expert and I have no idea if what I am saying makes any sense. joe? matt?

anyhow… wish me luck.. I really think my site have some sort of potential but for the hand in I wanted to prove that I can use and make something useful out of php and mySQL… while providing a website that people can, somehow, USE for themselves…. considering i’ve never used either before this project and think i’ve done aright… but at this stage I already realize how I could have done things a bit different to make it even better… but that’s part of the learning , isn’t?

-j

Ok.

My project have moved on at an amazingly steady pace… which is good I think.

small update: the uploaded files now resize *almost* properly, the script I am using maintains aspect ratio which is good, the problem is with images that are a bit wider than the usual 4:3 ratio…

Also, the website now have a more self explanatory text in english, which is going to be useful, since I pretend to go on a first public-beta release soon… Besides that now there are 5 usable graphics and in general is very nice. I would like to post the address, but so far the website is residing on my computer and although I have done some testing on my server with people checking the site from the internet, I rather wait until I move it to university server, hopefully I will do this week.

My dilemma now is about the “sharing” bit. There are two solutions. The first one (and the most unlikely to implement) is using flash to take an snapshot, then generate an jpeg.. the problem is this technique is not very practical,consumes a LOT of cpu and the process is slow in general… and this has a shortcoming that is that the user wont be able to “edit later” in case they want to save their progress and continue later…. the other option and more related to the technical skills required for this project is to use a “live” system… how live? well, all the positions of each used object are written in a table that holds them for further use. If you are the original editor, you will be able to move them around on a later stage, if you are not you will be able to see everything, but no editing… that is a first stage, I would like in the future to let other people edit the pictures if the original editor allows them too, or maybe allow SOME people, like his friends or something. Right now im working on that system and I already got some ActionScript to get the information, now I need to find the way to send it to PHP on the server, so it can be written on a given table.

Wish me luck, I think is not impossible and I am slowly getting grips with ActionScript.

 -j

Ok, on my site people will be able to upload pictures. (duh!) So far the filter is set to take jpeg’s but no gif’s or anything else. Should I add the .png file type?

I think .png is not as widely used for anything and much less for pictures. The thing is that *in general* I want to restrict the uploaded images to actual pictures of something preferably people, not photoshop artwork or stuff like that. Since the main idea is people sharing their pictures “with a twist” (ha! it starts to sound a bit boring now) with their friends.

If you have a suggestion on the topic, or you are a avid user of png’s for family pictures and parties, please leave me a comment.

ta.

-j

As you can see now, my project have a proper name. It wasn’t easy, but I finally found it.

locofoto.net is not related to trains… for those of you who don’t know (im sure plenty of you DO know) loco means crazy in spanish… so you know where this is coming from. I have a prototype of a little flash title which will show the purpose of the site more clearly, but is not done yet and is not high on the priority list.

So far things have moved along on the project. I have a working login/registration page, which interacts properly with the database, then I also have a little page where each user can see the pictures they uploaded. Today I started to work on the nitty gritty of this project which is the flash interaction with the data of the database. I already had a little (horrible) interface on the flash side and now I am triying to get it to work with the data from the database. The problem is, as usual, FLASH itself. It doesn’t matter what they tell you, of what you think. Flash is extremely unfriendly to work. I am sure the only reason flash keeps looking the same as the first few versions is because that’s how they learn to use it. I’ve used many different pieces of software and I have to say Flash is the most unfriendly one. Nothing is clear in flash, everything is a mistery and if you try to find a simple answer on the web, what you get is extremely complex examples that don’t work. Hopefully Adobe will do something about it, as autodesk did with autocad. at first it was all text based and you needed to code to use and design in autocad, today you have a great amount of graphic tools that the new users can quickly learn, or you can still use it the old school way and both ways work perfect. I guess I am paying the price of the problems we had with flash tutorials last year. . . anyways, i’m doing my best and is working so far.

The PHP thing.. the PHP issue. . . I don’t find PHP that intimidating and actually I think is quite straightforward once you have an idea of what’s going on. And I think the problem has been that the approach in the first couple of weeks wasn’t the correct one. We were never told why would we need php, we were just told what it can do in very basic terms, and I think some of us still don’t know exactly what is php. But in general terms , im getting the grasp of it. I have to say that getting the grasp on how dreamweaver can make the communication with the DB and the generation of php code for me has helped me a lot. Meaning that I don’t spend hours coding but I just tell dreamweaver which data I want from the DB, or what data I want to write on the DB, what to do with it and keep moving. Dragging the little lightning symbols is quite an useful thing to avoid typing variables and stuff. Slight modifications of the code are sometimes neccesary but nothing too complicated.

I really want this to work out. I still have to figure out a few things, but I have a feeling that I am getting stuck in things I shouldn’t get stuck at. Which sucks of course.

Hopefully functionality will be ready for the hand-in date. Hopefully it won’t matter if it doesn’t look as pretty if it actually works.

-j

Ok.

Before the weekend I was under the serious impression (after hearing a couple of arguments floating around, sorry no links to what I heard) that my idea of using flash and relate it to a database and let people do a couple of small things with their images to share with their friends was suddenly a very bad idea.

A very bad idea when it came to achievability. (is that a word?) Apparently just the thought of using flash and php/mySql is enough to cause massive headaches. The thing is, I am a little stubborn, not only that, but I think my idea have some sort of potential. Of course to develop it fully in two/three weeks is a great challenge. Still, my target is to get some sort of functionality. People able to login, upload pictures and do some post, online editing on them, then use that snapshot and share that with friends and family and have fun while doing it.

At first I needed to set up a test enviroment on my comp.. I once installed Apache web server, ages ago for something I dont remember now. Today I installed that, then the php module (which didn’t work straight away) and then a mySQL server. I followed the the strongest suggestion I saw and went with phpMyAdmin for administration. That made me wonder why they don’t use that in the uni, since that MySQL Administrator that we use on the macs seems to be filled with bugs… of course.. it looks “prettier” than phpMyAdmin.. but if it doesn’t work and people are having problems… what’s the point?

After I got everything worked I decided to try a couple of tutorials I found on the web about integrating flash and php/MySQL. That provided key understanding on how possible my idea of managing images and data from databases was (or not) possible. And I am glad to say that results looks promising… it also look like shit loads of work, but if the potential is there, why not?

So yes. Today Monday Oct 30th I manage to test flash loading info (including images) from an mySQL database. I think that is a very important step.

My next mission is to “develop” a little flash app to play with the images in the way I want to. It shouldn’t be that hard.. but again, this is Flash we are talking about, and we know it could be a bit temperamental . . .

Anyways. If I achieve what I want in Flash, I’ll let u know.
Comments / Suggestions are always welcomed.

-j

Ok. I still have some reading to do about the theories. . .  but let’s talk about the assigment.

 I’ve been thinking really hard about what to do for my project. And one of the things I’ve decided at some point was to try to focus the interactivity on pictures. Meaning? that I do not want to deal with uploading videos, or with having just an online forum with some text.

The brief calls for a “online community based website where people can interact and share media artefacts and information.” … yeah.. right easy ….. not so much!

Basically we can do whatever we want with that guideline. Of course one of the things that most of us (students) try to do with every project is to make it somehow original.. even if is not *too* original (i think) we really try to add something to it to make it different. And at least for me that is very important, and even more important than the technical skills themselves.

 Anyways after some research and my decision to do something with pictures, I would like to do a photo-sharing site (yeah! that’s  o r i g i n a l  , isn’t?) with a small twist… Of course; I have to check if such thing exists, but if it doesnt and I manage to do it even remotely properly please don’t steal my idea, unless not before I make some profit out of it (you know joe, for the well being of $ociety and all that stuff Jefferson suggested …..  :-)   Well, joking aside, the idea is for people to be able to share their pictures as they do in many sites already, but at the same time give some very basic, easy-to-use tools to put text ballons, symbols, maybe dribbles on top of the pictures and share them like that.  I think is a good idea, but of course there is the issue of achievability (is that a word?). I think it would be a step further in sharing pictures with just a caption at the bottom and giving the user an online tool to make their pictures funnier is better than pretending them to open Paint in windows and do it there.

 Of course the first thing that comes to my mind in how to achieve this task it to do it in Flash, and my small research showed that integration between php/mySql and flash is possible as it is with HTML.  The workshops have come handy. Sometimes is hard to look at the big picture during a php workshop but I think the tools are there. Now I have to dig deeper into flash to see how can I make this happen and I already have a couple of ideas going thru my head. And is probably going to implicate a decent amount of database use.  I already know is possible to load jpg’s from “outside” in flash dynamically, now I need to figure out how to give the user the power to move some symbols, and then somehow take a “snap-shot” for it to become the shared artifact.

There are also other considerations as image sizes and so on that need to be sorted out. But I think is possible. Of course there are a couple of ideas to give this a sense of community.. maybe lets user fiddle with friends pictures, but first I need to get the functionality working.

Comments are more than welcome, and discussion is encouraged.

See ya around.

 -j