Steve's photography habit
Something I enjoy. I have a few photos posted here.See http://donie.homeip.net:8080/album/You'll need a password to see them. Email me and tell me who you are and why I should let you see all my pictures, and I may let you in.As described on my home page, I keep all my family photos in subversion and I have an automated system that publishes them here. One thing that helps me enjoy them is my electronic photo frame.
At one of my previous jobs, I was able to buy a broken Compaq laptop (I think it is a Pentium III 200 MHz or so) for $1. Turns out the problem was a bad hard drive. So I put a new one in it, removed the case completely, and flipped it so that the screen and the motherboard were back to back. I got a piece of thin hardboard and cut a hole the size of the screen, and hot-glued the screen to it so it showed through nicely. The hardboard was sized to fit inside a deep 'shadowbox' picture frame I got at Big Lots. epoxied to the back of the hardboard are a couple of pieces of 1/4" square steel that are the mounts for the motherboard. It has a WiFi card in it for wireless network access, a wireless keyboard and mouse hidden nearby (I use it for web surfing and checking gmail all the time), and runs Windows XP Pro. The photos are just shown using the Windows XP "My Pictures" screensaver. It shuts off the screen after 4 hours or so. If I want to see the photos, I just jiggle the mouse and then after a minute the show starts.One of the cool things is that my automated system for building the photo albums builds a version of the album optimized for the photo frame. Every night, the frame pulls down the latest photos using robocopy. I have even set it up for my brother, who lives in New York. When he plugs in his camera, it automatically downloads the pictures from his camera to his computer. We set up FolderShare and it automatically copies his pictures to my server, where CruiseControl detects the change and builds his photo album. Those also show up on my photo frame, which lets me see new pictures of my neice almost as soon as he takes them!Pretty slick, I must say.
At one of my previous jobs, I was able to buy a broken Compaq laptop (I think it is a Pentium III 200 MHz or so) for $1. Turns out the problem was a bad hard drive. So I put a new one in it, removed the case completely, and flipped it so that the screen and the motherboard were back to back. I got a piece of thin hardboard and cut a hole the size of the screen, and hot-glued the screen to it so it showed through nicely. The hardboard was sized to fit inside a deep 'shadowbox' picture frame I got at Big Lots. epoxied to the back of the hardboard are a couple of pieces of 1/4" square steel that are the mounts for the motherboard. It has a WiFi card in it for wireless network access, a wireless keyboard and mouse hidden nearby (I use it for web surfing and checking gmail all the time), and runs Windows XP Pro. The photos are just shown using the Windows XP "My Pictures" screensaver. It shuts off the screen after 4 hours or so. If I want to see the photos, I just jiggle the mouse and then after a minute the show starts.One of the cool things is that my automated system for building the photo albums builds a version of the album optimized for the photo frame. Every night, the frame pulls down the latest photos using robocopy. I have even set it up for my brother, who lives in New York. When he plugs in his camera, it automatically downloads the pictures from his camera to his computer. We set up FolderShare and it automatically copies his pictures to my server, where CruiseControl detects the change and builds his photo album. Those also show up on my photo frame, which lets me see new pictures of my neice almost as soon as he takes them!Pretty slick, I must say.