Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.) ... and their answers
Open AllClose All
- What are the shortcut keys for viewing the pictures?
-
- In slideshow mode:
- alt/meta + F for first picture of the slide show.
- alt/meta + P for previous picture.
- alt/meta + N for next picture.
- alt/meta + L for last picture of the slide show.
- alt/meta + I for switching to index mode.
- alt/meta + A for turning on/off auto. refresh.
- In index mode:
- alt/meta + S for switching to slide show mode.
- Why does it take so long to load the pictures?
-
- There are lots of pictures in some of the page.
- The pictures on slow link server is much slower (roughly 10k/s MAX).
- All high res. pictures are located on slow link server, due to server space constraints.
- Why do pictures look so dark on screen?
-
- In short, I am not sure. It seems to be OK on LCD, but looks dark on CRT monitor. Just turn up the brightness and it will look OK.
- I want to print some of the pictures. How?
-
- Click on the line (low quality or high quality) to get the picture by itself, then
you can save it or print it.
- If you want a high quality printing, use the high
quality version. (If you want to print on real photo paper, I know these guys
can do it in Toronto (and do a good job). GTA Photo Imaging)
Other shops (with photolab) such as, Henry's Camera, FutureShop, Costco etc. can print too.
- I attended the event, and I want to download some/all of the pictures related to it?
-
- Use the free Firefox browser, then install DownThemAll extension. See the doc in DownThemAll's homepage on how to use it.
- Use a download
manager if you want to download a large number of pictures. It can automate the process.
Please set it to download 1 file at a time. Otherwise you will overload my Internet connection and
I *WILL* BAN your connection.
- If you are the newly wedded couple and I attended the wedding, I will happily burn a CD of the wedding pictures I have taken for you. Otherwise your chance of convincing me to burn a CD for you is very slim (even with bribe). Sorry, I take quite a lot of pictures,
it's just too time consuming to burn each one a copy.
- Why are the pictures not loading?
-
- I made a mistake somewhere, please tell me which page so I can fix it.
- If none of the links work, web server maybe offline. Please check with me or try again later.
- You use a download manager and forget to set it to download 1 file at a time, overloaded my
Internet connection and I banned your IP address. E-mail me when you fix your setting.
- My eyes are evil looking red in a photo. How can I get the photo fixed?
-
- Picture taken with flash sometimes may have red eyes problem.
- You can fix them
(Please use the high quality version) yourself and send me a copy.
I'll be happy to put it online.
- Send bribe to Ka (money, food or ski lift ticket) to fix red eyes.
- What can I use your photo for? (The ones that are taken by me personally, excluding the ones that I am hosting for other people.)
-
- You can print/save them for personal use. You can share them with your friends and families. I would like to be known as the person who took
the pictures, that's all.
- If you want to use my pictures for commercial purpose, please contact me. Thanks.
- Ontario Track3,
YYT and
CALCY have full permissions to do whatever they wish with pictures I took during their events.
- How do you create the panoramic pictures?
-
- Some of them are created using the software bundle with the camera.
- Some are created using AutoStitch
which is a free (as in beer) demo program written by Matthew Brown of UBC.
- What camera did you use to take the pictures?
-
- Very few old pictures are film pictures that are later scanned in.
- Most pictures taken before Dec 2004 are using Nikon Coolpix 775.
- Most pictures taken after Dec 2004 to Mar 2006 are with Nikon Coolpix 5200.
- Pictures taken after Mar 2006 are a mix of (mostly) Nikon D200 and (few) Nikon Coolpix 5200.
- Some pictures after Dec 2008 are taken with a Canon G10, (sometimes) inside an underwater housing.
- Some pictures are taken with other people's camera, such as Canon S30, Canon SD300, Canon Digital Rebal (a.k.a. Canon EOS-300D) (Digital SLR), but not very often.
- How do you host the pictures online? How do the pictures display script work?
-
- I wrote the entire script that's used to generate the picture pages. Instead of describing the script, I will list some design points I had in mind when I wrote it.
- Use some config file to control which and how to display pictures, while minimizing the time it take for me to create the config file.
- Ability to store photo on different servers and easily config where they should be retrieve from.
- Let people download the full size photo themselves, without asking me to burn CD. This implies, some webserver with lots of disk space,
but can have relatively slow connection, base on the assumption that not many people is going to download
the full size pictures.
- Ability to display captions of pictures and/or highlight pictures.
- Reasonable backward compatible, such that new script version will work with old config file.
- Don't use cookies
- Don't use non-standard browser feature. i.e. no IE only tags.
- Work reasonable well with old browser
- Support web standard as best possible
- Ability to NOT display some pictures (mostly out of focus one)
- Ability to add text/html link to photo page
- The pictures are hosted on 2 separate servers.
- A slow server with lots of disk space, but a slow connection to the net. This hosts older pictures and all full size pictures
- A fast server with limited disk space, but a fast connection to the net. This hosts newer pictures' icon and mid-size version,
so that user viewing these picture pages can have a relatively good browsing experience. Some pages that contains many many photos
will still take time to load, but that's a reasonable delay as people can start looking at pictures that are already loaded.
- How do you do some of the Web effect on this site?
-
Ka Lam
e-mail address:
