Haig Armen » Life

Photos From Flickr

Haig — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:48:35 +0000

Lately I’ve been looking for an easy elegant way to bring my photos into my personal haigarmen.com site. I’ve been using Flickr for years and believe it’s still the best photo-sharing web service out there. One of the things that makes it exceptional is it’s robust API (Application Programming Interface), an aspect I’ve been meaning to dig into for a while now. So I decided to pull photos from my Flickr account instead of uploading my photos to the web more than once.

This little PhotoWall project is an effort to understand more about the Flickr API and also see what is possible with Javascript and CSS3. The page works on Safari really well because it uses the cutting edge WebKit technology. Unfortunately the page works poorly on Firefox right now.

I began by reading through the documentation and some examples of how to use it. Then I put together a simple HTML example that pulls my public Flickr photos into a Javascript/CSS3 enabled page. Here it is at http://www.haigarmen.com/photos.

The functionality of the page replicates the popular browser plugin Cooliris and relies on your use of the arrow keys to quickly browse the hundreds of images. I really like the instant updated aspect of this type of interface and a sense of the macro level of the larger photo archive.

Recently there’s been a fair bit of chatter about Flash being unnecessary because HTML5 and CSS3 will surpass it in functionality. I’m not quite convinced of this yet but I think with WebKit some amazing rich interactions are becoming possible.

sorry for the absence

haig — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:12:16 +0000

This is one sadly neglected blog. I’d like to apologize for not keeping up with this publication. Let’s just say I’ve been busy. I do have big plans for this site and I hope to roll them out soon. In the meantime sign up for the mailing list and I’ll let you know what I’ve up to with an announcement.

If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see on this blog, comment below.

Documentary Movie List

Haig — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:58:36 +0000

Last year the International Documentary Association put out a list of the best 25 documentary films ever made. My interest in documentaries has been growing steadily compared to my disinterest in Hollywood flics. If you’re at all interested in docs then this list is a great place to start.

1. Hoop Dreams (1994), directed by Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx
2. The Thin Blue Line (1988),directed by Errol Morris
3. Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore
4. Spellbound (2002), directed by Jeffery Blitz
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), directed by Barbara Kopple
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), directed by Davis Guggenheim
7. Crumb (1994), directed by Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb
8. Gimme Shelter (1970),directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
9. The Fog of War (2003), directed by Errol Morris
10. Roger and Me (1989), directed by Michael Moore
11. Super Size Me (2004), directed by Morgan Spurlock
12. Don’t Look Back (1967), directed by DA Pennebaker
13. Salesman (1968), directed by Albert and David Maysles
14. Koyaanisqatsi (1982), directed by Godfrey Reggio
15. Sherman’s March (1986), directed by Ross McElwee
16. Grey Gardens (1975), directed by Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (2003), directed by Andrew Jarecki
18. Born into Brothels (2004), directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
19. Titticut Follies (1967), directed by Frederick Wiseman
20. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), directed by Wim Wenders
21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), directed by Michael Moore
22. Winged Migration (2001), directed by Jacques Perrin
23. Grizzly Man (2005), directed by Werner Herzog
24. Night and Fog (1955), directed by Alain Resnais
25. Woodstock (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh

I’ve seen 20 of the films from this list. But my favourite doc wasn’t mentioned and that is Fast, Cheap & Out of Control by Errol Morris.

CCI CONFERENCE TALK

haig — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:13:29 +0000

I’ll be presenting a talk on a new topic for me at this year’s Content Convergence and Integration Conference on March 14th. The subject I’ve chosen is Service Design – a new term for designing and integrating all the various touchpoints of a brand into a new networked service.
It’s a fairly new approach to interactive design but one that seems widely accepted in Europe and something I heard a lot of talk about at the London Design Festival I attended in the fall of 2007.
Come on by, the conference is at the Sheraton Wall Centre and has a lot of great speakers.

Tree in a Forest

haig — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:03:16 +0000

I’m curious about genealogy. Maybe it has something to do with being Armenian and having your family tree cut off after only a few generations, but I’ve recently been looking into software to enable genealogy tracking. What I’ve found is the following software:
Family Tree Maker (PC)
Legacy Family Tree (PC)
RootsMagic (PC)
REUNION (Mac)
MacFamily Tree (Mac)

They all seemed somewhat amateur and small, if not completely dated. I realized that this is a perfect opportunity for an online application. After all, you need a community of people inputing data into it, to be effective. Wikipedia had a few open-source genealogy options.

As a trial, I’ve installed phpGedView at treeinaforest.com to give it a whirl. My first impression is that it seems fairly comprehensive but lacking in usability and aesthetics.

Clean Up Time

haig — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:32:03 +0000

This is just a reminder for me to start doing some major cleaning up. It’s been a really busy year and in many aspects there has been a lot of loose ends left behind. The clean up starts now. The list starts here:

My Dreamhost account: lots of stray orphans here. It’s time to round up the unused domains and testing sites, back them up and then throw them to the fire.
Teaching Resources: consolidate all those lectures and online bits of blogs, wikis and such and throw them into a box.
The Lab: a place on my computer for experimentation – Design patterns, colour palettes, sketches, ActionScript code. All will be gathered and organized and backed up.
Goodbye Microsoft: I’ve tried doing this before but now the tools seem to be there to leave the Microsoft software behind.

The Corley Conspiracy

Haig — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:00:58 +0000

As part of the London Design Festival I attended a new opera called “The Corley Conspiracy”. The event was cowritten by a friend and collaborator Sean Starke, who is also part of the MIRROR project that I’m involved with.

Based on a true story that unfolded on Usenet bulletin boards in the early 90’s, the piece which I would hardly call an opera as its delivery is more like a play with actors speaking and accompanying music is a portrayal of a paranoid mind that raises unsettling questions about a society under surveillance. Both disturbing and darkly comic, the show was entertaining and intelligent with some great comedic moments and high calibre acting.

Congratulations Sean, nice work.