Yann Muller - yann@darkriver.net

Yann Muller

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:33:50 +0100

When I travel on my motorbike I usually spend the nights in campsites. It is cheaper than hotels or B&Bs and I get spare money for a nice meal. And sometimes the location of the campsite is just fantastic. I have pitched my tent on the seafront in Ireland, at the top of Welsh cliffs, in the French hills and many more beautiful places.

I have been using a Vango Halo 200 tent for several years. Unfortunately during my last trip in the Alps I somehow made a large tear on the flysheet. I tried to repair it but nothing seems to stick very well to the fabric. So I started looking for a replacement.

My friend lent me his tent to try out. It's a hiker's tent by Decathlon. It is light and packs very small while still being a decent size. There is nothing wrong with this tent but I would have to change my habits. The porches are too small to hold my motorcycle panniers. I am used to having access to all my things without going out of the tent. But the little thing that annoyed me is that to keep a door open you have to tie it up to the side otherwise it falls back closed. I just don't have the patience for that sort of things. I decided to replace my old tent with the updated version of the same model.

The current model of the Halo 200 has gained a new Pro moniker and is a lot more expensive. It is not obvious why. The flysheet uses a stronger fabric and that is a clear improvement after the demise of my previous tent. Vango claims that the poles are more eco-friendly but does not elaborate. Not a word on whether they are as strong as before. Considering that the ends are now made of plastic I would guess not. Also the poles are longer than on the old model when folded. That is incredibly annoying as pack size does matter.

I can't be sure that the groundsheet is thinner than it used to be but it does feel like it. The fabric is a bit translucent and appears fragile. I hope it doesn't get damaged as soon as I pitch the tent on rough ground. In other disappointing changes, the plastic ring on the inside that was so convenient to hang a little torch is gone. Instead there are two minuscule fabric loops at will of course serve the same purpose but they are so impractical. Also impractical is the packing bag. The opening along the length of the bag is supposed to make it easy to pack but the bag is just too big so it is almost impossible to pack small. The new flysheet is a very dark grey and I am a bit worried that it will make the tent very hot in the sun.

This is almost the same tent as I used to have but not quite. Overall it seems like a downgrade. There has been a fairly obvious cost-cutting exercise. I will soon find out how the tent holds up on the road.

travel gear

Yann Muller

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 16:30:21 +0100

I didn't keep up with updating the site during my trip. But now I'm slowly preparing a trip report with photos and comments.

Road trip day 4

Yann Muller

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 21:38:08 +0100 last edited: Tue, 05 Jun 2018 21:39:51 +0100

A morning in Freiburg.

Also a walk in the Wutachschlucht and the evening in Konstanz.

Road trip day 3

Yann Muller

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 22:05:47 +0100

Schwarzwald or the art of doing too much in one day

Baden-Baden, the Schwarzwaldhochstraße, lots of minor roads and a family dinner : more than we could handle.

Road trip day 2

Yann Muller

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:41:23 +0100

Crossing the Vosges on the way to Alsace.

Road trip day 1

Yann Muller

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:39:50 +0100 last edited: Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:40:15 +0100

First leg of the trip to the Champagne area.

Yann Muller

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 14:47:48 +0100

Fully loaded and ready to go.

ebu2srt subtitle converter

Yann Muller

Fri, 11 May 2018 12:49:28 +0100 last edited: Fri, 11 May 2018 13:47:18 +0100

I finally got around to publishing my EBU-TT-D subtitle converter to github. The code is distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I need subtitles to watch Tatort in German but the subtitle format provided by the Mediathek is not supported by most media players. As I couldn't find a tool to convert the broadcast format to something simpler and in general use, I wrote my own. Converting to SRT was the easiest but it shouldn't be too difficult to support more output formats.

https://github.com/y-muller/ebu2srt

ebu2srt is a simple subtitle converter for EBU-TT-D format.

I'll add binary releases soon. I also wouldn't mind some help creating a Debian package.

freesoftware

Camping and walking on Gower

Yann Muller

Tue, 08 May 2018 15:45:33 +0100

A great weekend of camping and walking on the coastal path on the Gower peninsula.

More photos...

photography uk

Alimentazione e quello che sta intorno

Wed, 09 May 2018 16:35:42 +0100

Thank you for sharing !

Yann Muller

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 12:38:03 +0100

Going back a few years in the archives, I added a trip report from a long business trip to South Korean in late 2013. Working there was soul crushing but I had enough time to discover a fascinating country and its people.

travel photography

Stephan Maus

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 22:56:41 +0100

Very nice!

Yann Muller

Sat, 28 Apr 2018 17:00:06 +0100

Helping with the lighting and stage at Woodcode Amateur Drama Society.

Yann Muller

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 21:42:54 +0100 last edited: Sun, 29 Apr 2018 12:38:32 +0100

Two more trip reports added to the travel section: across France in 2017 and 2016, avoiding main roads and the shortest route.

travel photography

Yann Muller

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 14:34:20 +0100 last edited: Sun, 15 Apr 2018 14:44:35 +0100

Welcome to darkriver.net. I now have a proper server to host my Hubzilla-based website.

There is not much content yet, but to get started, here is a trip report from my travels to Ireland last year. Read it or just look at the pictures. Then start planning for your own trip!

darkriver travel photography

Brian Christensen

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 18:18:07 +0100

This is a very nice report. Definitely makes me want to plan a trip there myself.

Yann Muller

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 00:18:05 +0100

My schema for the redbasic theme is coming along nicely, considering I don't really know where I'm going with it. Some of the blue tints coming from bootstrap are difficult to get rid of.

h.ear.t

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 18:23:12 +0100

I quite like your basic direction, it's somewhat near what I'd do today.
I used to do a Friendica theme back in the days, long gone and I even do no longer remember what it looked like, which is a pitty somehow.

Yann Muller

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 19:51:47 +0100

Thanks. I'm fairly pleased with the schema so far. I managed to get rid of most of the blue highlights now.
But I'm going to struggle to give it some polish as I've more or less reached the end of my design skills. ;)

Android without a Google account

Yann Muller

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 17:47:54 +0100

I have started an article about using Android without a Google account for enhanced privacy.
I'll keep updating it with more details and useful apps...

android

API for photo albums

Yann Muller

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 16:26:59 +0100

!Hubzilla Support Forum
Hi all,
I'm using the Zot API to build a sorted list of photos in an album. I found a solution with the /api/z/1.0/photos API but it is probably not ideal. It returns all the photos in the database. I then filter them with the album name and imgscale 1, etc... It is fine now that I have a few pictures only but I don't know if it will be usable once the number of photos grows.

Anybody has a better idea?

I'm converting some existing pages with lots of pictures to HZ. Adding the photos one by one from the albums is very tedious so I'm just automating things a bit. The zmg tag is easy since the database gives out the src with a full path. For a zrl tag, I think I need to construct it with resource_id and the path to the albums. I can hardcode the path for now but I'd rather do something that works on any HZ install.

show all 7 comments

Mario Vavti

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:24:31 +0100

Not sure if i understand what you try to accomplish. Have you considered using webdav to move your photos to Hubzilla?

Yann Muller

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:57:05 +0100

I didn't explain very well. Adding the photos to the albums is not a problem, with the upload tool or with WebDAV. It's adding correctly formatted links to those photos in a webpage that is painful. From the webpage editor, images can only be added one at a time, unless I missed some other way.

So my strategy was to have a script generate all the links for me, copy that into the page (or post) then add some text in between the images.

My script works reasonably well now but I still have a hardcoded path that I would like to get rid of. I'll publish the script and it should make more sense.

Yann Muller

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 18:34:04 +0100 last edited: Tue, 03 Apr 2018 15:22:01 +0100

My script is here: https://www.moonskin.org/articles/yann/hz-photos-orderedalbum

I managed to get rid of the hardcoded link. It might get slow when I have a lot of photos in my albums but for now it does what I need.

Edit: I've updated the script with Mike's suggestion in case someone finds it useful. It is a bit slower on a small database but it should be a big improvement on large photo collections.

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum)

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:30:20 +0100

You can take a look at adding the Portfolio widget to your webpage.

Yann Muller

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:42:39 +0100

Thanks for the tip. I'll have a look. I've not had a chance yet to try widgets or modifying the layout.

Mike Macgirvin

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 21:03:28 +0100

A possibly more efficient method would be to fetch /api/z/1.0/albums first to get the list of albums and then enumerate each of those with /api/z/1.0/photos?album=xxxxx replacing xxxxx with the urlencode: entry for each desired album

Yann Muller

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 22:23:12 +0100

That's just what I was looking for. Thank you.

Photo album issues

Yann Muller

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 18:17:05 +0100

!Hubzilla Support Forum
Hi,
I tried posting this in the morning but I guess I set too restrictive permissions and it never appeared on the forum. How can I post to the forum only, so that it doesn't show in my channel?

I've installed Hubzilla a few days ago and I'm trying to find my way around. I've encountered a few issue with the photo albums:

]The full screen view of the photos is actually full size. So you have to scroll around to see the image. If the image has not been resized it is pretty much impossible to use. I don't mind resizing photos before uploading them but there is no resolution that will work on all screen sizes.
I uploaded 120 photos to a new albums and selected the option for a post for the new album. I expected a post with a link to the album. But instead I got 120 posts linking to individual pictures. I deleted the album and that removed the posts too. Except for my only connection so far (a test user) where the posts are still showing with broken image links.

For the moment, I have a workaround for the second issue, but it is a bit of work and I didn't get it quite right as it opens in a new window. I copy the URL of the album page and create a new post with a link to it and then I edit it to add one image from the album as a preview and link to the album.

Any suggestion for the first problem?
Thanks,
Yann

show all 7 comments

Mario Vavti

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 18:33:58 +0100

1. It's more of a full size view - to give the viewer an opportunity to view the photo in its original size. I'll see if i can come up with a solution for that. Maybe introduce a download button for the photo and make the full size view an actual full screen view...

2. Posting albums is not yet implemented. That the posts are not deleted for your friend might indicate a bug. Could you please open a github issue for that?

kris

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 18:59:37 +0100

rezising a huge image to 100% or the screen could be nice.

Yann Muller

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 19:05:28 +0100 last edited: Sun, 01 Apr 2018 19:09:10 +0100

Thanks Mario. I like your proposed solution for 1).

2) Not a problem, I'll play around with the syntax of my manually created post so that it opens in the same window.

It seems the deleted posts have eventually disappeared from my "friend's" Activity. I guess it took a while to synchronise the deletion.

Philipp (private)

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 15:17:52 +0100

Also like your proposed solution for 1), @Mario Vavti If we get a full screen view it could also be nice to be able to switch to the last/next picture in this full screen view without having to close the full screen window first. So as to be able to view a album full screen smoothly. I guess that should be possible somethow with colorbox, but I have no idea how much work it would be.
Hm, perhaps I should try to get deeper into php again ... just too many ideas to ask other people to implement them ...

Mario Vavti

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 15:59:25 +0100

@Philipp on my todolist is a seperate gallery addon using this library: http://photoswipe.com

It probably does not fit into core so well because we can also have comments on photos and the possibility to edit photos. That is subject to investigation still though...

Stephan Maus

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 23:13:18 +0100

@Mario Vavti Oh yes, photoswipe looks great!

Andrew

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 11:13:26 +0100

Looks like @Mario Vavti has quietly been working on this recently in the dev branch.

https://dev.reticu.li/gallery/andrew

Disapearing Login and Register button

Yann Muller

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 17:37:28 +0100

!Hubzilla Support Forum
Hi,
I've noticed that depending on the width of the window, the Login and Register buttons are not always shown.

If the window is wide, all the buttons are showing. If the window is quite narrow, it switches to a mobile theme (looks good on my phone). But somewhere in the middle the buttons just go missing.

It's not a huge problem but if your screen is just in the wrong size bracket it can be confusing.

Cheers

Mario Vavti

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 17:48:46 +0100

Thanks for reporting this.
I'll have a look asap.

First public post

Yann Muller

Sat, 31 Mar 2018 19:02:45 +0100 last edited: Sat, 31 Mar 2018 19:37:47 +0100

Figuring things out...

Eventually there will be some public stuff but some content will be available only to friends and family. To get to this you will need a Hubzilla account. You can register here or on any of the public Hubzilla servers, for example start.hubzilla.org . Then add me as a contact with yann@www.moonskin.org .

Hubzilla is a bit complicated but you can think of it as a very powerful decentralised Facebook without the corporate spying.

h.ear.t

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 18:20:49 +0100

Fun fact.
Around 2011/2012 I joined Friendica. Migrated along to Red Matrix. Created an f account in March 2015. Hubzilla 1.0 was released 03.12.2015.
To this day I find f unnecessarily intransparent, complicated and lacking. There is so much I learned to love in here ... especially after I found how not to do it. I am using f only very reluctantly and very passively. Unfortunately there are a few groups which started as good old mailing lists that still keep me from not deleting that account. But using it ... is no fun.

Stephan Maus

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 23:09:30 +0100

@h.ear.t | tobias You wrote: " There is so much I learned to love in here ... especially after I found how not to do it." Tobias, what did you find out about how NOT to do it?