Has anyone else noticed..

that I haven't updated this in over a year?

Thought not!
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A quick Python script to crop and resize photos

The script below was written to resize a stack of images for loading onto a digital photo frame. It may be of some use to others, but as with any scripts available here you use it at your own risk....

# Crops and resizes an image for photoframe using PIL
# requires PIL from http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/index.htm
# Graham Arden, July 2009

from __future__ import division
import os
import shutil
import Image
import Tkinter, tkFileDialog

def resize_image(photoName):
im1 = Image.open(photoName)
imageWidth=im1.size[0]
imageHeight=im1.size[1]


if imageHeight > imageWidth:
path,fi = os.path.split(photoName)
print fi, "is a portrait image, skipped...."
else:
print "Current image is", imageWidth, "pixels wide by", imageHeight, "pixels high"
path,fi = os.path.split(photoName)
saveName = "R_" + fi
newPath = os.path.join(path, saveName)

#Crop the image to convert aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9
newImageHeight = int((imageWidth/16) * 9)
topCrop = int((imageHeight-newImageHeight)/2)
bottomCrop= imageHeight-topCrop
box = (0, topCrop, imageWidth, bottomCrop)
croppedImage = im1.crop(box)

# The are the width and height for our final image
width = 800
height = 480
resizedImage = croppedImage.resize((width, height), Image.ANTIALIAS)
print "Resized image is", resizedImage.size[0], "pixels wide by", resizedImage.size[1], "pixels high"

resizedImage.save(newPath)
print "Saved as", newPath
print " "

root = Tkinter.Tk()
root.withdraw()

photoFileNames = tkFileDialog.askopenfilenames(title='Choose the photographs you wish to resize', initialdir="~")
ListLength = len(photoFileNames)


for i in range(0, ListLength):
resize_image(photoFileNames[i])

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RTFM

Sometimes it really does help to read the manual.....

Today I spent about three hours trying to understand why when I modified the pixel data in a DICOM file and then saved it back under a different file name the original and modified images appeared to be identical. Any other tag I'd edited had changed but the pixel data refused to budge.

I gave up. I banged my head on the desk. Then I read the manual.

Although you edit the pixelArray attribute, any data you edit must be saved back to the pixelData attribute using

ds.PixelData = ds.PixelArray.tostring()

....seems obvious now
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Oh well, not quite.....

Well it looks like I may have to still use MATLAB occasionally. If anyone comes across a Radon transform implementation for Python can they let me know....
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Cob Records

Just a quick pointer to a great article Adam Walton has written about, what for me is, the best record shop in Wales. I've spent many a happy hour in the place and for me it ranks up pretty close to what was the greatest record shop in England, (although I'll be perfectly honest and admit I haven't been to the latter in years).

I just hope that Amazon and itunes don't mean the end for places like this.
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Zotero

If you need a system for storing references then I can strongly recommend Zotero. Its consists of a a Firefox plug-in and a plug-in for either OpenOffice.org (hurrah!) or MS Word (eurgh!).

The 1.5 beta seems very stable and also includes the facility for storing copies of papers if you have access to a webdav server. I'm using it with Amazon's Jungledisk and it works flawlessly, both on Linux at home and XP in work.
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What's the point?

In case anyone I know happens across this and wonders why I have a blog, well, why not?

I find it useful, when I'm working on something, to just write it down. Sometimes it may help, sometimes it will be utter nonsense, occasionally I may actually come across something useful. (Well that's the hope anyway).

If nothing else it may occasionally be useful if I'm trying to remember why I did something.
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