davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2025

[davidd]

How does a phone photo not have a suitable format for forum display?  Sincere question.

You can crop, at least on an iPhone....

I just upload it to Flickr and then mess with trying to copy/paste the link from a little screen....

And yes, Flickr app's upload is soooooo cumbersome....

Sunsette is very dedicated in posting her dispatches.

I applaud Sunsette's dedication. She is far more dedicated to filing dispatches from the field in a timely manner than am I. Perhaps she gets that from her deadline-oriented mentor.

Of course, once she gets home and it's time to sort, edit, and upload the rest of those field photos, it's a different matter altogether. 

Regarding phone photo formatting: phone photos have large file sizes and, if the capabilities of the phone camera are utilized to maximum effectiveness, a widescreen aspect ratio. With occasional exceptions, I prefer to post my photos in 8x10 (4x5) or standard 4x3 aspect ratio. File size is of more concern than aspect ratio when posting from the road. The yuuuuge mondo-megapixel phone photos sometimes fail to upload, or take a long time to upload, or... you've possibly encountered this with the Flickr app... they show up two or three days later! When I travel, my Internet access is often limited. While I supposedly have an "unlimited" data plan, those large file-size photos simply do NOT want to upload in a consistent manner. So uploading a widescreen, large file-size photo to Flickr is a pain.

I also have not found a reasonable way to re-size a photo on the phone, which I would need to do if I wanted to upload the image file to my own hosting account. Maybe there's a feature for that which I have not yet found. When I've looked in to doing so, usually an "app" is recommended. I have too much cr*p on my phone already. I don't want another cr-app to resize pictures -- an app which would be either filled with ads or which would constantly be prompting me to pay for extra features. An app which would be cumbersome to use on a tiny screen. An app which would store the files in a difficult to access folder. And then, of course, I'd need yet another app, a File Transfer Protocol app, to upload images to my hosting site.

I envy people who can run their entire lives from a phone. I can't do it. I just can't. Messing with the phone makes me want to throw it against the wall.

I know some people have their Flickr accounts linked to Instagram accounts. Instagram posts load automatically (I guess?) to Flickr. Maybe I should look in to that. Instagram is relatively easy to use from a phone compared to Flickr. I could set up a "private" Instagram account that I just use for photo posting.

My phone is an Android. I wish I'd purchased an iPhone. At the time they said the Whatchamallit-23 had the "best camera" available in a mobile phone. Maybe based on specs, but iPhone photos still look better, and the iPhone interface is smoother and more intuitive. And iPhones just work better, much like Mac computers. But yes, I can crop photos on the Android, if I care to be bothered with teeny tiny touchscreen controls on a teeny tiny even though they say it is "large" screen.

"Just upload to Flickr...." yeah, sure. Like I mentioned, and to which you allude, that's not always so easy. Uploads are dodgy and inconsistent at best. And then... where's the BBCode link? I have not been able to find a code link on the app. I went back and looked at it again just now. Got so frustrated that... yeah, tempted to throw the phone against the wall. Finally figured out -- I can't DO that from the app. Not on my phone, not on my iPad. What I have to do, I realize as of ten minutes ago, is open the Flickr site on a browser app -- the web version -- and copy the link from there.

SO MANY STEPS! I thought mobile phones were designed for ease of use. That was their original intent, anyway. Now these "apps" are designed for Content Consumption, not content creation. Apps are designed for scrolling thru stuff created by OTHER people, interspersed with advertising. Yeah, we can kind of upload from apps if our data or internet connection is sufficiently robust, but the hassle of trying to do anything else -- as you say, captions, tags, groups, folders -- makes it not worth the time or trouble. Oh, and I discovered while I was traveling that I cannot edit titles or tags from the Android Flickr app. Don't make typos! Don't come up with a clever turn of phrase after the fact. You can't fix it from the phone.

And then trying to navigate this forum on a tiny screen, paste in a photo link, and add a bit of text from a phone, or even from a touchscreen tablet device? I'd rather wait 'til I'm back at a keyboard and screen.

Besides, I still often use a "real" camera for many, or most, of my travel photos. I have no idea how to efficiently transfer a photo from my ten year old pocket camera to a phone or iPad.

As I said, I shoulda bought an iPhone. And while I'm at it, I should buy a laptop computer. I loved the Mac laptop(s) I had. They each lasted for six to eight years of daily use and lots of lugging around. But eventually they quit working. And... because Apple are *sshats... Apple eventually stopped supporting the iOS, and the installed apps stopped working with the outdated iOS.

I suppose I could get a cheap laptop, but I suspect the user ex-perience would be... disappointing, at a minimum.

Anyway, I'm back, and taking a page out of Sunsette's playbook, who knows if or when I'll get around to "playing catch-up" with A Doll A Day. I believe I missed twenty-one or twenty-two days.

Speaking of missing days -- I'll be away for three or four days around Halloween, and for two-ish weeks or a bit more around the end of November, and I don't know yet what's happening around Christmas. The 2025 A Doll A Day is going to have a lot of holes in it.

P.S.: Imagine trying to post a caption like this from a phone! 

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13 August - A Doll A Day 2025:

A Mysterious Arrival

The parcel isn't all that mysterious. It contains... or I think it contains, but I haven't opened it yet so I can't be certain... an "action figure" item I purchased nineteen months ago.

Yes, nineteen months ago. It's absurd. In the world of action figures and of many toys, items no longer appear on store shelves (or in online storefronts) for sale when they are in stock. Rather, items are announced in advance, an estimated release date is posted, "pre-orders" are accepted for a window of time (sometimes limited to weeks or days, sometimes open until items become available), and items are shipped once they are received by the retailer. Estimated release dates are inevitably delayed. The norm for that delay has become about a year. This item had a four-months-away original release date. Here it is, nineteen months later.

If a potential customer decides to wait to make a purchase, the items almost always sell out during the pre-order window. Retail shops only order the number of items for which they receive pre-orders. With rare exceptions, the price for most items escalates rapidly on the secondary market once the pre-orders close. The only way to get many items at "original retail price" is to pre-order them sight unseen.

Most items fall short of the promise in the promotional images and descriptions.

Even mainstream, "big name" companies like Mattel and Hasbro are starting to play this game. "Special Edition" or "Limited Edition" Barbie and Monster High dolls are often only available online through pre-orders.

So what's in the box? I'll show y'all when I get around to opening it. I already have a few unopened boxes sitting in the storage shed. I've been too busy or too lazy to get around to opening them. Maybe if I wait long enough they'll become "valuable."

There's an exception to that secondary market price inflation situation -- anything I purchase will almost inevitably decline in price.

Anyway, UPS dropped off this box today, nineteen months after I purchased the item.

I think I'm done with pre-orders. At this point, there's no guarantee I'll even be alive by the time the pre-order item arrives.

13 August - A Doll A Day 2025