Thoughts On Rails

Meditating the Sky
Originally uploaded by Harshad Sharma.

I'm thinking of too many things… this old photo (old as in clicked last year) reminds me of something important.

stop. and. think.

MEDITATE.

.

Finally remembered something that I was forgetting all the time. Calibrate the monitor and tune the settings.

While looking for more information, I came across this very useful website:

http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html

And there’s a brilliant software available from Praxisoft for doing just the same:

http://www.praxisoft.com/

Other than that, I’ve been lazying around. Did not photograph anything today. But yeah, I’ve been working on the software side ;) I am looking into the possibilities of starting a new project specially meant to handle complete digital workflow. Or at least bring all the loose ends together.

Since most of the photo organizers do just that, organize photos, there’s little I can do with them when I freshly copy the photos from the camera. GIMP is the best tool for editing as far as I know… but when I want to save the images in one centralized place, that becomes a pain. Also, renaming the photos according to the EXIF data (date-time for example) needs another application. This, is right when you look into the UNIX policy of working, but for an artist, it’s a pain in the neck.

The plan is to integrate these existing softwares in a way that the digital workflow is simplified - handled from one application. When you connect the camera, the photos are copied to your repository.

You can preview them, select the ones you like and delete the ones you’d rather be without. You can rename the files by date-time field of EXIF data just by right clicking on the folder and selecting the rename option. Then right click on the photo you would like to edit and select the menu option ‘edit’… it copies the photo in a subfolder and launches GIMP (or your fav editor) and so can work on the photo.

When you save the photo, the thumbnail is updated as per the photo in the subfolder, however your original photo is untouched. You find out you messed up - right click > revert and the original is back.

You now would like to take a backup of the photos, so right click on folder, select backup and it zips the files and asks where to save it. Now you can email it to yourself or burn on a CD/DVD.

Printing should not be different. I assume we should be able to select the printing preferences and export a PDF file that is printable on any machine.

These are just dreams… reality is yet to be realized.

I’m rewriting the software for the 28th time. Now wonder I am doing it at a much faster pace and with better design and lesser bugs.

I follow the ’survival of the fittest’ rule in my programming. Develop a few prototypes simultaneously if I have more than one idea (which I usually do) and then integrate only the best ideas into the next rewrite (not the next version… complete rewrite)

Usually the story ends in 2 or 3 rewrites, the software is good enough. However this particular software is pretty complex and I’m trying really hard to make it intuitive and easy to use with least clutter while keeping most information available at the fingertips. Basically, I’m trying to find the golden mean of simplicity and functionality.

So far I’ve been mostly successful - have learnt valuable lessons about GUI related stuff. Experienced, how some small assumption can cause nightmares to my users and learnt how to pacify them and sort out the issue ASAP.

My ML Management software has been used by Dnyanodaya Magazine for over 4 years now. It has been rewritten 27 times before this - because the magazine is run from home and I’m always with the crew - my parents. Now as I mentioned yesterday, another magazine has shown interest in the software, hence I am rewriting the software to make it customizable for the other magazine… over the years, I had tied the software with the name “Dnyanodaya” and now it needs to be loosened up.

Today after about 8 to 10 hours of work, I have the complete interface ready and am working on the internals. Here are a few screenshots…

Here’s The Member Address Editing Screen:
MLManager01.jpg

The Membership Information Editing Screen:
MLManager02.jpg

The Printing Template Selection/Editing Screen:
MLManager03.jpg

The Print Preview/Control Screen:
MLManager04.jpg

If you are wondering why the first tab “Select” is not shown, well it’s not fully functional yet, and these two tabs are already working great! I can say that my application is almost ready. Little work is needed to add the finishing touches and wrap up the left-overs.

There’s also a small button on the right hand side that says “Backup” … it’s a nifty utility (made using 7zip commandline tool) that backs up the database and saves it as a zip file to a location you specify. Also saves a copy in the application folder itself. Hmm… I shouldn’t be documenting the application on the blog, so here’s the

EOF

The site is growing, and is adopting changes. So after trying a while to get only the photographs in the set ‘photo of the day’ to show up, I am choosing another option for now - select 7 random photos and display them. Gives justice to all photos!