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Weekend Geek Project: Create your own image hosting system
For the past several years I have been trying to come up with a good way to post images to the web from my iPhone. Now that I have a Mac as my web server via MacMiniColo, it is incredibly easy. Now, I'll be completely honest, setting this up did take some time and effort. It is not as simple as clicking a button, but if you can follow some instructions, you can do it too, assuming that you have access to all of the pieces. The Goal This shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve: I have an image on my iPhone. I want to post it to the web and get an URL that I can use. I have tried all of the various image sharing services out there. They all have the same problems: either they are chock full of ads and don't want to give you just a plain URL to use, or they go out of business. Or, sometimes, both. The latest one to go under is mlkshk, which is a shame not only because they provided a great service, but when I checked the various "Terms of Service" at different image hosting companies, they had the best one. But even if there was a great service out there with a great app, I'm still not sure that it would be better than the "holy grail" solution that I have wanted: Take a picture on my iPhone using the regular camera app (or any other). Edit it (or not) using the regular photos app (or any other app). Email the picture, which gives me a chance to reduce the size (or not). Receive an URL to the direct image via push notification. Since I couldn't find the service that I wanted, I've tried rolling my own a few times, but none of them worked as fast or as easily as I wanted, until I figured out the last missing piece. The Pieces of the Puzzle I won't hold you in suspense: the last missing piece was a real Mac server. I recently signed up for MacMiniColo and I couldn't be happier with the decision unless I could get in a time machine to go back and make it sooner. Once I had a Mac server, the rest of the pieces were easy: SendToDropbox - gives you a private email address that you can use to email files and have them added to your Dropbox. Although paid accounts are available, you can start using it for free. A shell script (naturally) which will move the file from the SendToDropbox folder to the appropriate web folder, and do some other housekeeping. Pushover (or Prowl) - to send push notifications from your Mac to your iPhone. SendToDropbox Once you have created a SendToDropbox account and linked it to your Dropbox, you'll need to go to https://sendtodropbox.com/account and create a special email address just for this purpose. It will generate a random email address for you. Keep it random. That way no one else will be able to post pictures to your website via email! (For added security, see the "Whitelist" settings in SendToDropbox.) Once you have your SuperSekret SendToDropbox email address, go to the "Organization" tab, and drag the "To Address" and "Subject" from under "Available Attributes" to "Destination" so that it ends up as shown above. Make sure that the "To Address" comes before the "Subject." What this means is that every file that you send to your SuperSekret@sendtodropbox.com email address will be saved to ~/Dropbox/Apps/Attachments/SuperSekret@sendtodropbox.com/Your Subject Here/. I'll explain why that's important in a moment. launchd There is a feature in launchd called QueueDirectories which looks at a directory. It has to end up being empty, but that's OK because we are going to empty all of the files when we're done. Replace /Users/jsmith/Dropbox/Apps/Attachments/SuperSekret@sendtodropbox.com with whatever the SendToDropbox path is on your Mac: Now what about that /usr/local/bin/sendtodropbox-image.sh file? Well, that's the last piece of the puzzle. sendtodropbox-image.sh The script sendtodropbox-image.sh is going to process the files in your SendToDropbox folder ~/Dropbox/Apps/Attachments/SuperSekret@sendtodropbox.com by moving them into the folder that you use the host images, and then it's going to send you the URLs via Pushover using a shell script called posh that I have previously discussed over at GitHub. It also uses jhead to make sure that the iPhone pictures appear with the correct rotation. If you do not have it installed already, I recommend brew install jhead (or you can get it from rudix ). Now when I want to post an email, I just send an email, choose the size: and then about a minute later I'll get a confirmation with the URL And then I can use that image anywhere. Like right here, for example: You do not need a Mac server to do this if you have an "always on" Mac, you could do this and then sync it to any web server using unison or rsync. However, you'll have to figure out those steps on your own. Now that I've experienced what it's like to have a real Mac server, I can't imagine going back to anything else. If any of you scoffing at the idea that a Mac mini could be a "real" server: I am using a 2010 Mac mini (Macmini4,1) Intel Core 2 Duo with 2.66 GHz process with 4 GB of RAM and a non-SSD hard drive. Most of us would look at those specs and say that it is not "new" and not "powerful" but it rocks as a server. I've been running lots of apps on it at once, including Time Machine, Dropbox, OwnCloud, and BitTorrent Sync (I'm testing sync options for another article), as well as hosting my own websites on it, and it hasn't even blinked. Summary Recap Here's a checklist for you if you want to re-create this on your own Mac: Create a SendToDropbox account Setup an email address to be used for this purpose and configure its "Destination" as shown above (e.g. ~/Dropbox/Attachments/Foo/) Add the email address to your iPhone contacts Create a launchd plist file in your ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder named something like com.tjluoma.sendtodropbox.email-to-url.plist Set the QueueDirectories to the directory used by your SendToDropbox address created in step 1 ( ~/Dropbox/Attachments/Foo/) If you do not plan to put the shell script at /usr/local/bin/sendtodropbox-image.sh be sure to change the contents of the plist to point to wherever you will save the script. Load it using this command (substituting whatever name you chose): launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.sendtodropbox.email-to-url.plist Create the sendtodropbox-image.sh script, ideally at /usr/local/bin/ Change the SOURCE= line to point to the folder described in Step 1 (that is ~/Dropbox/Attachments/Foo/ or whatever you chose) Change the DIR= to the folder to your web server's path Make sure it is executable: chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/sendtodropbox-image.sh Setup Pushover Create a new account at https://pushover.net/login Generate a Token and User key at https://pushover.net/apps/build Get po.sh, configure it, make it executable Install jhead That's all. The setup will take you some time, but once you have it, you can use it with the knowledge that you never have to worry about a 3rd-party image hosting company going out of business, or changing their terms of service, or anything else they might do.
Alfred, Dropbox, Hazel, and Markdown? All in a day's work
"How does a geek-pastor use a computer?" is a question that I assume a lot of people ask themselves, although they probably don't. But if they did, this would be one answer: I need to make a list of the readings and sermon titles for the church secretary and choir director, so one can make the weekly worship guide, and the other can plan the music. I put my schedule up as a web page, like this: The reading is linked to the text so that everyone involved can easily access the text (I'll need it for sermon preparation, and the choir director will need it to see what the text is about so she can try to match it to potential hymns/anthems). Which reminds me: I have an Alfred shortcut for looking up Bible passages from the NRSV: A month year of Sundays Today the church secretary reminded me that I needed to update the list, as I had gone through all of the previous weeks that I had scheduled (oops). I decided that it was a good time to make a list of all of the Sundays between now and the end of 2015; that way I could start to fill in the dates of special events, vacation, etc. So... how would a sane person make a list of Sundays? Maybe look at a calendar? Try to figure them out in your head? Not me. I wrote a shell script: Actually I made my loop a little more complex, in order to give me the Markdown formatting that I wanted for the list: That gave me a nice, clean "unordered list" in HTML. The first line under the date will be the Scripture Reading. The second line will be the sermon title. The third line (if any) will be any notes about that particular Sunday. Fortunately I didn't have to include all of that in the output because I could use CSS' "generated content" feature to automatically add it for me: Markdown Markdown is a simple way of writing plain text which can be automatically translated into HTML (the language of web pages). But I don't want to have to remember to manually update the HTML page every time I edit the plain text Markdown file. So I have Hazel do that for me: Translation: Any time the file worship.mmd in the folder worship.luo.ma is updated, run that script on it, which will automatically convert it from Markdown to HTML and save it as the file index.html. The ~/Sites/worship.luo.ma/ folder is linked to my Dropbox, so I can edit that file on any of my Macs (or on my iPad or iPhone), and every time I press "Save" the website version will update, usually in less than a minute (the amount of time it takes Dropbox to sync and Hazel to notice the file has changed). (Have I mentioned how much I love having a MacMiniColo server? Because I do. A lot.) You can see the result for yourself at http://worship.luo.ma, or view the Markdown file at http://worship.luo.ma/worship.mmd. Now... if only I could get Hazel to clean up my actual desktop.
Macminicolo asks: why do used Mac minis cost so much?
The Mac mini is the little computer that could. Personally, I own four of them -- of various vintages -- and they're all in use on a daily basis, some of them seven years after their initial purchase. They're insanely reliable, super affordable and some of the best kit Apple has produced. Macminicolo built a company around hosting Mac minis in a high-end data center, providing co-located servers for their customers. Starting at US$35/month, your mini server is given a static IP, fast network access and service options should things head south with your little server. Over at the Macminicolo blog, the company has posted a few thoughts about the used Mac mini market, and why these systems retain so much of their value over time. For example, they write, "You could purchase a mid-range, quad-core Mac mini for $799, use it for a year, then sell it for around $715." That's a really amazing retention of value. The post discusses why the Mac mini offers such good value retention, with its continuous brand identity, easy shipping and general capabilities. Compared to the iMac, the mini provides a much easier solution for embedding and tucking away. It's a fascinating post that you'll probably want to hop over and read in full. I'm throwing open the comments here, so you can (civilly!) share your mini experiences.
MacMiniColo will host your Mac Mini server for just $10/month for 6 months
Colocation facilities are typically stuffed full of various rack-mounted servers running all manner of websites and other tasks with fat pipe connections to internet backbones. One company, MacMiniColo, offers colocation services and is dedicated to hosting Mac mini servers. Long before Apple introduced the dedicated Mac mini server a year ago, MacMiniColo has been setting up all flavors of the headless Mac for customers. The Mini makes an excellent server thanks to its compact dimensions, low power consumption, good reliability and reasonable power. Servers don't generally need a lot of inputs and outputs, just a fast ethernet connection -- and the Mini server comes with a gigabit port. MacMiniColo currently has a promotional deal available that expires tonight, at 12 AM Pacific Time (so if you want to take advantage of the offer, head to MacMiniColo's site now). You can get six months of colocation service for your Mini for just US$10 a month with 200 GB per month of bandwidth. After the first six months, pricing reverts to one of the regular plans that start at $35 per month. That should be enough time to try it out and see if the company can meet your needs. TUAW's Steve Sande used MacMiniColo for some time. You can either send in your existing Mini to the data center in Las Vegas or have MacMiniColo provide one for your needs.
Macminicolo writes up their state of the Mac mini
Steve Sande actually did a brilliant job of explaining just why the Mac mini is so awesome the other day (and we've certainly had our share of mini-love here on the site before), but this is worth a read as well if you're interested in Apple's littlest Mac. Macminicolo, the very company that Steve lauds in his piece for colocating mini servers for a while now, has posted a "state of the mini" piece, complete with unboxing of the new mini server, pictures of its guts and how they all work together. If you've ever wondered why the mini is such a marvel of desktop OS X-ness, check out their writeup (and drool at the beautiful setup above -- so many minis!). There are a few good things to take away from the big release this week -- while Steve is exactly right that releasing a mini server means Apple is getting on the server bandwagon, it also means that Apple is officially on the mini bandwagon. When these machines were first released, they were marketed as a switchers' computer -- bring your own mouse and monitor, and we'll show you what being on a Mac is like at a fraction of the cost. Frankly, they never shined at that purpose, prompting many people to proclaim death sentences for the little machine that could. But by releasing a server, Apple's saying, "we get it." They get that the mini is much more of a workhorse than it appears (or was meant) to be. In my mind, that's a whole new lease on life -- the mini may have never made much of a splash as a switchers' computer, but it's got a long future as a tiny but powerful computer you can use for all sorts of things. [via DF]
TUAW takes Macminicolo for a spin
TUAW was recently given the chance to test drive a remote server at Macminicolo, the colocation service that specializes exclusively in Mac Minis. We first covered Macminicolo in 2005 and just mentioned their recently-won "My Mac Server Contest". Given the improvements in the Mini since 2005, I took the challenge to satisfy some curiosities. For a couple of weeks I tried everything I could think of to see what solutions the meager Mini could provide. I got a good idea of what was possible and ran a few tests of my own on various Mini-hosted services to see if it could really hold its own in the realm of XServes and big-iron hosting.
Win a Mac mini, hosting and a MacBook Air
Aside from being a company with a name that's dangerously close to copyright infringement, Macminicolo has long been dedicated to creating hosting solutions for Mac users. In fact, they only host - you guessed it - Mac minis. It's a pretty nice service. Just send them your mini and they host it for you and give you full access (it's all yours, not shared). If you've thought about colocation but shuddered at the cost, this could be your chance. Right now, Macminicolo is running a contest to find the greatest answer to the question: "What would you do with a remote mini?" Start up a new business? Create a non-profit? The contestant who submits the best answer will receive a year's free hosting, a Mac mini and a MacBook Air. As Jeff Probst would say, "Worth playing for?" Yes, Jeff, it is.You can get the details here. Good luck!
