Thumbs UP!

Or rather, I eventually got around to uploading that cool GD thumbnail creator cum image viewer thingie. In truth, I'd forgotten all about it, and had left it lying dormant in one of the forgotten corridors of the dev mirror. To rectify this, I popped an "X" in front of its HTML, and slapped it on-site, here.

When the page is first visited, it uses GD to rapidly create a set of thumbnails from a chosen folder of images, along with a database of their names and sizes. Clicking on a thumb pops up a clever pre-sized windoid with the full-size image in it1. Simple as that.

Thumber can operate in stand-alone mode, or as a helper, working in a similar way to the textviewer script, churning out thumbnail galleries for whatever folder you point it at. A simple wrapper to create a " qdig-like" infinite gallery wouldn't be too difficult, methinks. It's not complete, but certainly functional enough to share. What else?

Whilst answering a comment on one of the .htaccess pages, I stumbled into a site-wide .htaccess mod_rewrite update; hoping to finally nail that one-file-suits-both-servers state of being. All this is transparent (I hope!), but I mention it because in the process I threw together a wee Hot-Link tester. If you are messing around with hot-linking code, you might find it handy. I must remember to drop a link into the .htaccess page. Oh! I just did. One sec... Ahh, much better!

I've been working on making some of the /server/ parts more generic, less Mac-centric; following the multi-platform format I used for the static IP page. I have a feeling Google gives extra love to multi-platform-aware sites; I'll likely get detailed about my Google feelings, another day. At any rate, *I* have a lot of love for multi-platform aware endeavours, and will try to cover all the bases wherever possible.

I gave the php man page viewer a make-over while I was in the area (upgrading the debug unit - now with debug-report - my super-handy instant output php debugging tool), and some other stuff.. It's starting to blur together now. WHERE IS MY LIST?2

/me scrolls back through the EditPlus "txtbax" folder.. oh yeah!

The distro machine continues to get subtle upgrades, and is now handling all the old OSX downloads section, too; which leaves only one old-school distro machine left on-site (serving up some of my mp3s). No doubt, another section will appear in the /engine sometime soon, and then, as they say, there was one.

On the subject of numbers, I got around to tarting up the UNIX Timestamp Converter, which is proving popular. It is quite handy, and I'll probably add it to my new services page; collecting together the various handy tools that lie ever-ready to do your bidding. Okay, that's done, too.

This dev-as-you-blog devblog is working out swell. I'll definitely do this again. It's almost as good as a list.

for now..

;o)