So OBC said after seeing the photos from Wednesday "be nice if we could have that in a slideshow to send out to everyone".
I dipped my paw into my fairy purse, fetched out the wand and lo, here it is...
Actually, it wasn't like that at all. I've not made piccies into a slideshow in years. I knew the welder had an interest in this kind of thing, so I sent him a text. No response! If it had been a text saying there was some curry on offer, the little bleeder would have been round two minutes after I'd clicked send. Verdict: As much use as a chocolate teapot !
Then I stumbled across a free Microsoft program called Photo Story http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11132
Have to say, I was utterly blown away by the simplicity of use for this proggy. I have painful experience of stuff similar to this and the formatting of photos was one thing, adding music was a whole new experience in self tooth extraction, then there was the file format choice !
It took me about fifteen minutes to cobble this together, though my choice of music has been cross examined and suggestions of the good, the bad and the ugly and Happiness is a warm gun by the Beatles, suggested by Charlie Chalk.
Well, this was a first attempt and as the old song goes, the only way is up...
Because I've been e mailing this sort of stuff and the raw photos which were about 20 megs, coupled with the fact my ISP uses a Google interface which won't allow zip attachments, I had to find a way to send bigger files to "net novices" and spare myself the grief of explaining file transfer protocol and the likes.
I've used services like Sendspace and what pisses me off, is you use the service once and a bit like Vistaprint, once they have your e mail address, you'll hear from them every day, sometimes more than once.
I had some stuff printed by Vistaprint and they did an excellent job of the print and the delivery, but I have reached the point where I am pissed beyond belief with the daily shit always saying the same, but in a different way. Just puts me off using them, I wanted to pay for a service, not marry into their fucking family.
Quite by accident, I stumbled across Attachmore who live at www.attachmore.com
Their free account allows you a total of 100 Mb of data before they expect you to subscribe to their service, but you can send a gig of gubbins for $ 5 a month.
You really need to be sending larger amounts of data to people on a regular basis where normal e mail boxes will bounce (usually around the 5Mb mark), to get the use.
As I've used it four times in a week now, I am very warm to what they offer.
All you do, is upload the individual files you want to send to someone. Then it gives you a hyperlink and all the tools you might want to send that link to your friends.
They get an e mail with that link in which they click and then get a zip download right to their puter. So simple, even OBC failed to fuck it up (though we are still waiting on the Welder's verdict).
In these times when I find most software and service to be the same, I find this has the buzz I used to get from new discoveries back in the 90's. These days, I really have adopted the "impress me" approach and this is one service which has.
Part of my voyage of discovery this week, involves a service I wasn't even aware of until yesterday, which is Google sites. Like we all know about Google mail, G+ (which I am warming to), Google docs (cloud computing) Google nude cam (I made that one up).
Basically it's a free website with a sub domain. Of course it interfaces with all the other google services (which is why I set up a You Tube account for the Coffin Dodgers) and I am looking forward once I get my head around laying out the site, to presenting them with a nicely themed home on the interwed.
