Scott Yang's Playground

Since my hard disk died more than a month ago, I have been trying to rescue that dead Western Digit drive using various methods — but so far they all appear to be in vain. Currently I am trying to copy the dead disk to another flesh one using dd_rescue in hope that I can run fsck on a copied partition, but after 2 weeks I am only one quarter way through (at whooping 10kb/s). I guess it will take another 6 weeks to copy over the remaining 45Gb over, and there is no guarantee that fsck can fix it.

To cut the story short, I basically have little hope in rescuing the old FOCUS gallery — yeah the 5+Gb photos we have accumulated since 2000. Probably all gone. <sob>

I guess it is then about time to re-start another FOCUS Gallery project. This time was different — back in 2000 I was probably one of few in FOCUS who has a digital camera, but now it seems every other person has a 8MP DSLR handy in all kinds of events. Instead of having me (and selected few) who upload all photos, I want to change how FOCUS Gallery works.

Something more community driven. (Okay. Because I am lazy.)

How it works now is:

1. Go to the all new FOCUS Gallery website.
2. Click on “Register” at the top-right-hand corner.
3. Put in your details — make sure you put in your “Full Name” and “Email Address” properly, because every registration will need to be approved.
4. Once I approve your account, you’ll receive an email confirmation Update: Gallery does not automatically generate a confirmation email, but I’ll email you instead.. You can then log back into the Gallery using your username/password.
5. At the top right hand corner there will be another link “Your Album“. You can add photos, create sub-albums (recommended for getting organised), and start uploading photos to them!
6. Once in a while I (plus other volunteers, anyone?) will organise the FOCUS Gallery by creating links to your albums.

Basically, registered users get an on-line gallery to store FOCUS-related photos. Initially it will be 200Mb per account (or until my hard disk space ran out). I am also enforcing all photos to have maximum resolution of 1600×1600 — good enough for 6″x4″ prints and on-line viewing, and not too big to blow up the storage.

How does it sound? Those who tracks this blog via FOCUSer.net are my beta testers :) Also note that FOCUS Gallery is currently hosted on my home server (one with big enough space to host a multi-user gallery). However it is extremely slow as 7 year old Pentium III has really shown its age. Maybe I should set up a “new server fund” :)

Also a note for those who are uploading photos — you can upload to Gallery 2.1 site using both Windows XP publishing agent or Gallery Remote, and both are way faster than filling up the web form. Give them a try.