Photon

First off, I wanna thank Gavin Steele for figuring out a problem on Photon, it’s in the “Access Point” section of the blog configuration. Second is that he told me he’s gonna spread the love by making a screencast of the plugin from download to usage. Lastly, thanks for that donation you gave me. I really really appreciate it, man!

Also an announcement: I’m currently in the process of transferring from a Mac Desktop development company to a full-web/PHP development company, so that means I won’t have access to my own mac starting next week. I know I haven’t been updating Photon lately (as much as I wanted to) but I’m in uber-focused code mode for Xackup Inc. for the past few months, and I’m really sorry for not answering most of the support issues you posted here. I am planning to buy a new Mac soon, but not too soon, to play around with iPhone apps, Mac apps and Photon. My focus will be Photon just to move it to version 2 status.

Good news is, I’m still into updating Photon and maintaining it… just needed to save up and earn ‘coz I’m just a lowly developer here in the Philippines, that’s why I needed to focus for work. XD I will still be focused on my next work, but it’ll give me more time for “me time” and hopefully let me play around with Mac code again.

So I guess I’ll leave you guys for now, with hope for a new release when I come back (and I’ll cut a finger off if I didn’t come up with a version on October).

Good news peeps! I’m back on the mac, and will try all my best to continue Photon. I heard more about incompatibility problems, and I would want your input about the existing version, things to improve on, etc.

I’m sorry to those who emailed me and I failed to give my response. I was undergoing some life-changing stuff, and realized I want to be back “home”. Hopefully I could service you guys some more with Photon.

(Shameless Plug)

Those who are kind enough to donate this Christmas, you will all be so appreciated. Also, not only I’m back for the Mac, but am also planning to go the iPhone path. I’d like to write a Photon equivalent for the iPhone. Hopefully that’s something the peeps from Apple would approve.

Anyway, I guess I’ll be hearing from you guys more. And thanks for those who are unrelenting enough to “keep the fire burning”.

I’m broke and just had a new job. My new job doesn’t require me to do Mac OS X programming, and I lost my one and only Bella (Macbook Pro) from my previous job (which is Bandwagon). Actually, Bella is not mine, it’s Xackup’s and I can’t afford such a computer.

Unless I get a donation machine from you guys, Photon Development is still on-hold. I have tons of dreams for Photon (like a free iPhone version), and, though this is kind of an indecent way to ask for donations,your help will be so much appreciated.

I really wanna go on doing Photon, especially now that I’m not doing anything Mac as of the moment.

Just fixed a few bugs inside the XML-RPC encoder. Apparently, I saw code inside the XML-RPC library itself where NSNumbers were forced or typecasted as NSStrings which is a big no-no. Changed the casting part to [nsnumberinstance description]. Still wondering why it worked before.

Anyway, the XML-RPC library is really old. Didn’t change the library, though. Just tweaked it a bit.

As for the moment, I’ve already uploaded version 1.2.1 beta. Once I’m assured that things are OK will I only remove the beta mark.

I’m open for suggestions for Photon version 2. Please leave your comments below. One of my plans for version 2 is the grid-style thumbnail gallery I mentioned before. One MovableType user requested this, and I really think it’s neat.

As for the current version, please start testing. If it seems to not work, please make sure that:

1. The “Entry Creation” tab inside the blog settings pane has entries in it. If none, then click the “+” button below the blog listing, and remove the just-created item using the “-” button.

2. “Categories” dropdown inside the Weblog tab, of the Export pane, is not stuck to “Retrieving…”. If it’s stuck to that or crashes, please send me the crash reports.

That’s all folks!

Just adding more pictures of the Tidal Pool we saw along the way.

Enjoy!

This is the first time we saw the tidal pools.

Huge coral formations!

Dead coral formations. Really spiky!

Lots of blue colors!

If you see this post, together with a couple of pictures from my Pagudpud trip last week, then Photon is definitely working for Leopard and iPhoto ‘08 latest version.

Shortly after this post, I will be posting Photon version 1.2.1 on the downloads section, and tomorrow, I will be putting up the Photon SVN repository.

This is the Kaibigan Falls. Kaibigan literally means "friend".

This is (technically) my boss, together with his wife.

I’ve received so many emails about Photon being public, with source easily downloadable, even people offering tens of dollars just to keep the ball rolling. I’d be a hypocrite if I say I don’t like these offers (kinda tempting, though), but in the spirit of Open Source, and since the technology is not really mine, I’ll open up a subversion repository of Photon within the week.

I’m really sorry if I’m not updating Photon lately. I’m just so busy with a lot of stuff. But last week, I just had a short time debugging what’s really wrong with Photon, and I found out that there is something weird about the XML-RPC message created by the plugin. The XML-RPC library used by the plugin was pretty old, and I also used it on one of my projects, Bandwagon. I was forced to use other XML-RPC libraries for Bandwagon because the XML-RPC library seem to have problems encoding “data” nodes in XML-RPC.

Anyway, to make the long story short, I am planning now to move to a new XML-RPC library, change a few UI behavior, and implement the “grid-type gallery” I’ve been promising since I started this project.

For those guys who were left in the dark, I’m really sorry. Please wait for the subversion repository and the next update. Hopefully this week (clearing up my sched just to finish this thing).

Should I just remove the donate button then? I feel so uneasy putting it there… feel like I don’t deserve having it there as of the moment.

Technorati Tags: photon, leopard

I dunno if this is really done in bad taste, but somehow I really need input to at least motivate myself from doing this plugin. I can’t put a price on this because this is open source, and never in my dreams will I ever think about doing that. Besides, it’s not a fully-grown, fully-functional plugin. That’s why I will just let you guys decide how much you could give me to keep on doing this.

My only problem with setting up a donate button is the country where I live. We don’t have PayPal donations here, and I have to setup a 2CO account in the near future, just in case. As of now, what i only have is a Xoom.com account, it’s pretty much like a “Philippine Bank Accounts” and PayPal interconnectivity system, so you guys might be shocked by the interface that you will see upon payment. The downside on using Xoom is that you could only donate at least $28.50. I dunno about Paypal, but that may be caused by me living here in the Philippines, that Xoom should at least have, I think, $3.50 for shipping to make money. I’m really sorry about that.

Anyways, just tell me whether I should stop putting up the donate button, and focus on the working. OK? Otherwise, if you know other ways to put up a donate button, and at the same time has a lower minimum value, then buzz me in the comments section.

UPDATE: Now, I got me a Paypal Donation button (sigh).

As of now, the current Photon Plugin’s Leopard compatibility hasn’t been fool-proofed yet, but I’m currently working on it right now, including the grid view, and the iPhoto crash caused by this plugin. Please keep track of the updates. Hopefully I’ll come up with a version before the month ends.