upicasa -- an upload script for PicasaWeb

So, as planned last time, I developed my PicasaWeb script a bit further. After I got home from a niece's first birthday party, I had some photos I wanted to upload, so I added the support for listing and creating albums. Then today I moved the authentication credentials out of module globals into a combination of a config file and interactive email/password query. With my password out of the source code it became ready for the initial import into a version control repository.

I chose Mercurial as a VCS just to try it out. Thus, Bitbucket was a natural place to host the repository. Unfortunately, yesterday evening it was inaccessible. Mercurial feels really fast and convenient.

Bitbucket was a total blast to get going. I registered in with my Launchpad OpenId, created a new repository for my project, uploaded my SSH pubkey, and was able to push my initial version within two or three minutes. Way to go, dudes! Very clear, simple, and good looking. A stark contrast with Launchpad, which leaves me confused whenever I try to do something that should be really simple. Here's the link to the upicasa hg repo on Bitbucket.

So, anyway, I wrote a setup.py script, a README file, polished the script a bit and released it to PyPI: upicasa 0.1. Writing the setup.py and the README in order to package the script took about the same time, if not more, than writing the script in the first place, but that's how it goes with Open Source, doesn't it?

The more I use PicasaWeb the more I like it. It has a nifty semi-automatic face recognition feature. It makes tagging people on photos pass the threshold of convenience where it becomes practial. Finally I'll be able to find a photo of someone I know I have. Full screen album display feature is also very nice.

So, now I have a warm fuzzy feeling of having done a useful weekend programming project. Tried something new. Learned a bit. Now it will be great to see whether other people will find it useful.