Category: Online Life

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Flickr + CraigsList = Dilemma

Japanese Maple (Fall) - 11/21/2007
Japanese Maple (Fall) – 11/21/2007

Not sure how many folks have run into this, but I was kind of curious to see what folks think on this subject.

As many of my followers and readers know, I maintain a Flickr account for my photographic work, and may remember that I have a big interest in Japanese maples, to which there are several images in my photostream.

Users of Flickr know that they can track various metrics on their images within their account, and over time you begin to see a trend of where your viewers are coming from.

Over the past couple of months, I began to see a Refer coming from Craigslist.com, and one day, I decided to trackback original link, and see what is was being used for, and in doing so,  I found a Craigslist User linking to one of my images on Flickr,  who was selling Japanese maples in Seattle area.

This kept up for several days, and I actually e-mailed the user, on June 13th,

First eMail to CraigsList User
First email to CraigsList User

in which I do express my hope that my images are helping in their effort of selling more Japanese Maples.

During the next couple of week, I continued to notice some more views, but after a while, they went back to near zero.

Today, while checking my Flickr account numbers, I noticed the CraigsList.com Referrers link again…

CraigsList Flickr Referrers #2
CraigsList Flickr Referrers #2

and tracked it back again…

CraigsList User Posting #2
CraigsList User Posting #2

In the mean time, I have gotten no word from the CraigsList User at all.

With all this being said, my questions are this…

1) Am I going overboard?

– This CraigsList User is showing my Flickr Link clearly, but at the same time, there is no further acknowledgement, reference, permission or Thank you.

2) Should I be asking for compensation?

– It appears that this User might be making some money, since this is their Second advertisement on CraigsList.

3) What level of compensation?

– We all know, today’s economics are bad, and everyone is trying to make a money, but what is “Fair” these days? and on something like this?

4) What should be my next step?

– Well, I have kind of “outed” them with this Post, but considering that “their” true identity is still hidden…

Please let me know your thoughts…

– Andrew
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Moved to a new Hosting Service

As I mentioned in a previous post, “Moving to Windows 7“, I have completed a second major task that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

CrystalTech and fastCGI

2011 Chester County Balloon Fest 098
2011 Chester County Balloon Fest 098

This task has been bittersweet, in the sense that I’ve been with my previous host, CrystalTech, for 10+ years and they have always been very responsive during that time, but ever since I moved to a WordPress environment, I’d been having issues.

By no means, do I mean to slam CrystalTech in any way shape or form.

The hosting service has done me well for well over a decade, and I have set up many of my clients with them during this time.

My issue with their hosting at this stage the game is purely technical.

CrystalTech’s main mission is to provide Microsoft based Hosting services, which was great for me during my early days of HTML, FrontPage and DotNetNuke adventures, but as I move to WordPress, it became apparent that their Linux/Unix emulation services left a little to be desired.

Again, I do not blame CrystalTech directly because they are offering WordPress in an emulation mode in a Microsoft environment.

Where I see the major issue in this, is the reliance on the little piece of software called fastCGI.

Since I did not have direct access to the error logs, I can only make this inference based on the errors that were coming up in my browser screen, and they seem to indicate more times than not, that fastCGI was the culprit, and I surely do not want to offend anybody that has not had any issues at all.

Again, during my time with CrystalTech, I was never aware of any major outage, and the tech support staff was readily available during instant messaging session, and were always courteous, and I would recommend them for someone wishing to host a pure Microsoft environment.

Inmotionhosting.com

As mentioned previously, I have been investigating a new hosting service for some time, and during some research for new client of mine, I discovered Inmotionhosting.com.

After setting up a new domain registration and hosting requirements for my new client, Filec Services, LLC, I got my first taste of what it was like to be in a purely Linux/Unix environment.

I was first struck by the speed in which I was able to install a brand-new installation of WordPress, and from there, the installation of my various required plug-ins seem to take seconds to install compared to that of my previous hosting service.

When it became time to actually add content, I could just add the information as needed and my WordPress installation just seem to flow with each new page.

Based on this initial experience, I prepared my old site for the migration to Inmotionhosting.com.

Again after doing numerous backups, of both my content and my database, and reviewing as much information on the topic as possible, I made the import of my old website into my new hosting environment, and was extremely pleased to see that nearly everything transferred without any issue whatsoever!

Once in place, I started to tinker around and was still greeted with the new speed that I had just gained for my web site!

In reading further of SEO, Google has announced that website response times are now linked to your ranking, so hopefully I can get my site further up the scale when potential clients are searching for my services!

In the meantime, please take a look at my various posts and pages and see if you do not also agree that the site seems faster than it was a few days ago.

Update

I still find it amazing, how many little bits and pieces need to be reconnected when one moves to a new host, especially after 10+ years!

In reviewing my Google Webmaster Tools account, it seems to indicate that prior to my move to my new host, my page load times were nearly 20 seconds!

It will be interesting to see how those load times will change during the course of the next several months, but already I know, or I should say, that they ‘feel’ a lot faster!

– Andrew
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Moving to Windows 7

110813 Hersey Park 052
The Roller Coast of Upgrading

I have finally done two things for my computer and online environment that I’ve been contemplating for a very long time: Upgrading to Windows 7 and Moving to a new Web Hosting service. (Moving to a new host will be described in another post.)

When Microsoft Vista came out, there were a great many reports and issues involved with this transitional operating system, and many of those did not like what they seem trapped with when they bought their new machines, and many corporations refused to move to Vista.

Even with time, service packs and patches, Vista never seem to be ready for prime time, so when Windows 7 came out in October of 2009, many people were even more anxious about this new operating system. Would this new operating system be a similar public relations disaster?

As more and more people used and reviewed Windows 7, it became clear, the Microsoft had learned from their earlier mistakes.

Personally, I had said to myself many a times, that I was going to wait till I got a new computer before I made the switch to Windows 7 on my primary machines, but that thinking got squashed when Adobe announced that Lightroom 4 would only run in Windows 7.

To my knowledge, this was the first mainstream application that required the use of Windows 7, and since I rely heavily on Lightroom, I had to reevaluate my thinking and my pocketbook.

So after freeing up some time and getting all business related activity done, I set about the task of backing up my system and beginning the migration to this new operating system.

I had not done a fresh install of my main computer in many years, so I was very concerned that I was able to keep my various settings, as well as applications that I had grown very fond of over the years.

I made backups of backups, hunted down preference settings and serial numbers, and finally made the switch.

After booting into my fresh operating system, I noticed my machines seem to be responding quicker to normal tasks which was quite pleasant.

I am still amazed the amount of time  necessary for our newly installed machine, which easily reaches 200+ patches, if one includes Microsoft Office, but once done it is like driving a new car, but without that unique scent (some would argue there is a different scent…).

At the moment, my single biggest issue with doing the upgrade, has been the restoration of my files, and this has to do mostly with my usage of Robocopy and User Account Control (UAC).

In the past, using Robocopy was a matter of learning the various command-line switches and writing your script accordingly, and for the most part, this still holds true, but one still needs to manually increase their privileges for the script to work.

This can easily be done, by typing in “cmd” in the program search field, and then holding the “Shift” key, as one right clicks, and selects “Run as administrator”.

I do need to spend some more time to get my backup scripts running with the same robocopy scripts but at the moment I’m happy doing it manually.

At least, I know they are running and completed.

All in all I had been very pleased with the upgrade, and does seem to increase the life of some of your existing computer equipment, assuming you can find compatible drivers.

If for nothing more, you now have a lot longer period till you have to worry about Microsoft no longer supporting your operating system! (See Microsoft Product Lifecycle for XP)

– Andrew
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Saving Private Space – Outlook PSTs

Day 04 - 120305 sunset Shamona Creek es 007
Day 04 – 120305 sunset Shamona Creek es 007

Last week, I spent the better part of the day backing-up all my files to make sure nothing would get lost, which should be common practice, for anyone looking to do an upgrade, or in my case a full rebuild my machine, moving from Windows XP to a brand-new install of Windows 7.

Why?

Well, XP has been my workhorse for several years now, but there are several applications, that are beginning to require Windows 7, namely Adobe Lightroom 4.

For the most part, the Rebuild of my main computer went quite well, and I can see a definite improvement in the general speed of my main desktop.

I also spent a fair amount of time prior to the upgrade, tracking down the various serial numbers which lay hidden in numerous e-mails that I have accumulated over the years.

There were a few applications that I have reservations about in my move to Windows 7 but after a day or two, my fears were alleviated.

Today, was my day to finally get back in touch with the real world, and tweak my Outlook 2007 for my new environment.

In my haste, trying to get back online last week, I inadvertently connected the wrong PST as my default, and this morning I paid for it.

After trying to do what one would think simple to clean-up of my mistake, I decided to go ahead and just create a brand-new PST.

What really amazed me, was that I was able to save approximately 600MBs of disk space just by copying the emails to the new PST, and that was after contacting the original PST!

So the moral of this quick story, or should I say rant, is that if you need to recuperate some disk space, one might take a look at copying your old emails to a new PST, but be forewarned it can take some time.

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No Super Moon – Still had a good time!

120505 Super Moon 007
120505 Super Moon 007

Last Thursday, May 3rd, Nina Downing Cazille posted on the Chester County PA Photography Facebook page, a Yahoo! News story, that suggested on Saturday night, that not only was the Super Moon going to be visible, possibly Saturn and maybe a dusting from Halley’s comet!

There was some spirited discussion on who might attend, and much speculation about the weather, since much of the past week or so, has been very cloudy and rainy.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, and looked out the window, only to find the skies still thickly clouded.

This was not good.

With coffee in hand, I went to the Chester County PA Photography page, and started a new thread, trying to finalize the details for our rather impromptu meet-up, later in the night.

Throughout the day, I kept looking at the sky, and try to figure out which way the clouds were moving.

In the mid-afternoon, I took both my kids down to East Ward elementary school, to burn off some energy in preparation for the evening, and when we started to leave, I was beginning to see increasingly larger sections of blue sky, which was very encouraging for a night of photographing the Super Moon.

By the time dinner had been prepared and consumed, the cloudy skies had returned.

Just before I left, I quickly checked the radar for clouds, and the hourly animation strongly suggested that there were big clear pockets of clear sky, coming down from the north, and would be over us within an hour or so.

Using Creek Road (Rt. 282), I got to the boating side of Marsh Creek State Park, within 20 minutes, and was able to find easy parking because many people were already packing up and leaving for the night.

After parking, I started to get my gear, but hesitated from getting it all out, because I still feared that no one was going to show up.

When I reached the predetermined meeting point, I was very delighted and relieved to see several other people standing there with their cameras!

  • Nina Downing Cazille
  • Shannon Chambers McMahon
  • Tony Babcock
  • Elaine Erwin-Babcock
  • I know I am missing some folks!

It was very nice to know that I am not the only crazy one!

After the various introductions, I headed back to my car, and grabbed my gear, heading back to the group to setup for the rest of the evening.

As the night wore one, we talked about various topic, and exchanged various stories about photography, family and life.

We also tried to identify which towns were glowing against the sky line, as well as experimenting with flashes and flash-lights.

At 23:35, when perigee finally arrived, the clouds were still as thick as when we started, but it did seem a little brighter, which could also have been from us standing in the dark for the past three and half hours.

It was not long after, that we packed up our gear, said our good byes and headed home. In reading the subsequent posts on the Facebook page, it seems that everyone had a good time!

– Andrew
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