The example application I’ll explain here is a utility to combine multiple images into one in one click directly from a Picasa folder view. However, it is very easy to modify this to perform various other batch image processing tasks directly from Picasa.

Part 1: The Picasa button

First of all, we will need a button in our Picasa to start our ImageMagick script. To create the button using Picasa Button API, we follow these steps:

1. Write a PBF file.
   A PBF is basically a simple XML file, that describes our button to Picasa. Here is the PBF file I wrote for my application:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <buttons format="1" version="1">
     <button id="{ca234ae3-6340-40c3-a46b-51a126bb887c}" type="dynamic">
       <label>Combine</label>
       <tooltip>Combine images vertically and save as a new image</tooltip>
       <action verb="trayexec">
         <param name="exe_name" value="stitch.cmd" />
         <param name="exe_path" value="S:\Tools\" />
       </action>
     </button>
   </buttons>
   

   Although the whole code is contained within a buttons element, the file can currently only describe one button.

   Note the GUID in the button/id attribute. You’ll need a new GUID for every button you make. The PBF must be named using this GUID, {ca234ae3-6340-40c3-a46b-51a126bb887c}.pbf in my case.

   The label and tooltip elements shouldn’t need much explanation. The next important element is action; this describes what the button will actually do when pressed. There are a few actions described in the Button API; the one I use here is a simple executable launch, that starts a batch script stitch.cmd, located in S:\Tools\ (in our environment, S:\ is a shared network drive on the office server). The script will be detailed further on.

2. (optional) Draw an icon.
   You can include a custom icon for your button. The icon has to be an Adobe Photoshop PSD file called using your GUID ({ca234ae3-6340-40c3-a46b-51a126bb887c}.psd for me), in a single layer. If you use an icon, you have to include an additional element in your PBF, inside the button element:

   <icon name="{ca234ae3-6340-40c3-a46b-51a126bb887c}.psd/layer" src="pbz"/>

3. Package your button into a PBZ file.
   A PBZ file is nothing different than a ZIP archive containing your PBF (and the icon, if you want to use one), with its extension changed to .pbz. This file is basically your distribution package, so name it appropriately, since Picasa differentiates its buttons by their PBZ file names. One PBZ can also contain multiple PBF files for multiple buttons at once.

Part 2: The ImageMagick batch script

Since the ImageMagick package provides command-line utilities, the simplest way to automate them in Windows is a batch file. Here is my stitch.cmd script for merging multiple images together vertically, resizing them all to match the first one’s width:

@echo off
cd /D "C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.7.1-Q16"

rem --- Output filename
set OUTFOLDER=%~dp1
set OUTFILENAME="%OUTFOLDER%Collage.jpg"

rem --- Imagemagick
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('identify -format "%%[fx:w]" %1') do @set WIDTH=%%a
montage -mode concatenate -resize %WIDTH% -tile 1x %* %OUTFILENAME%

When called from the Picasa button, the script will get filenames of all currently selected images in Picasa as arguments, including full paths.

First, we change directory to where ImageMagick is installed, to avoid possible problems with PATH. Then we generate a filename for our montage, taking the folder path from the first argument (first selected image from Picasa) and adding our own filename.

After that, we apply a batch hack, using a for loop to save a command output (ImageMagick’s identify) into a variable. This gives us the width of the first image. Next, we call the ImageMagick’s montage tool, that will combine all our images in one, additionally providing it with the output filename as a last argument.

Part 3: Installation

The installation is a bit tricky. Picasa doesn’t support importing the buttons directly, it can only be done using a browser and a specially formed link to the file. You’ll need to place your PBZ at some location reachable via an http:// link; since I have a local development server running on my PC, I used that. Here is an the HTML file I used to install my script in Picasa:

<html>
 <body>
  <a href="picasa://importbutton/?url=http://localhost/olex-stitcher.pbz">Install</a>
 </body>
</html>

Just open the file in a browser of your choice and click the link. Picasa will open and prompt you to select the button you want to install (only one option here, unless your PBZ contains multiple buttons), and where to place it in the button bar. Do that, and you’re all done.

A tool to configure an OpenTTD server via web interface.

Tested with OpenTTD 1.0.4, Apache2 and PHP 5.2.4 on Windows and Ubuntu Linux. No reason it shouldn’t work on any other platform, given PHP.

Project hosted at the OpenTTDCoop DevZone:
http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/ottd-webconfig

OpenTTD is an open source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer game Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It is an “Urban planning and simulation game”.

I’ve once again started playing OpenTTD – it’s been years now. OpenTTD, as stated above, is an open source remake of a strategy game called Transport Tycoon Deluxe from the MS-DOS times. The goal is to create a transportation network for passengers and cargo using trains, trucks, ships and planes, and to make more money than your opponents. A couple of screenshots to illustrate:

Efficient rail networks in the game can become very complex, with hundreds of trains rolling on them. Such networks cannot be built without large intersections, and the traffic flow is strongly influenced by the junction design efficiency. In this post, I’ll collect a few junction and station designs I made, that could become helpful for some OpenTTD players out there.

A good idea soon came from a friend: a client for the menu of the Mensa, university’s cafeteria of sorts. So one can look, while walking from the lectures (or sitting in them), what there is to eat today, and whether one doesn’t rather want to walk straight home. And so, a day, lots of coffee and a lot of googling later, I present you this wonderous Android app to see and download:

The app is available from the Android Market, and can be found easiest by scanning the following QR Code (if you don’t have the Barcode Scanner app, go and install it from the Market now, it’s a must on Android):

For the ones who dislike WMP and prefer the old good Winamp, there now also is a possibility to make use of these new possibilities. It is granted by a new Winamp plugin, win7shell, available here: http://code.google.com/p/win7shell/.

This plugin implements the following:

• Progress bar showing the current position of the playing track. Becomes yellow when paused and red when stoppen:
     
• Overlay mini-icons for play, pause and stop, also combined with the progress bar:
     
• Aero Peek – different options of displaying the track information, as well as album art and playback control buttons:
   
• Jumplist – a list of the recent and most played tracks as well as some frequently used Winamp options, accessed with a right click:
  

Plugin’s author is actively working on it, talking with the users on Google Code and releasing updates. I found out about this plugin yesterday and instantly recommend it to anyone using (or considering) Winamp on Windows 7.

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download: Sokoban (3.86MB) added: 31/05/2009 clicks: 625