Motion Test

Continuing this path tracking. Here's another prototype (did I say I'd finished?): Prototype #3.

This one has a rolling gallery set triggered by the user. In the final gallery there will be more pictures than are visible at once on the screen. The usual graphics and beautification will exist (background, framing etc).

I also plan to frame and swing the thumbs as they move as if attached to hanging wires. The zoomed in picture will also be a high resolution image rather than the scaled up thumb used in the prototype.

My next decision is whether to zoom a central picture, or do something based on user naviagation (such as mouse hover or picture clicking).

Anyways, the point, yes there's a point, the point is that the gallery is described as a path. Meaning new and whacky layouts are possible just by defining a new path. It might be a sane line/list of pics, or another shape (such as the rectangle in the prototype).

You'll also note that the gallery is fully scalable. Change the size of your browser, click 'next' and all the pictures will figure out where they now need to be.

Yes - it was fun to do.

Linear Path Prototype #2

Okay - here's test #2.

This time we removed the gravitational component and used a fixed acceleration instead. As we pass a destination point we move on to a new destination. There are 5 points describing this path; pretty small considering the loop it does across the screen.

Of course to achieve this we had to make the acceleration a directional vector applied to the velocity, but it's still all simple maths.

You can see the effect here, Linear Path Prototype #2.

Personally, this seems more sensible and less manic. The hard-stop you see when the picture changes direction is due to a small acceleration. The effect on the opposite axis is too slow to see initially, so it appears like a hard stop when in reality its a deceleration (had to think about that for a while).

To show you what I mean, there's a central point to pass through. This shows physics is still working (phew).

Oh - and panic not, I'm pretty much done with the nasty mathematics stuff now. The more sane world of photography will return ... as will a new gallery.

Path Following Without A Path

Flash is evil. Flash is horrible. Flash basically states that HTML is good for nothing and you should pay for a propriety piece of junk that ruins everything that HTML stands for.

So in my quest for a decent photo gallery I wondered if I could create something where pictures followed a path.

Enter Gravity Prototype #1. Not the most catchy of titles I grant you, but it does show there's a series of these.

The principle here is to have a natural / organic motion along a know path, but by using the smallest amount of anchor points possible.

So, attempt #1. Four stars / gravity wells are placed on the screen. A set of pictures are then released in orbit around those gravity wells. The result? Well look and see.

Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. I know. Roll on prototype #2 I hear you chant.

Ouch - beware of style.left vs style.right

Okay - yeah yeah - that Keep the Web Live! icon is zooming around the screen.

Hover To Rotate Logo

Want to do your head in dealing with browser compatibility? Probably not. I did.

I was changing the position of a right-aligned graphic using style.left. Big mistake. I should have been using style.right but I naively thought that browsers would retain a relationship between style.left and style.right using style.width. Errr, no.

The effect was fantastic and browser dependent. Either no movement at all or movement until style.left < the default for style.right at which point internally style.left = style.right.

It's enough to send you to the funny farm. To cap this off, it all worked on Blogger's Template Preview, just not on a real page.

Burble burble.

Too Much Fun

I have to say, javascript is just too much fun.

You may have noticed that the thumbs at the top of the page have gained a roulette feel. Sorry, I just couldn't resist. I decided that I should start playing around with dynamic content; i.e. changing web-pages on the fly.

This turned out to be remarkably easy. Therefore a small tweak to my random thumb code and suddenly the pictures are spinning like a fruit-machine.

The speed of updates is 50% less than the previous update. Meaning that things change quickly, but also slow quickly to a reasonable cycle rate.

There is method in the madness. I'm also working on some ASP photo code for the new gallery. My ideas are beginning to take shape on this, which is pleasing. ASP and javascript turned out to be substantially easier than I anticipated (years of driver writing taints you I guess).

I'm working on a dynamic content photo gallery with some pipelining optimizations for the content. In particular EXIF extraction for creation of the photo commentary and a whole new concept of photo rating, never yet seen on the planet (well by me at any rate).

Watch this space.

Thanks!

Hmmm - you seem to have heard me. The attacks have stopped.

Whoever you are, at least you're learning.

I know who you are

Why is the internet so shameless? You share information with people and this is taken as an invitation to break into you computer. Mystifying.

Either a new flavor of zombie has broken out or you people just can't appreciate the difference between enjoyment and exploitation.

I open up my computers for guests, not for numb-nut script kiddies with half a brain to take it upon themselves that it's open shooting season. You mess around here, you'll loose. Period.

Here's the latest name and shame list of idiots and zombies that have tried to break in. I should note, none of them has even bothered to actually access the website. Just break in:

83.151.205.101 (local zombie)
83.151.205.128 (local zombie)
83.110.142.39 ( someone on interroute.net's London node)
213.78.242.13 (UAE / Saudi Arabia area)
82.4.130.151 (zombie - Cambridge node of NTL)

I find it quite mystifying that this traffic only started up on Friday. For the past two months nobody has paid this computer route any attention. It's a honey trap boys, lap it up. Lap it up.

(do you see the irony - they won't even look on this entry point or posts)

Will I Ever Stop Tweaking?

Probably not.

Did some CSS template changes:

• Shifting the slightly inaccurate picture-click-hint to the top of the sidebar
• Reduced and table-ised the gallery icons
• Added a rated & recommended section
• Messed about with seperator bars

Probably not done, but it'll do for now. I'll grow the rated and recommended when I can remember all the cool places I haunt.

RSS Continued

Are you ready for more yet? I need to clarify one thing:

You can only subscript to an RSS feed if the web page has an RSS feed.

Okay, that's a bit zen. What's I'm trying to day is that, just because you have a web page doesn't mean you're supporting RSS. You have to setup an RSS feed for your web page yourself. With blogger.com this is very easy, all blog's on blogger.com support a competing standard called ATOM*. If you pump your ATOM feed through feedburn.com you're done.

For everyone else, some assembly is required. I'll leave you to figure out what as it varies depending on what you're doing and how you're hosted.

What's the best Aggrigator Program?

Now there's a question, and not easily answered. It really depends on what you like. Do you like Linux, OS X or Windows? There's not a substantial difference between them, they're all shades of grey in the end. This is no different as a topic.

What I do however believe is that I've not found the perfect program yet.

Which means everything is a compromise. What I want from an Aggrigator is:

• Unobtrusive
  Doesn't dominate the computer with a full bloated program. It must be silent most of the time, hide away in the shadows (like the butler) and discretely alert me to things of interest.
  
• Alert me to new things
  I don't want email type notifications, or having to start the program to check what's new. I want something that appears on the task bar. Maybe a little Messenger type pop-up when something changes.
  
• Efficient headline access
  It must allow me to efficiently look at what's new. I only care about the headlines, I can navigate to what I want based on that information.
  
• Easy to mark all as read
  Sometimes alerts come in lumps. I'd like to scan all the new ones, and then mark all as read so that I can easily spot when new ones arrive.
  
• Sensible navigation
  What's so great about plug-in browsers? You're only milking someone else's stuff. If the program is smaller and unobtrusive, I more than happy for it to kick off Internet Explorer when I find a headline I want to click through.

Well, this all sounds like sensible stuff. Why can't I find something like that? I have no idea. All I can tell you is what I currently use and why I use it.

I use NewsDesk from Wildgrape. I use it fundamentally because it's free and has nice taskbar behavior. When NewsDesk is minimized it only shows up as a taskbar icon. Bliss. When you right-click on that taskbar icon you get a menu of new headlines. Click on a headline and it starts Internet Explorer. That headline automatically becomes read and disappears from the menu.

I can even mark sections of headlines as read when they don't interest me. This makes surfing very efficient. Every now and then I just right-click on the taskbar and see if anything grabs my interested.

It also has a full RSS viewing program built in, but I've never found one that makes sense to me, so I avoid it. Too much information can be a bad thing!

--- Justin

*Why does ATOM exist? Why don't we use ATOM? ATOM is new (relatively) and a lot of RSS Aggrigator programs don't support it. RSS being much older is just used more. ATOM might be better, I don't care, you can use ATOM from my site too. RSS support however is essential even if blogger.com doesn't promote it.

Snow Update

Ahh sunrise. First picture of the day. Taken at work (yes I go to work in the dark, sad isn't it?).

Leaping Cats!

Okay - this is quite old now. Well in Cat years at any rate. It's a little video I did when the kittens (Sumi & Menoh) were in their jumping phase.



(if the above video doesn't appear it will probably be because you don't have the latest Quicktime installed - use the much larger direct link below or click here to download Quicktime from Apple)

Click here for the direct link

Stop Press: It's snowing!!!

6.45am it started raining. 7.15pm rain turned to snow. Yay! Go snow.



It's falling even now. Ha! We beat Montréal, it's November for pete's sake, and English weather is normally akin to a washing machine cycle.



Currently 0C and settling, night temperature predicted to be -2C.

Wahoo! In ya face MAC.

What the heck is RSS?

I hear this question a lot, and to some extent I sympathize with people when they intently listen ... pause ... and then go:

"but why would I want to do that?"

So considering I'm a big fan of RSS I thought I'd have a stab at it and see if I can add any clarity.

RSS lies somewhere between email, newsgroups, surfing and your own personal newspaper. It keeps you up to date with all the places and things you're interested in.

You use a special RSS program (called an aggrigator) to view RSS feeds. They appear like new email with you being alerted to changes, but based on what you subscribed to; which is similar to a newsgroup.

RSS itself is extremely simple, and basically just a headline alert. The real information, the real web page with the new information on is merely shown in your RSS program using an embedded browser. From the moment you receive an alert and interested enough to click through, you're back to good'ol web browsing.

So why would I want this?
Well that's the subtly I supposed. It's a bit like internet chat, buddy lists, tickers, alerts, email or SMS; once you've used it, you get it. It's all about simplicity.

So how did this all come about?
One guy kicking around an office noticed that every hour or so he used to trawl through the same set of web pages looking for changes. His favorites. Day-in, day-out.

Most of the time, nothing changed, leaving him repeating a relatively unproductive task. But what if all those beloved pages told him when they changed themselves? That, my friends, is the principle of RSS.

How the technical mumbo-jumbo to achieve this is done is quite irrelevant*. That's what a user sees, those are the benefits for the user.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there, find an RSS aggrigator program that fits your personality and start subscribing to websites that interest you. Start with mine! Such a top tip must be worth something right?

--- Justin.

*Techies around the world, don't flame. Yes yes it's a pull technology. Big whoop. Does the user really need to know this? Think about what they see, what they do and how they benefit.

2.5 Gigapixel Image

This is quite mad. http://www.tpd.tno.nl/smartsite600.html describes a crazy project to create an über large photo. Below is the viewer plug-in, the detail is so crazy you can zoom into any window in the picture.

Why someone would want to do this? I've no idea. See below:

(Please don't be confused. The picture above is not part of Marshmellow World. It is merely a framed link to the original site and an effect of your browser. This image is not a reproduction and remains copyright of the original author)
Click here for a direct photo link.

Personalised Galleries For All

New to Marshmellow World. Every time you visit this site you get a new 3 picture gallery unique to you at the top of the page (look above).

Hey what more could you ask?

The Thumb Gallery as I call it will expand over time. Hopefully with links back or the original content.

Any way, enjoy this new aspect of the web.

Keep it live!

Campaign to keep the Web live!

Every year thousands of personal websites and blogs are left homeless by the neglect of their owners.

Now more than ever we need your support to keep the flotsam of the internet from clogging our information rivers.

Join us in ensuring the internet is a clean and enjoyable space for all of us and our future generations to enjoy.

Keep the Web Live!

Take our pledge:

We, as a nation of graphic artists, hobbyists and just plain lunatics promise to ensure that our blogs and home pages will be updated weekly with content of worth and interest for the improvement of mankind.

Use our logos:

(the above logos are exempt from copyright by permission of the author)

Join in support.

Thank you.

(This party political broadcast was brought to you on behalf of the Keep the Web Live! campaign.

Not affiliated with George Bush or any other Republican party made-up or otherwise.)

Weather you like it or not...

Done a small change. I've added clocks for around the world and some matching weather panels too. Just scroll down and look on the left pane.

Okay - mainly for my benefit, but it's there if you want to know too.

Outtakes Now Open

Yes - they're now all posted - quite tricky - my website capacity is limited and 300 photos (even at low res) take up a lot of space.

In fact I've had to cull my other galleries to allow this.

Originally I'd hosted the Wedding pictures on a different server, but it had a monthly download limit of 1GB and some daily restrictions. This capacity was blown out in the first weekend, prompting some reoganisation.

Anyway - enjoy.

Wedding Guest Book

We're Open! (finally)

Yes it took a while, but the newly weds now have their photo albums (I think they're pleased).

So I've created this open entry for comments. Just click below and add any comments you wish about the wedding, photos and married couple (or anything else you fancy).

I'll make sure they pick them up.

--- Justin.

The Story of the Wedding Photos

I’ve been hearing comments about where all the pictures are. Hey, I’m a photographer and artist; I’m trying to tell a story! However for all those people who need an explanation, let me explain.

Taking photographs is tricky. The world of digital photography has improved things greatly. Unfortunately the laws of physics and nature still apply. My ability to take good photographs is limited by:

• Lighting (big problem on this shoot)
• Camera setup (some screw ups)
• Seeing the moment
• Speed
• People obstructing me (it’s not your fault – it’s how I shoot – see [1] below)

We do however have tricks to get around this, and one of the beauties of digital photography is we can triage and chuck away bad photos. Here are some statistics for you:

My brief was to take close-up photos from an unobtrusive distance; I didn’t want poses or to disturb the events that unfolded in front of the camera. Everything was to be as natural as possible (ignoring the guy holding a 50cm lens and a penetrating flash).

1. I took approximately 500 photos.
2. 100 were thrown away due to exposure limitations – lack of light, blurred images, film grain. Just embarrassingly awful.
3. 300 were discarded as not being suitable (more on that later).
4. 100 were kept for printing.
5. The average fashion photographer will keep one in 500 photos!!!!

The amount of bad photos is not uncommon in photography. Our environment and speed we can shoot limits our choices. The nice thing about digital photography is that we can take a camera to the limit and not be worried about film costs. We must however ditch a large number of close-but-no-cigar pictures if we want any credibility.

Some photographers prefer to delete bad photos instantly, others prefer to take a series of similar photos and triage them in post production. I take the latter approach as a 2” square LCD isn’t really suitable for accurate triaging; I also gain the ability to digitally enhance bad photos due to how I take them. I use a system called a digital negative; a raw capture from the camera without white balancing or sharpening or camera tricks. This allows me to recover or post-process bad photos into good photos … most of the time.

Taking a large volume of photos also allows me to tell a story. Something I’ve attempted to do on the main page of the wedding photo website.

So what of the remaining photos?
Well as I said 100 were kept for printing. 68 photos appeared in the final wedding album, 20 photos appeared in an exclusive album for Julian and Elisabeth called the Black Book. You will never see the Black Book unless they show it to you; it’s special and just for them.

The remainder of the 100 printable photos were removed at the final stage simply as they didn’t add to the story and would have bored people as being too similar.

So what of the 300 discarded as not being suitable?
Ah, well here’s the thing. The photos were okay in their own right, but didn’t contribute for various reasons:

1. Exposure sucked.
2. Composition sucked.
3. Didn’t fit with what I saw as the wedding.
4. Didn’t identify themselves as being part of a wedding.
5. Weren’t flattering to the people concerned (foods with mouth open etc).
6. Were bias to a family group; I want to show the wedding as neutrally as possible and not give favour to anyone specifically.

I took a lot to capture close-up expression. In low-light, with crowded scenes, it’s quite a feat to get one good photo. I have to say, of the 300 most (about 200) fall into category [1] or [2] and should really have been deleted.

But. Just for you. So you can understand the photographic process I go through, I’ve published the other 300 photos including the 200 awful ones. They’re boring, dull and horrible. I hope however it will show I’m honest and you can understand why I did this.

I suppose in the end I should say thank you. You’ve looked at a photo album of 68 photos and demanded more! It must mean my story telling actually worked and I didn’t bore the audience.

Thank you all. The remaining photos will appear on the wedding website. Don’t be too under-whelmed. I’m unlikely to reveal this part of the process again, nor would you want me to!!!Bumble over to the wedding gallery, there will be a uneditted link to the remaining photos soon.
--- Justin.

Yup - It's Hallowe'en again. A few of our friends joined us for some merry-ment. Here Cat Girl entertains a few of her siblings (out of camera shot). 

Handling familars is somewhat an art. 

A well tamed familar poses for the camera. 

Scream popped in for a visit. He was surprisingly jovial, and didn't try to kill us once. 

Scream decided to show us what he was made of ... cat girl got into the swing of it too!