I’ve been using a lot of stock photos in recent projects, and a good deal of them come from the fantastic SXC.hu. One issue I ran into, however, was that after downloading several dozen, making selections, then eventually using them, I’d usually lost track of where they came from on the site.

Even though the images are royalty- (and for the most part, completely) free, I still like to thank the authors if I’ve used their work in a project. So I thought I’d share this little tip: save the files from SXC.hu with their original filenames. These take the form of something like:

1156122_67969442.jpg

That first number is the ID of the photo, and you can then return to that photo’s page on SXC.hu by inserting the ID into the following URL:

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/<image ID>
e.g. http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1156122

I’ve no idea what the second number is, but it’s probably something equally useful. Anyway, this should help you give credit where it’s due. Group hugs all round.

Started before Christmas, mothballed until last week, finally completed. jayphoto.co.uk, my attempt at a “professional” web front for my photography, is finished.

The site showcases all of the photos available as prints from my deviantART page, while hopefully avoiding some of the slightly less professional elements of the dA site and helping the visitor get through the selection checkout process with the least difficulty. Hopefully it will help me get some exposure and sell some art; my main motivation to get it done was the looming on the horizon of a couple of higher-profile photo jobs that I’ll be tackling in the coming weeks – details will be forthcoming.

Techie note: The Flash used on the main landing page is a heavily modifed version of the “Gallery Tween” sample application included with Flash 8. It reads in a randomly ordered list of image filenames from XML (generated by PHP from the site’s image database) and then displays them on the Stage, using a one-frame loop with ActionScript to shift them from side to side. If people are interested I’m happy to publish the code.

An amusing little piece from TG Daily covering some scary and/or comic clauses in various software End User License Agreements (EULAs).

A message went out on the Peacefire mailing list this morning, announcing a new public “Circumventor” site at stupidcensorship.com. The site is running CGIProxy, which I’ve found to be a decent bit of kit, so all the downtrodden students in need of uncensored web access should give this a go.

I was introduced to some gems this weekend :-D. Pablo Francisco, hilarious comedian – check out the videos on his site, especially the stand-up routine from the Jay Leno show (WMV, RM). This guy had me doing Movie Preview Guy impressions all weekend. The other gem was a classic – Arnold’s Pizza Shop. “If you don’t fuck around, I’ll give you good pizza; if you do fuck around, I’ll take a pepperoni and punch it through your head.” :-)