Tagging using the Flickr API

My goal for the day was to geotag the mongage images I uploaded last week. Luckily each image title contains the latitude and longitude of the camera so I extracted the data from the title and added it back in the image tags.

Here is what I did:

1. Got a Flickr API key and authentication code from the Flickr services website.
2. Installed Beej’s Python Flickr API.
   1. Downloaded and extracted archive.
   2. Called python setup.py build.
   3. Called python setup.py install.
   4. Edited flickrapi.py to properly call firefox from the Windows command line (added double quotes around the URL in validateFrob).
3. Wrote a python script to extract the title, parse it, and upload the new tags (I started with the test script Beej provides).
   1. It took a while to realize I needed to include both the method and auth_token parameters for the photo.setLocation and photo.addTags methods.

outlook today customization

If you use Microsoft Outlook you should take a look at this “outlook today customization”:http://www.khakipants.org/log/2004/outlooktoday.html that I created a while ago. You can install it by setting your _Outlook Today_ -> _Properties_ -> _Home Page_ -> _Address_ to http://www.khakipants.org/log/2004/outlooktoday.html (or download it and use a file:// URL).

This will then provide a nice view in “Outlook Today”:http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/journ/OutTodayIntro.htm that allows you to quickly view and edit emails and calendar items.

content management systems etc.

For the last week I have been evaluating bids for a content management systems that will be deployed across campus. The plan is for the central IT shop to act as a content management ASP (similar to atomz).

My first impression is that most of these systems are designed for deployment to a single location. Or possibly that is just the most common deployment scenario.

Gosh that was really boring… in other news… I twisted my ankle this weekend at Summer Soaker 3. It was my first ultimate frisbee tournament in about two years and I played well and had fun. Because of the sprain I have been mooching rides off of everyone since I can’t ride my bike. Oooohhh and guess what else… last night I played in the sandbox with my son. I buried his toes in slightly wet sand and then he made them peek out. We also made smoothies (yum) and ate popcorn.

I am also reading Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (the origin of zipf’s law) by G. Zipf. I have seen it cited in many places and figured it was time to read this classic. I really love when the fields of sociology, economics, biology and computer science come together (sorry requires IE). If you want to read it for yourself I suggest your local library because $250 is the best price I found on the web.

provisioning systems

Today I am surveying the market for provisioning systems. Plans are in the works (and have been for a long time) to replace an internal system that is working but which has a bad reputation.

I am not a system administrator (IANASA)… So I am looking around for resources to improve my understanding (especially the appropriate level of granularity):

* “SPML”:http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=provision (Service Provisioning Markup Language)
* “an infoworld article”:http://www.infoworld.com/article/02/10/04/021007feidentity_1.html
* “tivoli identity manager”:http://www-3.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/identity-mgr/ comes with a “reverse engineering guide”:http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/tividd/td/IdentityManager4.4.html
* “bmc”:http://www.bmc.com/products/proddocview/0,,0_0_0_1587,00.html
* “business layers – eProvision Education Edition”:http://www.businesslayers.com/education-tech.asp

What do you use to manage access rights on a disparate hardware and software systems (IATS employees need not respond)?

Do you have any good information resources?

update: added links above based on contributors to the SPML spec.