Speeding up Pixelpost blog browsing
Pixelpost is a very popular framework for photoblogs due to its simplicity and ease of tweaking. A while back I posted an article on how to enable keyboard navigation on a pixelpost photoblog. It works very well considering it allows mouse free browsing. But the browsing experience can be improved even more.
Lets consider how a photoblog is browsed most of the time. A visitor typically lands on a home page showing the latest image and goes through the previous images sequentially, spending a few seconds on each image. Leveraging this fact, if the “previous” image is downloaded in the background using javascript right after the current image, it will be almost if not completely ready for viewing when the visitor is on the “previous” image page. The same can be done for the “next” image, but in most of the cases that image will already be in the browser cache.
This is a very simple change for a tangible usability benefit. Below are my tweaks:
index.php:
// expose the previous image name through tags, so previous images can be
// pre-downloaded in the background for faster browsing experience
$tpl = ereg_replace("<IMAGE_PREVIOUS_NAME>",$image_previous_name,$tpl);
templates/theworldin35mm/image_template.html:
window.onload = function() {
...
var prevImg = new Image(); // for downloading prev image in background
img.onload = function(evt) {
...
// after current image load, load previous image in the background
if('<IMAGE_PREVIOUS_NAME>' != '') {
prevImg.src = '<SITE_URL>images/<IMAGE_PREVIOUS_NAME>';
}
}
...
};
To verify that this extra javascript is actually doing its job, look at the Net section in Firebug (in Firefox browser, ofcourse). Clear the cache first. On first page load it will show several items getting downloaded. On left arrow, the previous image page will load, and then you can see that an extra image got downloaded at the bottom. Compare with and without my code. Here is a screenshot:
therider.posterous.com
I set up a posterous blog. Even though I use my own blog and facebook/twitter.
Why ?
1. FB is more like a realtime social thing, and past updates are very difficult to access. Twitter is for more uncensored chatter without the concern of spamming all my FB friends.
2. Conventional blog is good for well thought out and/or usually lengthy articles. It is also not too easy to update on the go, nor is it suitable for small posts.
3. Tumblr is well designed, but posterous is well engineered and more powerful.
4. Posterous can be used like a mini blog tool complete with pictures or videos, and it can autopost to FB, twitter and more with fine grained control via email. It makes sense to autopost from posterous to FB and twitter but not vice versa, since I might post stuff directly on those that is too casual to archive.
5. A posterous widget can be kept in my primary blog so all my content would be in one place.
6. The PicPosterous app on the iPhone seems to make it much easier to associate multiple pictures on a single post. And the pictures can be taken over a period of time and added to the post.
Facebook sucks in giving access to past updates and photos in a good way. I could find a way to download past statuses as a csv, but it has a very buggy format: http://www.socialarchivist.com/2009/08/20/exporting-all-your-old-facebook-statuses/
I wanted to recreate my cross country motorcycle trip updates in posterous but each post must have a title and body. My updates being one or two sentences I decided to put them together in this blog as one post.
Update: Just got Priti moved from her personal blog to posterous. She is reluctant to maintain a serious blog, but updates facebook with text/snaps often so this is probably the best arrangement for her. Besides all old content is still on her blogspot site, so it made the migration a one-click task. Double win.
Update (27-Feb): At this time there is no way to add more photos in a single post (in gallery style), unless you have the PicPosterous app on the iPhone and create your post using that. You also have to keep the gallery/album in the app as long as you want to add more photos in that post.
X-Country USA 2009 status archive
Posted by therider in Motorcycling on February 26, 2010
Very productive day today. new battery and front tire done. ordering rear tire + wheel from ebay. helped piyush installing hard bags on his VFR.
Instamapper.com rocks. Just set up a gps tracker for our month long cross country motorcycle ride. http://bit.ly/O9d9w
New rear tire should come today. Bike should be ready by evening. Dry run of packing to follow afterwards.
Feeling infinitely lucky to have a wife who is excited to be on a motorcycle trip for 30 days.
Seems like I can lose weight and stay young on a motorcycle: http://bit.ly/73jOX and http://bit.ly/10WZFS
Started at 7am. Breakfast stop at Benicia.
175 miles done. I-5 is a bit sedate.
At Weed, CA. 325mi done. Touched 97F peak at Redding. Morning was 58F.
At Chemult, OR. Blinded by greens and blues. Don’t wanna leave Oregon.
Got rained on day 1. Awesome. The smell of wet soil took me home in monsoon. This IS home.
Day 1 over. 555 miles. Staying at Bend, OR at my coworker’s place.
Day 2 begins. Shivering cold in Bend.
Breakfast stop at Madras, OR. Wish there was a dosa/idli restaurant.
Chilling at Kennewick near Pasco WA. In 2007 I almost bought an yellow Goldwing from here.
Watching awesome fireworks beside lake flathead. 50 more miles to Whitefish, MT.
Reached Whitefish, MT. 670 miles in 17 hours. Will camp at a guy’s place who I sold my Canon 5D last year.
Idaho rocks. No bullshit tax. Cheap gas. 75 limit roads, even on mountains.
Chilling at Whitefish. Slept at 2am, woke up at 7:30. Will visit Glacier NP today.
Damn, are all the prettiest American girls living in Whitefish ?
At Choteau, MT now. 200 miles today. Scenary overload all day. Glacier NP and then beautiful roads in evening.
Wish there were tech jobs here at Montana. This state is too good. My head is hurting with pretty overload.
Bfast stop at Great Falls, MT. 60 miles today.
Instead of Monday morning blues we are drowning in the greens of rural Montana. And popcorn clouds made for us…
Loving the life on the road. This is how we wanna live, work hard and ride harder.
Visually drunk and totally fallen in love with Montana. My previous favorites Colorado and Oregon got pushed down in my list.
Piyush’s VFR got a leaking right fork seal. Ouch. We did two quick fixes and hope he can get it fixed properly at SLC on his way back.
At red lodge, MT. Camping beside a river. 385 miles today.
The VFR fork leak got fixed by a masking tape trick. Thanks a ton to Goldwing yoda Susan Coles.
Soaking in the sights and sounds of nature. Never camped this close to a river.
Damn the night was one of the coldest I ever spent out. 48F is the morning temp at 5:10am MDT.
Sun is probably rising from west today. Priti wants to shower in this 48F morning at the campground.
Yellowstone turned out to be least fun in the trip. The slow road is painfully sedate on a motorcycle. Not sure I will ride here again.
Yellowstone SUCKS on a bike trip. 80 miles through the park at 35mph. NEVER again on a bike !
Waiting for old faithful to erupt.
Enjoying the ride through grand Teton park. Light is not right so will come back for sunrise and sunsets.
At Casper WY. 350 miles done. Got 43.3 mpg on highway instead of usual 38. Woot. Thought slow park roads gave earlier 44 mpg.
Casper to Douglas WY – 50miles. Dialed in 80mph cruise and it felt like flying a private jet.
Camping at KOA of Douglas WY. Beautiful location, free wifi, heated pool. After a 400 mile day I could not ask anything better.
Watched a beautiful sunrise. Now heading to Sturgis, South Dakota.
Marathon day tomorrow. 700 miles to Chicago to meet up with parents.
Had a solid sleep, ready to start in 15 min.
I totally absolutely hate construction zones and sun in the face. Would love to live in a permanently cloudy place !!!!!
Ice cream stop at DQ. Worthington, MN. 200 miles done. Minnesota is very green.
On autopilot almost whole day at 80-85mph. Wing is eating miles for breakfast.
Snack break at Albert Lea, MN. Boiled eggs taste better with tortilla chips than salt alone !!!
Fastest day of the trip so far. 440 miles in 8 hours. Lunch break near la crosse, MN.
Last fillup at Monona, WI. 630 miles done in 12 hours, 150 more to go. Still have lots of energy!
At Chicago. 775 miles in 15 hours. Longest so far.
Change of plans: leaving Chicago on Monday instead of Sunday.
Got a good look at my face. Resembles grilled chicken.
Doing oil change myself at a shell service station. They gave me a pan, gloves, rags and a cardboard. Cool.
Chicago feels like Kolkata. Got cooked in traffic on a short trip to change oil.
2nd day of lazing around in Chicago. In a train, going to meet up with a school senior who was a student of both my parents.
En route to Cleveland, OH. Had a feast of a lunch at my school junior’s place in south bend, IN. Feeling sleepy every 20 miles
Getting robbed by tollbooths in IL, IN and OH. Damn things are making us pay every few miles.
Started hating east coast already. Lost count of the cash gone in tolls, and am not even in NY/NJ yet !!! Can the gps help avoiding tolls ?
Staying with sister’s batchmate and family at South Euclid, OH. 395 miles today and 4125 miles so far.
Mentally still in pacific time. The road lag is not going away easily.
Reunited with a school friend after 7 yrs. At Ithaca, NY now. 400 miles today, 4525 miles so far.
Met up with a ST13 rider at Fultonham, NY. Enjoyed sone awesome rural roads and also had a scary little ride on gravel road.
Having mac chicken at a service area on I-88E at Schenectady, NY.
100 more miles of awesome Vermont twisties before Nashua, NH.
At Nashua, NH. 360 miles today, 4880 so far.
Off to stony brook.
Stony Brook, here I come. Lunch at my favorite Chinese buffet Yin Yang.
Got fried in traffic around NJ-NY. Turned off engine many times to prevent boiling the coolant.
Took I-495 and northern state pkwy. Memories, memories…
Priti forgot to show ezpass when getting on NJ turnpike I-78 from Bayonne. What to do to avoid fines ?
Going to manhattan with friends. Time for some street photography which I should have done long back.
Charmed by NYC at night. I think I like this city more than SF which has no season at all.
Had a fantastic thai dinner at Yum Yum Too near 9th and 46th.
1am feels like 7pm in NYC. Awesome.
10mph on I-95 near Rutgers. HATE it. Should have taken 206 at 45mph
. Goodbye east coast. I will likely not miss ya. Finally got rid of the congestion on I-95 and at walt Whitman service area. 100 more miles to Maryland.
Escaped from mile long 10 mph toll plaza queue insanity at last. Entering Maryland.
Dear Priti, repeat after me 50 times: we will never ever ever ever ever even think of living in NY/NJ area !!!
At Baltimore. Meeting Ja from Stony Brook after 3.5 years.
Met mejomashi and family at Ellicot city, MD. Now with Ayan and Aritra at Ashburn, VA.
Got stuck at 5mph construction zone traffic for an hour on I-66. The awesome cloudy weather kept me calm. Don’t know how people go to work.
Got blown over at Luray Caverns at Virginia. Raining now, gonna be an awesome monsoon ride to Durham, NC.
Raining cats and dogs, taking a bite at burger king near Luray Caverns.
Checked into 360 motel at Midlothian, VA. 220 miles today, 5960 miles so far.
Midlothian VA to South Hill VA. 90 miles non stop in 70 min. My fastest sprint so far. Reward: bfast at Dennys.
Slept like a log at Kools’ place in Raleigh. Fully charged up for the ride south.
Rode into heavy downpour before walterboro SC. Taking shelter below an overpass due to very low visibility. Quite fun.
Staying at Savannah today. Bike tires wore unevenly and it is wobbling a bit. Have to fix it tomorrow.
Perfect day. Just as I pulled into Florida welcome center the rear tire blew. Guess the puncture was there for a while.
Got lucky about the location to fix my puncture myself. Also met a Goldwing rider with yellow wing and trailer.
Fixed puncture but tire won’t hold air. The big gash blew it. Now trying to reach a local gwrra member with trailer. Honda dealer is 30mi.
Omg ! A local wing rider has a spare wheel with rear tire and he is on the way!!! Wooooot.
The local winger came with wheel. We swapped the wheels in 10 min. Now at Jacksonville Honda getting a new Bridgestone.
The wing rider had the spare wheel because he switched to a car tire (dark side).
Don, the local winger is a pilot as well. He even rebuilt a plane!!! This GWRRA membership is fully worth.
The best things in life are priceless. We meet the nicest of people un the strangest of places and situations.
On the road again. Zero wobble. Whether or not I shoulda examined the rear tire more during wobble does not matter now. Had a helluva day.
Don is the symbol of how life should be lived. We talked about motorcycles, aviation and boating as well. His wife does woodturning too !!!
Tire lesson #1: if front wobbles check rear tire 10 times.
Don had car tire on his wing for last 7k mi with no issues. Am convinced enough to get one next. 3x miles, more traction, tilts fine too.
At chuck’s place in Satsuma FL. He rides an yellow wing with an yellow car-shaped trailer. My fav color and combo. 225 miles today.
On US-17 to Orlando. 80F, 80% humidity and just trotted beside a goods train. Feels home.
Reached temple terrace FL near Tampa after a non stop 120 mi ride from Kennedy Space Center. Rode through some hellish thunderstorm as well.
Don said priti should get her moto license before car and also should study towards a pilot’s lic as well so I can fly
Planning to ship all camping gear home tomm to reduce the excessive weight of the suitcase. We are unlikely to camp in this southern heat.
Shipped 20lb of stuff home. Suitcase should be much lighter after redistributing rest of stuff.
Bailing on Clearwater beach. It can be out of the world but 25 miles through town at 15mph is making me sick.
FL-98 is 10x better than I-75. Glad I ditched Clearwater. Still have my sanity and also prevented coolant boil-out of the bike.
Having a refreshing icee at Old Town, FL. Love these small towns, nice people and relaxed life. And no parking hassle ever.
Got first speeding ticket just when I thought the day was getting better. FL-98 is too good to ride near limits. Struggling to save the day.
Trying very very hard to enjoy the most gorgeous sunset at the same spot I stopped in 2005 on my first cross country bike trip
Stopping at a nice little town Appalachicola, FL. But it is Friday and inns are $$. Florida is giving me a bittersweet experience.
At the shore of the gulf of Mexico, st George island, FL.
We got our Clearwater with 1% crowd. Patience pays off.
With Suparno and Tusi at Baton Rouge, LA. Long day today, 510 miles.
Friend at Dallas is on-call today and got busy. We were unsure where to stay, then Priti found a contact at Uncertain, TX by a lake
Had an incredibly awesome stay at Uncertain, TX. The boat ride on the swampy Caddo lake was beyond any kind of our imaginations.
Priti called Florida clerk of court to ask if online traffic school is possible for my ticket. And they said yes !!! My trip got saved !
No more bad moods and fights with Priti for a while
Reached Midland, TX and got a motel. Incredibly sleepy day today but 530 miles done. 8670 miles so far.
At monahans sandhills state park. Feels like visiting the gobi desert in Rajasthan except for the cool 75F temps.
Lunch at a Mexican place by I-10. My god, the waitress is hotter than Salma Hayek !
Getting roasted in blistering 101F Texas heat now.
Had to ride 2 miles on unpaved road. Not fun on wing. Parked little far from house since it is a steep gravel slope to the house from road.
Imagine. 10pm. Moon playing hide-n-seek. 3 ladies and us sat in a natural hot springs pond in the woods for an hr. Au naturale, except me!
Had a beautiful morning ride from Bayard to Silver City on mountain spirits scenic byway. 75F at 6000 elev. Now on US-70W from lordsburg.
Had a refreshing light snack at a small town Duncan, AZ.
Getting oven roasted at 104F desert heat in AZ. Picking up another chilled soda at Globe, AZ. 100 more miles to Scottsdale.
50 miles from Scottsdale. Temp when moving is 108F but not too bad since it is dry. We can survive.
Reached Scottsdale, AZ. New record temp 113F but still better than humid 95F in Florida.
Anyone want a quadruple bypass burger from heart attack grill at Chandler AZ ?
Priti’s iPhone 3G did auto shutdown and won’t come back up. Anyone knows how to hard reset it ?
Thanks everyone for the iPhone reset tip. I tried all those but the phone decided to ignore everything for a couple hours, then booted up.
Staying at Caltech/Pasadena with Priti’s ex-roomie from IISc. 415 miles today, 9920 so far. Will cross 10k tomm the 30th day of the trip.
Walked a few blocks for a juicy chicken burrito. Walking back is not fun. Burp.
Met up with 2 friends of Priti in Marina Del Ray and Los Angeles. Starting for home now on 101.
Telling the GPS to route home, finally !!!
101 is nice but has lots of slow sections. Should have taken I-5. Still 270 miles to go.
Last fueling done at Soledad, CA. 100 more miles to home.
At Gilroy. Waiting for Piyush at a gas station.
Reached Sunnyvale at last after a 30-day, 10360 mi xcountry motorcycle trip. Running to a friend’s daughter’s first bday party.
Finally, home. Can’t believe the trip is over.
MAMP 403 issue and fix
Posted by therider in Software, Technology on February 20, 2010
I have been using MAMP for a while. For no apparent reason today, I got a 403 message for the start page (http://localhost:8888/MAMP/):
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /MAMP/ on this server.
Apache/2.0.59 (Unix) PHP/5.2.6 DAV/2 Server at localhost Port 8888
Figured out the solution by a little search but it is useful enough to share.
1. Quit MAMP or stop servers.
2. Open /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf file in vim or any text editor.
3. Find this section of code:
<Directory /> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All </Directory>
4. Change “AllowOverride All” to “AllowOverride None”.
5. Save the httpd.conf file.
6. Launch MAMP or start servers, then open up the start page.
It works !
Linkgen – A webdev tool
During web development and debugging, developers often need to compare the locally modified version with what is in production. Most of the time this involves copy and paste to make the urls for dev and production in two side-by-side tabs on a browser. This is not only tedious, but poses serious ergonomic injury risk as well.
I figured that a bare bones html with a few bits of javascript can go a long way towards making a custom tool just for this task. So if you got a set of paths (e.g. /blog?p=23 or /blog/2009/05/12/hello-world) just put them in the tool alongwith two hostnames, and you will instantly get urls in pairs to be opened on sequential tabs.
The tool is now hosted here: http://joydutta.com/projects/linkgen/
Feedbacks are most welcome. I can add more features on request if they prove to be absolutely essential.
A few old sketches
Yesterday I was discussing website development with a friend when we both had a good laugh recalling how our first pages looked like in geocities. And that reminded me, I put up scans of some pencil sketches in 1999 on my geocities site. I still fondly remember those nights in my second year of college. Room B-219, RP Hall, IIT Kharagpur. Each sketch took about 7-8 hours of continuous effort, and ofcourse that meant night-outs.
I wanted to see them again. Badly. Now.
My careful backup strategies paid off with a small caveat. I located those precious scans quickly, but they are only in a web-sized version. I don’t know where the original sketches or the full size scans are, or whether the originals are in good enough condition for a re-scan, but it sure felt nice to get them back.
Wordpress blog development tip
Posted by therider in Software, Technology on February 16, 2010
When I started this personal blog, it was a matter of a few clicks in a tool called fantastico and everything was up and running. Whatever development and style modifications I have done over the time were directly on the server. As a matter of fact, I still do.
Clearly, it is not the best idea for incremental development, not without inevitable “production downtime”. Working in a big internet company at least taught me this truth among other things. So, when I started my photoblog using pixelpost, I set everything up in my local MAMP stack and pushed the data to server one time.
joy@localhost ~ $ mysqldump -u user -ppass db > db.sql joy@localhost ~ $ scp -C db.sql joy@server: joy@server ~ $ mysql -u user -ppass db < db.sql
Afterwards all code pushes happen by rsync.
joy@localhost photoblog $ rsync -avz . joy@server:public_html/photoblog
This way, even though locally I have a small set of data, I can change code and test all features before doing a production push. Works very well for me. Also I check in my code in a local git repository. Double win.
I am in the middle of setting up another wordpress blog right now, and forgetting a small detail cost me a bunch of time. After getting the blog running locally, I took a mysql dump and synced it with the db in the server. It just won’t load. I mucked around here and there and figured that the blog url is set as “http://localhost:8888/newblog” in the local db. I modified the .sql file and re-synced to production and voila, it worked.
I suspect that I might need to do the db sync a few more times before I have enough volume of data to keep it growing in the server. I will probably set up a sed script to do the search-and-replace in command line.
Epson 2200 in Snow Leopard
Posted by therider in Mac, Photography, Software on January 27, 2010
The upgrade to Snow Leopard a few months back was smooth, except for one fatal thing. The colors from my Epson 2200 went from awesome in Leopard to downright awful, thanks to the third party Gutenprint driver. I only realized this mess today since I had been printing black and whites using the Quad Tone Rip (QTR) driver which kept producing neutral prints.
So I hit google and there it was, a pretty long forum thread on the very same issue. To my surprise I found that Epson indeed released Snow Leopard driver for the 2200 printer sometime in Nov 2009. I installed it, then removed and re-added the printer and voila, the colors are almost back to normal. The interface is actually much better than what I expected, and the advanced color setting panel actually worked (it was mangled up in the Gutenprint driver).
Now that I still had a little magenta cast (as opposed to horrible), I tweaked with the advanced color settings panel. Took down magenta to -9 and suddenly the grays started to look like gray. There is just one thing to be done in photoshop prior to printing. The brightness of the image has to be increased a little bit. A foolproof way to do this is to have a curves layer, with no adjustment, then setting the blending mode to screen with 50% opacity. That makes my color prints about same as what I see on my monitor. For black and white prints using QTR, the last step is not necessary, or maybe about 20% opacity will do.
Looking forward to some print sessions in the coming days.
Update: Magenta -12 works even better.
Update: Brightness +16 nearly eliminates the need to brighten the image using a 50% screen blended curves layer with no adjustments.
New place, new woodshop
We moved to a rented house in the beginning of 2010. One of my two roomies moved out of the old place, and the rent looked pretty steep, so we found a 3br house for a little less. Besides the fact that all of us craved for some open space, the 2-car garage was a pretty good motivation to move my lazy ass.
It took us no less than a week to move and set up, but now I can say that it was totally worth the labor and pain. No more stair climbing nonsense, and my garage woodshop next to the kitchen is a total bliss.
Among my tools, I have only added a wood lathe and a bandsaw. As luck would have it, the lathe was my own over a year back and the current owner would not sell it but trust me enough to let me use it on rent. Could not find a good deal on craigslist so I rented it for 6 months. Who knows if my bowl turning passion will still be active or not. The bandsaw was a great find, and it makes me feel like I got a pair of scissors to cut wood in arbitrary shapes. Pretty darn fun.
Amazing how a little more space can fire up so much energy. I have taken up a little bit of acrylic painting as well, and anxious to see where it takes me. Painted my first 16×20 canvas last week and right now making a 24×24 hardwood canvas for another painting I have in mind.
Hope the creative energy stays on for a while. More later…
Stackoverflow.com: A programmer’s dream
While google has always served me to find answers to a wide array of programming and technical issues, I don’t recall any one tech QA site which was consistently reliable. I regularly dug out answers from google group discussions to some old bulletin board archives to the typical flashy QA sites infested with scammy ads.
Stackoverflow.com provides a spot-on solution to this very precise problem. Not only it is a clean and functional site free of annoying ads, it actually engages the users to help others more. The reputation scoring logic is a feedback loop, which gets a programmer addicted in no time. I think it works marvelously well.
To top it off, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, the founders of stackoverflow made their software reusable. There is also superuser.com and serverfault.com based on the same platform but geared more towards sysadmin crowd. And slowly, many other sites are adopting this very successful platform, for example: answers.onstartups.com.
I am very happy to be involved with helping the programming community and learning at the same time. I guess I have nearly stopped spending time on facebook and twitter. I recommend all my coworkers and techie friends to start contributing in these platforms already.
About
Hi, I'm Joy. I am a developer at Yahoo! Finance. Besides having fun with software design, hacking and programming, I enjoy photography, woodworking and touring on a motorcycle. Read on, and welcome to my blog.
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