Batch Image Resize on Linux

Isn't it the same case always. You go out on a trip somewhere. You become trigger happy and click loads of pictures. You come back and want to share it with friends and need to upload them to either picassa or flickr. Now typically if you use a 6 plus MPixel camera, the pictures generally come out to around 1.7MB in size. Uploading a lot of such pictures is a big pain.

I recently discovered the convert utility on Linux. Using it is pretty simple. Here is a small script that I use to batch resize my pictures before uploading them:

for file in *.JPG;
do echo "Resizing file $file ...";
convert -resize 640x480 $file $file ;
done

Check out some pics (Portland visit for RailsConf) that were uploaded after the conversion above here.

RailsConf - Day 1

I am/was kind of getting used to the jetlag back in NJ, but now Portland has added another 3 hours to the mix. Its 6:15 PM local time while I am writing this and am already feeling sleepy here.

In the morning, me and George were quite hungry as our last meals were just the burgers that we have had on the flight from NJ. After the breakfast, we headed towards the Convention Center where RailsConf is being run. We took the Red Train or something to reach it. Was pretty impressed with the infrastructure here in Portland. I mean this is a decent tram which takes you FREE OF COST across major portions of Portland. When does one think this will happen in India?

The convention center was pretty good and we attended some of the sessions/tutorials. The attendance also seems pretty decent this year around. We headed back to our hotel for lunch with Denis and Marie. And after lunch, we have been holed up together in a room working on our rails stuff and what all we plan to do!

The brainstorming is still ongoing as we speak, so I better get back to it, now! (still groggy though...)