Finally took the time today to get my album back up and working. This time I used a plugin called FAlbum which is just a bunch of php/javascript code to hook together my flickr page and lay it nicely down on the gallery page. Everytime I upload new pictures, the gallery will automatically be updated. Well not automatically as there is some caching involved and it will only go back to flickr every 10 min or so when requested.

I also added Robin Hillman to the old link list. Found his page on the ol’ internet today. Looks like he actually updates it regularly!

Enjoy the updates!

-Matty

I just upgraded the wordpress backend to version 2.0. If anybody notices anything weird, let me know.

After getting the movies section up and running, the next obvious step was getting the music section. Previously it old versions of the websites, a list would show all my music and you can drill down into the album, artist etc. Now that was all find and dandy, but it was time consuming to put it all in the database. When I first created it I didn’t plan ahead as to what it could be used for. In the end, it’s too hard to export it from iTunes and then import it into the database somehow.

So I thought about somehow exporting XML and on the fly parse it on the webpage. That worked OK, but the major problem with it is it took too long. and I mean a LONG time. This technique would work with a small sample set, but I just have too many mp3’s for it too work properly. I also wanted it so you can easily click on an artist and view all the mp3’s I have of that artist as I download full album’s quite often.

So what have I done. Well by using a Wordpress plugin called iTunesBlogger and WPiTunes I can now show you guys what I’m listening too in real time. Granted it doesn’t have my whole mp3 library, it will show you what I’m currently listening to. (95% of my library I don’t listen to anyway). Everything is saved into a database so I can query that later.

What’s the future of it. First thing that pops to mind is using AJAX for realtime updating of the current list. It’s something I want to dive into anyway. Secondly, I can query the database to see what my most popular song is, what is the least, etc. The possibilities are endless!

While I was sitting here pondering what to add to my website, I looked back on the old websites, seeing what I had added. The one section that always was prominent on all versions, was the movie and music sections.

Most people that know me know that I enjoy copying movies. I call it more of a hobby. I have a rather large collection that I’ve gathered throughout the years. Most people ask why I copy them if I only watch them once. Well my answer to that is…well… I don’t have one. Now you may think my list is large, but it’s not as big as Shane’s. If he ever get’s his movie list back up and running, check it out. It’s something more of a jaw-dropping number. It’s been a while since his movie list was up, but I’m pretty sure it was past my number. Plus mine mostly are all old SVCD’s while his are all DVD-R’s.

What’s really cool about the movie list is that when you look at the detail at the newer movies, it is all brought back from amazon at real time. None of the detail is kept in any database of mine. All I do is plug in the amazon sin number (ASIN) and BAM! All the detail is there ripe for the picking.

I’m not sure if the music list will get updated soon. Updating the database is currently a pain the ass, plus I’m so far behind in the music it would take a bit of time to get it updated. Maybe someday.

The redesign is going well. I’ve implemented the flickr gallery that I wanted to do. What’s cool is all I have to do is upload my pics to my flickr accound and they’ll automatically show up in my gallery. The php classes have cache enabled so that it will be speedy browsing for everybody. There’s still a few more tweaks to do with the gallery, but I’m liking what I’m seeing.

What’s cool about this is that I can post the latest images right in the blog now as I’m now hosting the postings as well as it’s with wordpress - thus allowing me to do my own php inside my posting.

Example:

Will show 5 images from the flickr photostream (not mine) with tags of “party”

Pretty sweet huh?