Hello from Spain. The last two posts have been missing pictures. I hesitate to blame technology (heck, 12 years ago you'd all be waiting for me to come back and process the films) but I'm blaming the technology. It's gotten too good for the type of posting I'm trying to do.
The Picture Plan #
For the foreseeable future, here's how the blog will happen.
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I'll post stories about the trip. Some long, some short little snippets.
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I'll also bulk upload a selection of pictures to a special gallery in my SmugMug photo sharing account.
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I'll link to the gallery at the top of the post.
The pictures in the gallery will be roughly sorted into the same order which I talk about things in the post. But they won't likely have a caption per picture. Sorry.
Here's two galleries to get you caught up with the last two posts:
Gallery for "Evora: Step Back. Step Way Back."
Gallery for "The Algarve Has Been Logged. You Must Visit Anyway."
Technical Details For Those Who Care About This Sort Of Thing #
Here's some detail for the geeks in the audience. I won't feel bad if you stop reading now.
The blog is built on a self hosted Wordpress site. I'm writing my posts on a new iPad and posting whenever I have access to Wifi.
I'm using the official Wordpress iPad app to post. I've tried posting straight from the Safari browser too and still get the same problems.
The problem, as I see it, is that the image files from my new iPhone and Cindy's new camera are just too big to upload to my self hosted site. Whether I upload the images from the Wordpress app or the Safari browser, and whether a bulk 'add media' operation or from the post editor, the upload hangs up before it is complete.
However, I can upload the files to SmugMug with no problem. OK, it takes forever, but it works so long as I leave the iPad alone for an hour per post.
If I resize the images and reduce the file size, it works. But there's no automatic resize capability with Apple Photo.
I bought a 3rd party app to do the resize, and it works, but individually resizing each photo, then getting back to the Wordpress app, finding the space in the post, loading and embedding the picture, etc. Is just taking too long.
I spent over 5 hours on my Estremoz post alone and we were almost in Spain before I had time to finish it and post it. At this rate I'll be home and Christmas will come and I'll still be posting about the trip. Cindy and I want to see new things rather than sit around uploading photos.
When I get home, I can quickly resize the photos on my PC, or just upload them to Wordpress from my computer/proper internet connection.
The only other change I could make is to see if my server has a file size restriction that I don't know about, which may be causing the issue. Ie, don't allow uploads of more than 2mb from Europe. But that's unlikely.
The Smugmug solution doesn't give an awesome reading experience. Having the pictures in the right place in the post is better. But at least this way I can stay more current and people can see pictures too. I know Cindy's mom wants to see more pics. So that's one person anyway, and a pretty important person at that.