I'm still not sure if this is the most elegant way to create a fully (almost) automatic Lomo wall, but since I went to the trouble of hacking it together I might as well share it with you fine folks.
The idea was to use Movable Type and its ImageMagick-enabled image-sizing functionality to automate the construction of a Lomo wall, as seen on many a hip nerd site .
The method was to modify an existing piece of javascript and plug in the right Movable Type template tags in order to make it work. This, it turns out, also requires fairly specific configuration of your lomolog, which I'll try to document as well as possible.
The outcome of my efforts is so-so but it works, as seen here.
My Lomolog uses Movable Type version 2.62 (the latest as of this writing) with ImageMagick installed on my server (hosted by ByteStacker). ImageMagick, as far as I know, is a binary program so you'll either need it installed already, full access to your server, or a compassionate Web host.
Under Blog Config you'll obviously have some directory as your Local Site Path. For your Local Archive Path use a directory called pictures inside your Local Site Path. Here is how mine is configured:
Weblog name: Movable Lomo Demo
Local Site Path: /var/www/uigui.org/projects/movablelomo/demo
Site URL: http://uigui.org/projects/movablelomo/demo/
Local Archive Path: /var/www/uigui.org/projects/movablelomo/demo/pictures
Archive URL: http://uigui.org/projects/movablelomo/demo/pictures/
You'll also want to deselect every Archive Type in the Archiving section of Blog Config. Everything else is pretty much up to you. You've come this far, you're a real trooper and you've had such a good attitude this entire time. Just a few more minutes and we'll be there. Can you wait that long? Shut up and wait.
Once you extract these files you'll see, you know, some stuff. There's a file called index.html which is a demonstration of what we're building. There's a folder called pictures which contains photos and thumbnails for index.html. Inside scripts is the javascript* and css. Finally, in templates, is another file called index.html. This is your Main Index template for Movable Type. If you didn't configure your lomolog like mine, you'll need to make some adjustments. Hell, you should make adjustments anyway because right now it's really plain.
Once you have your log configured, your Main Index template set up to your liking (go ahead and delete all the other templates), and the scripts folder uploaded inside your Local Site Path you're probably ready to upload an image (note: if you want to add category archives, see instructions below and do that first, so you don't have to edit all your entries to add categories later. -- Gwen). Size a nice photo to 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high (You change these dimensions but it'll require some calculatin'. You know, numerology and stuff.) Hit Upload File in Movable Type, choose your file, hit Upload, check Create a thumbnail for this image and enter 64 for width. Click Embedded Image and have a drink. Now all you're worried about is Entry Body. For that you only want the file name without the extension. Yeah, remove everything else. for example, if you've uploaded prettyflowers.jpg the Entry Body is going to have tags with full URIs. Get rid of the tags, URIs, and the extension so that all you're left with is prettyflowers. Click Save.
Addenda from Gwen 20030609
Text formatting must be set to 'none' rather than 'convert line breaks' in each entry in order for Movable Lomo to work properly. You can do this either manually on each entry or by changing the default in Weblog Config: Preferences to 'none'.
I thought this would be nifty if you want to color-code your entries, or sort entries by theme, date, etc. See example at http://www.dougspants.org/photos/020622jamestown/test.html
1. Go to weblog config:archiving, re-check Category archive type, and save.
2. Go to Templates, choose Category Archive, paste in the contents of templates/category.html, and save.
3. Add categories.
4. Go to Categories. Choose "edit category attributes" and add a category description.
5. Add categories to your entries.
6. Rebuild.
Fin.
(If you have any problems with this document, well, that's outside the scope of this document.)
*The javascript was done by Marc II . I really just modified it to work with Movable Type conventions.