Side projects
Things I built for myself. Work projects are listed with each position in my resume.
PicR – Picture Randomizer
Thousands of photos from weddings, holidays and phones end up in folders nobody opens again. The randomizers of common photo viewers kept showing the same pictures and could not filter by person. PicR fixed that.
How it worked
- Faces came from Google Picasa, which stored them in
.picasa.inifiles. - Tags were added with Set-FileTag, a PowerShell GUI writing
.tags.inifiles, so Dropbox did not re-upload whole images. - Collect-Tags, a server-side PowerShell script, indexed paths, tags and face positions into SQL Server Express.
- PicR, a PowerShell GUI, queried that index and showed random pictures.
Features
- Random pictures filtered by person, category and folder, with AND/OR logic
- Slideshow with timer, full-screen and multi-monitor support, history and "previous picture"
- Randomizer that avoids repeats; metadata overlay; keyboard control
- Embedded web server to show pictures to other devices in the local network
- Export of a filter selection to a folder or a text list
The first version ran on PHP and MySQL on an ownCloud server, then moved to Dropbox and was rewritten in PowerShell. Picasa has since been retired, so PicR is no longer maintained.
Family tree
"Where do I come from?" That question started my research into my ancestors. The Hierholzer family tree goes back to the 17th century and shows that my ancestors come from the Black Forest in southern Germany, where a small village called Hierholz still exists.
If you are a Hierholzer, are related to the family or know something about its history, I would love to hear from you.