Schierer Space

From what I’ve learned, we are apparently not the only ones to be suffering problems with the gallery software on our web-hosting company. Something that was changed in their server configuration seems to have broken the application.

What’s odd, is only the front page is completely failing to load. If you link directly into the lower level albums, the pages will load. At the moment many of the thumbnails are also broken, but that’s a separate issue.

So as a workaround, to get to Nathan’s pictures just go to the album directly with the following link:
http://www.theschierers.net/gallery/v/Family/Nathan/

from there you can navigate to other albums by using the pull-down menu on the lower part of the left column, or regular thumbnail navigation, just don’t click on the logo or the root album.

Previously we had allowed only registered users to view the ‘full’ size images on the Gallery. I have now removed this restriction because it seemed to be more annoying than useful. The ‘full’ size images in the Gallery are 1800×1200 which is larger than most people’s monitors, but still significantly reduced from the full resolution image (3504×2336) from the camera.

Speaking of the camera, the corruption issues have continued which is putting a bit of a crimp on my most productive hobby. I’ve come up with a workaround (download images from the camera exclusively with the Canon viewing software which is horribly awkward), but clearly there is some kind of problem that will need to be addressed.

The problem seems to manifest when I remove the card from the camera and place it in any card reader. I can remove the card and replace it in the camera with no issues visible within the camera. Once it touches a card reader, however, the camera and WinXP agree that there are busted files. We have several (two different brands of USB type and one embedded in our printer) and all of them seem to suffer the same problem. I’ve tried multiple CF cards (I bought 2 new ones just a few weeks back when the issue first came up). It doesn’t happen EVERY time, but I’d say it’s higher than 75% that at least one file will get mashed. This is clearly unacceptable. There was even a recent firmware update for the Canon 20D that addressed a compact flash compatibility issue. I’ve upgrade to this firmware, but the problem persists.

The nearest Canon service center is near New York City in Jersey and this is NOT a good time of year to be without your camera for two weeks. I think I’ll muddle through until after the holidays. Yuck.

I’ve added a major new capability to the Gallery which I think is very cool. Here are the details:

• I have activated the “Keyword Album” feature. This is actually something that has been latent in the software for a while, but I hadn’t gotten around to setting it up. What it lets you do is quickly navigate the gallery by keyword, rather than (the somewhat arbitrary) album hierarchy (you can do something similar via the search feature also). In the left sidebar you will see a pull down menu which lists ALL of the keywords on the site (for now). At some point I will probably limit this only to the top 25 or so keywords, but I’m going to display all for testing purposes for a while. Once you are in a Keyword Album, each thumbnail will have keywords listed which will let you navigate to other Keyword Albums depending on what you click on. The albums should be ordered such that the most recent image (or album) is shown first. This example will take you to the Nathan Keyword Album.
• You will also find the Keyword Album links on the bottom of the album pages (for the album’s keywords) and on the image pages (for the images keywords). So if you are looking at an image of beer and food (that has been tagged), you can click the keyword “beer” to see all images of beer.
• If you have navigated to an image via a Keyword Album, there is also a link below the image which will allow you to view that image in the context of the original album (back to the normal hierarchy).
• One consequence of this addition is that I’ve been editing the tags on quite a few images so that the tags are consistent and (reasonably) useful. As such, quite a few galleries and images will show as “Updated” when really nothing significant has changed.
• There is also a new “View Latest Updates” link in the sidebar for each album. It will provide a dynamic gallery of the most recent images in that album (and children albums). So if you click on that link when viewing the top level gallery album, it will show you the most recent images in the entire gallery. Try it!

My friend Bill is creating a new website. I’ve never seen it. In fact I’m not even sure what it’s going to be about, although considering the trend of the current site I suspect traffic or some other road-geek related field. I could be wrong, but I think I’m right. Why? Because I had a vision of Bill’s new website in my dreams last night. Yes. Really.

So to Bill if you think my website vision is cool, feel free to use it, that way I get to say I foresaw it in a dream. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all. If anybody else wants to use it, well it’s going to cost you.

(more…)

K pulled the images off the camera from an impromptu photo-shoot, and she found what she thinks is the best picture yet. I’m not sure if it surpasses the pea-pod picture, but asked her to put it in a frame for me to take to work.
You decide for yourself.

She put up some other images in the 3rd Month gallery also.

The pictures from last weekend are up.

In addition, Nate has reached the two month mark. So it’s photographic growth chart time:

And some pictures to start out the third month…

We had a busy weekend with relatives in town for Nathan’s baptism on Sunday. We took lots of pictures (and so did the rest of the family) so hopefully tonight I’ll get a chance to get the pictures up. For now, I’ll tide you over with this one.

Happy Birthday to Grandma Schierer!

Uploaded a few of the better shots of Nate from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy!