The meet is the meat in the middle of these photos:

http://www.geekhackfilk.com/gallery

awsome pictures.. I love the VR truck thing.. it's something I've wanted to attempt for a long time.. but I don't have the time or the $ to invest in all the parts. and my old RC-10 is missing too many pices.

Cool set of pictures, it's great that you took the time to write descriptions for each one.

Oh yes, and top marks for not getting me in any of them!

Hey, thanks, guys!

Yeah, the descriptions were something that I considered important. Looking at a bunch of photos is pretty boring unless there's a story to tell with each one.

Not sure if my mail reached you - your ISP seems to have my ISP on a block list...

The unidentified american in pic 2 of the series "day 3 to 5" is John McDowell (johnmcd3 on the BBS)

/Michael

Rob Schofield sent me the same information and I updated it. I'm going to double check the spelling now...

Hey Tony, great pics!

I've only got one question for you : who told you what the the translation was for the sign in this pic ?

It only says : "movable obstacle in road". Or am I missing an inside joke here ?

``Inside''. Heh. I believe that's an atomic wedgie.

In (at least US) English, a wedgie is when your underwear gets ... stuck in your back side. Or the act of the bully that caused it to happen. It's only really funny because it's juvenile -- making fun of words that are similar to vaguely naughty words. Very ``Beavis and Butthead''.

Edit: Get this! ``Wedgie'' is in the dictionary!

I know what a wedgie is.

I've seen it done in one of those "American Pie"-type movies.

I still don't get the translation though...

who told you what the the translation was for the sign in this pic ?

Same one who translated this one and this one

"Note: The disk drive is actually smaller than it appears in this photo, due to scale considerations. You have to account for the fact that it's Hugo holding it, rather than a normal-sized person."

ROTFL. Mean, very mean Tony.

I'm still on London but the stories are great, especially the exceptionally nerdy talk about the taxi. Most people dont give vehicle graphics a second thought, except ner... never mind.

By the way, Parliament Square and the green (I forget it's name) is usually busy with TV crews.

Gareth

We tease Hugo only because we love Hugo.

Ah, that's cool about Parliament Square, I'll update that.

Same one who translated this one and this one

Funny, my dictionary has no translation for "cross-breed", but the sign just says "this area is for the protection of nature"

On the second one you are perfectly right, especially because of the fact, that "schiffen" has a special meaning which is bound to drinking...

cheers, Thomas

Nice Pics!

Thanks for the recognition.

John

Funny, my dictionary has no translation for "cross-breed", but the sign just says "this area is for the protection of nature"

I think what happened is that we split one of the words at the wrong place, so we ended up with the word for "sheep" somewhere in the translation.

Near our hotel were these odd looking apartment buildings. I think they were trying to make them look deliberately Dutch, as if they were built from an old windmill or something. I thought they just looked cheesy.

I wonder if they are supposed to look cheesy. Specifically, I wonder if they are supposed to celebrate Edam cheese which is traditionally made in a red wax covered sphere, and then cut into wedges.

great pics.

Did you realize that you captured a UFO in the panarama shot of the autobahn?

Did you realize that you captured a UFO in the panarama shot of the autobahn?

I didn't do a panorama shot of the autobahn, I did a panorama shot of the plain below Castle Neuschwanstein.

If you mean that shot, yeah. It was moving, so you can see it in two of the panels.

Those aliens left me alone, probably because they knew I'd already gotten an anal probe from airport security.

celebrate Edam cheese which is traditionally made in a red wax covered sphere, and then cut into wedges.

I thought we were past the discussion of wedgies at this point.

In reply to:

---

I didn't do a panorama shot of the autobahn, I did a panorama shot of the plain below Castle Neuschwanstein.

---

Ahh i misread the title on the page as the heading for that pic. My mistake.

I sure hope you weren't smuggling anything when you got that anal probe.

I think what happened is that we split one of the words at the wrong place, so we ended up with the word for "sheep" somewhere in the translation.

yeah, i got it now... Land schaf tsschutzgebiet Schaf is sheep

cheers, Thomas

NIce pics, and great stories!

Obligatory correction: most (all?) of those "hang gliders" are actually "para-gliders". A hang glider has a rigid frame, whereas a para glider is amazingly similar to a wing style parachute. Commonly used not only for thrills but also for descent from long alpine climbs.

Cheers

Thanks, Mark! I really liked your pictures, too.

So you're saying that some of those people were just coming down from a climb?

Hmm. Now that I think about it, I don't know if there's any way to get up to the top of some of those craggy peaks without climbing, so it's conceivable that all of those people were mountain climbers.

Wow, what a great reward for a long climb. The question is... How many were climbing just to do the paraglide, and how many were paragliding just as a means of getting down after the climb? And while we're at it, let's solve that chicken and egg conundrum.

Yeah.. I think I'd do it 30% for the climb, and 70% for the ride down. Problem is, the launch at beginning of descent has less than 100% success rate..

Most of the mountain saddles probably have cable car access from some point.. but at least a few of those gliders may have been climbers on their way down!

Your photo tour of Europe is simply amazing -- the stories really make it!

Cheers

the launch at beginning of descent has less than 100% success rate

Like the guy in one of the Epics issues of Climbing magazine a few years back. He climbed the Trango Tower in Pakistan, then tried to paraglide off the top. He ended up being blown back into the rock, snagging his chute, then crouching on a 12" ledge for a few days until a rescue could be mounted. I think he was there for a good week before a rescue.

Your photo tour of Europe is simply amazing -- the stories really make it!

Thanks very much! I had hoped the stories were more than just rambling.

My only concern is that Gallery might not be the right software to display such long stories with each photo. I find myself wishing for more options for formatting it.

I already hacked into the gallery source code and added one change... the "Viewed XX times" text was scrunched up right against the stories, so I added a couple of line breaks before it in the Gallery code. (When posting to Gallery on Riocar.org, I add the line breaks at the end of every story to work around the same issue.)

But I'd like to see a lot more options for formatting. And also improve the UI just a bit. Incidentally, what are you using for photo gallery software on your site? My wife commented that she liked your UI better than mine.

And despite what everyone might think, that last sentence wasn't intended as a set-up line, so just leave it alone.

And despite what everyone might think, that last sentence wasn't intended as a set-up line, so just leave it alone.

<Shatner>Willpower... weakening.... Must... resist... urge... to... make... snide... comments..... </Shatner>

My own photo pages use my own custom awk script for formatting. It works reasonably well for my purposes, but I do need to do something about the teensy control icons someday! The same interface has an "edit mode" (grayed out for you folks) for adding/changing comments and photo sequences and rotations etc..

Probably a little clumsy to replicate on another server at present, but I may work on the portability aspect soon.

Cheers

The thing I like most about Gallery is how it's got a good interface for uploading the images, and how it automatically creates the thumbnails and the 640-resizes. And I like the Gallery Remote software now that I've gotten it working properly... It can rotate and resize the photos before I upload them, saving even more time.

Tony, thanks for nice photo tour. It (together with Mark's and Rob's ones) made me bang my head for yet again not making it to The Meet. Also, it is always interesting to see how people from over the pond perceive details the locals (or not solocals) no longer notice.

BTW, it seems that you use the same SW as Rob Riccardelli, but on his galleries one can make comments. Are those different versions or is that matter of configuration choice?

Cheers!

It's a matter of configuration choice.

I originally had the comments enabled. But I'm not confident that I'd be able to monitor the server properly and update the gallery software if someone finds a PHP exploit that takes advantage of the comments field writing. So I disabled them.

That's the sort of thing that usually get compromised when a server is broken into: Little known bugs in publicly exposed input fields like that. I'm not saying there's exploits in the comments feature now, I'm just saying that if someday a bug is discovered, I'd prefer to know that I wasn't exposed to it instead of losing sleep over it.

It was a really hard decision, because I really like the comments feature and would really have loved to get direct comments from everyone.

Tony, Gallery does have a e-mail list where they announce new versions and also security concerns. I have run Gallery on riocar.org with comments enabled and no problems have occured. Gallery does strip out PHP code properly if someone tries.

Listserv is here.

I guess I'm a little late, but...

Bitchin' photos Tony!

I've got to start taking notes while snapping pics so I can write comments like that.

Thanks, Rob! I think I might have linked your gallery somewhere amonsgt mine, I'm not completely sure. I like having cross-linked galleries of the meet.

However, I feel a bit guilty that this stuff isn't up on riocar.org's gallery. I considered stripping the meet photos out and moving them to the riocar gallery, but it broke up the flow of the storytelling. So I'm not sure what to do. Suggestions?

Tony, Gallery does have a e-mail list where they announce new versions and also security concerns.

Right, and that's exactly the sort of maintenance I don't want to have to worry about.

I realize it's feasible that there would be exploits that don't require comments enabled, but I think that if there ever is an exploit, it's much more likely to happen because of a field input like that. So I just feel safer not having it.

I actually feel guilty putting meet photos up on RioCar. My pics are like 700KB each and I usually go for quantity over quality.

I think just having meet pics up on RioCar would be fine. You can use HTML in the Gallery captions, so you could link to your own gallery if people want the whole experience.

Yeah, toss the meet photos up on riocar.org, I have no problem with that. Space really isn't a huge concern on the host now.

Also, for anyone else, I promise to go through the gallery requests soon and get them all processed. I had completly forgotten about the signup form lately.

Tony, why don't you simply plunk days two to five to Riocar.org, descriptions and all, and just expand a bit descriptions on first and last of the photos noting the visit was a part of a family vacation and providing links to the whole story?

It would be nice if people who already have set up their meet galleries elsewhere at leat make one (or several) pic gallery on riocar.org with link to the rest. Othervise, they are accesible only to us BBS junkies.

One thing that I like about your gallery, Tony, that Mark's doesn't have, is the use of Next, Prev, etc. navigation links. It's so much easier to have these in a consistent place on a browser toolbar than to hunt them out in the document!

>the use of Next, Prev, etc. navigation links.

Eh? My photo gallery s/w has rather advanced navigation links for next/prev image, next/prev group of images, contact sheet pages, larger/smaller pics, etc..

But the icons are definitely teensy, and I have noticed that at least some people never seem to get further than the first index page (contact sheet).

Cheers

I have noticed that at least some people never seem to get further than the first index page

Nothing technical about that, the one's that are looking for their own photo keep going: For heaven sakes, get Andy's photo up!

He means these:

<link rel="last" href="http://www.geekhackfilk.com/gallery/album03?page=2" />
<link rel="up" href="http://www.geekhackfilk.com/gallery/Europe2003" />
<link rel="top" href="http://www.geekhackfilk.com/gallery/albums.php?set_albumListPage=1" />

Kinda like these, I suppose:
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061096+medium"><img src=/icons/back.jpg border=0 title="Previous image" alt="Previous image"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?1+medium"><img src=/icons/up.jpg border=0 title="Up to current index page (1)" alt="Up to current index page (1)"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061124+medium"><img src=/icons/forward.jpg border=0 title="Next image" alt="Next image"></a>
<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle><a href="index.cgi?z0061095+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061095.jpg border=1 title="Hugo and Rob.. where would we be without them?" alt="Hugo and Rob.. where would we be without them?"></a>
<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle><a href="index.cgi?z0061096+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061096.jpg border=1 title="Hugo modelling a newish Rio item" alt="Hugo modelling a newish Rio item"></a>

<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle bgcolor=yellow><a href="index.cgi?z0061098+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061098.jpg border=1 title="Hugo and the Empeg Mk3 player (aka Visteon)" alt="Hugo and the Empeg Mk3 player (aka Visteon)"></a>
<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle><a href="index.cgi?z0061124+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061124.jpg border=1 title="Parking lot mahem.. the sound/install judging begins" alt="Parking lot mahem.. the sound/install judging begins"></a>
<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle><a href="index.cgi?z0061103+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061103.jpg border=1 title=z0061103 alt=z0061103></a>
<td rowspan=4 width=114 height=114 align=center valign=middle><a href="index.cgi?z0061104+medium"><img src=tiny/z0061104.jpg border=1 title="Hugo and his NSX" alt="Hugo and his NSX"></a>
<tr>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061080+medium"><img src=/icons/start.jpg border=0 title="Back to first image" alt="Back to first image"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?1+medium"><img src=/icons/top.jpg border=0 title="Up to first index page" alt="Up to first index page"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061169+medium"><img src=/icons/finish.jpg border=0 title="Skip to final image" alt="Skip to final image"></a>
<tr>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061090+medium"><img src=/icons/back2.jpg border=0 title="Previous group of thumbnails" alt="Previous group of thumbnails"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061098+medium+nothumbs"><img src=/icons/fullscreen.jpg border=0 title="Hide thumbnails" alt="Hide thumbnails"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061112+medium"><img src=/icons/forward2.jpg border=0 title="Next group of thumbnails" alt="Next group of thumbnails"></a>
<tr>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061098+small"><img src=/icons/reduce.jpg border=0 title="Reduce image size" alt="Reduce image size"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061098+medium+edit-906235"><img src=/icons/edit.jpg border=0 title="Enter Edit Mode" alt="Enter Edit Mode"></a>
<td><a href="index.cgi?z0061098+large"><img src=/icons/enlarge.jpg border=0 title="Enlarge image size" alt="Enlarge image size"></a>

-edit Took out the PRE tags, was causing side scrolling even at 1280x960 - Drakino

No. The tags that Tony's using allow Toby's browser to give him a proper browser toolbar with prev/next/up buttons on it. Your code (AFAICT) doesn't do that.

Oh, that's very cool. I didn't even know that sort of stuff existed.

Holy cow, I didn't know Gallery had that feature.

Does that only appear in Mozilla, or can you have it in IE, too? Doesn't appear on my IE when I connect to Gallery.

Well, they're not the same, Mark - they don't have the REL attribute, so browsers don't pick them up and do nice things like prefetching and menu/toolbar generation.

Look at the pic I attached for an example of how one browser presents them. The advantages are that it's consistently the same wording and same location (even across different sites) and it's always visible, even when you've scrolled some way down the page. And it is hardly any effort, after all.

One note - some browsers only make use of REL attributes in LINK elements (in the HEAD), not in A elements (in BODY), so don't rely on merely adding REL to the existing A links - best to add some LINKs as well.

Ah, okay, that's cool (And trivial to add..)

My script DOES use "rel=prefetch" to suggest prefetching the next photo while the current one is being viewed, though.

I'll add the others.

Do they NEED to be in the HEAD section, or is the BODY okay?

Thanks

Okay, done.

I've added <link rel> tags to my index pages and the "detailed photo" pages. They seem to work for me in mozilla (had to turn on "View->show/hide->SiteNavigationBar" to make it appear, but all looks fine to me.

Cheers

Great pictures and great comments! It will take me forever to read everything but that's almost like having been there

Thank you!

Looks good, Mark - thank you!

I forgotten that Mozilla's navigation bar is initially off in a default install, or I'd have mentioned that; sorry!