Paul O'Flaherty

Næstved Interlopers Meetup Group

I’ve just started the Næstved Interlopers Meetup Group over on Meetup.com to afford people like myself (ie; “foreigners” living in Denmark) the opportunity to get together, have a bit of fun, make some new friends and discuss issues which affect us. The major emphasis is on fun however.

If you would like more information, or would like to join the group just drop along to this link or drop me an email at paul@pauloflaherty.com.

I look forward to hearing from you…

All I want is a simple Gallery. Why can’t I find it?

All I want is a simple gallery for this site. Why can’t I find it?

I’m not a big fan of re-inventing the wheel. If something has been done already I don’t see the point of doing it again (unless it can be improved upon). Improving upon something, doesn’t necessarily mean adding features. Sometimes simplicity is best.

I’ve been seraching the web this morning for a good PHP Photo gallery, and as of now I’ve been pretty dissapointed with the offerings I’ve come across. I’ve looked at all the big names (Gallery, Coppermine, etc.) and I’ve looked at a couple of the smaller players as well. Still, nothing has been “exactly” what I want.

So what do I want? Well, I want a nice little gallery that out puts (X) amount of thumbnails in (Y) number of rows that I specify. Width and size of thumbnails are decided by me. The thumbnails will be produced once by the gallery and stored in a folder to make things faster.

The routine that renders the page can either be displayed according to a css layout, or the code can be called allowing the insertion of the output in existing blogging software posts.

I don’t mind work. I don’t mind having to edit css, php and my database to get this thing running (althouh I’d prefer not to).

I don’t want masses of features, image rotation or discussion capabilites. I don’t require the gallery to allow other users to login, or allow the uploading of images. After all I can always ftp them up.

What I’m looking for is simplicity. Not a 3mb download, and (after unzipping) and 7.35mb upload to my server just for the gallery without even including one image (Coppermine I’m looking at you) .

As an example.. Look at the gallery’s produced by Picasa. Now imagine if they were dynamic and didn’t use static html pages. If you could just drop a new image into the gallery folder and have it appear in the thumbnails.

Now maybe I’m dense, or maybe I’m just not looking properly, but I can’t find a gallery that does what I want. This isn’t the first time I’ve looked. When this site ran on PHPNuke, I used coppermine after much searching. So, can you guys help me?

What gallery software are you using (if any?) or are you just using static html galleries for your images?
Why are you doing things the way you are?
If you do know of a gallery system like the one I have described, can I have the URL please???

Don’t step there!!

Boing Boing has posted a link to Core77 which contains an article about genetically modified plants which change colour in the presence of land mines.

A Danish company, Aresa Biodetection, has developed genetically-modified flowers that change color when their roots come in contact with nitrogen dioxide in the soil. Explosives used in mines produce NO2 as the chemicals gradually decay. The company plans to sow fields of NO2-sniffing Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale or mouse cress) in areas riddled with long-forgotten ordinance from Angola to Cambodia.

One can only hope that they plan to spread the seeds by air.

Temporary Design

I’ve put up a temporary design for Brasco’s blog. It’s just a modified version of “drove all night” by Vladimir Simovic, which can be downloaded from www.alexking.org. Unfortunately I don’t have more time to work on his site today, but at least it doesn’t look like the bog standard WordPress install.

I’ll get cracking on a proper design tomorrow hopefully.

Lycos – The new law!

In perhaps one of the most stupid and reckless moves I’ve heard of in a long time Lycos have decided to provide their users with a screen saver that they can download which will launch a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack on suspected spam servers. This moves comes as part of their “Make Love not Spam” campaign, and is targeted at servers listed by SpamCop.

Now, first off let me say that this type of vigilante warfare on the internet is no better than the spammers themsleves, and lets not get into the legal ramifications. Also, let’s not mention what will happen if it turns out that the software launches an attack on a server that has been falsely labeled as a spam server. Lets also not mention the ramifications to servers that are unaware they are acting as spam servers.

There’s a new law on the internet, it calls itself Lycos, and it’s about as bright as a 3 watt lightbulb.

Idiocy, plain and simple.

Congrats Rob!

I have to send a big “Congrats” out to Rob on getting the new job. Best of luck mate!

Is it just me or…

Is it just me or are things really slow in the technology world today. By today I mean the 27th of November 2005. The stuff comming through on RSS seems to be down to an absolute trickle.

Anyway… Went into town today to pick up some Christmas bits and pieces, and when I got back Brasco was on ICQ. Brasco is a great guy, my best mate on the planet, and is very enthusiastic about computers. Unfortunately, he’s not very skilled from a programming point of view, but with hardware problems he’s the man.

Anyway.. he’s starting a new blog called “Brasco on the Blog“, and I’ve just spent the last while talking him through downloading WordPress, putting it on his host via ftp, configuring php files, and installing WordPress. Still, everything seems to have worked, and his blog is up and running, although as I type this, there are still no entries.

I’m gonna help Brasco with the design of his blog, although, design is going to hampered by the amount of advertising that Lycos throw’s out on those free accounts. Not to worry, I’ll get cracking on a design for him on Monday…

Sex and the wrong city

Sarah Jessica Parker, the indomitable pixie of Gap ads and more, can do no wrong here in America, but she’s ruffling feathers in Tel Aviv, showing too much skin in a billboard for Unilever Lux shower gel, at least according to the Orthodox community.

I found this story over on AdFreak, and apparently all this fuss is being caused even though the picture depicts Parker wearing a spaghetti-strapped, sequined dress that fell well above the knee.

I have a couple of initial reactions to this.

First off, to the people getting offended in Tel Aviv – “Grow up! Get over it!!

Secondly, I’m left trying to figure out why anybody would find a wrinkled, skinny prune like Parker attractive. Okay, maybe she was attractive once, when she did films like “PÃ¥ Skudhold” (I can’t remember the english title) with Bruce Willis in 1993. These days however, she’s just a wrinkly skinny waife. Not exactly my cup of tea, but then again there’s no accounting for taste (or lack of it), is there?

UPDATE: 26-11-2004 19:00 I’ve just figured out the name of the film. It was “Striking Distance”.

The joy of comment spam – revisited!

Yet another pearl of wisdom gleamed from attempted comment spam.

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

Weblogger Meetup

I decided this morning that I was going to contact my fellow bloggers in Denmark and see if I could arrange a bit of a get together. Then I realised how much work that would be, made a cup of coffee and typed “blogger meetup” into google.

The results of the search have saved me a lot of work because it threw up an awesome site at me. For those of you that haven’t visited Meetup.com yet, scoot along, and see who’s doing what meetups in your part of the world. It doesn’t have to be blogger meet-ups by the way. They cover every kind of meetup imaginable.

A quick search revealed two blogger meetup groups that I can reach from Næstved, so, I’ve joined the “København weblogger Meetup Group” and hopefully will make it to the next meetup on the 15th of December.

My wish list.

Okay, it seems a little weird to me to make out a wish list of stuff that I want to recieve for Christmas because it’s something that we never did back home in Ireland. But I’m in Denmark now, and that just seems to be the way things are done with the people that I know.
So, with that in mind here’s my Christmas list (in no particular order) for the whole world to see.. maybe some of you folks out there can help me get some of this stuff.. hint hint.. (if you’re feeling generous…)

Egg wisk (don’t ask )

En Nissehue

That’s the list for now.. I’ll add more stuff as I think of it, and delete stuff as and when it’s acquired (doesn’t matter how it’s acquired as long as it becomes mine!!).