It's taken me 127 days to de-SmugMug this blog, but it's been worth it.
Maybe now I can get back to some serious blogging.
Or maybe some not-so-serious blogging.
Archive for the 'Photo hosting' Category
Hotwiring the fragment-links and superceding the binary— binary— binary— binary— binary— binary— …
If only I could do that, the task of editing all of the blog's image, image-link and mouseover URLs (to reflect the changes associated with migrating all of my pics out of the failing SmugMug and into WordPress) would probably be a doddle. As it is, it's a tedious manual-edit jobbie that's taking me ages.
Two months in and I'm still not a quarter of the way there. It didn't help that a fortnight ago WordPress updated to version 3.9 and the thing fell apart because of the limitations of the bundled "upgraded" TinyMCE visual editor which had been gelded of various features that I need to do the editing. The techies at BlueHost did a restore from a their monthly backup to get me back onto WP3.8.3 with the previous TinyMCE... that put me back in control, but it undid a month of editing and scrubbed a month of uploads.
So, expect this place to be a mess while the transfer is in progress. I reckon I have about 6,000 URL edits still to do, so it's going to take a long time.
FWIW, I did try reversing the polarity of the neutron flow but that had no beneficial effects. The sonic screwdriver...
is helping a bit.
Maybe I need a Doctor.
TKO-ZOTO
Back
We're back from a week of rain-dodging in Dorset. Aside from the usual few days of washing/drying kit and sorting hundreds of pics, there's a more pressing task - the final stage of the photo-hosting move from Zoto to SmugMug. This entails the thankless task of going through every blog post, page and comment here to find and edit all of the links to my pics and albums. There's a fair chance that the blog will have to be taken offline, and an even larger chance that I'll not get it finished by the August 8th deadline.
Of course, this all means that you get a week of respite before I start to bore you with my holiday snaps, so make merry while you can 
Zoto’s finally gone to the knackers yard
Time was when Zoto was an excellent photo-hosting service, providing quick and easy access to many ways of viewing and organising uploaded pics. Sadly, it's been going downhill for some time now. Today it seems to have shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! Hyperlinked pics still seem to be working (slowly), but I suspect that it's more of a reflex action than a sign of life.
Don't bother going to the "My pics and albums" page - it's a complete mess. I'll repair it when I've finished downloading the 1500+ pics, renaming them and uploading them to a safer place. Then there's the ball-aching job of going through nearly 500 blog posts updating all of the photo URLs. What joy!
Anyway, I've still not decided where to put the pics - Flickr's cheap and cheerful, SmugMug seems to be a better option, Zooomr is still a no-no even though I still have a pro account there (which they still haven't closed after all this time). Maybe I should take on the hassle myself and go down the self-hosting route? Hmm, decisions, decisions...
Digitally-challenged
Anna had just one piece of homework during the recent junior-school half-term holiday... find some pictures of Autumn. What a great excuse for getting the kids outside in the fresh air, we thought, so off we went to the local woods for a "let's see who can take the best photo" competition. I took my Nikon D50, Ella took her Vivitar compact and I gave Anna my old Olympus C730-UZ.
Anna got used to the camera very quickly, this was the first time she had used one "for real", as she put it (she's taken the odd holiday snap with mine, that's all).
Well, we were in and out of the trees, crawling through the undergrowth, trudging through the mud, it was a great time. Anna rattled off shots here, there and everywhere, she really enjoyed herself.
Back at base, we took stock and prepared to send her pics to school, and that's when the experience started to turn sour...
First, we tried to send them by email to the address that had been given to us for this exercise, but they bounced back.
Next, we sent them on the smartmedia card that was in the camera when she took the pics. This was returned with the message that the school "couldn't use that type of card".
Next, we transferred them to an SD card, this was returned with the message that the school "can't read the pictures".
Getting a bit bothered by all the unnecessary hassle, I burned the pics onto a CD, that was returned this week with the message that the school "still couldn't read the pictures".
Now, I'm no expert, but I've yet to find a modern computer that won't read JPG files and finding one without a CD-ROM or better is practically unheard-of these days. It seems to me that the school is more digitally-challenged than I thought.
As you would expect, Anna is now completely disillusioned by the situation, she feels that it was a waste of time, and I can appreciate that feeling. It's not much of a morale-booster, is it?
So, to make up for the shortcomings of the school, I've put her pics in an album of their own. Who knows, maybe the school might figure out how to get to see them too!
Here's a taster of what's on offer...
Not bad for a first-timer, eh?
