Still Ice

by JanieM

Three weeks ago I wrote that it wasn’t going to be an especially late ice-off this year. In a post about unpredictability, I hazarded a prediction.

Here’s the view from the town beach this afternoon:

It's usually at least a few days from the time when the ice starts to break up into big sheets until it's all gone. Right now it's still all in one piece. We've had February weather in March and March weather in February and April. The peepers are awake, the crocuses are lovely, but the grass is still brown.

As a bonus, here’s more or less the same view from a recent autumn:

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Let’s take care of it. We ain’t got another one.

*****

P.S. Flickr has been sold again, and I'm thinking of getting my stuff off the site and starting afresh with a new photo repository. Anyone got any experience/suggestions?

P.S. #2: Edited to fix the fuzziness of the photos.

Comments

[wj]

My experience is all with one repository: thumb drive. Totally under my control. Not limited to one device. Still able to attach photos to emails, etc.

[JanieM]

I am flush with thumb drives, and a personal filing system to boot. But those things are not a mechanism for sharing. So says the person whose entire "social media" presence -- except for photos -- is to read and occasionally comment on three blogs.

Picasa served my purposes for a while, and linked nicely with the travel blog I made using Blogspot so that I could share photos of various trips with friends and family.

Then I switched to Flickr when Eszter Hargittai of Crooked Timber started a photo group in 2013 (?), which dissolved at the end of 2016, sad to say.

While I was socializing at Flickr, Google discontinued Picasa, although there's an archive where I can still access my pics, and apparently Blogspot still links to them.

I haven't started to research this yet, I just thought that if anyone here is happy with one platform or another, it would be useful to hear about it. (Bernie...? I've forgotten which one you use.)

[JanieM]

Nor could I post the occasional photo here from a thumb drive. ;-)

[wj]

Well, obviously my social media presence is on the same level. (Only post on this one blog. Plus a LinkedIn entry and a lot of commenting on the Economist.)

Guess I will learn something from this, too.

[Will Bamberg]

JanieM, I was in that Flickr group, too, and am still sad about it ending. I tried looking for another similar one a year or so ago but never found one with such a nice feeling. Still I became increasingly unreliable at posting in the second and third years, so it's hard for me to complain. I read your beautiful post about Baskaborr a year or so ago, but couldn't find the words to comment.

I think SmugMug acquiring Flickr is just about the best thing that could possibly happen for Flickr. The SmugMug people actually care about photography and providing a good platform for it, rather than just owning another random piece of a corporate portfolio. Yahoo never cared about Flickr, or photography, or had any idea what to do with it, and just gradually ran it into the ground as they wandered deeper into irrelevance. And belonging to Verizon is about the worst fate for any company.

[JanieM]

Hi Will, thanks for all of that. I was exactly like you with the Flickr group: I loved it, but had periods where I disappeared. Every time someone else disappeared I was sad....

Also, thanks for the info about SmugMug. I don't pay enough attention to have heard of it, all that's happened is that

1) I got an email saying that Flickr was being bought by them, and if I didn't want to be part of the move I should delete my Flickr account (perhaps downloading my pics first).

2) I logged in for the first time in a few few months and got a prompt to sign a TOC for "Oath." Not too far down the page it talks about Oath having the right to share stuff with Verizon (its owner). Well, Verizon is my cell phone provider for lack of a sensible option here in the boonies of Central Maine, and I hate Verizon with a purple passion. They have been dishonest and predatory and just on principle -- all the more because I haven't been using the Flickr account much -- I would want to get away from them.

Now Google tells me that Oath/Verizon actually acquired Flickr/Yahoo a couple of years ago. So I do wonder why the Oath oath-signing just showed up now. I said "Remind me later" and didn't click "Accept."

Now you've made me worry that refusing to sign it might make my account disappear when the changeover to SmugMug comes. I'll have to go back and read the fine print, because certainly on your recommendation I am likely to give SmugMug a try.

Maybe we could even start a new photo group!!

[hairshirthedonist]

I was going to mention SmugMug before reading through this thread.

I was doing genealogical research and stumbled upon a photo of my great grandmother's sister while searching for info on my great grandmother. It turns out it was on SmugMug under the account of a previously-unknown (to me, anyway) second cousin.

I've since developed a relationship on line with this cousin, and he's very into photography and not remotely a dummy. He's also tech savvy. (Non-dummies aren't always tech savvy!)

So SmugMug gets my second-hand endorsement.

[Michael Cain]

Took the granddaughters out for a bicycle ride today (granddaughter #1 out front displaying her recently acquired two-wheeler skills, granddaughter #2 in the seat on the back of my bike). Lots of white stuff on the back peaks of the high country. River hasn't started rising, so the melt hasn't started early. All evidence of last Friday's mild snow event down here on the flat is gone, and there were butterflies working the dandelions. Forecasters aren't sure whether we'll be above or below the snow line for tonight's precipitation event.

[Will Bamberg]

Yes, I feel the same way about Verizon.

> Now you've made me worry that refusing to sign it might make my account disappear when the changeover to SmugMug comes.

I don't think that will happen. As I understand it, if you do nothing your Flickr account will automatically move over to SmugMug:

As part of the acquisition, all Flickr accounts will move to SmugMug’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You have until May 25, 2018 to either accept SmugMug’s Terms and Privacy Policy or opt out. If you do nothing in that time, your account will simply transition from the current Yahoo Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to SmugMug’s Terms. If you don’t want to make this change, you can delete your Flickr account through your Account Settings page.

(from https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/04/20/together-smugmug-flickr-faq/)

> Maybe we could even start a new photo group!!

I would love that!

[Pete]

The ice is off the lake here, and the last week has seen the predictable and steady stream of trailered pontoon boats down to the marina, even though we woke up to temps in the upper 30s over the weekend.

I spent yesterday attempting to reclaim a decrepit rock wall from the forsythia. A losing battle, but the robins appreciated my efforts. The flies were up by noon as we finally got into the 60s. I'm reconsidering one of those hat-net things.

I guess I'm a cheap bastard, but I can't bring myself to sign up for anything but the free storage offered by Google or the like. It's not the expense so much as the annoyance of another account to manage. Then again, I have yet to cancel my Office 365 account even though I preach the gospel of OpenOffice.

[wj]

And here we are starting to have to deal with days in the low 80s. (Happily we are looking at only mid-70s for the rest of the week.) The garden is loving it -- the artichoke plant has shot up, and is now taller than Joanne is.

Of course, we don't so much have 4 seasons here as two: wet and dry. With dry being longer . . . and not counting the occasional wet season month, like February this year, when we barely got 0.1 inches of rain in the whole month. It's not technically a desert. But compared to where you all live, it's pretty close.

[bobbyp]

Janie,

Is that the spot where David Frum fell through the ice?

:)

[JanieM]

bobbyp -- I'll never tell. ;-)

[JanieM]

The ice is gone. :-)

This doesn't set a record for lateness, but pretty close.

The grass was turning from brown to green by the minute today. Ahhhhhhh.

[wj]

Hey, it's global warming, but the resulting local climate change can go in various directions. For northeastern North America, it seems to mean things getting chillier. Out here on the West Coast, it means things getting drier.