Where was bignosemac today, 15th May 2019

[whole diary]

[grahame]

[snip]
Paging grahame for a more technical explanation.

Looking at the image info (in Firefox) shows that it is downloaded full size:
Location:      http:// ... _112636_zpsmlmojofe.jpg
Type:           WEBP Image
Size:            5,810.95 KB (5,950,416 bytes)
Dimensions:   5,120px × 2,368px (scaled to 1,024px × 474px)

6 MB in a concentrated lump in a web page is going to be noticeable on a VSDL line that's now only "fast", though from memory it was slower than that when first seen. As to why it's a .jpg file but identified as a WEBP image ... that needs an even more technical explanation!

I think Stuving has provided the technical stuff there, BigNoseMac and SandTEngineer

Basically, they're held as blooming big images on the web server BigNoseMac uses and the whole blooming big image is sent out to your browser, which then reduces them for screen display.  And as it's a reduction of 5 x in each dimension (X and Y) it means that there's 5 x 5 = 25 times the data actually needed for the display coming down the line.

So it works out (with image resized at browser) something like ...
2G - don't even try it!
3G - typical excellent case - 1 Mbyte / second = 6 seconds per image; 20 seconds for this thread
4G - typical excellent case - 7.5 Mbytes / second = 0.9 seconds per image; 4 seconds for this thread

Image resized on server to 1k x 474 pixels would cut the download time:
2G - don't even try it!
3G - typical excellent case - 1 Mbyte / second ... 1 second for this thread
4G - typical excellent case - 7.5 Mbytes / second ... 0.2 of a second for this thread

Also bear in mind that if you have a data limit / pay per gigabyte, BigNoseMac's posts are going to be more expensive to view   

I am ... hopeful ... we can add image hosting and resolution changing at the server when we update the software; I'm very familiar with the technology in PHP but need the proverbial month of Sundays of spare time if I were to do it in that time, and it's not 'worth' doing on the old software.  If we do it, you WILL loose the ability to save BNM's pictures and get high quality prints off them.  At 5k pixels, an A4 print would give you over 400 dpi (dots per inch) whereas the 1k reduced image would only be around 75 dpi - in effect preview rather than final quality mode.   Perhaps an advantage to BMN who could then sell you any pictures you wanted in high quality

[SandTEngineer]

Thanks for all the replies and calculations. Must be my Internet connection then, as its the same on all the devices we use here.  Well, I suppose that's what you get for living on the edge of Dartmoor

[Celestial]

Also bear in mind that if you have a data limit / pay per gigabyte, BigNoseMac's posts are going to be more expensive to view   

Oh dear, maybe I should be grateful that BigNoseMac seems to be alone in sharing his days out photos on such a regular basis. (Actually I am anyway, as I'm not sure that the Forum would be enhanced if lots of members were constantly posting what they've been up to on their jollys.  I do appreciate that is a personal opinion and probably not shared by many though before anyone shouts me down.)

[TonyK]

Oh dear, maybe I should be grateful that BigNoseMac seems to be alone in sharing his days out photos on such a regular basis. (Actually I am anyway, as I'm not sure that the Forum would be enhanced if lots of members were constantly posting what they've been up to on their jollys.  I do appreciate that is a personal opinion and probably not shared by many though before anyone shouts me down.)

I certainly shan't shout you down for voicing a valid opinion, although I enjoy seeing BNM's - and others - pictures of railways infrastructure past and present, and have even joined in the game myself. What jewels we may miss, but for this amusing diversion!

That said, I keep mobile data switched off, just in case.

[grahame]

Also bear in mind that if you have a data limit / pay per gigabyte, BigNoseMac's posts are going to be more expensive to view   

Oh dear, maybe I should be grateful that BigNoseMac seems to be alone in sharing his days out photos on such a regular basis. (Actually I am anyway, as I'm not sure that the Forum would be enhanced if lots of members were constantly posting what they've been up to on their jollys.  I do appreciate that is a personal opinion and probably not shared by many though before anyone shouts me down.)

Hmmm .. I felt I shared a lot of photos from when I'm out and about!   But to give you an idea, pictures such as this one here, from today have been resized and compressed from 2.5 Mbytes to 82 Kbytes before uploading to the server - so they're 30 times less traffic than if I simply uploaded them. And I routinely reduce (and check) the size as I upload.


There's an enormous temptation when posting / putting anything up on the web for the webmaster / page author to design it so it looks superb and loads well on his/her system. At a professional designer level, that has often lead to sites that are great on big screens and with fast connections, but have fallen over when reduced to a smaller device and slower connection.  With the Coffee Shop, which the team has worked on over the years from distinctly poor connection on quite small devices, we have kept page furniture down to a small size, and occasionally asked people to resize images (especially avatars!) which are slowing the site down.     As we move to new software (Lisa and I were looking at various look-and-feels today), we have to keep an eye on this as the modern look and feels tend to be slightly bulkier.   But it will give us much better coverage on mobile devices.

I can sense a thread split coming up here as we're a long way from where BNM was on Wednesday!

[JayMac]

Oh dear, maybe I should be grateful that BigNoseMac seems to be alone in sharing his days out photos on such a regular basis. (Actually I am anyway, as I'm not sure that the Forum would be enhanced if lots of members were constantly posting what they've been up to on their jollys.  I do appreciate that is a personal opinion and probably not shared by many though before anyone shouts me down.)

Bah, humbug.

[grahame]

For the absence of doubt, "where was I today", "where was this taken" and "my trip log" type posts are very popular in terms of follow up volumes and numbers of likes. 

The segregation of the forum into separate areas and boards helps members be selective in what they read and would allow for an increase in the number of such posts within our data structure and without being overbearing to the more serious or tuned-view members.  The segregation also allows the forum to cover heritage topics, other modes of transport, nearby lines, etc, without people having to spend too much time wading through those associated topics if they're not interested;  bear in mind the for some, such topic are of little interest but for others that are key interests or learning points.  I think the balance isn't far off being right; keeping an eye on that, always, as we move forward.

An especial "thank you" to contributor who instigate this type of thread; I know that I (for one) often read them with interest but leave little comment / make little remark.  But I do learn, I do grab facts from them, and so do many other if you look at the "number of reads" stats that come up.  And if you bear in mind that this statistic is NOT incremented when a post comes up in "recent posts" ... so it's very much an underestimate!

There is a potential serious issue with image count and size (total data volume) - but that is potential and for most of our users is currently a roof a very long way above their heads.    If every poster added images resized at the browser, it would need looking at straight away ... but we all act and do things differently and at present it's just a note / explanation job.