30 May

oh. my. god.

If you are at all into gore films, and like to sometimes watch things that make you squirm with revulsion (isn’t that all of us?), then I can’t think of any stronger film than August Underground’s Mordum. A quick search on just the word mordum will give you a load of reviews, by hard-line horror/gore enthusiasts, agreeing that this is by far the sickest film ever put to film.

I mean it!

And yes, I have seen Guinea Pig 5: Flowers Of Flesh And Blood. Yes, that’s a very very vile and realistic film. This is realer.

It’s made by Toe Tag Pictures, and is basically a video diary of a trio of murderers. The major difference between this film and the Guinea Pig one is the amount of sexual content in it. I won’t describe the atrocities in the film other than to severely recommend that people think hard about how squeamish they are before buying it.

On a humorous note, as the credits were rolling, I felt that all it was lacking was a notice saying “no animals were hurt during the making of this film”, but then the credits finished and the camera played on to show a cat playing with the remains of a mouse. Ah well; that idea goes out the window.

You have been warned.

Hmm… I have no appropriate category to put this under.

29 May

a bit more work on kfm, and thoughts on file tagging

I’ve changed the behaviour of the KFM file manager (demo) to require double-clicks rather than single-clicks, in order to choose a file. This is more in-keeping with how other file managers work.

I’ve also added the ability to select single or multiple files (click a file, then ctrl-click other files to add them to the selection). This is not useful for selecting a file for the FCKeditor, but is most definitely useful when you need to move a load of files to different directories, which I’ll implement soon enough (through drag’n’drop). Note the funky curved borders on selected files :-).

I was thinking about how to implement file-searching earlier, and have a few strategies in mind.

First, I think it should be possible to search by file name (obvious). Every time a file is added, a reference to it would be added to an indexing file, which could be searched quickly to find matches.

I think a more interesting thing, though, is the idea of Tags, where a file could be marked with Tags which describe what it’s for. For example, an MP3 could be tagged as “prog rock”, “comedy”, “spinal tap”, “majesty of rock”. This would allow files to be easily grouped together, despite their being in totally separate directories in actuality.

I have a number of practical applications for that in mind. For example, you could tag a load of images according to certain themes that they portray, and easily produce a gallery of images about one theme (or filtered with multiple tags for a more specifically themed gallery).

I know this isn’t clearly defined. It’s still kind of liquid in my head as well. I’m reading through the beagle website at the moment, as I think it is similar to what I’m trying to define.

As a postscript. I notice that I have just “tagged” this post as belonging to four separate categories. I believe this is similar to what I am trying to do with files – after all, it’s all information, right?

29 May

kfm – today's work

demo – click an icon, then “Browse Server”.

You can now:

  • rename files
  • create sub-directories
  • remove directories

Various protections are in place. You cannot create directories or files which begin with the character ‘.’, or contain a forward slash. You cannot delete directories that contain items. You can’t create or rename a file or directory to one that already exists. You can’t affect the root directories (they’re internal FCKeditor directories).

If you’re interested in this, you can download today’s work here. Feel free to criticise or comment.

28 May

copyright-free movies

here.

I’m watching Buster Keaton’s “The Blacksmith” at the moment. Hilarious. I think the funniest scene has to be when kid pops a little balloon which is holding up a car while its wheel is removed. Charlie Chaplin has nothing on this guy!

28 May

kfm – file uploads and deletes

Today, I added basic file handling tools to kfm (Kae’s File Manager). You can now upload files into any directory you choose, clicking a file will select it for FCKeditor, and you can delete the file with a right-click.

demo – click an icon, then click “Browse Server”.

The only things missing now, before you could consider this a “true” file manager, are the abilities to create and delete directories. That should be simple – a small extension of the code I wrote today. I’ll do that tomorrow, after work.

I’m using PHP sessions to keep track of the current directory. This will have the added bonus of allowing the user to restart the filemanager back into the same directory as they were already in.

While writing the code, I’ve been considering how to handle custom API hooks. I think I have a pretty solid idea of how to do it. When I’ve finished bringing this project up to the same level as the official FCKeditor file manager (should be a few days), I’ll add in those hooks, and see if I can interest any developers in the file manager.

download today’s work.

27 May

file manager for fckeditor – day one

Today, I played around with some code, and got the bare bones of a file manager created. It’s not functional in any meaningful way, but you can see where its going:

demo – click either of the buttons, then “Browse Server”.

Tomorrow, I’ll add file upload functionality, as well as all the right-click stuff I added to the original file manager. Today was really about building a neat, easily extended base.

If you want to mess around and work on it yourself, here is the code: kfm. Just extract it in your /editor/plugins directory, and add this line to your fckconfig.js:

FCKConfig.Plugins.Add('kfm');
27 May

infinite doesn't mean every

I was reading through Slashdot’s article on the crumbling possibilities of space elevators, and came across an interesting quotation:

An infinite universe is no guarantee that everything will happen. There are many infinities. For example, there are an infinite number of numbers between three and four, but none of them are five.

That was interesting to me, as it kind of effects something I am interested in – abiogenesis; the idea that life can appear out of semi-random chemical interaction (i.e.; no God).

One of the most popular arguments against abiogenesis is:

The probability of a self-reproducing molecule appearing by chance is so small that it should be considered impossible.

My favourite argument against that is:

In an inifinite universe, every configuration of molecules is not only probable, but inevitable.

The slashdot quote appears to negate that, by saying that even in an infinite universe, there may be impossible configurations. This is correct, but doesn’t really affect my belief in abiogenesis – my justification can be saved by adding one single word:

In an inifinite universe, every possible configuration of molecules is not only probable, but inevitable.

i.e.; in the original quote, it is impossible to have a number 5 which appears between 3 and 4, even though there are an infinite numbers that do appear between 3 and 4. However, the opposite is true – every possible number which is greater than 3 and lesser than 4 is most definitely part of that infinite set of 3<n<4.

So, if there is a molecular configuration which supports life and is possible to replicate in this universe, then it is inevitable that it will appear at some time, given that the universe is infinite.

26 May

fckeditor and image captions

So anyway, as I was saying…

My FCKeditor file manager hack can now record captions for your images.

demo

Click the Image icon, then “Browse Server”. Right-click an image to edit it.

I’ve mentioned in the FCKeditor forums that I plan to build a full plugin for this, instead of occasional hacks which need to be re-applied every time the official project changes. Here are some solid details of what I will be doing.

  • ajax – cached file lists and directory structures allow for very quick navigation
  • remember the state – what directory you were in, how files were ordered, etc
  • drag’n’drop file re-ordering, to allow for moving files into different directories, etc
  • search function, for quickly sifting through files
  • build captions automatically from EXIF data.
  • add programming hooks so that updates in the file manager (files renamed, resized, moved) can notify any databases that rely on their urls. The hooks must be CMS-agnostic, so that the plugin can be used by multiple CMSes without requiring hacks

There are other features which I’ve mentioned in my office’s internal bug-tracker, but the above is a pretty good list of the things to come.

25 May

js/uix

A javascript U*IX shell.

http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/

Has a very basic version of vim (a quick test shows that some simple commands like “:%s/test/test2/g” don’t work).

Also has an emulation of Space Invaders! Type “invaders” to play.

Doesn’t have auto-complete (hitting TAB in Bash, for example, tries to complete a command or filename that you’re typing), but it’s still good fun.