Stupid boasting

It's funny this time last year I thought it would take forever to build a site like that, now I could have most of it done in a couple of weeks.

Currently being put to the test. Deadline for Portrait of Nation website is two weeks away.

Learning agreement part 105

OK, learning agreement is here. Learning agreement 500 word !!!!
summary still to do. Hard copies need burning/printing and handing in on Friday.

Exhibition needs finishing this weekend.

After a shock to the system first day working for Noise on Monday, I'm getting into it.

Basically chucking a whole load of MA related ideas at the Portrait of a Nation brief I've been given. All very Web 2.0.

Bookmarks

Arrgh not enough time and my web server isn't working. Looks like I'll have to come home one night this week to finish this. Bollocks.

Questions are all done, work is all uploaded(looks like there's nothing there execpt crappy unfinshed code and bad page layouts) and learning agreement text is done.

Exhibition tag search

This is another exhibition test.
Tag search
Use's Javascript with Flickr. I could add the Lightbox Javasrcipt to it, it needs a user id adding to it, which I can't figure out how to do.

It's good as it uses a search form and pulls out the a list of related tags. The design is crap though. The CSS needs restyling

I'm also looking at the tag cloud again, it might work if I can add a gallery slideshow to it. I don't know, after tomorrow I'm not going to be able to do anymore work on this until next Saturday. So I'm going to have to decide what to use.

More Learning Agreement

Struggling to finish this. Might leave it for today, I'm still not clear about the questions I'm going to use, how I'm going to seperate work form here, it's all a big mess (which is meant to be the point) I should really organise it some way but at the moment I feel thats a task for another time.

Exhibition

This is a rough idea for the exhibition in a couple of weeks. Basically it's a Joomla page with a Flickr plugin. Images are randomly pulled in from a Flickr user and displayed using the Lightbox tool. Javascript refreshes the page every 30 seconds. It's far from ideal, it's only limited to ten image blocks, so you get repeated images. There's no real use of tagged images. But what is good about it is uses a lot of the tools and ideas discussed in the learning agreement (open source, mash ups, free code) The lightbox tool is good as it stops people navigating away and onto the Flickr site.

It would be good to try and use a search tool or tag cloud which incorporates the Lightbox tool.

Learning Agreement Text

Learning agreement text is here. I had toyed with hosting it on my own space as a HTML page but it needs to go on a blog. As this whole MA is becoming about using web 2.0. I still need to work on the layout of it how it will link to this blog, bookmarks and uploaded work.

I also need to work on the questions for the bookmarks and work. I guess I can do that as individual blog posts.

Exhibition Tags

Quick tag test.

Test two

Some ideas for the exhibition. PHP tags look to be a quick and easy way to create a base of images to work with.

Noise festival

A very intense, bizarre, strange, couple of days.

The upshot of which is I'm now working with Noise festival

Noise

Ning

MA Image Gallery

Photography Gallery

photographyleeds

Learning Agreement

neilowen.org

Graphics at Leeds Met
Login
c7002834
s***100


36 Photos
Usergroup

monkey_bananas

Old site

Learning agreement part 3

Learning agreement
Testing layouts for the learning agreement. This uses an RSS feed and a basic Flashr/ Flickr viewer for a users Flickr images.

Processing

Rough text sketch built in Processing
Demo

Building an interactive interface or search tool in Processing is my other idea for the exhibition.

Exhibition part 1

Starting to pull together ideas for the exhibition in September.
Probably going to upload and pull images through Flickr. My initial idea was to use an RSS feed or Javascript badge, but you are a bit limited in the user interface and how the images are shown. The images need to open in a separate page but I don't want to take people straight to the Flickr site. I looked at re-using the Lightbox plugin but couldn't find an easy way of working it with the Flickr badge javascript.

I revisited the Flashr API that I was trying to use months ago. Finally got it working, it's a very basic demo from an old tutorial. At the moment it's simply pulling in my Flickr feed. But I can see it being customized, reskinned and altering how images are being pulled in.

Demo

This is a good little slideshow tool which I'm going to try using with the Leeds Photography site on the student pages.


Ways of searching for images are going to be kept simple. Either colour or tags, Findr is an excellent example of what could be done with tags and word association.

Learning agreement part 2

I've started to upload all the work from the last year to my own web space and to a new Flickr account.

www.neilowen.org will have links to all the work I have done so far.

My new Flickr account is here This is solely for ant MA related work (will make random feeds a little easier)

I have some rough ideas for site layouts, it will incorporate the RSS feed from here and the feed from Flickr. Archiving of work is interesting, whether it's tags, dates, ideas, software. I'm not sure.

At the moment I just need everything up and online.

www.photographyleeds.com

Live test site for photographyleeds
Works fine on my machine using Firefox. Not been tested on any other browser's yet.

I'm really quite pleased with this. It doesn't look much but it feels like a culmination of a lot of research and work from the past few months.

To recap all the images are being pulled in from Flickr using the Javascript from the Flickr badge. Restyled and redesigned using CSS. At the moment there are three group pools on there. Eventually it should run the Leeds FD Photography pool showing current/random student work.

My Blog is being pulled in using Javascript, again restyled using CSS.

RSS feeds are all being pulled in using Javascript, restyled using CSS.

The front page is a hub or meeting point that brings users together, in this case students and staff. At the most basic level it is a collcetion of links to students Blogs. The simple reason for running the site this way is, Flickr and Blogger are good, free tools that work well as a way of publishing text and uploading photos. For the people who are using this site there is no need to over complicate with an additional logins in to Ning or Drupal.

Site at the moment

This is the non drupal site front page. Flickr random images from a number of group feeds. Done using the Flickr badge code.

RSS Feed code from my Blog account, could be from any blog. Both feeds work fine.

CSS styling for both is being re-designed. Should have the live verion of the site up tomorrow. Should also have a mock up of a students page tomorrow.

Work in progress part 4

I was thinking last night that at this stage for the Photography site I don't need to use Drupal. Sure it's useful to know how to use the software but all I need is a front page with links to Flickr, students names and students blogs. Some interesting RSS feeds on the front page and a group blog that staff can access and contribute to and feeds in to the home page. Maybe it's about keeping it as simple as possible. Two login's (Blogger and Flickr) and Photography Leeds it a simple meeting point. Everything else is done through RSS Feeds and external links.

I really like this approach, re-using what has already been built, skinning and rebuilding it. Blogger and Flickr are being used as a server or host. They already have tools to upload and comment on work so I don't need to be re-inventing that. And maybe this is where being a designer becomes back into what I'm doing. Being able to meet aesthetics with function and usability.

Final screengrab for today

Before I balls up the DIV's and PHP tomorrow here's what the Photography site looks like at the moment. Starting to look worryingly close to the mock up screenshot I posted last week. Log-in postion is a pain in the neck at the moment.

Work in progress part 3

This is using the Flickr badge tool. Appears to be the esiest way to pull images from a group pool, without getting stuck with the PHP, API tools. Simple cut and paste, strip out Flickr's CSS, HTML etc. Next step is to try and organise the rows, at the moment this is just four pieces of the same code. Also need to add an external links so users don't navigate away from the main page.

I also like the design of PictoBrowser so might have a go at designing something similar.

Teleabsence I

Created by the same people who did the Flickr plug in in the previous post. Teleabsence I

This installation consisted of a screen displaying a slideshow of pictures which were being remotely uploaded online with a cameraphone. The sequence of these images was being shown as received, presenting itself as a mobile work-in-progress experience.

Work in progress part 2

Playing with this plug-in PictoBrowser Plug-in for Flickr

Simple way of displaying a groups pool of images using a Flickr widget. Needs to be randomly generated for what I want for the Photography site. There also doesn't seem to be anyway of fixing a Flickr user to it.

Work in progress

Rather messy work in progress using Drupal Basically looks the same as the old Joomla site which is what I want. Working on the PHP and CSS of the templates, stripping it all back.