Failing to find any tool on the web that does what I need I set out to write my own.  Put very simply, at this point it copies all the files from one directory to another while moving and renaming the file based on the EXIF metadata timestamp stored within each digital photo.  From My Documents\My Pictures\DSC_1234.JPG to 2009\02\23\2009-02-23_16.28.45.jpg.  The new name and directory structure makes it easier to find “those Hawaii pics I took last summer.”

I developed the program in Python with the aim of keeping the utility platform-independent and later building a front-end GUI for it.

You can currently find the program and source code on Sourceforge (released under GPL3).  I compiled an .exe binary as well for Window users who do not have Python installed.  It currently is in beta stage and supports basic functionality.  For example: renaming based off custom template, simulating the actions, and controlling the verbosity of output.

Planned features include moving the original file, checking for duplicate pictures, and renaming RAW files as well.

Please post any comments or bugs to the Sourceforge discussion forums or bug tracker!

Often times I would run commands that depended on processes to finish on another tab within a screen session.  Unfortunately, bash’s wait command only works within the existing shell, so I came up with a quick script to check versus executable name.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -ne 0 ]; then
    while pgrep ^$1 > /dev/null; do sleep 1; done;
else
    echo "Invalid Arguments"
    exit 1
fi

Obviously it’s a pretty simple script, and currently only matches commands at the beginning.  A simple modification to check for pids instead would be fairly simple.

There was a recent article posted on /. about Experimental Gameplay.  They’re probably most famous for Crayon Physics (arguably better Flash knock-off here).  In short, Experimental Gameplay started out with 4 grad students making 50 games in a single semester as an experiment, aka the shotgun approach.

Doing a little more digging, I’ve found similar programs at CMU (where the Experimental Gameplay group came from), компютри втора употреба??????Stanford, and UCSD.  Sadly, I haven’t found anything similar here at UT Austin with the exception of CS 378, but that class  isn’t offered every semester.  EGaDS is a student org here on campus that tries to fill in that niche, but I really haven’t found time or motivation to go to any of their meetings.

Either way, I’ve really wanted to get into games programming as a hobby but still need to learn all the technical aspects first.