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To all Zenphoto users - Zenphoto has a new release out yet again, 1.1.3! This version has much improved setup, which now does a systems check and lets you know if anything needs to be fixed before installation. It’s much easier and more intuitive than before, so it should help anyone get started easily. There are many other improvements and bugfixes as well, but instead of talking about them here, I’m going to direct you to the release entry on the new Zenphoto.org web site!

That’s right, Zenphoto.org has a new design and new useful features, like a blog, theme browser, and showcase gallery that shows off some great Zenphoto installations from around the web. The new site was designed and developed by Malte (acrylian) and Mark (aitf311) and looks excellent! Make sure to go check it out.

Since Zenphoto has a new blog, the release announcements will now be made there instead of here. I’ll keep making entries here for each release right now, but please switch your RSS feeds to the new one, located here: http://www.zenphoto.org/category/release/feed/. It should be the main source for Zenphoto information from now on. The main blog can also be found at http://www.zenphoto.org/category/News/.

Congratulations yet again to the Zenphoto team for the new site and another great release. We hope you enjoy it. Happy holidays!

Following last week’s highly successful and well-reviewed 1.1 release, we’re already keeping up with the bug fixes and improvements.

1.1.2 is a small release that fixes all the reported bugs from 1.1 so far, including some bad installation problems with 1.1.1. It also adds a few useful features. You can read more about it and download it on Zenphoto’s home page, as usual.

Go to Zenphoto.org to download or read more.

Update: 1.1.2 released on 11/8/2007 to fix the installation bugs. If you tried 1.1.1 and it didn’t work, try again with 1.1.2, it should be fine.

I am happy to announce, on behalf of the Zenphoto development team, the release of Zenphoto 1.1!

Go get zenphoto 1.1 now!

First, I’d like to give a warning to upgraders — you’ll need to move your zp-config.php file from the /zen/ folder to the new /zp-core/ folder. We just renamed it, but I know that’s going to be confusing, so I’m reiterating it everywhere I can. After the upgrade you should delete the /zen/ folder.

Ok, now that’s done, here’s what’s new in this release:

• Sub-Albums - fully supported in the Admin and all themes.
• Tags - enter tags in a text field on albums or images, and then you can…
• Search! Searches within tags, album titles/descriptions, image titles/descriptions, and other text fields.
• RSS Feeds for the gallery and albums.
• EXIF/IPTC reading and display - IPTC Titles and descriptions are loaded when images are loaded, EXIF is displayed in a nice table.
• Video support (.flv, etc.) by Zenvideo
• Preliminary Plugin support
• Sp@m filtering for comments
• Geospatial visualization - maps photos by geocoded metadata onto a Google map.
• Image archives by date
• Even more, lots more.

Wow. That’s a lot of new features. And what’s even more incredible is that I cannot take responsibility for any of them. I helped out here and there, but mostly did nothing, as I still don’t have the time to dedicate. The release was made possible by many people, but I want to thank Stephen B. (sbillard), Mark (aitf311), and Malte (acrylian) in particular because they did by far the most work for 1.1.

I know I am never satisfied with anything; I feel like a bad parent to this project sometimes, when at some point I simply should let go and let the new team have their own spotlight. This is that moment. They deserve all the credit and more for the great things in Zenphoto 1.1, while I take full blame for the delay in getting it to you all. There are still some known issues, but none of them are important enough to hold up a release. I apologize for that, and I hope I can do better in the future.

This is truly a great achievement, and I am truly impressed with how it has come together. Look forward to more releases in the future with less time in-between, and for now, enjoy your photographs as displayed by Zenphoto. Thank you.

[Note: due to a bug in Wordpress (which is fixed in 2.3.1 which I just upgraded to) this post couldn't be in the zenphoto category and the 'Release Announcements' category at the same time. Sorry if those of you subscribed to the 'zenphoto' feed didn't hear about it until now!]

November 2nd, 2007.

Sorry folks, needed more testing and a few bugfixes first. Out soon!

This is not HDR in the traditional sense. Any guess what I did to it?

I’m staying in Boston working on my new startup with my business partner, who has a luxurious and geeked out condo here. Boston is a very interesting city. It’s completely different from what I’m used to, the young frontier of San Francisco and Berkeley. There’s a more mature feel to it for some reason, like everyone knows it’s been around for a really long time and they’re proud of it. Or maybe I’ve just been eating at too many upscale restaurants, I’m not sure.

Tonight we ate at a nice little pub in Harvard square called Grafton Street, so I’m practically a namesake. As a matter of fact, though, I’m more of a namesake than the Harvard grads - the names “Harvard” and “Harward” both came from “Here-weard”, old English for “army warden” (thanks to Tara for finding that out for me!). Clearly, “Harward” is closer to the original. I’m glad I didn’t go to Harvard or I would have a hell of a time not being a pretentious prick by explaining that to people every chance I got.

I haven’t done the history tours yet, but I’m really looking forward to it. Even driving around the streets here feels like a history tour, and it’s really cool to be in the middle of it for a bit, even if I am working most of the time.

Development is going fast — we started 4 months ago in Java EE and the Java Server Faces framework, but found it didn’t meet our needs to produce a truly rich user interface with a reasonable amount of effort. More on that later.

Two (working) weeks ago we evaluated our options and switched to Adobe Flex with a Ruby on Rails backend. In two weeks we had caught up with our previous Java prototype and we’ve seen major progress this week beyond our expectations. We’re a lot happier working in Flex and Rails (me especially, being a UI snob and all) and much more efficient too.

I have a few posts I’ve been meaning to write on why we chose the platforms we did. I will surely get to them this week, so stay tuned.

On top of that, we’re making great progress on Zenphoto! I’m sure you’re all happy to hear that finally. Version 1.1 is almost out the door, and it will be the first non-beta feature-complete version of Zenphoto, with tons of new features, bug fixes, speed improvements, and more. It’s looking and working great and staying as simple and elegant as it was from day one. I’d like to thank the whole team for their hard work in making this happen, and all the Zenphoto users out there for being so patient. I’m really impressed with how it’s coming together in a true open source manner.

So, back to Boston - the time change is very annoying. I’m trying to wake up early, but it’s hard to get to bed early enough too. And there’s always something else to do, it never stops. So I had better get to sleep on East Coast time, in my sofa bed in an office walled in whiteboards and computer monitors. Goodnight

Well, Go Bears, we beat Tennessee! That should silence any doubts about the Pac-10. What a game, it was a lot of fun to watch and see all of my old friends all in one place!

My new camera remains awesome, especially for those night scenes. [Nerdy photographer text follows, feel free to skip] I also picked up a 50mm f/2 Macro lens at a great bargain, widely regarded as the best lens available for the Olympus DSLRs, and I was amazed at all the beautiful portraits I got out of it, not to mention how fast it is! If you’ve never used an f/2 or wider lens, I highly recommend it. It sure it something to shoot at ISO100 under stadium lighting and still get 1/80-1/125 shutter speeds. My other lenses (f/3.5-5.6ish) were at ISO800-1600 for that, and the photos were barely passable with all the noise (though the E-510 is great about the noise, much more so than the older models). It certainly is a big step up.

So the point of this post, I guess, is that I’m turning 23 in a couple hours. This is my last post as a 22-year old. Woooo, big deal. Heh. I’m listening to Jimmy Eat World’s “23,” which is appropriate and a great song, and I always promised myself I’d listen to it when I turn 23. “Amazing still it seems / I’ll be 23 / I wont always love what Ill never have / I wont always live in my regrets.” God, that just hits me right now. I guess I’m growing up or something. And I think I ain’t doing half bad.

To my family and friends and everyone who has been a part of my life in the past year, Thank you. Now’s as good a time as any to say it. You’ve all made my life brilliant, and I can only hope I’ve been as good to all of you as you have been to me. Thank you all!

Alright then, now that I’ve said all that, time to have a fun birthday!

A couple nights ago there was a total lunar eclipse visible to most of the world (did you see it?) so I took a few pictures. They came out pretty well:

Not too bad! You can see more in the full album. They were taken with my new Olympus E-510, 40-150mm f/4-5.6 telephoto lens, and a tripod.

I’ve also got pictures from my Yosemite trip up here, I’ll post some to the front page when I get a chance.

Also, if you reading happen to be in the Cal Band, I’ll be working to put up an an album of the 4000-odd photos I took last year of everyone so you can purchase prints. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!