PHP API Flickr Integration

Posted by Timothy on Aug 11, 2011 in Random Babble

So I was tinkering with the idea of hosting all my photos on Flickr instead of trying to maintain Coppermine Image Gallery. I have 1.9gigs if images!! Anyhow. I’ve put together a very ALPHA version of a script to interact with Flickr’s API. This allows me to sort of integrate Flickr into my website. The basics work. Just have to determine how fancy I want to get and finish up the theme/skin to match the rest of my site. Not 100% sure a photo gallery will fit this theme, so I might do something close, but not the exact same. Check it out!

http://www.cyberdyne.org/~icebrkr/fkrphotos/

Web Application Developers

Posted by Timothy on Jul 28, 2011 in Random Babble

Has anyone ever stopped to think what a web application developer is expected/required to know to do their job?  I’ll briefly detail a few things.  Here’s the short list.

HTML - The very framework the web is built on.

Well that’s just he tip of the iceberg.  You have HTML v4 and most recently HTML v5.  The birth of HTML4 was the rework of HTML but using an XML standard– Enter XHTML which also has it’s own versions.  Of course all this HTML behaves differently between browsers.  But lately, things have been getting better as each browser has been doing better at becoming compliant and supporting the so-called Standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets.

CSS is a blessing and a curse at the same time.  CSS helps ‘stylize’ webpages.  Allows for consistency and makes life easy when having to update or change things.  CSS also behaves different between browsers.  The syntax is completely different from HTML as well.  There’s all sorts of ‘tricks’ you can do using CSS which I’m not going to go into at the moment, but it’s almost another language a web application developer must know.  Just knowing CSS gets you pretty far– We could stack on top of this all the different CSS frameworks that attempt to make using/writing CSS easier and faster– There’s still a learning curve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS

Javascript – A C-like scripting language .

Yes, yet another language a web application developer needs to know and understand.  Of course, the user has the ability to disable such things and prevent scripts from running in his browser.  There’s also some instances that javascript behaves differently with different browsers (yes, again).  Javascript lets us do all the fancy stuff to make a webpage perform or act like a desktop application.  Like CSS, there’s also multiple Javascript frameworks you can use to make development move along faster, but again, there’s a learning curve.  OF course, you’re expected to know these things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript

SQL – Structured Query Language. (Did I just add yet another language to the list?)

Regardless of the database running on the back-end of the web page, there’s some sort of SQL going on to fetch and store data.  Of course there’s all sorts of ‘magic’ that a web application developer should know to make sure the web application runs smoothly and performs without hesitation.  The basics are easy.  It’s when you start getting into the complicated queries for data that things tend to slow down and bring a server to its knees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

User Interface Design & Usability – The psychology behind people clicking buttons.

You can’t have a web application without buttons or some sort of user interface.  Web application developers need to design a UI that’s easy to understand.  Easy to navigate and makes life simple for the end-user.  There’s tons of studies and presentations on Vertical Rhythm, Typography and A/B Testing to determine which colors or layout works better for the user.  Just more stuff the web application developer has to cram in his brain and is expected to know and understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface_design

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design

I haven’t even gotten to the meat of the web application yet.  These are just top level things.

The ‘web language’ itself – The main code behind the application.

EIther it be PHP or ASP or .NET or Python or Ruby or Perl… Just to name a few of the common/popular ones.  A web application developer should know this language inside and out… and yes.. I just added yet another language to the list.  Just another thing a web application developer should know.   This is his swiss army knife.  He can make this language do jumping jacks in his sleep.  These languages are pretty stable across most environments.  What works on one server most likely works on another server.  There’s only a few differences you have to look out for. Along with this,  he should also probably have a good idea about memory management and how the language shuffles data around.  He should know how to write efficient and maintainable code.  You can take this one step farther and expect him to know proper formatting and code layout.  File naming conventions and how to organize a project on disk.  Just more stuff to be conscious about.

Networking / Protocols – How things talk to each other.

As a web application developer, he should also understand how a browser (the client) and the web server (the server) operate.  Understand how a browser fetches a webpage and all the stages of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) works.  He should also understand memory management on the server side as well. How the server is going to deal with that huge SQL query.  How his code is going to grab that data and present it to the user.  How all this data is going to fit (read: bandwidth) over the wire.  Sure his application can look pretty, but if no one can ‘talk’ to it, it’s worthless.  One step further.  He should be aware of disk I/O.  Reading and writing of logs.  Reading of scripts.  Reading and writing of data.  You’d want to keep all these to a minimum to increase performance for a large audience.   All of this could be a science.  But he’s expected to know and understand it.  Did I mention different operating systems handle some of these operations differently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_%28computing%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seek_time#Seek_time

I could probably go on and on with all the things a web application developer is expected to know.   These are just main ones.   So if you’re trying to be a web developer and you feel overwhelmed, there’s a reason for it.  There’s a lot to learn and even more to master.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of people take all these things for granted.  A lot of the ‘experts’ in the field forget where they came from.  All of these stuff has become second nature and they really DO forget just how much stuff we must know.  Anything is easy if you’ve been doing it for years.

American DJ VMS4

Posted by Timothy on Feb 24, 2011 in Gadgets, Random Babble

I was so excited about the American Audio (American DJ) VMS4 that I pre-ordered it. I waited almost 4mo to get the thing since their release date kept getting pushed back. I should’ve known this was a bad sign. I understand problems come up. But announcing a release date and then having to re-announce a new release date 3-4 times is a major PR issue. It also says something about the product– Which I soon found out.

Out of the box the VMS4 looks great. It’s got a lot of knobs (which I LOVE knobs!!) It’s got “The weight of quality” (it’s heavy) and a bunch of blinky LED light buttons. Unfortunately, looks aren’t everything.

Trying to get it to work with VirtualDJ 6 took almost 2 days. The cue buttons weren’t working properly. The cross-fader wasn’t changing decks. The list of problems goes on and on. Probably a month or so later, American DJ releases a firmware fix to address these issues with Virtual DJ. A side note: American DJ promo’d the VMS4 on Traktor. All their videos showed these (so called) DJ’s using Traktor. But when it came time to ship, they send it out with Virtual DJ— Now that’s all fine and dandy for me because that’s what I’m familiar with. But the problem comes when they didn’t have significant testing with VDJ! Which I believe is where all the issues come from.

So anyhow, it’s now it’s 6mo later and I STILL haven’t used the VMS4 in a live set. I just can’t trust it. Even after I’ve sat here and configured all the MIDI Mappings to my liking and working around some of the cue/PFL issues. The cross-fader doesn’t fade. It’s more like an on/off switch. I’ve considered investing in an Innofader, but that’s $150 just to see if it’ll fix my problems.

I’m pretty unhappy with their support for this thing. I’ve just sent and email to customer support to see what can be done. We’ll see how things go form here since their forums are completely worthless.

Here’s a quick demo of some cue/headphone issues I’m having.

Crocker Park – Westlake, OH – Valet Parking Incident.

Posted by Timothy on Dec 19, 2010 in Random Babble

Valet services towed my car while their valet parking lot wasn’t properly marked. Guest Services and Security didn’t seem to care. Their attitude as "Oh, well. you have to take care of it." Couldn’t get anyone to acknowledge there’s a problem and they screwed up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/icebrkr/sets/72157625632082980/

[Update]
Crocker Park head of Security returned my phone call (and the 5 other groups of people) and expressed his concern in the way this matter was handled. He apologized to me and ended up sending me a gift-basket along with a $25 Gift card. A few days later I was reimbursed the towing fees (gift card).

Easter Sunday Trance Mix

Posted by Timothy on Apr 7, 2010 in Random Babble

Spent the night putting together a relaxing trance mix– Enjoy!

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