I use Linux at home and I’m also a big fan of Flickr and use the service to store and share all my photos online, including my gratuitous cat photos, embarrassing and revealing though they may be.

The problem I face using this service with Linux is that while Flickr supplies uploading applications for most operating systems, they kind of leave Linux out to dry. Luckily, several people have written programs to fill this void. If you only have a few photos to upload, you can get by using uploading via web page, but if you just got back from vacation or shameless cat worship and you’ve got 40-100 images to put up, you need a batch uploader or you’re going to go insane.

I had some success using Flickr Uploadr. It worked well enough until I chose to merge my Flickr account with my Yahoo account (Flickr users know what I’m talking about). After that, I couldn’t get it to work. Faced with the headache of finding, installing and setting up a usable replacement, I started getting pretty frustrated with the missing dependencies, incorrect Java packages and shit I didn’t have the time or patience for. I just wanted to upload a few photos, not perform an appendectomy.

Fortunately, I spotted uploadr.py. It’s a simple Python script that lets you specify a folder on your computer to serve as the “live” folder. Put your photos there, run the script and they are uploaded to your account. It’s no frills. You can’t rename, set tags, resize or add to sets, but honestly, I’m happy to be able to upload by only running a simple script. I can do all the rest later, once they’re up and I’m logged into Flickr’s batch edit.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2006 at 11:52 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.