COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

My feelings exactly P! I don't understand all the physics of metal cutting but I can make nice stuff and the cutter does what I want it to. Same applies to computers. We're lucky, when it gets murky we can rely on Ian and Pluggy! Bit like the workings of your body... it would frighten you to death if you knew everything that was happening in real time!

[Pluggy]

The file size taken up on the disk is determined by the smallest addressable cluster size which varies by the storage medium and its capacity. The file cannot take up less than this space no matter how small it is. A file that is 1,000,000 bytes will takes up the same space as a one byte file if the smallest addressable size is 1024 kB. An entirely different problem to the difference between a binary and a decimal MB. I have that down to a ploy by hard drive manufacturers to make the numbers look better.

[plaques]

Thanks Pluggy, perhaps I was being a bit mischievous rambling on about decimal megabytes and what we see as common or garden megabytes. In all events I doubt if the quantity limit ever comes into play when using the Gallery function, that is if you have taken the trouble to shrink your image down to the recommended pixel sizes for height and width.
Taking a typical image example..
Initial dimensions 3072 x 2304 = 1.6 MB
Shrunk to maximum width using my own photo editor = 1280 x 960 = 279.2 KB. ie: well within the capacity limit of 19.53 MiB. (1 MiB = 1.04858 MB).
I know PanBiker has written some instructions on the 'Gallery' subject but somehow my difficulty is getting off first base. Just where do you start and what happens next. A nice little YouTube tutorial would help me and possibly a lot of others.
If you want to know whether the instructions are clear and concise give them to an idiot to try out. (I'm your man in this respect).

[Stanley]

P, I have a file dedicated to pics I am going to upload and always make the maximum width 800. Nice size for emails and the site and will print as a decent image if someone wants to do that.

[PanBiker]

The gallery is a separate module to the main site so it has different settings for upload to the gallery and posting into a topic from the gallery. The gallery files size limit is there to encourage a bit of prudency. I have never had a photo rejected for exceeding the preset limit, it is good practice though to resize to 800 x 600 as that is the preset size that the post editor will make the file anyway. All images are resized to this when inserted regardless of original file size or dimensions.

I use a free image manipulation program called Irfanview, it has a handy batch resizing facility which is very easy to use.

To help Plaques along here is the truncated version of "how to do it".

Adding images to the Gallery

Navigate to suitable category in gallery.

Click "New Image"

Browse to location of image file, select and click "Open" the name of the file will be placed in the box.

You will be offered another upload box, you can browse to add more files. When you have finished adding files (limit set to 10) click "Continue".

Your image(s) will be shown on a preview screen where you have the option to give the image a name and add a description if you wish. It's a good idea to do this as it makes searching within the gallery easier.

When you have finished renaming, click "Submit", you image(s) will be added to the gallery.

To put the image in a post.

Navigate to the image in the gallery (click on the imagename in the gallery browser).

Highlight and copy the Image URL string from the first box below the image.

Place your cursor within the post where you want the image to appear then click the "insert image" icon in the header bar of the post editor, (it's the one that looks like a mountain).

Paste the image URL string previously copied into the "enter a link for image" box then click "insert into post" button.

Your image will be inserted in the post at the cursor position.

It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is and once you have done it it becomes a lot clearer. One tip would be to have the gallery location open in a separate tab in your browser. It makes it a lot easier to switch between gallery and the post you are editing.

[plaques]

Thanks PanBiker, I will give it a try for some of my next rivetingly boring pictures.

[Stanley]

Take heart P. It looks complicated but is incredibly easy when you have got your head round it. Certainly far easier than it was on the original site.....
I still advocate a dedicated file for the re-sized images. I don't know whether it is a peculiarity of Gimp or my OS but when I go to upload a pic 'browse' defaults to my OGB file and the latest image is at the top of the list. (I just had a look and there are 1300 images in that file and I never have any problems finding an individual image)

[PanBiker]

Yes "browse" will normally go back to the last path visited.

[Stanley]

Yes and of late it has introduced a small improvement. It used to simply go back to the alphabetical list and you had to hit the date modified button and scroll to the bottom to find the image you were working on but now it defaults to date order, last mod at the top which is of course the one you want. Saves two key strokes! Only glitch is that when I am in full flow with multiple images, because of the speed of FM3 and the fibre connection I beat the installation programme and on submit it fails and I have to 'try again'.

[Big Kev]

Just renewed my broadband and phone contract. Unlimited 17mbps broadband, anytime calls, 1571 and caller ID services and line rental. £21 a month with Sky. That'll do until unlimited fibre is free

[Pluggy]

Just renewed my broadband and phone contract. Unlimited 17mbps broadband, anytime calls, 1571 and caller ID services and line rental. £21 a month with Sky. That'll do until unlimited fibre is free

Was that on the back of a telly package with Sky or on its own ?

[Big Kev]

Just renewed my broadband and phone contract. Unlimited 17mbps broadband, anytime calls, 1571 and caller ID services and line rental. £21 a month with Sky. That'll do until unlimited fibre is free

Was that on the back of a telly package with Sky or on its own ?

That's on its own, I binned Sky TV several years ago. The cost breakdown is £10 for line rental, £2.50 for the broadband and the rest is for the anytime calls, 1571 and caller ID so it could have been cheaper

[Stanley]

IPs are a mystery to me. I don't think I have ever had a package that's cheaper than the others! I'm afraid I am idle, if it works and isn't bankrupting me I just pay and get on with it!

[Pluggy]

In this day and age, its broadband that keeps people using landlines, my daughter has a landline, and doesn't have a phone plugged into the line, just a router for internet. She uses her mobile for all her calls. My dad gave up on landlines a few years back, he makes very few calls, doesn't have the internet so he got rid of the landline altogether and just uses a PAYG mobile now. It costs him about a tenner a quarter in calls.

I have a line line, a real phone, internet and another phone piggybacking on the internet. I just splashed out on a new telly and an Amazon firestic, I'm on a trial with Amazon prime, and humming and arghing as to whether to pony up when the trial ends.

[Tizer]

I didn't think you'd fall for the Amazon prime tactic, Pluggy! Late on Friday afternoon I ordered a device from Amazon for making audio mp3 files from old cassette tapes recordings. It was a (potentially) `Free delivery' and `Bought from Amazon' item but didn't qualify for the free delivery because it was only £18 , just below the £20 watershed. So I bought a pack of AA batteries as well for £4, similarly `Free delivery' and `Bought from Amazon'. They arrived 18 hours later, on Saturday morning. The trick is to choose items that not only say `Free delivery' but also `Bought from Amazon'. You can tick boxes on the L.H. side of the web page to limit your search to only such items, but they craftily put the `Bought from Amazon' tick box a long way down near the bottom. (Cunning wheeze!)

(I'm only joking about Pluggy falling for the Prime service. He's running a business and needs delivery to be reliable. My delivery `Free deliveries' are usually fast but sometimes can take a bit longer.)

[PanBiker]

Talking of delivery, I ordered some LED lamps and batteries from CPC on Friday evening at about 8.30pm. They have free delivery, (3-5 days quoted) on orders over £5.00. My box was delivered Saturday morning at 10.00am.

CPC is now part of the Farnell group but I have been dealing with them through various employments since the business started. Geoff Taylor who started the business used to call on us personally. Back in 1971 he operated from his mums front room and the back seat and boot of a Ford Escort selling Japanese valves at half the price of the Mullard or Mazda equivalents and a few semiconductors and passive components. His original catalogue was a folded single sheet of A4. He would call one day and take your order then come back the next day and deliver. He sold the company for squillions a good number of years ago but it still trades with a massive catalogue now.

[Wendyf]

We used to buy most of our cables & connectors from CPC when we had the electronics business. Farnell & RS were a bit too pricey for components in bulk but were good for small tools and the occasional item we were desperate for!

[Pluggy]

If Amazon prime was just free delivery I wouldn't bother, but there is some watchable telly in their offering. Which sweetens the deal. Me and the missus are enjoying watching 'Outlander'. There's shedloads of dross on there but some of it is good. I'll probably go with Prime and buy more stuff through Amazon, Ebay gets a lot of my trade now.

[Stanley]

My problem with Amazon and Prime is that they are aiming to supply us with everything. I like to have some independence in my life. I don't like monopolies.....

[Stanley]

In complete contrast, 135mb of upgrades free and trouble-free from Canonical. I like their business model! Sounds a lot but installed and re-booted in ten minutes easily.

[Tizer]

Remember the problems that people have had when they receive videos taken in portrait format on smartphones but they display in landscape on PC screens? It seems difficult to find any way to rotate them for correct viewing on the PC screen and I guess the makers of smartphones don't care because they want you to view them on smartphones and not on PCs.

Well I've encountered that problem today but find it's easily solved in Ubuntu, as follows.
First, install Avidemux video editing software - open the Ubuntu Software Centre, key Avidemux into the search box, and when the appropriate page shows click on `Install'. It will place an an icon on your screen; click this to open Avidemux. Then open the video for editing by using File / Open. For me, a box came up saying `use safe mode' and I clicked for it to do so

On the left-hand side under `Video' you'll see a dropdown menu titled `Copy' where you can choose the type of video. I had no idea what type I'd been sent - it had a .MOV file ending but that means nothing to me so I simply chose the top of the list which was MPEG4-AVC.

Now, in the top menus, go to Video / Filters which opens the Video Filter Manager. Double click on `Rotate' and choose the angle you want, then click OK.

Now click `Close' and then File / Save/ Save Video, then wait while it does the encoding and then tells you it has worked successfully. If you now go to your File Manager and click on the video file it should be in the new rotated format. This might sound complicated on paper but it's very easy in practice and only takes a few minutes. And you can use Avidemux for other video editing jobs! Avidemux

[Stanley]

None of that concerns me because I don't use video formats these days but I am impressed. Particularly because it is via Ubuntu and free!

[Gloria]

Is anyone else on orange/EE and having email problems?? We were having connection problems a few weeks ago and they sent a new black bright box router. Set up was dead easy, everything worked ok, but now I can't access emails. Been on mail2web can access them on there, but when I reply to them I get an "error" when I press send.
I went on downdetector and there does appear to be problems but not in my area of west lancs.

[Gloria]

Been to library with iPad and accessed emails ok there, came home, tried it again here and bingo, for the moment it is working.

[Pluggy]

EE's broadband went down altogether briefly this afternoon, but I've never used their email in earnest. I collect the emails I get from EE (the only ones who use that email address) through gmail. Its reporting its getting it OK. If you're using old school smtp to send emails, its often picky about what network you're connected to. It often requires you to be on their network to send whereas receiving usually works anywhere. I've been using gmail for about 3 years now, theres no danger whatever I'd go back to faffing about with client email. I like an easy life.