The Open Source Ministry Blog

I has finally started to happen, more security people are finding the Church Security Forum.

If you ever have the feeling that perhaps you are not paranoid enough about church security I recommend you stop in. As more people who are interested in security are joining in there are more perspectives and resources available.

Blogs are nice. They allow an author to focus on a topic and write in a personal manner. I still prefer forums though. They open up the conversation in a way that a self focused blog cannot.

If you are an active learner then I invite you to stop in at the Open Source Ministry Forum and join in.

It isn’t a place focused on software or Linux (although those are regular topics), it is focused on opening knowledge for ministry. I believe that Open Source is not about software, it’s about people helping people accomplish great things.

We use Ivis Plus 1000 (Motto: 32-Bit Software . . . faster & more reliable than 16-bit systems) from Identicard for our ID Card printing.

One of the features we really wanted was to be able to use the images from the ID cards for other uses, but the documentation for IP 1000 didn’t include info on how to get the images out. Ivis Plus 2000 advertises standard jpeg images as a feature, but the 1000 does not.

It was after about 1 week of starting on the ID cardsthat I decided to look into how the images are stored. They are kept in \IVISPLUS\PHOTOS\PIC1 and they are named as p1.pc where “1″ is the incremented number of the image. Don’t let the .pc fool you, they are really jpeg images and once I associated .pc files with Firefox they open up immediately.

We use a separate program for controlling the maglocks, and it was able to import the .pc images for the picture IDs associated with the cards in the system.

The fact that the images are stored in jpg format meant that I was able to open one of the images in photoshop and use it as a template for creating my own ID images. I used the proportions of that image and created other pictures for the loaner cards (Yoda: “Return this card you must”, General MacArthur: “I Shall Return”, The Terminator: “I’ll be back”, and President Bush: just in case he ever visits). I used a picture of communion trays for our communion prep ministry card, a picture of an audio cassette for the message ministry card, and pretty notes for the worship department loaner card. I saved them as .jpg files and then took a picture with the camera through the ID card program to create an associated image and then renamed the .jpg to match the .pc name in the picture directory.

I also used this option for bringing in pictures of people who were not available to get their picture taken when I had the system set up for regular operation. There were a few times when I had to edit images in photoshop and drop in the default background before importing.

The best feature with this is that we also have a place where staff can look at pictures of all the other staff, ministry leaders, custodians, and regular contractors to know what they look like. I got around to tht after 100 pictures had already been taken so I ended up pulling out a section of the Ivis Plus database and writing a php script to associate the person’s name and position with their image, resizing the images to make them all the same size, and saving the images as FirstName_LastName.jpg for easier future reference.

These pictures look like mugshots so they did not turn out well when a couple were used during service at the last minute (if you want to recognize people they need a more flattering image), but they were used to identify people in security camera video, and one was used in a police investigation. The security hosts have a direct link to the images on the front desk computer so they can identify people by name very quickly.