The Roving Reporter Photo Albums are now up to date - at last!

[MickT]

This is relevant to Exhibition Reports as there are now over 100 of them up and working.

This has also been posted on NGRM-Online. If you are a member there, then don't bother reading any further as you will have already seen it. I have put it on here as well as there are a number of members on this forum who are not on NGRM-Online

I am at last very happy and mightily relieved to be able to report that, after many months one way or another and through several crises I have now uploaded all of the outstanding reports to my blogsite up to and including the Wiltshire Group 19th biennial members day (Pewsey) on the 5th of August.

The saga began when I experienced having to cope with a number of serious health issues in my family and then we all suffered through the Covid couple of years plus I had a house sale and purchase right in the middle of the lockdowns. The result was that my Roving Reporter Photo Albums, featuring several hundreds of layouts that appeared at over 100 events between 2009 and 2016 had survived a couple of crises during this period such as Fotopic and then Picasaweb going to the wall which required a lot of work in re-establishing the reports, but we arrived at 2022 with the reports still being 4 years moribund.

So, a massive catch up took place and I eventually got as far as SWOONS January 2022, but then everything stalled again, not least because the next report due to be constructed was NG South 2022 and over 300 photos to put into Google Photo Album, which believe me is not easy at all to get them in the correct order, even if you rename everything sequentially from 001 upwards and tell Google to upload in sequence order - it IGNORES that and for instalments of 100 or more photos it can take several Man-Days (which can take several weeks of real time at half an hour or an hour when it can be fitted in) just to get them uploaded into albums in the right order - and this is before the important captions are considered. None of this is made any easier when an event attended has a show guide that simply lists the owner's name and the name of the layout, and sometimes there is no show guide at all. Try remembering specific things to make captions of several months after an event with nothing to guide you!

Then there was the recent pallaver over Google deciding to delete all the albums that they saved into their archive that they had previously removed Picasaweb - which in my case included over 100 albums previously saved in Picasaweb! Fortunately some very helpful members on NGRM pointed me in the right direction and the albums were saved and re-linked to safe URLs in Google Albums before the archive materials were deleted. However this meant that over 100 albums had all to be manually re-linked and tested, which took several weeks, but we got there in the end.

This then led to trying to catch up on the more recent albums, which were from NGSouth 2022 through to Pewsey 2 weeks ago, a total of 15 blog posts linked to photo albums, containing 665 photos with captions.

I've been flogging away with these when time has permitted for the past couple of months, and was extremely pleased when I finally uploaded Pewsey, 5 August 2013, into the blogsite today.

Before all this disruption started 8 years ago, I was regularly getting over 1000 viewings and often 2000, the record to date is the 2017 final NG South West report which has had 2376 to date. Since the catchup of unposted reports took place these have attracted around 200 viewings for each one, and then when things had caught up and got reinstated, the latest one posted before the current delays was SWOONS January 2022 with 636 viewings.

The series I have been working on beween 8 July when NGS 2022 was uploaded and today have not been publicised until today but have had between 13 and 36 from good people who had not totally abandoned the Roving Reporter albums as a source for keeping a record of layouts that I have managed to capture in my camera lens, Thank you to all those who have sent me messages encouraging me not to abandon ship, it has been very much appreciated.

So that now, at last, everything is up to date and once again works smoothly (I have given all albums comprensive test viewings and the only glitches I've found so far are typing errors on captions, that I have corrected as I come across them). I wonder if things will get back to over 2000 viewings for the photo reports, I do hope so, as it makes the effort seem worthwhile!

Now to clear the decks ready for the big challenge of producing a report covering as much as possible of the 009 Soc 50th anniversay at Statfold 16/17 September. Kegworth 2013 had 1267 viewings, I'm sure we will be able to beat that, won't we?

Best Wishes

Mick

My Blogsite is accessible via this link: http://micksrovingreporter.blogspot.com/

[duttonbay]

Thank you Mick. From the antipodes your roving reports are real gems and much appreciated.

[Robin Webster]

What a lot of hard work has gone into these lovely photos. I certainly enjoy them.
Thank you.
Robin.

[Hugh Norwood]

Oh well done. Very many thanks!

[MickT]

Posting deleted - Total Horlicks on my behalf, I went to edit some typing errors noted in my long first posting and my fingers got confused between "modify" and "quote" resulting in the whole shooting match appearing again! Apologies to anyone who may have been more confused than me about that!

I think normal service is now resumed.

Mick

[JulienW]

Well, what passes for 'normal' around here! ;)

[Tom Haythornthwaite]

Just enjoyed 'Pewsey' and looking forward to working back through the rest in due course.  Thank you Mick!

[MickT]

I have just today uploaded a Roving Report on Narrow Gauge South, better late than never as it has 200 captioned photos in it.

https://micksrovingreporter.blogspot.com/

Now that big one is "in the can" I hope to very shortly have 2 more reports following in the next day or two (famous last words) : Rainford Merseyside & SW Lancs 18 May and Beccles N&SNGM 01 Jun

Mick

[duttonbay]

Thanks Mick, your work is greatly appreciated.

[MickT]

Another Update, Following the NG South marathon report there are now a further 2, from Merseyside & SW Lancs meeting 18 May (aks "Stan's Tea Party") and Norfolk & Suffolk NGM Open Day Beccles 01 Jun. Hurry along now"!

micksrovingreporter.blogspot.com

Mick