Posts from 2012 | amdavidson.com

Exporting to Wallpaper from Lightroom

posted on 2012-04-23 at 07:33 PM - amd.im/5ffT

I have recently switched from Aperture to Lightroom and missed the ability to export straight from my photo tool to the desktop of my Mac.

If you're in the same boat I've figured out a way to get the desired feature wedged into Lightroom.

Create a folder that will store your exported images. Mine is located at ~/Pictures/Wallpapers.

Create a post-processing filter that will take the exported file and set it as the wallpaper. Open AppleScript Editor and use the following code to create an application in ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Export Actions mine is named wallpaper:

on open theObjects
    repeat with theObject in theObjects
        tell application "Finder"
            set desktop picture to {theObject as string}
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

Create a Lightroom Export preset. This is going to be customized based on your setup, but some things I did to make mine work better are:

Export to a "Specific Folder", the one you created above.
I chose to overwrite without warning so that the files will be replaced if I edit and re-export them.
Resize to fit "Width & Height" set W and H to your display size.
For Post-Processing choose your plugin, wallpaper.

Enjoy!

Relaxing

posted on 2012-04-21 at 11:45 AM - amd.im/QzD9

Almost Summer

posted on 2012-04-20 at 07:02 PM - amd.im/VNMc

This is a BBQ kind of night.

Sparkle Shoes

posted on 2012-04-13 at 06:40 PM - amd.im/FMss

Chicks

posted on 2012-04-07 at 11:55 AM - amd.im/aCTP

This one is named "Car Alarm".

Cliff Edges are Dangerous

posted on 2012-04-02 at 12:46 PM - amd.im/CrgO

Boardwalk

posted on 2012-04-01 at 08:13 PM - amd.im/7EwF

Lillies

posted on 2012-03-26 at 12:50 PM - amd.im/48Sz

Scarlett's Fourth

posted on 2012-03-14 at 10:15 PM - amd.im/FxsK

I took a few pictures at Scarlett's fourth birthday party, but I think most of the ones in the gallery ended up being Naomi's shots including the one above.

Speedy "Dynamic" Elements on a Static Page

posted on 2012-02-29 at 09:23 AM - amd.im/kIER

Moving to a custom static site generator killed my old solution for Twitter and Pinboard integration.

To mitigate this I came up with the following javascript that would pull the information from publicly accessible JSON feeds and integrate it on the client side:

$(document).ready(function() {

     // using jquery built in get json method with twitter api, return only one result
     $.getJSON('http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=amdavidson&count=1&callback=?', function(data)      {{

         // get the date and make it pretty
         var date = Zepto.timeago(data[0].created_at.substring(3,11) +
           data[0].created_at.substring(25,30) +
           data[0].created_at.substring(10,19) +
           data[0].created_at.substring(19,25));

         // result returned
         var tweet = data[0].text;

         // process links and @replies
         tweet = tweet.replace(/(\b(https?):\/\/[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|])/ig, function(url) {
             return '<a href="'+url+'">'+url+'</a>';
         }).replace(/@([_a-z0-9]+)/ig, function(reply) {
             return  reply.charAt(0)+'<a href="http://twitter.com/'+reply.substring(1)+'">'+reply.substring(1)+'</a>';
         });

         // output the result
         $("#tweet").html('"'+tweet+'"');
         $("#tweet-date").html(date);

         // display the twitter block
         $("#twitter").css('display', 'block');
     });

    // using jquery built in get json method with pinboard api,
   $.getJSON('http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/v1/u:amdavidson?format=json&cb=?', function(data)      {

         // get the title.
         title = data[0].d;

         // get the url.
         url = data[0].u;

         // get the description.
         description = data[0].n;

         // get the date and make it pretty.
         date = Zepto.timeago(data[0].dt);

         // output the result
         $("#pin-title").html(title);
         $("#pin-description").html(description);
         $("#pin-link").attr('href', url);
         $("#pin-date").html(date);

         $("#pinboard").css('display', 'block');
     });

});

Unfortunately, this was very slow, especially for Pinboard. Adding 1-1.5 seconds to my page loads. In an effort to alleviate this I started caching the JSON files on my server with these cron jobs, not wanting to put too much additional load on my server, I only pull them every half hour.

0,30 * * * * /usr/bin/curl -s -o
pinboard.json
'http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/v1/u:amdavidson?format=json&count=1'
0,30 * * * * /usr/bin/curl -s -o
twitter.json
'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=amdavidson&count=1'

Then changed the .getJSON lines to this:

$.getJSON('/dynamic/twitter.json', function(data) {

//and

$.getJSON('/dynamic/pinboard.json', function(data) {

Enjoy the faster page load times.

Spring's Coming Early

posted on 2012-02-24 at 10:19 AM - amd.im/q8GS

Backpacking in Pt. Reyes

posted on 2012-02-20 at 08:47 PM - amd.im/gWWC

Slopes and Santas

posted on 2012-02-06 at 09:22 AM - amd.im/gAeN

A Bicycle for Bicycles

posted on 2012-02-01 at 08:40 PM - amd.im/1CXB

DuckDuckGo Search Box

posted on 2012-01-30 at 01:24 PM - amd.im/g2Gj

I've recently been transitioning to a statically generated blog and this threw any plans for a home brewed search functionality out the window.

Fortuitously, I ran across a blog post by Pat Dryburgh that describes how he setup a custom DuckDuckGo search box that was well integrated stylistically into his site.

I took his lead and did the same with the code below:

<form method="get" id="search" action="http://duckduckgo.com/">
  <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="amdavidson.com"/>
  <input type="text" name="q" maxlength="255" placeholder="Search&hellip;"/>
  <input type="submit" value="DuckDuckGo Search" style="visibility: hidden;" />
</form>

If you're looking for a search box for your statically generated blog, I heartily recommend it.

Gloomy Morning

posted on 2012-01-27 at 06:34 AM - amd.im/2Ekx

Vines

posted on 2012-01-17 at 07:23 PM - amd.im/VDen

Fence vs Tree

posted on 2012-01-12 at 08:51 PM - amd.im/yObv

Chainsaw wins.

Ropes

posted on 2012-01-10 at 08:19 AM - amd.im/YZ26

Small Yacht

posted on 2012-01-07 at 06:37 PM - amd.im/dUUD

Shot with a Canon EOS-1 and a Canon 50mm F/1.8 using Ilford Delta Pro 100.

Gate

posted on 2012-01-06 at 09:03 PM - amd.im/WxLk

Shot with a Canon EOS-1 and a Canon 50mm F/1.8 using Ilford Delta Pro 100.

Personal Email Volume Between 2004 and 2011

posted on 2012-01-05 at 09:30 AM - amd.im/VE60

Above is a graph of my personal email volume between 2004 and 2011. I made it just now after archiving away 2011's mail.

It shouldn't include any work email, or any mailing lists or other junk. Just mail that has been sent to me or from me since March 04.

A couple interesting things, my email usage dropped off significantly in 2007 despite a general upward trend in all other years. I wonder if I lost some mail at some point during transitioning between servers. Also interesting about 2007 is that it had the largest average email size: 129kb. That's about double the overall average since 2004.

Email usage jumped by a huge amount in 2009 when I was traveling and spending approximately 50% of my year abroad and then fell significantly in 2011 when I got a job that keeps me here in the US full time.

For those interested, I created the chart using http://sparklines-bitworking.appspot.com. The constructed url was: http://sparklines-bitworking.appspot.com/spark.cgi?type=impulse&...

iPad + Keyboard

posted on 2012-01-04 at 04:38 PM - amd.im/B9Ho

I recently went on a business trip for a few short days and decided to go "laptop free" and just bring my iPad with an Apple Wireless Keyboard.

To make a long story short, I loved it.

I bring my iPad anytime I travel. I read on it, watch movies, play games and otherwise pass the time. Up until this trip, if I had to do real work, I would bring a laptop as well as it's just a bit better for cranking out email and the like. With the keyboard, the iPad was just as productive or more than my laptop had been.

Benjamin Brooks just posted that he is trying the same experiment but can't quite get away from his MacBook Air because he needs to be able to upload content to Amazon S3 in order to post to his blog. I host my imagery on S3 as well and ran into a similar situation that was preventing me from easily posting from my iPad or iPhone.

The solution that I came up with was to write a script that allows me to send a Markdown formatted email to an email address that my custom blog software checks. Images that are attached are resized, uploaded to S3, and embedded in the body of the post.

It totally changed the way I blog and made it so much simpler to just shoot off an email to the server. This post was written in just that way, using a keyboard paired to an iPad.

I don't know what platform he uses, but I'd guess there's something pre-written for his platform. I know there is for Wordpress, Posterous, Tumblr, and others.

Ferry

posted on 2012-01-03 at 09:53 AM - amd.im/09eh

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