iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

While my wife was getting a valuable two hours of sleep before she was woken with contractions signaling the birth of our first born child 19 hours later, I was not quite tired enough to sleep. UnknowingIy missing out on my last chance to sleep for a while, I was typing away at a PHP script to allow us to share pictures of our new baby – whenever he was going to arrive – with our friends and family privately with nothing more complex than the ability to eMail photos from my iPhone.

It was important to us to be able to share these pictures of our new child, but also to protect our child’s image from the very public exposure of the public internet and the still too public (or at least, un-trustable privacy of) Facebook.

Here’s how I was able to achieve this with a web server, some PHP, a GMail account and my iPhone:

Creating Galleries
First off I created a folder with standard Apache Basic Auth settings and let our friends and family know the simple username and password. I also turned on WebDAV access for the geekier viewers. In order to construct interesting galleries I placed a copy of Qdig, a Quick Digital Image Gallery PHP script to create galleries and thumbnails on the fly (and secured it against the WebDAV access). I had to increase the amount of RAM PHP could use, but otherwise it was very easy to implement.

Getting eMail Attachements from GMail with PHP

I created a new GMail account (specifically through my Google Apps domain) to receive all of these cute baby pictures via eMail from my iPhone. The next step was to check it automatically and store the attached pictures in a specific folder.
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My wife Lindsay and I are excited to announce the birth of our first child: Evan Isaac Clare

Evan was born on Tuesday November 16th 2010 at 19:33 at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, Ontario Canada. He was born 7 pounds 10 ounces, 8 lbs 4 as of Monday November 22^nd.

His four grandparents, two aunts, one uncle and many others in the GTA have all had a chance to hold him. He’s even been held by one of his three great grandmothers.

Thanks to everyone who have sent their congratulations, cards gifts and love. He’s blessed to be born into such a caring community.

Lindsay and I have setup a private web site with a lot more pictures of us and Evan. If you feel like your one of our close friends who should have access and don’t please send one of us a E-Mail and we’ll be sure to make sure that happens. At a later date I’ll create a post that describes how a leashed a GMail account to a PHP script and private web site to allow us to send updated pictures of Evan from our smart phones so that our close friends and family could see the little guy’s cuteness ASAP but giving as a lot of control over those images.

I am not a lawyer, and I am not prepared to give legal advice. That said, here are some general practices for dealing with copyrighted works that respect the tradition of academia and are influenced by the current realities in Canadian intelectual property developments. This is the same advice that I’ve been giving my Interactive Arts and Sciences students in the two courses I teach at Brock University.

Three important principles are:

Access Canada (formally CanCopy) which gives educational exceptions to copyright does not apply on-line, only to some paper-based situations.
The distinction between “taking” or “making” a copy versus referring others to an artifact is very important.
“Fair Dealing” (“Fair Use” in the U.S.) is not well defined. There are exceptions for small portions of a text for educational use or satire etc., but there is no set amount. Canadian judges have not created a test, like a percentage, for all types of media. However, for practical reasons many individuals and institutions have chosen “workable” number with the advice of legal council.
Linking:

Linking is almost always a good idea. Many court cases in the US and Canada have held that you are not liable for directing people to something hosted/posted by someone else that violate copyright. For example, showing a YouTube video posted by someone else should not leave you liable. Additionally, most of the library’s agreements with journal providers insist students are linked to the articles, NOT downloaded and redistributed.

Reuse:

Reusing artifacts, or otherwise including images and other media from the web. Any explicit prohibition from reusing work trumps anything else; an image with a copyright logo or ‘not for reuse’ message would unsurprisingly prevent reuse. In the absence of those types of messages, using a work with a citation *should* be fine.
Read more... (534 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

The Toronto Maple Leafs have won all three of their games so far this year. As of right now they are tied for first place over all with Washington.

I’ve started building my bandwagon so that it’s ready for the Stanley Cup parade.

Haven’t found any wheels yet, should I be worried that as soon as I find them they’ll fall off?

My web site passnerd.com has had some recent updates.

Here’s what to look for:

• There’s a new complexity picker.
• The site has got even more light-weight and should load even faster than before.
• There is a new mobile version ( preview it at passnerd.com/?mobile )
• You can enter the password length into the URL, for example: 6 characters passnerd.com/6 , 12 passnerd.com/12 , 32 passnerd.com/32 — worth bookmarking.

The site still is a quick way to have a scure password suggested to you from work done one YOUR computer, not “my” end. I created the site as a service to those who need it, and it makes pennies a year, but one of these days if it earns enough I’ll create an HTTPS version – but I want to stress that it’s just as secure without it because it uses JavaScript on YOUR computer’s end to create the password.

I’m always looking for suggestions or feedback from anyone that is willing to share them.