With kids going back to school all over the country…
The change of seasons must be just around the corner…
But I swear the two things happened together when I was kid…
I want ice water.
More from the Visual Treats volume
I Want Ice Water! 
They certainly happened together when I was in school. My classes never started before Labor Day and often not until mid-September. Starting in mid-August just seems so … wrong. Rushing the season. Cheating kids out of a big chunk of summer vacation (where many of my best childhood memories originated). But here and now, yes, my grandkids started classes last Wednesday. So sad. And just yesterday I was wondering if perhaps I should replace the pink flowers on my porch with the fall wreath. (I decided to wait till after Labor Day. August is still summer!)
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P.S. I’m curious about how you’ve done these last few photo mosaics. Although the photo sizes vary, the horizontal dividing lines remain unbroken. They don’t break and vary like when I do a mosaic. Is that a WP setting or are you doing it that way manually?
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It’s the stupid way WP handles animated GIFs PT. The second section of this post is actually built from 7 separate mosaics, which took over an hour of image rearranging to find a balance that worked!
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That’s a shame, considering how easy it is to assemble a mosaic with non-GIFs. I do seem to recall in the past having a problem getting animated GIFs to work if I resized them (something about their being composed of multiple layered images). And of course the mosaic function needs to be free to resize.
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But a “Don’t Resize” checkbox, along with “Images per Column” and “Images per Row” settings, is just what the mosaic feature needs PT. But instead of advancements like those, their tinkering in the background has only made it worse. Note the vertical “white space” gaps between each of the 7 mosaics in the second set. It used to be that having mosaic codes on the same line, like I have them here, would at least produce the “appearance” of a single mosaic. Argh!
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But the only way the automated mosaic function can randomly arrange different sized images into a perfect rectangle is by resizing the images as needed, like pieces of a tangram (especially if you want the arrangement to change every time the page is loaded, like in my “hand painting” post). Otherwise you’d have to do all the math yourself, calculating how to size and arrange all the images so that they’ll fit into a rectangle. That’s certainly more math than I want to do.
The sort of restrictions you propose are counter to the function of the mosaic, which is to produce a beautiful, random montage of images. Sounds like what you really need is a sort of automated table function for images, where you can specify rows and columns and their sizes.
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When you say “change every time the page is loaded,” are you referring to the “Random” checkbox on the gallery setup page? I thought that was for setting the image order before coding, just as the “Reverse Order” button and the “Drag N Drop” rearranging does. I had no idea you could make a mosaic rearrange itself every time the page is loaded! I’m not so sure I like that, as I spend a lot of time rearranging them to display just the way I want.
But you’re probably right about modifying the existing feature to achieve what I like to do with GIFs. But I’ve tried both doing it with tables and with a boatload of DIVs (as in my “Say It Ain’t So NCIS!”), and both ways are a major pain! Maybe WP will be nice enough to develop yet another (4th?) way to do galleries… 🙄
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I had to test it just now to be sure, but yes, checking “Random Order” on the gallery set-up page is what makes the images rearrange every time the page is loaded. Kind of pointless, really. Most visitors would probably never notice the change. And yes, it would totally mess up your stuff that depends on a fixed arrangement. Have you put in a request/suggestion to WP for a feature that would do what you want? Couldn’t hurt.
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I’ve thought about it, but WP isn’t exactly the most responsive organization..
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The last line was just a little self-mockery of my own memory PT. The truth is that I remember very well that the leaves were already changing when I returned to school. I also remember that the reason why the bureaucrats decided to rob the kids of part of their summer was because they mistakenly believed that it would help close the growing “academic achievement gap” between the US and countries where the kids spent more time in school – completely missing the fact that even more time in this seriously broken system would make things worse, not better…
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And considering that our national scholastic achievement was actually much better back when you and I were in school and had long summer vacations. To be honest, I thought it was due to the teachers getting longer holidays and more time off during the school year.
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I’m not sure where it all went wrong PT. There were so many changes in the late 60s and into the 70’s. I loved school until halfway through my 6th grade year, when I go shipped off to Los Angeles. I hated school there and I hated it here in Ohio when I came here in 1970 – the teachers were just nowhere near as helpful and friendly as I remembered them being in West Virginia. I didn’t like school again until I started college in 1976. It was that feeling that your video reminded me of! 😀
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Autumn certainly around the corner … but not hear yet!
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Hi Frank. Good to see you here again! This summer has been so weird in my parts, weather wise, that it seems like we’ve already had our Autumn! 😀
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Last week was great weather … but sure feels like summer is back now.
BTW – Act 6 of Time: The Musical is currently up … Theme is songs with Weekend, Saturday, Sunday, (or their plurals) in the title.
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I know what you mean my friend. We’ve even got storms on the schedule for today! 😀
Oh jeez Frank, my last attempt to join in was so embarrassing. But I will drop by to check out what others are contributing and, who knows from there… 😳
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Just remember the keywords for the titles!
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Did the best I could Frank. As usual, I was a bit overwhelmed… 😳
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No problem … I’ve got you covered!
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Thanks Frank! 😀
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Love the pictures my friend, and yes even here in the UK the nights draw in and there is a nip in the evening air… But please Please! let Summer Last a little Longer…. We here in the UK have had such a good one this year.. I do not wish to see it go just yet!..
have a Brill weekend IzaakMak, and watch out for that Lightening! xxxx 🙂 xxxx
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Thanks Sue. You have a great one too, and I do so hope you get your wish! 😀
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Is the little bird getting pelted in the storm also a GIF? If so I can’t seem to get it going. I have tried to arrange GIFs to no great success. I tried (for example) the crazy grey kitten
that leaps up and down. I used separate files and put four GIFs in a square. When it worked it was neat in that each GIF would be out of sync with the others and it would quickly get
vertigo inducing. However; the machine would rearrange the four into any grouping it liked
more often than not.
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No, unfortunately that one isn’t animated Phillip. Do you have a blog too? Your name isn’t linked to one, so I’ve been assuming you did not. 😀
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No; no blog. The woman who does my taxes thought that I should have one, but I
don’t even begin to have the computer chops. Also, there is the little matter of what
I would use for content. Then there is the issue of work to pay the man. It’s hard to
believe how much time can slip away while one gets cataracts from staring at the
screen. I am getting better with the computer/iPad. I have been told that an iPad is
not a computer. I have a very long way to go before I could consider a blog.
The Tax Lady is the person who got me into following a blog. I think that I slipped over to “Motley” by accident and then to you from there. I do like to write and tend to
go on and on.
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There are lots of good blogs that post simple content like single images or short statements. I imagine they’re easy to maintain and that they don’t require much time. But the fact that they’re so easy to do also causes them to get carried away at times, publishing as many as 10 or 20 posts in a day. Having so many new post notifications in my email is more than I care to deal with though, especially since I don’t know how much time it would take to visit each.
But I can’t complain about others getting carried away, because I myself have to work very hard to find a way to say what I want without forcing my visitors to read a whole damned book. But I’d rather publish just one or two larger posts per day than fill my reader’s emails with tons of incomplete thoughts…
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You flatter me. However, to have a blog is food for thought. Sometime, if I should
live so long, my wife and I are moving out of this Trailer Park (there is a blog there)
and when we do, it will be a real adventure. We have no plans and abiding hatred
for the Trailer Park. Perhaps the move would be fodder for a couple of para-
graphs a day.
Actually many of the people who live here are very nice. The sort of people who
find themselves in Trailer Parks seem to be those who live a life and didn’t think
a lot about the future. Some real interesting people. It is “The Company” that
victimizes the tenant/owners that makes it so onerous.
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Personally, I’ve always liked the freedom associated with being able to to just pick up and move, home and all, whenever I want. I don’t know how much life in a trailer actually reflects that fantasy, but it’s a nice fantasy and a blog about trailer park life could be pretty cool.
But if and when you do decide to begin your own blog, you might want to stop using the Enter key to introduce line breaks, as any good editor will take care of that for you, including the one here for comments. Mixing the two can result in some really unattractive output…
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