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Some older images missing
https://www.calcudoku.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=751
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Author:  pnm  [ Tue Nov 10, 2015 1:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Some older images missing

About 50-60 older images on the forum are now missing: I was hosting these with "imageshack",
and yesterday (Nov. 9) I got an email from them saying that starting Nov. 1 (!) they would block
free image hosting [sad]

I'm working on getting a copy of the images and hosting them somewhere else (instead of paying
them $4 a month for hosting 2-3 MB..).

In the long run it's probably best if I host them myself.

Author:  bram  [ Thu Nov 12, 2015 12:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

While preparing my reply to aquilae's recent question in the "Solving strategies and tips" section, I noticed that when you click on the word "Image" in any of the 7 places in clm's illustrated subtraction-only solution where it has replaced an embedded image, you get not only a download link for the image in question but also 3 different proposed links to embed it in forum posts etc.

Seeing that ImageShack have changed the syntax of those links (and one, but not both, instances of the domain name in the links from .us to .com) since clm originally posted the solution, I experimented with replacing the existing link with each of the three proposed ones in succession to see if the image would be re-embedded, but to no avail.

The images haven't yet completely disappeared but can still be downloaded (for as long as it lasts) from ImageShack as explained in my answer to aquilae. Still, clm may soon receive the same kind of "Dear John letter" :-) from ImageShack that they sent to Patrick. After all, according to Wikipedia, they switched to a subscription-based service as early as January 2014. For anybody willing to put in the amount of (tedious) work required to restore embedded images to their old posts, Patrick's idea of finding another image host or self-host the images seems to be the most sensible one.

Author:  pnm  [ Sat Nov 14, 2015 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

After 2-3 hours of work on this I found the following:

- the "download all your images via our wonderful app before they disappear forever until you pay up" solution provided by imageshack does not completely work: some images are missing from the batch
- fortunately I was able to download most of these via the direct download link
- also fortunate: quite a while ago I thought: "what if imageshack goes out of business?", and I made a backup of all remotely hosted images (!), so I was able to recover more missing images :-)

In the end I was able to recover 487 out of 488 images [woot]

Edit: cheered too soon, the direct downloads of 80-90 images failed, they were redirected to some kind of manual download page :-(

I'm not particularly happy with their business model (= "put your files on our server for free! Once we have enough, we'll charge you $38/year or THEY DISAPPEAR FOREVER!")

Later I'll run a backup of the images that are currently hosted on "imgur" (a much better service, still free at the moment [mellow] )

Author:  pnm  [ Sat Nov 14, 2015 3:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

After some manual searching and ploughing the number of missing images is down to 7 ...

Edit:

Now testing a script that replaces the links, the images at:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61

should be visible again.


Edit 2: all posts by clm now have their images restored and are saved for posterity :-)


Edit 3: just about all images replaced now (480 to be precise).
7 (seven) images still to track down.

Smaller todo: remove the "uploaded with imageshack" advertising that still can be found here and there in posts [cursing]

That was my Saturday [glare]

Edit 4: imageshack advertising removed in about 15-20 places

Author:  clm  [ Sat Nov 14, 2015 11:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

pnm wrote:
After some manual searching and ploughing the number of missing images is down to 7 ...

Edit:

Now testing a script that replaces the links, the images at:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61

should be visible again.


Edit 2: all posts by clm now have their images restored and are saved for posterity :-)


Edit 3: just about all images replaced now (480 to be precise).
7 (seven) images still to track down.

Smaller todo: remove the "uploaded with imageshack" advertising that still can be found here and there in posts [cursing]

That was my Saturday [glare]

Edit 4: imageshack advertising removed in about 15-20 places


Thank you, Patrick, for the hard work, however I am very affraid the situation is still wrong (or even worse) since now the text itself appears garbled ??? in many places (this happens in different posts though I am focussing on "Step by step solution of a 7x7 subtractions only"), the graphics are being repeated, the sequence is not the correct one, some graphics have disappeared, etc... [confused] [confused]

Author:  pnm  [ Sat Nov 14, 2015 11:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

clm wrote:
Thank you, Patrick, for the hard work, however I am very affraid the situation is still wrong (or even worse) since now the text itself appears garbled ??? in many places (this happens in different posts though I am focussing on "Step by step solution of a 7x7 subtractions only"), the graphics are being repeated, the sequence is not the correct one, some graphics have disappeared, etc... [confused] [confused]

I see that now, some problem with the "special characters", and the replacing of the image filenames, will check...

Author:  pnm  [ Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

clm wrote:
the graphics are being repeated, the sequence is not the correct one, some graphics have disappeared, etc... [confused] [confused]

I checked that one now, and hopefully it's specific to that post only
(and not your other posts..):
for that post you used the same filename for 4 different images. After uploading to imageshack they ended up
in different directories, but in the backup the images overwrote each other :-(

(in the zip file you sent me all the files are there, and they are numbered. It looks like imageshack dropped the numbers,
possibly because there are spaces in the filenames (in general it is a bad idea to have spaces in filenames, and unfortunately
216 of the 288 files in the zip file have spaces [sad] )

I'll have to rewrite the replacement script such that sequence numbers are introduced in the filenames. Also, because
there is no longer a correspondence between the imageshack links and the files in the zip file, the images have to be re-downloaded
(can hopefully do this automatically, not by hand..)

Author:  clm  [ Sun Nov 15, 2015 3:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

pnm wrote:
clm wrote:
the graphics are being repeated, the sequence is not the correct one, some graphics have disappeared, etc... [confused] [confused]

I checked that one now, and hopefully it's specific to that post only
(and not your other posts..):
for that post you used the same filename for 4 different images. After uploading to imageshack they ended up
in different directories, but in the backup the images overwrote each other :-(

(in the zip file you sent me all the files are there, and they are numbered. It looks like imageshack dropped the numbers,
possibly because there are spaces in the filenames (in general it is a bad idea to have spaces in filenames, and unfortunately
216 of the 288 files in the zip file have spaces [sad] )

I'll have to rewrite the replacement script such that sequence numbers are introduced in the filenames. Also, because
there is no longer a correspondence between the imageshack links and the files in the zip file, the images have to be re-downloaded
(can hopefully do this automatically, not by hand..)


Yes, there are spaces in many different filenames, I must change habits, I do not usually take care of this since Windows accepts them for files and folders, ... .

But unfortunately not only that post is affected, i.e., The most difficult 9x9 Full analytical solution step by step, in the same Section, Solving strategies and tips, repeats the same graphic 8 times, or Step by step analytical solution of a 9x9 very difficult which also repeats 8 times the same graphic, ... .

And a curious thing, it seems that the garbled characters appear in the text where originally I had double quotes, and always simultaneoulsly with the graphics problem, while the rest of posts that follow the same thread look well, including double quotes, ... [confused] .

Author:  pnm  [ Mon Nov 16, 2015 12:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

clm, I've now tried a different approach (completely skipping the "skypath" zip files, trying automatic re-download
of the images and standardizing the filenames), can you look at that "subtraction only" post again and confirm
the images are now correct (hopefully)?

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61

Author:  clm  [ Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Some older images missing

pnm wrote:
clm, I've now tried a different approach (completely skipping the "skypath" zip files, trying automatic re-download
of the images and standardizing the filenames), can you look at that "subtraction only" post again and confirm
the images are now correct (hopefully)?

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61


Thanks, Patrick, I have compared your result with the "Print view from Forum" that I have and everything is perfect [thumbsup] (a little difference: the fourth graphic appears here in a smaller size, while in my original the size is big as for the other 6 graphics, but this is absolutely irrelevant and I would not touch it).

I think you found the correct approach (additionally, I have also verified the other two posts previously mentioned, restored, with the garbled characters removed, just waiting the same process for images, ... :-) ).

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