While I was in the US I had little time between work and socialising but I did get to set up the iPhone and Android dev kits on the new machine and play with some UI concepts. I also started writing some test code in Java to test the RPC mechanism to Coppermine. This code has turned in to the JSON-RPC and Session classes that will be used in the Android version of the client app. I will also release that code as open source so that anyone can write Java clients for Coppermine.

I will use the same design when I implement that mechanism in Objective-C. This will be used in the iPhone client. I have also downloaded the iPhoto extension SDK so I think I’ll release an iPhoto export extension that will allow you to export directly from iPhoto in to Coppermine.

Lots for me to do.

As you may have noticed if you’re reading this having navigated through from the index page I have tied up the Weird Sheep Software web site and given it a proper main page, theme, links, projects page and so on. The documentation for the Coppermine JSON-RPC API is also available. The theme, although not terribly exciting, is lovingly hand crafted PHP and CSS. Once I’m happy with it I’ll have it available for download for all those who want to use it for a Wordpress blog.

I took time out from development to do this due to the fault with my Mac halting development for a short while. So I set up a new server and development machine running the Ubuntu 8.10 distribution. Also I ordered a new MacBook which is currently in transit which I hope I will receive before I head back to the US at the end of the week. So that’s about it.

Current Mood:  accomplished

At the beginning of this week I decided to set up my old PC is a pure Linux dev box and test server. I had given it away to one of my girlfriends but they no longer required it so I reclaimed it and installed Ubuntu. It appears that the fates decree that I should have an unchanging average number of working computers. Because as I was bringing the PC up and getting software installed my trust three and a half year old iBook, on which I code, developed a fault.

The fault appeared as a complete freeze of the machine. I hard booted and it couldn’t find the harddrive. My good friend, Sonya, who’s a Mac Goddess, talked me through various options on IM. Unfortunately none of them really fixed the issue. So the following day I took the machine in to the office, put the iBook in to target disk mode, and used my work laptop to copy the data on to an external USB harddrive.

That evening I tried to install OS X on another external harddrive but the iBook froze yet again. Since the internal harddrive was out of the loop this looks like a more serious problem; possibly a main board failure. Anyway I recovered the data, which is the important thing. Also I have a machine that does work for short periods so I’m currently not using it incase I have to fire it up at any point for data I’ve not recovered yet.

So today I decided I couldn’t live without my Mac and ordered a nice shiny new top of the range MacBook from the Apple Store. This will take a few days to arrive. I hope it arrives before I go to the US in about ten days otherwise I will find it hard to survive. My work laptop is very much a work machine. In the mean time I’m switching back to working further on the Coppermine extension and also at setting up an Android development environment and thinking about the Android client.

Now this is working it allows me to start development on the clients. Which I have done. iPhone development has begun and hopefully there will be a few screen shots soon. Also I’ve got myself a T-Mobile G1 Android phone so I’ll be writing a client for Android too.

I’ve started with the most important part, the authentication. I have implemented a challenge / response protocol. I’m currently at SFO waiting for a flight to the UK. On the plane I will code up query functions that return catagories and albums for a catagory. The I will code the upload functionality. The whole lot then needs to be tested so I’ll use a simple CLI client to try it out. If that works I’m on to the proper client.

I recently acquired an Android based phone so I’ll produce a client for that too.

Watch this space!