Kite Strings recently suffered its most major disaster since the Tapatalk attack late last October (though perhaps it was only Yours Truly who noticed). But after more hours of agony and tedium than I care to ever remember I think we're now pretty well fixed and then some.
I think it was latish Sunday that I first noticed something amiss in the course of preparing and previewing a post (that's now/still on a back burner). And for an explanation/description of what happened (and bear with me for a while) let's use this publicly accessible Flickr photo:
Keel Release - Composite
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
of mine for the example.
When one uploads a (hopefully) high resolution, full quality, lossless compressed PNG photo, Flickr saves the original and then breaks it down into a lot of decreasing resolution, compressed, low bandwidth JPEGS. Then when one wants to display a version of the photo in some other venue one goes to photo's page, clicks on "View all sizes", selects a resolution, control clicks on the image, selects "Copy Image Address", catalogs same for purpose of embedding. "Medium 800" works well for forums (such as Kite Strings) 'cause the resolution is decent and considerate enough not to overwhelm one's display and run off of it to the right. And this is the resolution that Flickr amended to its breakdown series precisely for this purpose.
Whenever I post an image of 800 width or any sub-full other resolution I want any member of the public to have access to full resolution to use as he pleases - within the confines of copyright issues - so I virtually always amend the image with the photo link if public and/or full resolution/quality original image address if private. Both appear in our example above. The photo page if public allows one the same access I have to all the resolutions but if private is totally useless to anyone who isn't me (or logged in as me). The max resolution original image address allows anyone access to max resolution original image and the ability to break it down into lower resolutions with Photoshop if he feels like it.
Flickr image addresses from the beginning of time, I believe, until some point in 2015 looked like:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
Then at that some point in 2015 they started looking like:
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
Different prefixes prior to the first multi-digit code (8216 in this example) - which we'll designate "Farm" and "C" respectively. Doesn't matter if it were an ancient existing image in the collection with an address you'd harvested years before or new shot you'd uploaded two minutes ago - the Farm format is gone.
The old Farm format prefix still worked/works fine for accessing and/or embedding. And, very interestingly, you can swap any Farm prefix in for any C prefix and everything works fine. Ditto for vice versa. Maybe even more interestingly the single digit codings in the prefix make no difference whatsoever - almost. A zero in any entry kills things and the first entry in the C format prefix can't be a nine.
So anyway... When I preview what I'm constructing for my post I notice that SOME of my Flickr images...
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
...aren't displaying. Check to make sure I haven't made any mistakes and find I haven't. Copy the URL and use it in a new browser window - opens/displays fine. Control click on the "?" problem icon - also opens/displays fine. WTF?
Then I notice that it's the C format URLs that are the problems and achieve success swapping in Farm prefixes. Oh well, probably some temporary glitch with some Flickr servers they should have sorted out shortly 'cause I certainly can't be the only one out there having and/or noticing this problem. But nothing happens and there's no relevant traffic on their Help Forum.
And at some point it sinks in that it's not just three or so images in this post I'm trying to prepare but over 13.4 THOUSAND images on Kite Strings that have gone black. No, I'm not seeing swapping in Farm prefixes as a terribly viable solution. So I start preparing a post for the Flickr Help Forum and keep checking and experimenting to make really sure I'm getting all my ducks in a row. And then, Tuesday morning...
I lied a little about harvesting the image addresses. Compare/Contrast:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
to/with:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
http / http
s
HyperText Transfer Protocol / HyperText Transfer Protocol
SECURE
I always chop esses off barring good reasons not to - which I virtually never have. Saves bandwidth, reduces clutter, makes things look more uniform and less confusing/distracting. One more experiment before running to Flickr help and...
Oh.
The "s" hasn't mattered since the beginning of time, STILL doesn't matter on anything with the Farm format... But with the C format.
Kite Strings... Prior to this one 10867 total posts. Start scanning - option down arrow - through the hundreds of pages of our history looking for
s. When I find one, five, a hundred...
EDIT - command G (Find Next "[img]
http://c" - command V (Paste "[img]
https://c"
Mac Dvorak layout keyboard...
Hold left command key down with my left thumb, rock back and forth between G and V with my extended right index and curled back ring fingers. About thirty hours between identification of the problem Tuesday morning and the wee hours of yesterday morning. Things would start to hurt and I'd start going blind and would need to take breaks to keep from melting down and imploding.
I'm sure Zack knows how to do this the smart way in two and a half minutes and that I've missed some stuff but... What the hell. It's good to review the whole site every once in a while and I caught and fixed a lot of other issues that the machine wouldn't have.
Note that...
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_58342fe594_o.png
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
...I HAVEN'T amended the full/original resolution links with esses. Those links work just fine and they're never intended to be displayed 'cause they CAN'T BE to any imaginable benefit - as far as our purposes are concerned.
Issues...
- Please be on the lookout for broken images and PM me with the post number or an easily search-and-findable fragment of text.
- Better part of 7.9 thousand of our relevant embedded/displayed Flickr images are Farm format. And if Flickr can do this to us with C format stuff... Might be a good idea to do a preemptive overhaul. I think I probably will if/when I get bored enough. Little more than half of what the C format volume was and it will also serve a useful further proofreading function.
- Some very important images of ours have been posted by Kite Strings and other individuals on enemy forums. (All other glider forums are enemy.) Please edit what you can and/or alert authors, administrators of the issue. I know a lot of stuff is being used for dishonorable purposes - misrepresented, out of context - but undoctored photos don't lie and the truth won't ever hurt us.
Comment...
You do Google image searches for relevant Kite Strings issues and find that we dominate the fuck outta those necks of the hang gliding cybersphere forest. And you notice how totally the mainstreamers bend over backwards to pretend we don't exist and you have pretty solid evidence that we're the big fuckin' elephant in all of their Living Rooms. But we're heavily dependent on Flickr and its good graces and have zero control over it and thus much of our destiny.
---
2018/08/23 13:15:00 UTC
As noted in my 2018/08/23 00:26:54 UTC post on the next page of this topic the Flickr image display problem I documented here resolved itself at some point after I overhauled the forum to fix everything. And subsequent to that point in time this post made no sense. So in it I've substituted:
http://hikkaduwa.free.fr/images/M_images/activites/CABANAC/120211/cab3G.jpg
a longtime and permanently dead image address for:
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg
which didn't work at the time but does now.
So now this post again displays as it did originally and as intended and makes sense - as long as one doesn't go snooping around too much.