Last updated July 23rd, 2006
- -pr0n is my very own gallery system. It is used on a few different - host names, most notably at pr0n.sesse.net - to show images I and others have taken at events I care about (some - more than others, of course).
- -The name "pr0n" (scriptkiddie-speak for "porn", of course) was just seen - as a very good fit for an image gallery. :-) There is no (and will not - be any) adult content on this site.
- -Yes, you can, as long as they're related to one of the events already - here. Contact me (see the bottom of the page) for more information.
- -Sorry, no. First of all, please don't use any "web mirroring" program to - download all the images -- of course, I can't stop you, but you're - putting a lot of unneccessary load on the system. There are two main - reasons for not downloading all the pictures: First, there is a - question of copyright; not all images here are taken by me, and I've - been given permission to display them here, not to pass them on. Second, - keep in mind that some of the events contain several gigabytes of images -- - do you really need all that? I'd advise you to crank up the thumbnail - size to the maximum possible size instead; it's quite comfortable to - browse images on without having to click back and forth all the time.
- -Probably the requested size was never generated before, so the server - has to scale all the images. As the scaling method used is geared - towards getting good-quality, sharp thumbnails, not speed, this can - take a while. It's all getting cached on disk for later re-use, though, - so the next time somebody views the same images in that resolution, - it will be snappy as usual.
- -Because it didn't fit my needs, and the same goes for all other systems - I've seen. I wanted something no-nonsense that would work for my - purposes -- I don't want to click around endlessly just to watch some - pictures. Others are of course free to do as they wish, I can't impose - my will on anybody :-)
- -Mostly that it's no-nonsense and just works, without being in your way. - Also, it has dynamical rescaling (of good quality -- proper, - sharp thumbnails, no crappy nearest-neighbor scaling) of both thumbnails - and images (most client-side scaling sucks quality-wise, unfortunately), - an easy-to-use WebDAV-based upload - interface and in general good performance (being a set of persistent, - optimized Perl modules; I've seen it throw out over 300 hits a second, - but I won't guarantee it would withstand a Slashdot attack ;-) ). Also, - it has quite OK skinning capabilities, so it's able to adapt into - different designs quite easily.
- -pr0n currently runs on an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 2GB RAM and ordinary - SATA disks. (The server does a lot of other stuff besides running pr0n, of - course.) pr0n itself is a custom-made system by myself, tightly coupled - into Apache 2.0, mod_perl 2.0 and ImageMagick 6.x (as well as various - other Perl modules), using PostgreSQL 8.1 as the back-end - database for metadata et al. The base operating system is Debian etch (ie. âtestingâ).
- -The Perl modules aren't really that big -- we're talking about only - approx. 1500 lines of code (of which ~30% is the WebDAV part; I should - really make that a bit cleaner once). Most of the real work is done by - the software on which pr0n builds on.
- -At the time of writing, approximately 45GB of image data (that is, over - 36000 different images), plus cache, plus metadata in the SQL database. - (These numbers are growing rather rapidly, so they could be outdated at - any given time.)
- -Probably, but are you sure you can get it to work? It's - non-trivial to set up, as it depends on lots of odd modules and a lot of - custom configuring; this is not a pre-made, user friendly package for your - favourite Linux distribution. There is a bzr repository at - http://bzr.sesse.net/pr0n/, but - going to hold your hand configuring it. :-) (Hint: If you do not know what - bzr is, and cannot find out on your own, pr0n is not for you.)
- -Probably not; I have a lot of things to do besides programming new - features. Also, I'm not really sure if I want tons of stupid people - writing stupid comments under my images, or icky HTML pages with - "previous" and "next" buttons instead of just getting directly to - the images :-) If you really have a novel or cool feature, feel - free to contact me (see below).
- -Unfortunately, no. When and if somebody makes a sane framework for - making WebDAV servers I can use, it probably will, but ATM it's just - too much work for what I need it for. It would be a lot easier if - I only had to support WebDAV level 1, but due to silly restrictions - in Mac OS X' WebDAV client I have to support WebDAV level 2 as well, - and, well, most of that is faked. ;-) In addition, there are multiple - minor features in the system (like autorenaming files on name clashes) - that just aren't easy to adapt to WebDAV. The WebDAV service is - restricted, though, so I guess rather few people will get hurt just - because I'm not fully compliant ;-)
- -Try e-mail, or reach me - on IRC as Sesse on EFnet, IRCnet, Freenode or OFTC.
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