I was able to go to see UK hiphop artist TY co-headline with The Bamboos for their Album Launch at Sydney venue The Forum (opposite The Hordern Pavilion at Moore Park) as a photographer for InTheMix. As such my photos have also been published there.

The full photoset is also available on flickr (mind you, there are 47 there and 650 shots taken at the gig ;))

The Bamboos

These guys play that long lost sound of funk. Absolutely awesome live music that can fit in in so many locations.

TY

Absolutely phenomenal live act.

Support Acts

Australia, Bands, funk, gig, Hip Hop, Live, Music, NSW, photography, sydney, the bamboos, the forum, ty

MyMileMarker.com (Image: Bryan Veloso)

The team at Sidebar Creative have come up with a genuinely useful little app - My Mile Marker. To date I..m playing with - though the second graph is buggy as all hell (bug noted and filed with the guys in their development forum).

Graphing problems (Image: moi)

another little useful app, bryan veloso, dan rubin, errors, graphing, jonathon snook, my mile marker, screenshots, sidebar creative, steve smith, web app

Headline: The Panda Band (WA)

Support: Cut Off Your Hands (NZ)

Support: Moscow Schoolboy (VIC)

Support: The Mares

Photos for FasterLouder.

band, cut off your hands, faster louder, flickr, Live, Music, photography, south by inner west, the annandale, the panda band, the shake up, the waysiders

8th June, Ship Aground - Lauritzen Bulker, run aground on the reef at Nobbys Beach, Newcastle. (Photo: Matthew Packer)

The Vasco Era @ Northern Star Hotel, Newcastle - 2nd June 2007 - Photo Set

The Vasco Era

Whiskey Go Go's (Supporting Act)

The Vasco Era @ Northern Star Hotel, Newcastle - 2nd June 2007 - Photo Set

Australia, band, flickr, Live, Music, newcastle, northern star hotel, NSW, photography, vasco era, whiskey go gos

So I've had the books in my possession for almost a year now, and I've been picking at it when I've had time and am part way through a "small" project called brewr. As I needed something with a little less degree of difficulty I've decided to develop the backend of jc-photo.net by hand myself and am using the new kid on the block, coding wise, Ruby on Rails. There's plenty of history already written on the group behind it (37Signals). Anyhow, on with the show.

Many to Many Relationships with Details

No, we're not talking about polygamy here, but rather the issues surrounding with linking models together.

Obviously with almost every database model you will be looking to link various bits of disparate data in different tables together. With RoR you have a number of options. There's the has_and_belongs_to_many option, however as a join table this is limited as it gives no option for additional details about that join. Enter has_many :through (and it even has a blog dedicated to it!). Why is this important? Well, imagine you want to replicate flickr's image functionality with tagging, sets and collections.

The Model

Obviously there are a set of relationships. In RoR this could be represented, taking into account a desire to order your sets in collections and images in your sets, by:

class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many  :taggings,:dependent => true
  has_many  :tags, :through => :taggings, :uniq => true

  has_many  :imagesets,:dependent => true
  has_many  :sets, :through => :imagesets, :uniq => true
end

class Set < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many  :imagesets,:dependent => true
  has_many  :images, :through => :imagesets, :uniq => true

  has_many  :setcollections, :dependent => true
  has_many  :collections, :through => :setcollections, :uniq => true
end

class Collection < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many  :setcollections, :dependent => true
  has_many  :collections, :through => :setcollections, :uniq => true
end

class Tagging < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to  :image
  belongs_to  :tag
end

class Imageset < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to    :image
  belongs_to    :set
  acts_as_list  :scope => :sets
end

class Setcollection < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to  :set
  belongs_to  :collection
end

If we look at the case of images in a set by itself, for ease of this write up, we need to add a little handler in there (you'll see why in a bit). This is due to the desire to add an ordering component to our models. This would then alter, slightly, the models to this:

class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many  :taggings,:dependent => true
  has_many  :tags, :through => :taggings, :uniq => true

  has_many  :imagesets,:dependent => true
  has_many  :sets, :through => :imagesets, :uniq => true
end

class Set < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many  :imagesets,:dependent => true
  has_many  :images, :through => :imagesets, :uniq => true

  has_many  :setcollections, :dependent => true
  has_many  :collections, :through => :setcollections, :uniq => true

  def image_ids=(image_ids)
    image_ids.map!(&:to_i)
    setcollections.each do |setcollection|
      setcollection.destroy unless image_ids.include?setcollection.gallery_id
    end
    image_ids.each do |image_id|
      self.setcollections.create(:image_id => image_id, :position => self.setcollections.length) unless setcollections.any?{ |sc| sc.image_id == image_id }
    end
  end
end

class Imageset < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to    :image
  belongs_to    :set
  acts_as_list  :scope => :sets
end

The Controller

So now we have our relationships set up, we need to be able to, say, tag an image with tags. Let us assume that it is done on the editing phase for ease of an example.

def edit_set
  @set = Set.find(params[:id])
  @images = Image.find(:all, :order => "name")
end

We grab all the images (though there may be better ways of handling this part in the long term) in addition to the actual set that we are looking at.

def update_set
  params[:set][:image_ids] ||= []
  @set = Set.find(params[:id])

  if @set.update_attributes(params[:set])
    @set.save
    flash[:notice] = "Set was susccessfully updated."
    redirect_to :action => 'view_set', :id => @set
  else
    render :action => 'edit_set', :id => @set
  end
end

The reason why we defined the function image_ids in the Set model is so that we can use the params[:set][:image_ids] to add or delete image references in the join table. When new ones are added, they are added at the end of the acts_as_list list. The catch here is that you need to force the items in the image_ids array to be integers, not strings (as is passed by the html form). This turned out to be a major debug point for me due to a background in PHP, with it's rather lax type strictness.

The View

Now we need only cycle through the images for the check boxes, pre-checking where an existing join occurs (using the third boolean argument of check_box_tag @set.images.include?(image)). The update phase also takes care of the ordered nature of our set, with new images added after existing. You can then use the methodology well described to move the image reference up or down for each gallery.

< ul >
< % for image in @images %>
  < li >
    < %= check_box_tag "set[image_ids][]", image.id, @set.images.include?(image) %>
    < %= h image.name %>
  < /li >
< % end %>
< /ul >

Conclusion

It took me some time to get to this point, with a major stumbling block being Ruby's more strict method of ensuring variable types are treated differently - namely a string of 1 is not equivelant to an integer 1.

has many, many to many relationship, programming, Rails, Ruby, ruby on rails, through, tutorial

Just recently caught wind of this one. Flickr is a renowned stirrer of the web world with their web application, with previous versions being declared "alpha", "beta" and "gamma".

Now, paying homage (or paying out) the "Jesus loves you" movement from Christendom the flickr crew have declared that they too love you!

..

I'm just awaiting the inevitable howls of protest from the various groups that believe that they own it.

Another classic example of their cheeky nature is in their error messages (which most web2.0 companies seem to have to make light of an error):

At least it brightens up a potentially embarrassing moment a little.

alpha, beta, error, flickr, flickr loves you, gamma, jesus loves you, webapp, yahoo

Let me first preface this by saying that Paul Stamatiou (aka "stammy") has done a great job delving into the slideshow for flickr users and enabling them to easily use it on their blog or site through his new assistive-application flickrSLiDR. That said, it is not without limitations, and while not due to Paul I do believe that the way it works should have been explained.

Flickr Slideshow

The lovely ladies and gents at Flickr (my favourite photo community) created the slideshow a few years back in September 2004 (Introducing Slideshows - September 10, 2004) and it was of course a great success. In spite of this there existed a major limitation, and that was in getting it to show anywhere but at flickr. Enter Paul Stamatiou.

Embedded Flickr Slideshow

In November of 2005 Stamatiou managed to determine a quick technique to embed slideshows in pages beyond flickr (see HOW TO Quickie: Embedded Flickr Slideshows - November 19, 2005), allowing flickr users to have the swish slideshow visible on their site with relevant tags, sets, groups and/or users acting as filters for the photos shown. I used this technique in a post showing the photos from my sisters high school graduation (see Eliza Graduates, November 2006).

Use of the Quick Embedding of Flickr Slideshows courtesy of Paul Stamatiou

The biggest issue is the use of ..s to embed the slideshow. Due to security restrictions on many free blogs and social sites ..s are prevented from being used. Despite the attention at the time, this was not a wide issue, since the uptake in the social sites was not as widespread as it is now, nor for that matter was flickr as popular.

flickrSLiDR

Enter Stamatiou's new assistive-application flickrSLiDR - a tool to assist the creation of the code needed to embed the slideshow from flickr. Despite the upgrade to flickr's slideshow (see flickr.com/photos/jufemaiz/show/), Stamatiou has not yet been able to move to the new slideshow flash file. The same issues also remain regarding embedding options of the .. with free blog software and many social sites (of which the main one that springs to mind would be the security-as-swiss-cheese MySpace). Additionally, due to a wider audience than ever before, Stamatiou failed in his article to fully articulate what he was using and why these methods might fail (and the comments on his post reflect that).

Unfortunately the misinformation goes further, with people not understanding that this is an implementation of flickr's own slideshow tool. With requests including: the ability to play mp3's; add titles and other information; change the colours; change the order of the slides; and randomisation, it is obvious that a disclaimer would be exceedingly useful to be displayed to ensure that people who read the article were not misled over the potential that the flash file may have.

Thanks Stamatiou

While this might seem a little rough on Stamatiou, I hope he doesn't take it as such. I was simply attempting to ensure that people were informed as to how the tool that he had worked on won't get negative publicity for limitations outside of his control. I also believe it would have been wise to ensure that the post included the information on the technical aspect, so it could be referred back to directly to show why the limitations exist (and help prevent rather silly feature requests).

flickr, flickrSLiDR, .., MySpace, Paul Stamatiou

Let me first preface this by saying that Paul Stamatiou (aka "stammy") has done a great job delving into the slideshow for flickr users and enabling them to easily use it on their blog or site through his new assistive-application flickrSLiDR. That said, it is not without limitations, and while not due to Paul I do believe that the way it works should have been explained.

Flickr Slideshow

The lovely ladies and gents at Flickr (my favourite photo community) created the slideshow a few years back in September 2004 (Introducing Slideshows - September 10, 2004) and it was of course a great success. In spite of this there existed a major limitation, and that was in getting it to show anywhere but at flickr. Enter Paul Stamatiou.

Embedded Flickr Slideshow

In November of 2005 Stamatiou managed to determine a quick technique to embed slideshows in pages beyond flickr (see HOW TO Quickie: Embedded Flickr Slideshows - November 19, 2005), allowing flickr users to have the swish slideshow visible on their site with relevant tags, sets, groups and/or users acting as filters for the photos shown. I used this technique in a post showing the photos from my sisters high school graduation (see Eliza Graduates, November 2006).

Use of the Quick Embedding of Flickr Slideshows courtesy of Paul Stamatiou

The biggest issue is the use of ..s to embed the slideshow. Due to security restrictions on many free blogs and social sites ..s are prevented from being used. Despite the attention at the time, this was not a wide issue, since the uptake in the social sites was not as widespread as it is now, nor for that matter was flickr as popular.

flickrSLiDR

Enter Stamatiou's new assistive-application flickrSLiDR - a tool to assist the creation of the code needed to embed the slideshow from flickr. Despite the upgrade to flickr's slideshow (see flickr.com/photos/jufemaiz/show/), Stamatiou has not yet been able to move to the new slideshow flash file. The same issues also remain regarding embedding options of the .. with free blog software and many social sites (of which the main one that springs to mind would be the security-as-swiss-cheese MySpace). Additionally, due to a wider audience than ever before, Stamatiou failed in his article to fully articulate what he was using and why these methods might fail (and the comments on his post reflect that).

Unfortunately the misinformation goes further, with people not understanding that this is an implementation of flickr's own slideshow tool. With requests including: the ability to play mp3's; add titles and other information; change the colours; change the order of the slides; and randomisation, it is obvious that a disclaimer would be exceedingly useful to be displayed to ensure that people who read the article were not misled over the potential that the flash file may have.

Thanks Stamatiou

While this might seem a little rough on Stamatiou, I hope he doesn't take it as such. I was simply attempting to ensure that people were informed as to how the tool that he had worked on won't get negative publicity for limitations outside of his control. I also believe it would have been wise to ensure that the post included the information on the technical aspect, so it could be referred back to directly to show why the limitations exist (and help prevent rather silly feature requests).

flickr, flickrSLiDR, .., MySpace, Paul Stamatiou

Silencing Dissent... fly away? (image: Michael Leunig, The Age)

This week The Sydney Morning Herald has run an article commenting on the Australian Federal Government's claimed Aid Budget and the creative accounting being employed to whitewash our minimal assistance through aid despite the massive income streams we currently get (of course, this is completely due to the Federal Government's single handling of the international economy, in addition to the Australian one). The article was based on a report released by Aidwatch, which is (to quote):

a not for profit activist organisation monitoring and campaigning on Australian overseas aid and trade policies and programs

The report highlighted the money classified as aid that never left the country, and in locations where the aid money is funding Australian activities. The report has been damaging for a government disinclined to provide real aid internationally but desiring to keep face. As has been investigated in the book from Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison - Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate - the Federal Government has a well worn methodology of minimising criticism. These include, in no particular order: character assassination; loss of funding; loss of charitable status; revoking of security clearances; and loss of job. We have not, thank goodness, had a loss of life (or at least a loss of life that the media has caught up on). What I am concerned about with this is not so much the Government's ruthless tactics that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be proud of, but rather the complicity of the media, the Fourth Estate in minimising the outfall.

Interested in what the media had to say on the revocation of charity status by the Australian Tax Office on Aidwatch, or any mention whatsoever of Aidwatch for that matter, in our major media circles I dropped in and undertook a search of a few sites.

Fairfax

Fairfax runs the big newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Financial Review (and a few more smaller papers) on the east coast. Traditionally considered a fairly small-l liberal (as opposed to the capital C Conservative L Liberal Party that has little true liberal progressive nature to it), it does however sway away from the Centre to the Right on many topics. It does maintain a relatively high journalistic standard in comparison with many of the alternatives.

Fairfax ran the original article on aid funding, based on the investigative report created by Aidwatch and has since followed it up with articles on the silencing of dissent through the revocation of charitable status by the ATO.

News Corp

Running news.com.au no doubt ensures that Rupert Murdoch's Australian baby maintains the dominant news outlet in the country. With journalists at The Daily Telegraph and other tabloids writing for a younger reading age than either the broadsheets at Fairfax or the in-house broadsheet The Australian, it would seem that the website is stocked with articles from this group of writers.

When doing a search for Aidwatch, we get a sum answer of zero articles. Even The Australian, which one would assume readers of higher reading age would be interested in, also turns up zip in the search.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Aunty however has run a few reports on the AM program and others on its news feed ensuring that the story does get some attention. The internal search of news also picked the relevant articles and stories.

NineMSN

A search of the Nine-msn group's news service also turns up zip. Given that this is one of the largest online groupings for television this is highly surprising.

Yahoo!7

Thankfully, due to their allegiance with Yahoo! the Yahoo!7 news, actually provided as local Australian content by Yahoo! does turn up some results. When limited to only that provided by Channel Seven, we get a different, though familiar, story - that's right, nothing to see here either.

Ten

Channel Ten doesn't even bother with news. It knows that it isn't the place for it.

SBS

Unlike the ABC, and in stark contrast to perceptions, SBS evidently didn't value the story high enough either to give it any airtime. After all, what's a billion australian dollars.

Conclusion

• Has debate been stifled through a lack of journalistic backbone and integrity? You bet.
• Middle Australia ignoring it? Does it look like this will affect my mortgage repayments?
• Do they care? I wish they did, but I think that they're too busy watching people gain their fifteen minutes of fame to care about the future of this country.

As a result, it seems to me that the Fourth Estate has failed, and failed abysmally. Despite recent attempts to highlight the limited access to information under the Freedom of MisInformation Act, News Corp is ignoring many of the stories that we should be worrying about in a healthy democracy. After all, a healthy democracy and strong Government should welcome a probing media and a Non-Government Organisation sector that maintains accountability and transparency. It is only a weak one that will hide and obfuscate instead.

ABC, aidwatch, Australia, Australian Tax Office, Channel Nine, Channel Seven, Channel Ten, Charity, clive hamilton, democracy, Fairfax, Federal Government, liberal party, msn, News Corp, Politics, sarah maddison, SBS, silencing dissent, The Age, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, Vladimir Putin, yahoo!