On a related note to releasing the much improved v2.0 of Flickr Schedulr, I just noticed that the previous release got mentioned in the BBC's Webscape reviews.

How awesome is that?!

It shows a quick tour of what the application does and how it works. And note that the part where they set up the Windows scheduled task is no longer necessary in v2.0 since that's now baked in :-)

Ok maybe it's not just released but still I'm happy to finally put the word out that you can now install Mayando v1.2 directly from the Microsoft Web Application Gallery!

Mayando is a full-featured photo blogging application that you can use to showcase your photos online.

What's new in this release:

• Dates on photos are now hyperlinks to other photos taken or published on the same date.
• The Flickr photo provider no longer synchronizes machine tags (because they are not intended to be displayed).
• You can now configure the photo provider to synchronize automatically at regular intervals (e.g. every 60 minutes).
• You can also use a command-line client application (or if you're a developer, a client API) to remotely trigger a photo provider synchronization through the use of a new Service API.
• You can now filter the event log by severity.
• Mayando is now compatible with ASP.NET "medium trust" hosting providers.
• You can now disable distributed transactions (in the AppSettings.config file) if your hosting provider does not allow them. Note that this can cause data loss and/or corruption so only change this if you accept the risks associated with disabling transactions.

If you want to see it running: check out the Mayando Demo Site or of course my own photo blog.

Since it’s been almost two years since my last blog post, I figured I owed the remaining 3 subscribers of my blog a short update on what I have been up to...

#1 – Maya

There have indeed been a couple of interesting things going on, and first and foremost, that would include the birth of our amazingly beautiful and unbelievably cute daughter Maya in June last year :-)

She just turned one year old this week, so time flies indeed! If you would be interested in seeing some more pictures, then I’m sure you can figure out where her own website would be located if you studied the incredibly complicated naming pattern I used to locate my own website :-)

#2 - Mayando

Because Project #1 called for a way to keep the family up to date and to regularly show off exactly how cute Maya is, and (almost equally importantly) because I was looking for an excuse to learn ASP.NET MVC, I decided to write a photo blogging web application. “What, another photo gallery site”, you might ask? Eh, yeah, exactly. But in my defense: I looked hard at the existing ones and couldn’t find one that covered my requirements so this is one I built to fit my needs :-)

Nonetheless, I didn’t just want to build a one-off “baby web site for Maya”, but really a generic application that I could also use later on use as the engine for my own photo blog – and that you, dear reader, might also want to use if you want to publish a collection of photos in a nice and user-friendly way. (For example, I have an architect friend who is interested in using it as a portfolio site for the houses he designed.)

And so, Mayando was born: a full-featured photo blogging application that you can use to showcase your photos online.

Now I did not want to reinvent solutions to the problem of globally storing and serving images on the web, so I figured that I should only build a rich front-end on top of existing photo storage services such as Flickr. So I built a provider model where the URL’s of the photos and their details (and comments) just get “sucked in” from a photo sharing site and you can work with them from your own website. So basically, the photos get pulled in from a service such as Flickr and then displayed through Mayando, using a lot of navigation possibilities (by creating static pages and dynamic galleries, by browsing through photos, comments, tags, dates, ...).

It also allows visitors to post new comments and obviously I needed to handle comment spam so again I implemented a provider model for anti-spam services (such as Mollom).

And finally, the whole thing had to be easily customizable so I made sure to allow different themes for the photo blog’s look and feel, with customization options ranging from simple (e.g. simply changing the CSS stylesheet) to advanced (completely changing the entire site layout and/or individual pages). Thankfully, by now I know that the ASP.NET MVC framework is so flexible it easily let me do all this with surprisingly little effort. Anyway, I won’t go into the many details – if you’re interested in how it works: it’s open source so feel free to look at the Mayando source code and let me know if you want to contribute!

If you just want to see it running: check out the Mayando Demo Site or of course my own photo blog :-)

#3 – Flickr Schedulr v1.4 & v2.0

Because Project #1 and Project #2 meant I would be using Flickr more, I figured it was also time to give my Flickr Schedulr application an update to incorporate feedback from a number of users.

In case you’re wondering what it is: Flickr Schedulr is a Windows desktop application that automatically uploads pictures to Flickr based on a schedule (e.g. to post a new picture every day at a certain time). It allows you to create a queue of pictures to be uploaded, along with their titles, descriptions, tags, and the photosets and groups into which they should end up.

I published v1.4 last January; new features include the possibility to upload multiple pictures at a time in batch, better handling of multiple selected files and overall UI improvements.

I’ve also been working really hard on v2.0 which is a complete rewrite of the application in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and as such looks and feels so much nicer in many ways than the previous version. It will also have a few new features of course. I’m still polishing some things but you can expect to see a release in the next few weeks.

Since I’ve been very happy with CodePlex for my other projects, I decided to move the source code and work items there and lo and behold: here is the new Flickr Schedulr homepage on CodePlex!

#4 – Proxy Monitor

Last October, the trend continued: another release around a year after the last one. This time, I got the help from David Huntley, who was kind enough to finally get something off my list I’ve been planning to do for a while now: properly setting the proxy via the Win32 API’s instead of just writing to the registry. This more robust way of setting the proxy came for free with the new feature he implemented, which is support for multiple connections. This allows you to specify proxy servers for other connections than the default LAN (such as dial-up or VPN connections).

To make it easier to work together, I decided to move this project to CodePlex as well. So for all information, downloads, forums, etc. go to the new Proxy Monitor homepage at CodePlex!

#5 – The NOT Part

So after a small list of things that I have been up to the last two years or so, it’s quite clear what I have not been up to: blogging. And that’s probably going to stay that way. I either have too little to say (which is increasingly the case), or too much (which would take too much time to write down). So honestly, I expect this would be the last entry on my blog for quite a while – if not eternity.

In case it becomes the latter: thanks for having followed my random thoughts for the last 7 years, and if you want to keep up with what I’m doing on the technical side of life, follow my projects on CodePlex:

• Mayando
• Flickr Schedulr
• Proxy Monitor
• BuildCop
• Configuration Section Designer
• Mollom for .NET

If you want to keep up with the non-technical side, check out my photography site - <plug>based on Mayando of course, and updated with the help of Flickr Schedulr</plug> :-)

No, don't worry, this site hasn't been hijacked, it's really just me again ;-)

I know it's been a very long time since I posted any actual content here on the blog and any new pictures over at my Flickr site (it's been exactly 7 months actually), but today I'm at least getting started again on the hobby side of things again (well, they're both hobbies but let's say the one I'm not getting paid for :-) ): I've got lots of new pictures lined up to go to Flickr every other day from now on, so keep an eye on my pictures' RSS feed and feel free to give me lots of comments!

I'm also including a bit of text with each picture from now on to give it some more background, which should also help explain the sometimes cryptic titles I tend to give them :-) I do prefer not to give away too much though, so you'll hopefully look at them a bit longer while you try to figure it out...

Here's the first one, but all the other ones will be posted only on Flickr so please do subscribe if you have an aching desire to tell me what you hate about them!

I Will Give You My All

A beautiful sight near Bunarkaig (Scotland), where the River Arkaig runs selflessly into Loch Lochy.

I've posted my photos of last Sunday's Photowalk in Brussels at my flickr site. It was definitely a fun day, since I didn't know Brussels that well at all and we hiked around for some lesser known spots. Did you know there's a cannonball in St. Nicolas' Church that's been embedded into a pillar since 1695? Did you know you could get a great view over Brussels from the roof of Parking 58? Did you know there's also a statue of a peeing dog, Zinneke Pis, just like Manneke and Janneke Pis? I sure didn't.

Now I must assume that all of you already knew that, since none of you actually showed up :-) Apart from the people I brought and Jan Tielens, that is. So what happened? No interest? No time? Bad weather? (It wasn't!) Showed up but didn't recognize us? Badly organized? Let me know so I can do better if I were to try again some time :-)

If you're interested in joining the Brussels Photowalk, this is the final date and place:

Sunday 4th of March, 10:30 A.M.
Main hall of Brussels Central Station

See also the event tracking on upcoming.org. You don't need to register there or comment on the blog here, but it would be nice to have some idea of how many people to expect.

I want to stress that anyone is welcome (you're not required to have a €3000 camera to join, so don't hold back even if you have a cellphone camera or if you can draw really really fast). I'm also expecting some non-geeks, so don't be afraid to bring your wife, mistress or photoshop-agnostic uncle.

See you there!

UPDATE: The final date and place is Sunday March 4th, at 10:30 A.M. in the main hall of Brussels Central Station. See also the event tracking on upcoming.org. Bring whoever you want and see you there!

It's been a while since I kicked off something stolen from across the pond, but Jan Tielens had the great idea of doing a Belgian Photowalk, so I'll happily broadcast it here and hope that we can get a lot of people aboard!

Actually, we don't really know what the 'mericans mean by "photowalking" but our version of it is pretty plain and simple:

If you're interested in photography, let's get together for a day to walk around some place, have some fun and and shoot some pictures!

Digital or film, beginner or pro, cellphone, compact or SLR camera, kilopixels or megapixels, Java, .NET, php or Cobol, it doesn't matter - you're all welcome as long as you're interested and can cope with people stopping every 10 seconds to take pictures ;-) So it's nothing official, it's not a course, it's just a day to hang out with some fellow passionado's, have some fun, get to know some new people, exchange ideas and tips, and make some great pictures.

So here's the plan: we meet in Brussels (a central location with lots of nice photographic opportunities) on Saturday 3rd or Sunday 4th of March at 10 A.M 10:30 A.M at the main hall of Brussels Central Station. We go on a nice tour through the city, have some lunch, walk around some more, and of course take lots of pictures. If you put them online afterwards (e.g. on flickr) we can tag everything and have a nice tagged collective memory of a lovely day :-)

If you want to join us, leave a comment with the following details:

- You and how many of your friends (you did invite all your friends, didn't you?)?
- Do you prefer Saturday 3rd or Sunday 4th of March?
- Any good ideas where we can start our walk? I guess near the central station would be best, but I don't know Brussels well enough to make good suggestions on a starting place and an interesting route we can follow.
- Other brilliant ideas to make this an even bigger success?

Let's hear from you and get those ideas rolling!

If you'd be at all interested in another part of me than the technical stuff that's been dominating this blog for the past few years, feel free to check out my pictures on Flickr or subscribe directly to my photo feed. I've decided against publishing everything here as well, so all my photos will be visible on Flickr only.

Since the last picture I posted here, I've bought a brand-new Nikon D80 a few weeks ago and I'm so pleased with this digital reflex camera (in a kit with a 18-135mm DX lens) that I can't stop trying out new things, reading and re-reading books on digital photography and just basically feeling up the machine :-) So if you know of any courses (near Antwerp, Belgium), great books or websites I might check out, please let me know! And if you have a strong opinion and want to help me learn: please comment on my Flickr photos!

(A picture I took during a one day course on black-and-white digital photography this weekend. Dries has a picture of Paula's Bear too.)