Adventures with Computers
My site has been lying dormant for the last couple of months, ever since NETsite decided to upgrade their server to the latest and greatest version of PHP: version 5.
That unfortunately broke my installation of PhpWiki. I believe that the CVS version of PhpWiki can run on PHP 5, but I haven’t tried. So now I’m giving WordPress a spin. It was mostly after I discovered Markdown which allows me to write in a Wiki-like syntax that I was convinced to try.
I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year! Nothing much has happened here at GimpsterDotCom, but as
usual that only reflects that a lot has happened outside of it.
I have been busy working as a student programmer for the DAIMI:~dIntProg course. There I have worked on making all sorts of (hopefully) interesting assignments that the students will have to try their luck on next year. They are all done in Java and range from simple wrapper classes that enable one to do image manipulation to an MP3 player. The player is the current project, and I’m working on it with Mikkel Krøigård who now also works with the course.
Together with Mikkel and Andreas Danielsen I made a project in our [Cryptography][4]/crypto.html] course. In the project we looked at how one can generate truly random bits, and how a sequence of such bits can be made much longer with the [Blum-Blum-Shub][5] algorithm. You can download the project report (in PostScript and PDF formats) as well as the associated source files.
My favorite pet project, PEL, has not seen as much work lately. This is mostly because nobody so far seems to be using it for anything, but also because it actually works. I have yet to come across an image which the current version of PEL doesn’t handle correctly — if you find such an image, then please send it to me.
That was a little bit about what has been going on lately. Right now I’m with my parents in Aalborg, getting ready to celebrate Christmas tonight. Merry Christmas to you all! -Martin Geisler
[4]: [DAIMI:~ivan | http://www.daimi.au.dk/~ivan/ [5]: WikiPedia:Blum Blum Shub
I’ve just seen that version 1.0 of everybodys favorite browser, FireFox, has been released. The main Mozilla site seems to be under heavy load, so please go to their European mirror instead.
Try using Coral for a faster download:
or use BitTorrent:
I’m looking forward to seeing the add which will be put in the New York Times to celebrate the event. This release is quickly becoming a world-wide celebration of OpenSource software, it’s amazing! -Martin Geisler
I’ve just had the unpleasant experience of seing GimpsterDotCom in
InternetExplorer — that browser cannot handle transparent PNG
images, and therefore the little rounded corners that I use show up
with a black background instead of the intented light-blue background.
”Please!” If you’re seeing those ugly black quarter-circles all over the place, then switch to a proper browser which will render the page and graphics as it is supposed to be rendered. Moreover, using FireFox will protect you against lots of nasty stuff on the web, and give you a quicker browsing experience. -Martin Geisler
Everybodys favorite (well… at least it’s my favorite) EXIF editing library — PEL, the PHP EXIF Library — just got better! Version 0.7 has been released. -Martin Geisler
Running PEL under PHP version 5.0.2 would produce incorrect EXIF data, this was fixed so that PEL works correctly on all versions of PHP 5. PEL now runs on installations without support for Gettext, but does so with English texts only. A new example script was added, showing how one can mass-rename images based on their timestamps using PEL. The Danish translation was updated slightly. The collection of test images has been split out as a separate download, cutting down on the size of a PEL download.
The image tests are now split into their own, separate download.
Added a test image from a Canon PowerShot S60.
Fixed a bug caused by a change in the way PHP 5.0.2 handles integers larger than 231-1. This change means that one can no longer use PelConvert::longToBytes() to convert both signed and unsigned bytes, one must now use sLongToBytes() for signed longs and longToBytes() for unsigned bytes.
Added a work-around, so the PEL will run (with English texts only) on installations without support for Gettext.
Added test/rename.php which shows how one can easily rename images based on their EXIF timestamps.
Updated the Danish translation.
Removed trailing newlines at the end of Pel.php and ~PelConvert.php.
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-0.7.tar.bz2?download (279 KiB)
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-0.7.tar.gz?download (453 KiB)
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-0.7.zip?download (608 KiB)
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-image-tests-0.7.tar.bz2?download (986 KiB)
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-image-tests-0.7.tar.gz?download (991 KiB)
http://prdownloads.sf.net/pel/pel-image-tests-0.7.zip?download (998 KiB)