| | OH SNAP!
Looks like I just got served by my web host, but all thanks to my stupidity. When I decided to have my gallery at pquijal.com/gallery instead of photos.pquijal.com, I had to install the gallery into the new directory and re-upload everything. Instead of re-uploading all of those albums I had already placed on the first gallery (about 15 of them), I used this trick that Gallery has built in that let's you grab photos from directories that already exist on your server. Unfortunately, I thought it copied them into new directories in the new gallery location when it actually just linked to those images wherever they were on the server. The trouble comes about when an anal retentive person such as myself decides he'll trash the old gallery since it is just taking up space. I did that earlier today, and everything seemed fine until I tried to view one of those "grabbed" albums this evening. As long as they've been visited, the thumbnails will exist, and any image that was viewed in the scaled-down resolution will be availabe as well since Gallery builds these images and the thumbnails when the items are viewed and stores the alternate versions elsewhere.
Of course, when I first realized this I had a sick feeling in my gut because I've decided to use my gallery as my main means of image storage. In the process of trying to get oranized and have one central location for my images, I decided I'd delete local copies as soon as they were uploaded.
Luckily, I still have more than one backup of one sorce of images which would be the .rar and .zip packages I made of some of my albums on Yahoo! Photos. Those still exist in a backup copy of my old student web data (web.pointpark.edu/~jdsmith). Additionally, I have a fair amount of the images from my My Pictures folder on a backup CD of my My Documents folder.
In the end, I hope to have all my images stored in two locations. I want it all stored on my web host so I can access it whenever from wherever (and so others can access it as well). Then, I'll download weekly or monthly copies of my entire site via FTP and burn that data to DVD-RW. Though CD-R has a longer shelf life, there is already more than a single-layer DVD worth of data on my site thanks to my gallery and The Don's gallery. Plus, I don't use my DVD burner enough, and I'll be re-burning the data before it has time to expire. I've also considered getting an external hard drive that I could dedicate only to data backup. Then I could lock that drive in a fire-proof safe for ultimate data archival!
I hate losing data. I didn't even lose an entire hard drive of memories like Buck did  , and I still feel like shit about the albums I lost. I probably have most of the stuff I deleted anyway, but I hate that I can't remember what each of the 15 albums was and which photos each had. When uploading to my gallery, I tried to consolidate every image for each event. For example, if photos were taken with ;more than one camera, and I happened to find additional photos that someone else took while I was consolidating, I may have added those photos to an album. Therefore, the version that I lost would have more than what I have backed up. However, now that I think about it, I combined two different sets of photos for Centralia 2, and the photos that were not "transfered" from the old gallery still remain. It is mostly the uncertainty that kills me more than the possible loss! It's my obsession with consistency that will drive me mad!
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| | Posted 1/29/2006 1:59 AM - 20 Views - 12 eProps - 13 comments
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