Posting pictures: A plea for mercy

[claymore1977]

Mate, I live out in the donga. We get one free-to-air channel, and that's only when the wind blows the right way!

If you only get one channel, then how do you know that most TV is crap?  :P

Does that really matter? I was active duty military as were my parents and many of my relatives. To be blunt, I don't like Ermy. The show itself isn't too bad but they could improve it immensely by replacing him.

Actually yeah it does.  I really don't know, or rather didn't know, very many non-active duty personell and everyone I know thinks Emery is a trip.  I guess I will chalk you up as #2 then :)

 

No, when my Annapolis appointment AND my four-year Air Force ROTC scholarship were rescinded because of gout,

Well sir, I applaud your Will to support your nation, even if the Way didnt pan out. I must comment that that is leaps and strides beyond what most can say!

I elected not to enlist as well (though the Navy did promise me Nuclear Power officer's school if I would enlist).

Well, as an Nuke Electrician Vet, I hereby dub thee an Honorary Nuke & Eng-Dept Friend... even if you were trying to go to the Dark Side, aka O-Ganger :)

But I have worked defense and aerospace all my life, so I have been around active duty personnel pretty much constantly. Not the same thing, I know, but I AM familiar with military hardware, and have designed my fair of it as well. For whatever that's worth.

Thats worth a lot, actually, as I too am now working the support side of the Military.  A lot more goes on behind the scenes that I realized when I was active duty!

But I DO llike Emery in some things other than Mail Call. He always plays the same over-acted drill sergeant personality though, as far as I know.

Oh yeah!  He's type cast and he knows it.  That what makes him so fun.  A viewer is not supposed to laugh with him & at his jokes, one is supposed to laugh AT him because he is so unreal.

 

Wow, what is the topic here? Srayed a bit didn't we. Thats ok.

I must say that after resizing my pics I get through some of my threads on other sites a bit quicker and the picks are't soooo big.

I'm sure this was keeping may people from looking and reading my threads.

I love how a conversation can flow from one topic to another so seamlessly :)  always interesting to see where the thread ends up!

But even those of us with broadband appriciate a fast loading thread!

[spidge]

Wow, what is the topic here? Srayed a bit didn't we. Thats ok.

I must say that after resizing my pics I get through some of my threads on other sites a bit quicker and the picks are't soooo big.

I'm sure this was keeping may people from looking and reading my threads.

[Pruitt]

To each their own, but WOW, you have to be the FIRST person I have ever met that thinks Emery is annoying.  It might be that I have been surrounded by military my whole life.  Where you ever active duty? 

No, when my Annapolis appointment AND my four-year Air Force ROTC scholarship were rescinded because of gout, I elected not to enlist as well (though the Navy did promise me Nuclear Power officer's school if I would enlist). But I have worked defense and aerospace all my life, so I have been around active duty personnel pretty much constantly. Not the same thing, I know, but I AM familiar with military hardware, and have designed my fair of it as well. For whatever that's worth.

But I DO llike Emery in some things other than Mail Call. He always plays the same over-acted drill sergeant personality though, as far as I know.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

 It might be that I have been surrounded by military my whole life.  Where you ever active duty? 

Does that really matter? I was active duty military as were my parents and many of my relatives. To be blunt, I don't like Ermy. The show itself isn't too bad but they could improve it immensely by replacing him.

[claymore1977]

 

Obviously neither of you have seen Mail Call hosted by R. Lee Emery on the history channel.  Quite a gem of a program, but still not enough to outwieght the literal ton of crud on all the other channels.

I've seen it. The man is the very definition of annoying (perhaps that's just his on-screen persona), and as for the show itself - the commercials are the best part! If that's considered a gem, then a horse apple necklace must be absolutely priceless!

To each their own, but WOW, you have to be the FIRST person I have ever met that thinks Emery is annoying.  It might be that I have been surrounded by military my whole life.  Where you ever active duty? 

[james saunders]

Mark, SNL is on Foxtel... on the comedy Channel...

OK. I'll revise that statement - SNL has never been broadcast on free-to-air television. As for Foxtel, Citizen Rupert has quite enough money already. He's not getting any of mine. (At any rate, where I live we're lucky to get the ABC*!)

Cop you later,

Mark.


*Australian Broadcasting Corporation. At 8 cents a day, it's overpriced.

 

Just thought i'd point it out... I only got foxtel for the comprehensive sports coverage, and the doco's...

 

[Pruitt]

Obviously neither of you have seen Mail Call hosted by R. Lee Emery on the history channel.  Quite a gem of a program, but still not enough to outwieght the literal ton of crud on all the other channels.

I've seen it. The man is the very definition of annoying (perhaps that's just his on-screen persona), and as for the show itself - the commercials are the best part! If that's considered a gem, then a horse apple necklace must be absolutely priceless!

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Obviously neither of you have seen Mail Call hosted by R. Lee Emery on the history channel.  Quite a gem of a program, but still not enough to outwieght the literal ton of crud on all the other channels.

Mate, I live out in the donga. We get one free-to-air channel, and that's only when the wind blows the right way!

Cheers,

Mark.

Boy, that brings back memories. Back in the 70's there was no cable out here, satellite dishes were still a decade away and all there was out here were antennas. We were lucky if we two channels (NBC - KALB Alexandria, La and KPLC Lake Charles, La), sometimes we'd get CBS from Lafayette, La. That was on a giant Radio Shack Crossfire III antenna, one of the largest on the market at the time. The rotor burned out in 1972 and we had to turn the mast with a large pipe wrench to change the antennas direction.

[marknewton]

Obviously neither of you have seen Mail Call hosted by R. Lee Emery on the history channel.  Quite a gem of a program, but still not enough to outwieght the literal ton of crud on all the other channels.

Mate, I live out in the donga. We get one free-to-air channel, and that's only when the wind blows the right way!

Cheers,

Mark.

[marknewton]

Mark, SNL is on Foxtel... on the comedy Channel...

OK. I'll revise that statement - SNL has never been broadcast on free-to-air television. As for Foxtel, Citizen Rupert has quite enough money already. He's not getting any of mine. (At any rate, where I live we're lucky to get the ABC*!)

Cop you later,

Mark.


*Australian Broadcasting Corporation. At 8 cents a day, it's overpriced.

[claymore1977]

"... we seem to get all the other rubbish US television programmes here.

Cheers,

Mark.

Unfortunately, we get it all in America, too! We have Directv satellite, about 100 channels, and it is amazing how often there is nothing of interest on ANY of them!

 Obviously neither of you have seen Mail Call hosted by R. Lee Emery on the history channel.  Quite a gem of a program, but still not enough to outwieght the literal ton of crud on all the other channels.

[Pruitt]

"... we seem to get all the other rubbish US television programmes here.

Cheers,

Mark.

Unfortunately, we get it all in America, too! We have Directv satellite, about 100 channels, and it is amazing how often there is nothing of interest on ANY of them!

[modelmaker51]

Anyone interested in 250 disks of Commodore games and programs and a couple of 64's and a 128, all in operating condition? (I still have the printer cass drive etc.) I hauled it all out a couple of years ago and we had a lot fun playing the old games with the primitive graphics!

I still use the 13" video monitors, one's in the train room and the other is in use at my A/V workbench. They've out lasted all my other TVs and monitors!

 

BTW I've seen plenty of low budget rubbish Australian TV too! Every country is guilty of producing plenty of crap tv.

[james saunders]

SNL = Saturday Night Live. It's only beem around for like 4 or 5 decades.

It's, like, never been broadcast in Australia*, so the reference is meaningless to me.

*Which is surprising, since we seem to get all the other rubbish US television programmes here.

Cheers,

Mark.

 Mark, SNL is on Foxtel... on the comedy Channel... I watch it sometimes

 I don't mind the original CSI... and Law and Order...other than that... CSI Miami is gold for the Caruso factor.  

 

James 

[Gandy Dancer]

I was hoping someone would get around to mentioning the Commodore computers.  ... Before the Commodore Vic-20 and the Commodore 64 there were the Commodore PET, plus the KAYPRO portable and the Grid portable.  Other people have already mentioned HP, Osborne, and the Radio Shack TRS-80.  Around that same time (early '80s) Atari sold a home computer and Coleco sold one called Adam.

  What's this! No one has mentioned the DEC Rainbow.  It had a bizzare upside down B: floppy disk drive.  No comments on the NexT machine or the DEC Alpha?  How about the Texas Instruments Explorer (a MAC with a LISP chip in it)?  The Bobcat - another LISP based machine.  The HP Apollo.  The Humming board 386 processor add on to the PC.   Until last year I had at least one of each of these sitting in my garage.  I was going to start a computer museum but decided they were just taking up too much space. 

Around 1986 IBM started selling hard disks for their PC, and they made the PC boot automatically from the hard disk.  No more inserting a floppy to boot up.  IMHO, that made IBM PCs more desirable than all the competition.

Interesting point, but wrong date.  By 1986 the IBM AT (80286) ruled the world.  The PS/2s were introduced in 1987.   I got my 20Mhz model 80 (80386) in November.

A few people have told me they absolutely love their MACs, and I intend to buy one someday.

I know many people who hold this position and still don't understand it either.  I've used MACs, UNIX workstations, and IBMs (Windows, OS/2, X-windows) since 1992 and find very little difference.  On a MAC one pushes and holds the mouse button, while Windows is a double click.  The MAC is now an intel based processor running UNIX based operating system anyway, so how is that different from running LINUX?!?!  Same, same, same, other than the brand name on the box.

[loathar]

I forgot about the Coleco Adam. Wasn't that supposed to be an add on for their game console?

The first drag race game I played was on the Commodore. (orange mono color sprite graphics)

[marknewton]

Other modellers often ask me how I manage to devote so much time to my layout - the simple answer is that I don't waste time watching television. I work on the assumption that all television, regardless of what county it came from, is rubbish. I'm seldom proved wrong! ;-)

Cheers,

Mark.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

SNL = Saturday Night Live. It's only beem around for like 4 or 5 decades.

It's, like, never been broadcast in Australia*, so the reference is meaningless to me.

*Which is surprising, since we seem to get all the other rubbish US television programmes here.

Cheers,

Mark.

I love that! Rubbish is what many of them are.

[marknewton]

SNL = Saturday Night Live. It's only beem around for like 4 or 5 decades.

It's, like, never been broadcast in Australia*, so the reference is meaningless to me.

*Which is surprising, since we seem to get all the other rubbish US television programmes here.

Cheers,

Mark.

[selector]

Sorry guys, but cordon has just spanked the lot o' yuh.   He knows his stuff.

[cordon]

There are some subtleties to image file sizes. You can, with most photo software editors, do these things to affect/change file sizes:

a.  Crop your picture, which does not change resolution or sharpness.

b.  Change its size without cropping, which reduces resolution if you are making it smaller.  If you make it bigger, you will not get better resolution. 

c.  Change the file type with which you save the image, if it starts out as a BMP or GIF.  BMP and GIF store every pixel in your image.  BMP is uncompressed, and GIF is compressed with a lossless data compression scheme with respect to the number of pixels.  However, the GIF scheme, at least with the software I have, reduces the color palette to 256 colors.  JPG, OTOH, is a lossy data compression scheme.  That is, when you save an image as a JPG, you usually lose some resolution with respect to pixels, but it can save (about) 16 million colors.  Most software enables you to select the level of compression that the JPG scheme uses.

  1.  Here's where it gets interesting.  With JPG you can keep the same picture size and increase the level of compression, which will decrease the file size and decrease the quality of the picture somewhat.  Or you can decrease the picture size and keep the same level of compression and get a smaller file size.  Or you can do both to get the smallest file size.

  2.  With a higher level of compression you will get artificial lines and circles around sharp edges and dots in your picture.  We call these artifacts.

There are many more image file schemes, but I don't know much about them and I don't want this to get too long.  These are just the basics. 

Personally, I use GIF for photos that are already small, and for line drawings.  I use JPG for larger photos at about 30 percent compression.

Now, comments on old computers:

I was hoping someone would get around to mentioning the Commodore computers.  Sometimes they get no mention at all, yet they have a very important position in the history of home computers.

Before the Commodore Vic-20 and the Commodore 64 there were the Commodore PET, plus the KAYPRO portable and the Grid portable.  These last two were mainly business machines.  Other people have already mentioned HP, Osborne, and the Radio Shack TRS-80.  Around that same time (early '80s) Atari sold a home computer and Coleco sold one called Adam.

The Commodore 64, the Apple, and the Atari were somewhat similar.  Many people who write about early computers neglect to mention that for many years there were many more Commodore 64s than any other make or type of personal computer.  They spread worldwide, even into the Soviet Union.  Indeed, I believe Russian programmers first wrote Tetris on a Commodore 64.  The IBM PC was catching up very slowly during the early '80s.

Flight Simulator first appeared on the Commodore 64.  It started the animation graphics revolution. 

Around 1986 IBM started selling hard disks for their PC, and they made the PC boot automatically from the hard disk.  No more inserting a floppy to boot up.  IMHO, that made IBM PCs more desirable than all the competition.

Commodore came out with the Amiga, which had amazing graphics and music capabilities, which artists used into the late '90s.  Apple also persisted and held on to a significant percentage of the market.

Amigas have pretty much fallen by the wayside, but Apple is still with us.

A few people have told me they absolutely love their MACs, and I intend to buy one someday.

 

 

[loathar]

Didn't anybody own a Vic 20? I got one of them in '82, but pined for a Commodore 64.

Had a 64 with the tape recorder drive. (ever try playing one of those in an audio cassette?)

Upgraded to a Commador 128 with (get this) DUAL FLOPPY DRIVES!

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I never had a Commodore. My first comp was an Osborne System 1, the second was an Apple IIe (which I still have), the third was a Panasonic portable (which I still have) and the fourth was an AMI One. I've had many others since. The one I have now is the first one I built to deal specifically with pics and internet surfing.

[secondhandmodeler]

Oh, I had a vic twenty.  It had the cassette tapes for disks.  I remember a game called hotels.  You had to set the price and see what kind of accupancy rate you got.  I just saw that thing in my mothers basement last year.  Our rich cousins had the Commodore 64!

[SteamFreak]

Didn't anybody own a Vic 20? I got one of them in '82, but pined for a Commodore 64.

[Pruitt]

Brunton:

I do believe that the issue is the bandwidth, not storage.  I think the OP of this thread was talking about how painful it is to get medium to high res images over dialup.  I do not believe that anyone asked to have people perminently downsample the pictures, but rather do what you are already doing and have a thumbnail that is also a link to the high res version of the image.  People are just asking to have the thumbnail/link posted versus the full res version, this way, the thread just loads the thumbnails, those with dial up can surf at a reasonable speed, AND they can click to look at the High Res version if they choose.

I'm not sure how the software here creates the smaller images that appear in the posts. But most of the images to which I link are 250-300k. My point was that, if Trains.com accepted uploaded images, then I'd reduce the size of the image files I upload to 75k -100k. Since they don't, I'm stuck with either reducing the image clarity or size on my website to what 100k will produce, or link to the larger files. Without meaning to be insensitive to any dial-up users, I will not do the former, thus leaving the larger files to download. Since the refusal to allow uploaded files on the site is probably at least in part a storage issue (though it may not even be the main reason), that storage issue is therefore something of a driver to the bandwidth issue.

Regarding early PCs: My Trash-80 Model I, with 4k RAM and 4k ROM (the BASIC interpreter) was built in November 1977. It is serial number 2525. The TRS-80 came out about six months after the Apple I.

[Gandy Dancer]

As for the first personal computers not being available until 1981, wrong! Apple introduced the Apple II in 1977.

Apple, however, unlike Beta, still exists. Also unlike VHS...almost LOL. What may have been available at anytime may not have been commercially feasible, affordable or available to all.

And for the record "Personal Computer" and "PC" are actually registered trademarks of IBM.  So if it isn't an IBM, technically it can't be a PC.  We used this fact to get around the issue that installing PCs was a Union job.  We proved we were using Compaqs so they weren't PCs, and didn't fall under the contract.

One can not compare Apple to Beta,  one would have to compare Apple to Sony which also still exists.  It is not a good analogy.  The technology used in the Apple II is much more obsolete than the BetaMax which is still used in professional video.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Jeffrey- Did you forget about the Radio Shack TRS-80? We had those at school in 80 but the Apple II weren't available at our school until 82. Even then it was just an over blown type writer. (not every one can write code). When did anyone make any practicle software for the thing? 86? 87?

Actually there were a lot of programs available for them, including graphics plotters. I used a graphics plotter when I was writing programs (games mostly) for the shareware market and free programs for the public domain. Many of these were simple word processor programs. The most complex wp that I wrote had a root command structure of 26 commands which each had subsets of 6 commands each. It was based on the Apple Writer word processor and was available on the shareware market as Word Tracker 3. I was also one of the first to have an Apple and an IBM interfaced back to back and sharing data through a common cable link. That was in 1984. Did I mention that I was a computer programmer for almost 10 years? And no, I didn't forget the TRS-80, I never took it seriously as a computer. I didn't pay any attention to the Radio Shack models until they brought out the Tandy 1000. The DOS 3.0 was an unmitigated disaster!

[claymore1977]

I think VisiCalc was the first application and therefore the first "killer App" and that was 1979 (?? me thinks) and it was for the Apple II.