Laborious logging

[+gnbrotz]

I find myself having a hard time keeping up with my benchmark logs here on the site. Not the actual logging so much as the photo uploads (I have a dial-up connection). I often have 3 or 4 photos for each benchmark, and hunt 5-6 marks per outing. So far I've had pretty good success finding them, which means more photos to post.

 

Right now, I'm about a month behind in logging my finds. In the interest of helping us reach that 10,000 mark, I'm going to go ahead and log everything that I've done and pick away at the photo uploads slowly; but over time, I only see my problem increasing.

 

Any thoughts on how I might remedy this?

 

Greg

N 39 54.705'

W 77 33.137'

[rusty0101]

If your ISP gives you some online storage for a personal website, why not use some mirroring software to update new photos to your own website, then put links to the photos, or individual pages in your found descriptions.

 

If you feel it necessary to have the photos on the benchmark page, check through the available formats, and see if you can find a format that you can upload in with low bandwidth requirements that still looks good when viewed from the web page. You may want to try a couple of different image manipulation software packages to convert the photos. You may also want to consider cropping images of the benchmark itself down to reduce the size of the image.

 

Just a couple of ideas.

 

-Rusty

[+rogbarn]

I also have a dial up and the picture upload does seem to take a while. My pictures are JPGs and range from about 50KB to 120KB so any upload should be a matter of seconds. It still takes a minute or two because of what looks like starting and restarting before it actually takes. Anyway, I do log mine as soon as I find them and later upload pictures when I can. On the other hand, I don't have a month's worth of back log.

[+rdw]

I had dial-up until 2 weeks ago (DSL now ), but the most tedious part for me has always been downloading from the camera, cropping, saving a high res photo of the mark for myself, then cropping more, scaling the image down, naming it, saving it, and then finally uploading it. Repeat for any "area" pics. It's the only downside I've found to benchmarking. This is also why I have 5 or 6 pictures sitting in the camera for benchmarks I logged a couple weeks ago. What a pain. Sigh...

 

rdw

[+rdw]

I had dial-up until 2 weeks ago (DSL now ), but the most tedious part for me has always been downloading from the camera, cropping, saving a high res photo of the mark for myself, then cropping more, scaling the image down, naming it, saving it, and then finally uploading it. Repeat for any "area" pics. It's the only downside I've found to benchmarking. This is also why I have 5 or 6 pictures sitting in the camera for benchmarks I logged a couple weeks ago. What a pain. Sigh...

 

rdw

[ArtMan]

gnbrotz,

 

I also have a dial-up connection. I normally upload only two pictures per mark - a closeup, closely cropped to the disk itself, and an area view, usually with the disk in the foreground.

 

My typical image size is about 30-60k.

 

I usually resize the picture to 350 pixels on the longest side, occasionally 400, but no more. And when I save after cropping, adjusting, etc, I use jpg 50% reduction.

 

You won't confuse my pictures with anything done by a professional, but I think it's the right balance between acceptable quality and file size.

 

Remeber, it's not just your upload time - anyone wanting to look at your images has to download them, too, and I'll be we've still got a high percentage of users with dial-up connections.

[Circum]

Resizing is a good way to optimize upload time. The system automatically resizes images which results in a standard width with variable height (as you can see in the gallery) and provides some uniformity. It also takes care of download optimization to some extent.

 

The magic number is 605 pixels wide to fill the frame available in the system. If your image is wider, the system will resize to 605, but your upload time will be longer. If your image is narrower your image will be put into a frame 605 pixels wide which will result in a smaller image with white border (see example).

 

My uploads take about a minute each on dial-up when the server is not busy. I have noticed things slow down a lot at busy times of day (early to mid evening Eastern time zone).

[+Centaur]

Some more options:

Set your digital camera to 640x480 resolution and high jpg compression. Since everything on the site is automatically resized anyway a 640 image fits nicely without to much playing about. So there is no manipulation needed at your end before you upload it.

 

A 56K dialup (which I use at home) is close to 56K DOWNLOAD speed only. Upload speeds are always less. 44K and down, depending on line quality. A 56K dialup gives more bandwidth to the download side so things get to you faster, and that leaves less for upload, so they are slower.

 

-Centaur

 

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I have a cablemodem and notice some weird upload timing. I uploaded a bunch of pictures last night (about a 3-day backlog). As usual, the first upload took about 3 or 4 minutes. Thereafter, as usual, all subsequent picture uploads for all PIDs took some small amount of time like 10-15 seconds.

I don't know what the first 3 or 4 minutes is for. On other occasions, I've tried various things on my end - delete the progress box, re-load the PID page - close other windows and processes - glare at the light on the cablemodem box or disk access indicator light - none made any difference.