Notebook / Archives / "my website"

Among many other defences, I have just installed Spam Poison.

Tools:

• Project Honey Pot (found via Nikke's Index Spam section: Project Honeypot – there is an article about Spam Poison there: Spam Poison - fighting e-mail harvesters);
• Sugarplum -- spam poison (uses Apache's mod_rewrite and Perl);
• Wpoison.

Afin de faire progresser ce site, à la fois pour en augmenter le contenu, l'ergonomie et l'esthétique, des travaux sont à prévoir ce mois-ci.
Si jamais vous passez par ici et qu'il y a des problèmes d'affichage, ne vous inquiétez pas !

Okay, it's now time for all of you to taste my sounds. This section deals with all my musical activities, past and present, and you can hear many old works in mp3. Some of you knew the existence of this webpage which was under heavy construction, but now it is officially and publically released, with original worksheets.
Things to come!

I am now using James Seng's Bayesian filter for MT to fight spam in comments and trackbacks on this website.
If you see an entry with n comments but you are not able to read these comments, they were actually spam. I will try to fix this small bug soon.

Statement of Audience
I realize that nothing I say matters to anyone else on the entire planet. My opinions are useless and unfocused. I am an expert in nothing. I know nothing. I am confused about almost everything. I cannot, as an individual, ever possibly know everything, or even enough to make editorial commentary on the vast vast majority of things that exist in my world. This is a stupid document; it is meaningless drivel that I do not expect any of the several billion people on my planet to actually read. People who do read my rambling, incoherent dumbfuckery are probably just as confused as I am, if not moreso, as they are looking to my sorry ass for an opinion when they should be outside playing Frisbee with their dog or screwing their life partner or getting a dog or getting a life partner. Anyone who actually takes the time to read my bullshit probably deserves to ingest my fucked up and obviously mistaken opinions on whatever it is that I have written about.

Signed: Jean-Philippe

(Via Stefano's Linotype – Typesetting some of Stefano Mazzocchi's random thoughts: Statement of Audience.)

Yeah! that's a good idea.
When I will have re-installed all my music software and plugged mics and MIDI cables, I might try to do some musical patterns blogging: read, watch and hear the creative process step after step.
At the end, is this *really* a so good idea?...

Well, I was working, teaching, reading and creating a new website.
Can I introduce you to Jean-Philippe Leboeuf - recherches 1999-2004? This is my french website where you will be able to find pieces of my research activities. There are already documents, but I will put many others soon. Keep watching!

Ouff!!! Back to the blogosphere! Happy New Year!
For those of you who did not know, my notebook disappeared in early december, following a DNS change made by my previous hosting service (go2.fr). They never contacted me to inform my humble person of this modification, and furthermore, they took two weeks to answer my e-mails! Moreover, they loose my blog entries for december... and among them was a very long story about my modem crash. :'-( I will have to write it down again, but not for the moment...
I am now hosted by DreamHost, an USA hosting service, and I have a very big plan. DreamHost is unbelievable, they have a incredible web interface to manage the plan (full of goodies that you can only found in professional hosting services – press release here, tour here), they are cheap, they work and answer very fast, users seem to be very satisfied (they are in the business since 1997), they have many forums and a wonderful knowledge base. I will now host friends and family, the first being Cédric. I heard of DreamHost on Peter Saint-Andre's weblog (I changed of hosting service a few days after him... but I forgot to use his id for him to get advantages offered by the reward system - if you read this someday, excuse me :-|). DreamHost is a “Silver Sponsor” of the JSF (Jabber Software Foundation), a good point to note (they offer Jabber services on all hosting plans – press release here) – Peter Saint-Andre is not only a philosopher, but a Jabber guru too. I will write a story later about the migration/reinstallation/update of my previous Movable Type installation (and other things worth saying for this new year...), but now, I just want to write down my new resolutions; here they are:

• sleep less, do not work at night;


• go beyond what I can do: write my Ph.D. thesis (lol); this is linked to the next item...


• schedules are schedules, timetables are timetables;


• read more, and more generally, split my time between (at least) work and cultural activities;


• record my musical works from 1995 to 1997 and begin my new musical project (with Pierre-Jean);


• update my previous book, try to write another;


• blog more regularly;


• find time to make physical exercices.

I am slowly beginning to rewrite the template for this weblog (and to write thoughts...). The "Online Status Indicator" (more here in a previous story) servers seem not to be performing very well.
I just switched the server, so you can see the funny status icons, but the status for each service seems wrong. Maybe the time to start with my own status indicator in Perl... NO, I have NO time... NO TIME!!!

Yes ;)

Many things to come, starting next week (-end?)...

After my month of Java lazy coding, the W3Framework (Wittycube Framework) is going on very fast and the first application using it, Atlas, is close to be running completely (in fact what is running is what will become the first plugin set available). Atlas is an incredible application to handle “Manufactured Serendipity”.
The core parts of Atlas will serve as foundations for the W3Platform (the high level of the Wittycube Kromacube-OS), actually in planning stage (hey! we do not build a new “Operating System” from scratch like that ;)...).

À ma propre initiative (j'en avais envie...) et parce que j'en avais parlé avec quelques uns, j'ai décidé de publier de temps en temps certaines de mes compositions de français, du collège au lycée (et peut-être plus loin dans le passé si je retrouve...).
Faut dire que je me sentais jaloux de Cramoisi qui ressort toujours des trucs étranges de ses archives ;)
Le premier texte est ainsi Un ours appelé « Nounours », comme vous avez déjà pu le voir.

Désolé, mais pour avoir le son sur mon montage, il vous faut le codec audio DivX. Plus d'informations sur la page "DivX Codec" du site "DivX Digest" :

The DivX Audio Compressor is a re-packaged version of the DivX ;-) Audio codec that comes with the DivX 3.11 Alpha codec - this re-pack has a standalone install/uninstall packagem, and is compatible with all versions of Windows.

Je vous conseille aussi d'utiliser un gestionnaire de téléchargement comme l'excellent et gratuit Download Express de Metaproducts Software Corporation, car mon site Free.fr (celui sur lequel j'ai déposé la vidéo, pas celui-ci, il est entendu...) a parfois des problèmes... la faute à Free.

I have created a new RSS 2.0 feed for my series of “making-of”. If you want to stay tuned with these tutorials, there is only one file: making-of.xml.

Today I wanted to be able to drop shadows on photos. I did not succeed completely (or “automaticaly” must I say) maybe because of a bug in ImageMagick conjure command line tool. I have submited my problem to the "Magick-users" mailing-list and I hope to have an answer soon...

But here follows my story... I first discovered thanks to the serendipity goddess Raymond Penners' home page who wrote a script called Photo Stack for The GIMP. This script uses the Script-Fu extension mecanism incorporated in The GIMP to process an image – as a script-fu, it is written in scheme... This effect is very original cos it does not only stick a border to an image, it simulates a pile of photos. Here is an example:

In order to understand this script, you need to be quite confortable with The GIMP and to read The GIMP API Documentation. What is hard is not this API but the lisp-way of writing scripts in The Gimp! However it seems the day is coming when we will be able to use The GIMP in script like all other Unix tools, according to this answer to a message about recording Gimp actions in the "Gimp-developer" mailing-list. Here is what we can read on the GNOME Bug Tracker (powered by Bugzilla):

This feature is on the TODO list, but several important changes are
necessary before it can be implemented. The user interface must be
separated from the core, and all actions performed via the GUI must
result in corresponding PDB calls. Once this is done, then all
actions invoked through the menus, all brush strokes, selections and
other actions will go through the PDB where they can be caught and
recorded in a file. Then it should be easy to export the sequence
of actions as a Script-Fu or Perl-Fu script.

This feature will probably be implemented in Gimp 2.0.

So I decided to explore ImageMagick mailing-lists to learn more about the conjure tools and maybe to find information about dropping shadows. The main answer is that conjure is really not wide diffused in the ImageMagick community and there is in fact no documentation. For example I learned that you can compose images (XML scripting version of the composite command line tool) in this thread about handling groups of images in a MSL file; there are other tips in this thread dealing with undocumented functions of conjure.

On the effect sire, I first found this thread about dropping shadows with PerlMagick but the result did not look very good. Hopefuly searching on Google I found in the "Gimp-user" mailing-list this message describing how to drop shadows with ImageMagick “like in Adobe Photoshop”; but the explanation was a bit too Gimp-oriented. I was finaly helped by the "Magick-users" mailing-list with the conclusion of a thread about dropping shadows in ImageMagick, answering this question describing the steps needed for this effect:

1. get the original image;


2. create a black image having the same size than the original;


3. add a 5x5 blur to the black image;


4. combine the original image over the black one offset right 5 down 5;


5. set the background color of the result image.

This is the end for the moment. I am waiting for an answer to know if I am stupid or if it is conjure which is bugged. I need too to investigate a recent articles on "LinuxWorld.com", entitled “Adding eye candy to your desktop” and dealing with dropping shadows onto icons with PerlMagick.
After this affair, I will publish complete batch files and scripts, documented and with more configuration parameters.

After reading this entry from Paolo Valdemarin about Food blogging (more info here in a previous entry) and watching the beautiful photo effect, I wanted to do the same thing.

I tried to mimic the effect with the command line tools conjure from ImageMagick (a collection of tools and libraries to manipulate images) which can process a Magick Scripting Language (MSL) file – conjure is useful to accomplish custom image processing tasks without using PerlMagick for example (PerlMagick is the Perl binding to ImageMagick). Apart ImageMagick, you will need the XML parser which comes with Libxml2 (The XML C library for Gnome); you can find the Windows port on Igor Zlatkovic's website (on the page where you can download binaries, do not forget to get iConv if you do not want to be reminded by conjure that you lack a library). After theses downloads, you must modify the path to point to the two new libraries.

To accomplish this effect, I wanted to take a JPEG file f.jpg to get another JPEG file f_photo.jpg (without needing to add the file extension):

1. resize the original image to get a width of 200 pixels;


2. add a white border of 4 pixels;


3. add a black border of 1 pixel;


4. rotate the image by -5 degrees.

While writing the previous post, it came to my mind I absolutely need a stylesheet which can handle big portion of code, with very long lines. The question is for example: how to automaticaly cut an URL inside an anchor tag?
If I do not find answers with a cascading stylesheet, maybe I will have to write a MT plugin... hum... it would be fun to have a plugin which indent code alone!

It could be very useful to display your online status on your weblog, that is to say which instant messaging network you are connected on when someone is visiting your website.
Almost all instant messaging companies are providing tools to actually perfom that job:

• ICQ offers the more powerful tools, "The ICQ Web Tools" which are covering many aspects of the ICQ network. Among these tools, there are "The ICQ Panels", which provide “basic ICQ features to empower your site, while each panel has unique features & design to fit your site perfectly”. On this page you can easily find "The ICQ Status Indicator", with actually ten different designs. For example, if you want a soft and little ICQ status indicator, you just have to add the following HTML code in your webpage, where the indicator must appear:
  
  
  <img src="http://web.icq.com/whitepages/online
     ?icq=[your_icq_number]&img=5">
  
  
  


• AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) only provide the "AIM Remote", a way to add an AIM communication center to your website (a panel to contact you by instant messaging or email, to join your chat room, etc.).
  


• Yahoo! just offers an online presence tools for its Yahoo! Messenger. Here is the HTML code if you want to compare it with ICQ's one:
  
  
  <a href="http://edit.yahoo.com/config/send_webmesg?
     .target=[your_yahoo_id]&.src=pg">
  <img border=0 src="http://opi.yahoo.com/online
     ?u=[your_yahoo_id]
     &m=g&t=2"></a>
  
  
  


• Microsoft does not provide a MSN/Windows Messenger presence tools. This is a strange situation because the Hotmail email service displays your friends' online status if you have received emails from them...

So as you can see, you will have much work to do for a result which won't look homogeneous. Hopefuly here comes the Online Status Indicator, OSI for intimates! This is a service which allow you to display a small image on your website to show if you are online (OSI can handle ICQ, MSNm, AIM, Y!M and Jabber – there are icons for Trillian but the OSI server uses the ICQ account in order to detect your presence). You can use the default icon (the one on the OSI server) or create your own for online and offline status. You can too host yourself an OSI server (written in Java): all you need is a permanent internet link.
I see two main servers with different icons: "lifelesspeople.com" (actually down) and "inkiboo.com" (more servers on the OSI WebRing).
You will have to create each icon separatly: you must select the medium (the instant messaging network), fill the user id (your id on this IM network) and the addresses to online and offline icons (it's a good idea to put them on your website to minimize the loading time of your page).

Example of the HTML code needed for AIM (note that the online and offline adresses for icons must not contain "http://"):

In conclusion I can say that I am very impressed by the Online Status Indicator, particularly the click-and-contact functionality: if you click on one of the presence icons while having your instant messaging client opened, you will be able to send a message to your contact (for AIM and Y!M, using their respective protocols via a web link, generating the appropriate data flow via the OSI server for ICQ and MSMm).

However I think a complete hosted-on-your-MTBlog Perl solution could be nicer. But this is another story I would tell to you later this year...

I have fixed a small bug in the stylesheet of this website. Now you can comfortably look at the archives of this blog. But I definitively do not know when I will find time to go on with the refactoring...

This week I will start to publish on this weblog a series of entries entitled “The Making-Of a Blog”. After weeks of reading blogs and design tips for websites, I think it is time to write entries about the way I am conducting the design of my website.
For the moment, this site does not successfuly display itself on every browsers. It's a problem but I need to find a lot of time to correct the templates. Even the design of this site will soon dramaticaly change.
I will begin my series of tutorials explaining how to add functionalities like resume, calendars, archives, syndication and metadata handling, referers, photo bars and other cool features... I will try to use the better methods to produce a clean result, always refering to the best weblogs around. The first blog I saw which made me scream: “What an amazing design!” is owned by Kevin Lynch; so you are right if you think that the design of my blog came from him.
Kevin Lynch was mainly inspired by Jason Kottke (kottke.org) for the linking icons and by Jeffrey Veen's weblog for the general design (a top bar with your name, a right side bar with your personal info, like the Meg Hourihan's weblog "megnut.com"). For the name of my blog, I choosed to sound like the well known (although incredible) "Russell Beattie Notebook".
However you will see at the end that my influences are numerous...

Many of these tips will find their room in my upcoming PHP book about group-blogging.

Sorry for my lack of entries this week... I was very busy sleeping or thinking (it depends on the point of view). I will try to fix this state of my timetable beginning... right now!

This website is under heavy reconstruction.
I will explain all in the following days, publish my scripts and templates, and give my inspirations.
But for the moment, you shall consider this website as a work in progress (best viewed at this time with Phoenix)!
Thank you.

Hum… No post for such a long time… I need to find time to post… I need :)

Yo!
This is my first post on this weblog, MY weblog!
I will try to improve it with the time (and to improve my english the same time lol).
I hope to have my own look'n'feel before the end of this month… I hope…