Year: 2005

Categories
Semantics

Photos, flickr, and back doors

By accident, I discovered that I was in violation of Flickr’s Terms of Use today. According to the TOS, Flickr is not a image hosting service. I’m not sure how it differs from an ‘image hosting’ service, other than I needed to include a link back to the photo flickr page for every photo embedded in a page here. Which explains why Flickr photo pages are starting to dominate search engine results, especially if people use meaningful photo titles.

The link back isn’t a problem within my weblog posts, but my the page generated by my photo metadata application, as well as Tinfoil, my photo album, have not been including a link back to the Flickr page. Unfortunately, this means that I’m going to have to change the code of the data collection element of my photo application. Which also means I’m going to have to re-run this for every page where I’ve included photos.

My fault for not checking the TOS more carefully. However, while I’m in the process of making this change, another one I’m making is to define a set for all photos that have been embedded in a weblog post, and add a tag linking the photo with that post. I also created a program that will use the Flickr API and download a local copy of each image. It will then update my post entries to point to the locally named copy, as compared to the one on Flickr. It’s my ‘backdoor’, just in case I decide I want to host my photos locally. No matter how much you like a centralized service–and I like Flickr–you should always have a backdoor.

I’m adding the metadata directly into the image itself, including the new longitude and latitude values, using the geotagging format. This way, this information follows the image no matter where I store it. I also add title, creator, description, keywords, and so on. When I do, Flickr pulls this data out and uses it to create the Flickr title, description, and tags.

(The geotagging format consists of three keywords or tags: “geotagged”, “geo:lon=value”,”geo:lat=value”. This is becoming standard format, and photos tagged with this are automatically pulled into other, external applications, such as my use with GoogleMaps.)

My photo application can pull this data out of the original image (whether stored locally, or found using the Flickr web services), utilizing a handy image metadata library for PHP.

I could keep the metadata stored in the image and just output this when the image metadata page is accessed. However, I store all of the data for each image as RDF, associated with the URL of the page itself, added to any other metadata I have for the page (much of this generated automatically using the same functionality used to drive the syndication feed in use for the site). The data is then available for my use, and accessible by any tool that can consume RDF/XML, such as Piggy-Bank.

I used to store this data in the database, but I’m now looking at trying something new. I figure if I have to re-do all the data, I might as well experiment.

Categories
Weather

Don’t mess with this lady

The conditions look very good for Hurricane Katrina to be a very nasty affair when it hits land. There’s little or no shear to tear it apart, and the water in the Gulf is bathtub hot. If it hits on or near New Orleans, well, this is about the most Not Good of the Not Good scenarios.

From Wunderground’s Dr. Jeff Masters’ weblog:

I’d hate to be an Emergency Management official in New Orleans right now. Katrina is pretty much following the NHC forecast, and appears likely to pass VERY close to New Orleans. I’m surprised they haven’t ordered an evacuation of the city yet. While the odds of a catastropic hit that would completely flood the city of New Orleans are probably 10%, that is way too high in my opinion to justify leaving the people in the city. If I lived in the city, I would evactuate NOW! There is a very good reason that the Coroner’s office in New Orleans keeps 10,000 body bags on hand. The risks are too great from this storm, and a weekend away from the city would be nice anyway, right? GO! New Orleans needs a full 72 hours to evacuate, and landfall is already less than 72 hours away. Get out now and beat the rush. You’re not going to have to go to work or school on Monday anyway. If an evacuation is ordered, not everyone who wants to get out may be able to do so–particularly the 60,000 poor people with no cars.

Categories
Photography

Modern marvels

Last night, I actually had my first video call through my computer. It was a trip. I enjoyed the experience immensely.

You see, that’s the advantage of not being the first to use a technology: when something is old hat to the rest of you, it’s new and exciting for me. My mom is the same–not the first to run out and try something new. She’s never really seen a computer, except as a box on people’s desk. She’s not ’seen’ the internet. She shows people the copies of the books I send her, but hasn’t the foggiest what I’m writing about.

However, she is moving into the digital age, and asked if she could have my older Nikon 995 digital camera. “Of course,” I said. I told her I would write detailed instructions on how to use all the lenses and filters. “Be sure to also write down what kind of film I should use,” she said.

She is going to be so blown away by this camera. I wish I could be there to see her face, and hear her laugh when she reaches the moment of discovery about how marvelous this new thing is.

Categories
Diversity

Too good to miss

One last gem for Friday, Slashdot writes on a soon to be released report from Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Ulster University that, well, read for yourself. From the Independent:

Men are more likely to win Nobel prizes and achieve excellence simply because they are more intelligent than women, an outspoken male academic has claimed.

Richard Lynn, the emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, argues that men have larger brains and higher IQs than women, to such an extent that they are better suited to “tasks of high complexity”.

By the way, he’s referring to white men. Previous studies of his show that whites are also more intelligent than blacks.

We’ll see what the study shows, but if it’s based on many of the current methods of testing, when I was studying Psychology, my professors disdained these for the fact that most are biased toward the test developers…who just happen to be western, white, males.

Fancy.

Best comment, from the BBC coverage:

I scored relatively high in an IQ test when I was a child. Since then I have done many many many very very very stupid things in my life. I still wonder what that test has to do with intelligence or understanding at all.

Second best comment, from Slashdot:

Of course men are smarter. We as women have been taught all our lives that this: |———| is 7 inches.

As an FYI, I have never taken an intelligence test. I have refused to take them since I was a child. For all I know, my IQ may be that of a frog, and anything positive I have accomplished has been the result of the energy released from frustration I’ve experienced with not being able to catch a plane in the sky with my tongue.

*thwapt!*

Categories
Writing

Frolicsome reading

Fridays are a good day to indulge in the work of others that gives me so much delight. I am lucky in your gifts–too many to list all, so I’ll just have to pick out a few this time around.

Jerry has a photo of a rather intimidating looking spider and I really like the poem he wrote to accompany it. He also has started a great new site on electric cars and other fuel alternative modes of transportation.

Loren has been publishing some pretty damn amazing pictures of birds and I also like the philosophy that accompanies them. However, he doesn’t post enough cat pictures. Still, I guess the world needs variety.

Dori posted a link to a site that features the work of graphic artists who are bored. My personal favorite is the fisherman.

(Oh, the cable company came out to disconnect the video and leave the internet, but he disconnected both. I caught him before he left, he checked his order and saw in small print that I was keeping my internet but dropping the video. He didn’t have a filter, so he disconnected the video and internet on the ground floor (since the router is on the second floor), but left both cable and internet for the second floor. For the nonce, we have free cable TV upstairs, including my bedroom/office/sitting room. So tonight, Firefly, Stargate, and Battlestar Gallactica, watching I am. I wonder who will get pregnant next on Battlestar? I’m banking on the President.)

Gordon writes on a “who’s turn is it to make tea application” written in .NET. So that’s what you folk in the UK talk about on Fridays? Huh. Anyway, Gordon, I hate to break any possible myth, but I am not a foxy chick. I am a tough, old, bird. Oh, still with a puff or two of smoke in me. Maybe a faint sizzle. A zing or two. Or three.

Elaine talks quietly on loss and paths taken.

Christine is returning to school. Good on you, Christine! Because I think this is a cool thing she’s doing, I have heeded her request and turned photos back on in my syndication feeds. With a wistful hope that you all still do stop by from time to time. It’s lonely at times, me here with just the bots. Millions and millions of bots.

(A hint: I’ve been thinking about going back to school myself…let’s hear it for the League of Grey Freshmen!)

I can empathize–so much!–with Pascale. I am also to her sending my most positive thoughts and bestest of good wishes.

Here’s to Julie and Ted Leung, who are probably one of the nicest couples in weblogging. Tech, too. And gardening. Between Loren’s pictures and the Leungs’, I’ve been getting homesick for the Northwest. Maybe it’s time for a move. If I did, though, who would serve you Missouri Green?

Dorothea Salo, who has a great new job and a wonderful new location, has a black cat, a bat, and a Thing in a Box, so she’s ready for halloween.

I started playing around with the NewsGator API yesterday, and so has Danny. Oh, how much I love REST APIs over SOAP. Sigh.

Jeneane is a real mensch. Phil is still one of my bestest buddies (no, you can’t go on break, Phil — too many of my favorites are on break).

Finally, a shout out to those webloggers who write long posts they never publish, for one reason or another. You know who you are. I have three posts in my drafts–really, really good ones–that I’m holding until you publish.

I just noticed that like the speech of Yoda, my writing is becoming.